Shortly after the end of the Second World War, administrators in the French Soudan began complaining about numerous incidents of African men deserting their worksites and going to military bases to enlist, boarding trains without authorization, and in other ways causing disruptions. When asked why they demanded free passage on trains or why they wanted to sign up for the army, the men expressed a desire to be treated with the same respect as that given soldiers who had returned from the war. Their complaints came at a time when most West Africans had reason to celebrate major changes in colonial rule. By 1946, new laws brought about an end to forced labor and a separate legal code for colonial subjects; many considered these an overdue reward for the significant contributions Africans had made to the war. But not everyone enjoyed the fruits of these recent political changes. African members of a quasimilitary service known as the deuxième portion du contingent militaire (second portion of the military contingent) found that little had changed for them. Since its origins in 1926, men recruited into the deuxième portion had considered it to be a form of forced labor. Their distaste for the service only increased during the war, particularly during the Vichy period, when colonial administrators were freer than they had been in decades to coerce Africans. While the war years had been difficult for everyone, the postwar years seemed to hold promise for many, but when the men in the deuxième portion realized that the changing political order did not apply to them, they found new ways to express their anger.

Initially, French colonial administrators began recruiting men into the deuxième portion to provide cheap labor to the Dakar-Niger Railroad, the Office du Niger, and other public works projects, primarily in the French Soudan. The men who designed this service argued that the conditions in the worksites and campsites were well regulated and that, therefore, the deuxième portion was somehow different from previous forms of coercion.