Speech to the Chamber of Deputies on colonial policy

Answers

• Q34CIVILIZATION

  Does superiority in industrial or military technology justify one people governing another?

  Yes. superior (industrial) nations have a right and duty to rule. Ferry asserts that contemporary European nations generously discharge a superior race’s civilizing duty, contrasting this with earlier Spanish enslavement. The excerpt does not state the technological premise or the explicit right-because-duty formula.

  M. Jules Ferry . Ces devoirs, messieurs, ont été souvent méconnus dans l'histoire des siècles précédents, et certainement, quand les soldats et les explorateurs espagnols introduisaient l'esclavage dans l'Amérique centrale, ils n'accomplissaient pas leur devoir d'hommes de race supérieure. (Très bien ! très bien !) Mais, de nos jours, je soutiens que les nations européennes s'acquittent avec largeur, avec grandeur et honnêteté, de ce devoir supérieur de civilisation.

  M. Jules Ferry. These duties, gentlemen, have often been ignored in the history of past centuries, and certainly, when the Spanish soldiers and explorers introduced slavery into Central America, they were not fulfilling their duty as men of a superior race. (Hear, hear!) But in our day, I maintain that the European nations discharge this higher duty of civilisation with generosity, with greatness and with honesty.

  OCR correctedmachine translation

  Wikipedia 'Jules Ferry' and Scribd copy date the speech 28 July 1885; the Latin Library excerpt (dated there to 28 March 1884) contains the 'superior races have a right because they have a duty' and coal-supply passages. The date discrepancy needs checking against the Journal officiel.