French West Africa
French West Africa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1895–1958 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Historical era | New Imperialism | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
• Established | 27 October 1895 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
5 October 1958 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Area | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
• Total | 4,689,000[4] km2 (1,810,000 sq mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Currency | French West African franc | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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French West Africa (
With an area of 4,689,000 km2, French West Africa was eight times the size of Metropolitan France.[4] French Equatorial Africa had an additional area of 2,500,000 km2.[4]
History
Until after World War II, almost none of the Africans living in the colonies of France were citizens of France. Rather, they were "French subjects," lacking rights before the law, property ownership rights, rights to travel, dissent, or vote. The exception was the Four Communes of Senegal: those areas had been towns of the tiny Senegal Colony in 1848 when, at the abolition of slavery by the French Second Republic, all residents of France were granted equal political rights. Anyone able to prove they were born in these towns was legally French. They could vote in parliamentary elections, which had been previously dominated by white and mixed-race residents of Senegal.
The Four Communes of Senegal were entitled to elect a deputy to represent them in the French parliament in 1848–1852, 1871–1876, and 1879–1940. In 1914, the first African, Blaise Diagne, was elected as the deputy for Senegal in the French Parliament. In 1916, Diagne pushed a law through the National Assembly (loi Blaise Diagne) granting full citizenship to all residents of the so-called Four Communes. In return, he promised to help recruit millions of Africans to fight in World War I. Thereafter, all black Africans of Dakar, Gorée, Saint-Louis, and Rufisque could vote to send a representative to the French National Assembly.
As the French pursued their part in the scramble for Africa in the 1880s and 1890s, they conquered large inland areas, and at first, ruled them as either a part of the Senegal colony or as independent entities. These conquered areas were usually governed by French Army officers, and dubbed "military territories". In the late 1890s, the French government began to rein in the territorial expansion of its "officers on the ground", and transferred all the territories west of Gabon to a single governor based in Senegal, reporting directly to the Minister of Overseas Affairs. The first governor-general of Senegal was named in 1895, and in 1904, the territories he oversaw were formally named French West Africa (AOF). Gabon would later become the seat of its own federation French Equatorial Africa (AEF), which was to border its western neighbor on the modern boundary between Niger and Chad.
In 1905, the French officially abolished slavery in most of French West Africa.[5] From 1906 to 1911, as emancipation progressed, over a million slaves in French West Africa fled from their masters to earlier homes.[6]
After the
Following World War II, the French government began a process of extending limited political rights in its colonies. In 1945 the French Provisional Government allocated ten seats to French West Africa in the new Constituent Assembly called to write a new
In 1946, the
The Constitution of the
Territorial changes
The administrative structure of French colonial possessions in West Africa, while more homogeneous than neighboring
Federal structure
In theory, the Governors-General of the AOF reported directly to the
Colonial administration
Each colony of French West Africa was administered by a Lieutenant Governor, responsible to the Governor General in Dakar. Only the Governor-General received orders from Paris, via the
Governors-General
Grand Council of French West Africa
Beginning in 1946,[citation needed] a Grand Council of French West Africa was created in Dakar. Two representatives from each colony, usually the Lieutenant Governor and a representative of the French population there, were seated. This council had only consultative powers over the office of the Governor General. The functioning of such bodies rested upon the Indigénat legal code of 1885.
Local administration
Despite this state of flux, and with the exception of the Senegalese Communes, the administrative structure of French rule at the lower levels remained constant, based upon the Cercle system. This was the smallest unit of French political administration in French colonial Africa that was headed by a European officer. They might range in size, but French Sudan (modern Mali) consisted of less than a dozen Cercles for most of its existence. Thus, a Cercle Commander might be the absolute authority over hundreds of thousands of Africans.
Cercles
A Cercle consisted of several
The "Cercle Commander" ("commandant de cercle") was subject to the authority of a District Commander, and the government of the colony above him, but was independent of the Military structure (outside Military areas, e.g.: modern Niger and Mauritania prior to the Second World War). Below the "Cercle Commander" were a series of African "Chefs de canton" and "Chefs du Village": "chiefs" appointed by the French and subject to removal by the Europeans. As well, the "Cercle Commander" made use of a large number of servants, employees, and African officers such as the "Gardes-de-cercle" police, any military units seconded to them by government authorities, and sub-administrators such as the Precepteur du marché trade inspectors, etc.
Because of administrative practice and geographic isolation, Cercle Commanders had a tremendous amount of power over the lives of the Africans around them. The Cercle Commanders also had tremendous power over the economic and political life of their territories. Legally, all Africans outside the Four Communes of Senegal were "subjects" under the Indigénat legal code of 1885. This code gave summary powers to French administrators, including the rights to arrest, try, punish and imprison subjects. It also gave French local authorities the right to requisition forced labour, usually limited to able-bodied men for a few weeks a year, but in practice having few restrictions. These "tools" included the Civilizing mission ideology common in the period following the First World War. Every new Cercle Commander might well bring with him vast projects for development and the restructuring of the people's lives he governed.
