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World War I Conscription and Social Change in Guinea

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Anne Summers  and
R. W. Johnson
Anne Summers
Affiliation:
Magdalen College, Oxford
R. W. Johnson
Affiliation:
Magdalen College, Oxford
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Extract

When the French government introduced military conscription into the A.O.F. in 1912, the Guinean colonial authorities saw the measure as a means of training a local administrative corps to replace the traditional chieftaincy, through whose military defeat the conquest of Guinea had very largely been effected. However, the chiefs had by no means disappeared by 1914, and wartime demands for recruits were too massive to be supplied without their assistance. Their help was bought with promises to consolidate their authority in peacetime. Although able to marshal recruits, the chiefs seem to have been unable to prevent large-scale desertions before the moment of embarkation for France; village populations could also avoid conscription by overland migration out of the A.O.F. The colonial authorities therefore felt constrained to offer substantial inducements, mainly concerning improved social status vis-à-vis the chiefs, to the individual recruits. These contradictory policies were compounded by the recruitment drive of Blaise Diagne in 1918, which involved a further promise to recruits of improved status vis-à-vis the French authorities. The return of ancien combattants to Guinea was marked by outbreaks of strike action among workers in Conakry and along the railway line; by riots in demobilization camps; and by rejection of or agitation against chiefly power in the home cantons to which they dispersed. The anciens combattants did not form a coherent or organized political movement, but remained a conspicuous social grouping between the wars. Although they appear to have been strongly influenced by their experience of war and by contact with French socialists, their conflict with the chiefs seems to have counted for more with them than any confrontation with the French.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 25 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 Statistics compiled directly from Guinean quarterly administrative reports indicate that between 20,000 and 30,000 soldiers were conscripted in Guinea during the war. Michel, Marc, ‘Le recrutement des tirailleurs en A.O.F. pendant la première guerre mondiale’, Revue Française d'histoire d'outre-merGoogle Scholar, 4θ trimestre 1973, gives a figure for Guinean recruitment of 30,204, which is taken from figures compiled in Conakry in 1918. It is not possible at present to give the exact numbers who served—allow+ance would have to be made for a different rate of desertion in each region (see p. 27)—nor is it possible to give the exact number who returned, as demobilization camps held anciens combattants from several different A.O.F. territories. As many as 26,500 anciens combattants may have returned to Guinea if the territory's proportion of survivors was the same as for the rest of the A.O.F.: around 11.7 per cent of the 1914–18 recruits died, according to official sources quoted in Sarraut, A., La Mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris, 1923).Google Scholar

2 The principal source for Guinea in the colonial period is the Governor's Rapport Politique, compiled quarterly, and incorporating the quarterly reports of each commandant de cercle, reports from police files, etc. In 1968 the authors conducted interviews with several veterans of the independence movement in Conakry, Kindia, Mamou, Dalaba and Dabola, none of whom were, however, old enough to recall the 1914–18 period.

3 Suret-Canale, J., French Colonialism in Tropical Africa 1900–1945 (London, 1971). 135Google Scholar. Gen. Mangin had estimated that French West Africa could provide 40,000 men per year for a 5-year term of service.

4 Rapport Politique (hereafter referred to as RP) 1915, 1θ TrimestreGoogle Scholar; 1917, 1θ Trimestre; 1918, 2θ and 3θ Trimestres.

5 RP 1918, 1θ Trimestre, p. 26.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 3θ Trimestre, p. 17.

7 Ibid., 1θ Trimestre, pp. 6–7.

8 RP 1917, 2θ Trimestre, pp. 49–51.Google Scholar

9 RP 1918, 2θ Trimestre, pp. 4–5Google Scholar; 3θ Trimestre, pp. 30–1.

10 Suret-Canale, op. cit. 138, 334, 341.

11 RP 1918, 2θ Trimestre, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

12 Suret-Canale, op. cit. 439–40.

13 RP 1917, 1θ Trimestre, Lieutenant-Governor's report, p. 32.Google Scholar

14 RP 1920, 4θ Trimestre, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

15 RP 1917, 1θ Trimestre, Lieutenant-Governor's report, p. 33.Google Scholar

16 RP 1919, 2θ Trimestre, pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., passim.

18 Ibid., 2θ Trimestre, report 392A 18.9.19, p. 3.

19 Ibid., 1θ Trimestre, Annexe, ‘Incidents Militaires de Kouroussa’.

20 Ibid., 4θ Trimestre.

21 Ibid., 2θ Trimestre, report 392A, 18.9.19, p. 22.

22 RP 1920, 1θ Trimestre, p. 27Google Scholar; RP 1921, 4θ Trimestre, pp. 13–14.Google Scholar

23 RP 1919 3θ Trimestre, p. 41.Google Scholar

24 RP 1930, p. 64Google Scholar; RP 1931, p. 37.Google Scholar

25 Digu'en, Abu, Notre Empire africain noir (Paris, 1928, 63Google Scholar; cited in Suret-Canale, op. cit. 139.

26 RP 1919, 2θ Trimestre.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 4θ Trimestre, p. 55.

28 RP 1923, 40 Trimestre, p. 9.Google Scholar

29 RP 1929Google Scholar; RP 1933Google Scholar. These appointments indicate not so much an inconsistency of official policy as a discontinuity of official personnel. French commandants appointed to positions in Guinea between the wars were usually former military men who were enthusiastic about the administrative potential of anciens combattants in their areas.

30 RP 1922, 2θ Trimestre, pp. 20–1.Google Scholar

31 RP 1918, 1θ Trimestre, pp. 6–7Google Scholar; Lelong, P., Ces Hommes qu'on appelle anthropophaget (Paris, 1946).Google Scholar

32 Interview with Autra, Ray, Sept. 1968), Kindia.Google Scholar