Chiefs
The other official office particular to the local administration of French West Africa was the "Chief". These were Africans appointed by French officials for their loyalty to France, regardless of their rights to local power. These chiefs were assigned created territories based on the scale of a French Canton, as well as on the small scale tribal structures the French found in the coastal areas of the Rivières du Sud colony in the 1880s, modern Guinea. The Canton, then, was much smaller than, and qualitatively different from, the pre-colonial states of the Sahel (such as the Toucouleur Empire) which the French would later conquer.[12]
They were styled "Chefs de canton", "Chefs du Village", or occasionally taking the title of precolonial states assimilated by the French structure whole. This last was uncommon, but became more prevalent in the later colonial territories conquered, as fewer administrators were available to rule over larger, less populated territories with strong pre-colonial state structures.
Where these larger polities resisted the French, they were often broken into small chiefdoms. Larger polities which presented a segment of the elite who would work with the French were maintained under new leadership. The
Regardless of source, chiefs were given the right to arm small numbers of guards and made responsible for the collection of taxes, the recruitment of forced labour, and the enforcement of "customary law". In general, Canton Chiefs served at the behest of their Cercle Commander and were left to see to their own affairs as long as calm was maintained and Administrative orders were carried out.
Geography
With an area of some 4,689,000 square kilometres (1,810,000 sq mi) (mostly the desert or semi-desert interior of Mauritania, Sudan and Niger) extending from Africa's westernmost point to the depths of the Sahara, the Federation contained more than ten million inhabitants at its creation, and some 25 million at its dissolution. The AOF included all of the Senegal River valley, most of the Niger River valley, and most of the West African Sahel region. It also included tropical forests in Ivory Coast and Guinea, the Fouta Djallon highlands, and the Aïr Mountains of modern Niger.
Territories
- Ivory Coast
- Dahomey (currently Benin)
- French Sudan (currently Mali)
- Guinea
- Mauritania
- Niger
- Senegal
- Upper Volta (currently Burkina Faso)
- French Togoland (currently Togo)
- Enclaves of Forcados and Badjibo (in modern Nigeria)
Postage stamps
The
In 1943 and 1944, stamps of Senegal and Mauritania were overprinted with new values and valid throughout French West Africa.
The first issues printed specifically for the federation were the
It was followed by a Stamp Day issue on 21 March 1959, which omitted the federation's name and was inscribed "CF" along with "Dakar-Abidjan" for use in Ivory Coast and Senegal.
See also
References
- ISBN 9781580462648.
- ISBN 9780191520556.
- ISBN 9789004233133.
- ^ OCLC 1389826279.
- S2CID 229943508.[page needed]
- ^ Klein, Martin (2009). "Slave Descent and Social Status in Sahara and Sudan". In Rossi, Benedetta (ed.). Reconfiguring Slavery: West African Trajectories. Liverpool University Press. p. 29.
- ISBN 1-85973-557-6.
- ^ "ASNOM - Association Amicale Santé Navale et d'Outre Mer".
- ^ For a progression of maps of the border changes of individual sub-entities, see: Ganse, Alexander (29 March 2005). "Historical Atlas: French West Africa". World History at Korean Minjok Leadership Academy (WHKMLA). Retrieved 11 July 2022..
- ^ Search page lcweb2.loc.gov [dead link]
- ^ "ASNOM - Association Amicale Santé Navale et d'Outre Mer".
- . Retrieved 16 January 2009.
Further reading
- Aldrich, Robert (1996). Greater France: a History of French Overseas Expansion. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-16000-3.
- Conklin, Alice L. (1998). A Mission to Civilize: the Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa 1895–1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-2999-9.
- Delavignette, Robert. Freedom and Authority in French West Africa (Routledge, 2018).
- Devereux, David R. (2005). "Colonial Federations: French West Africa". In ISBN 1-135-45670-4.
- Gamble, Harry (September 2017). Contesting French West Africa: Battles over Schools and the Colonial Order, 1900-1950. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-9549-0.
- Langley, Michael. "Bizerta to the Bight: The French in Africa." History Today. (Oct 1972), pp 733–739. covers 1798 to 1900.
- Lusignan, Guy De (1969). French-speaking Africa Since Independence. London: Pall Mall Press.
- Manning, Patrick (1998). Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880–1995. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-64255-8.
- ISBN 0-87663-702-0.
- Thompson, Virginia; Adloff, Richard (1969). French West Africa (2nd ed.). New York: Greenwood Press.
- Young, Crawford (1997). The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06879-4.
- "France: Africa: French West Africa and the Sahara". Statesman's Year-Book. London: Macmillan and Co. 1921. pp. 895–903 – via Internet Archive.