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The Formation of the Government General of French West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Extract

French colonial history, during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, was marked by two significant developments—a steady devolution of executive power from Paris to administrators abroad, and the creation of the Ministry for the Colonies in 1894. The basic reason for these changes was simply pressure of work. As communications with an expanding empire improved, the tendency to over-centralize the management of colonial affairs placed an excessive burden on the colonial section of the Ministry for the Navy. The appointment of an Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies who was responsible to a variety of ministers in the 1880's had provided no solution to the volume of business brought from Africa and Asia by the cable and the mail-steamer. Indeed, the example of Algeria where officials had been closely bound to government departments in Paris since 1871 had showed that the formulation of coherent colonial policy under these conditions was too often frustrated by divided responsibilities and changing politicians. Towards the zenith of French expansion, therefore, a single ministry took charge of all, territories except North Africa; and its first task was to apply to other areas the framework of federal administration set up in Indo-China some eight years previously. No longer were the colonies dependent for directives on a sub-department of the French Navy that had founded and protected them. The heterogeneous posts and annexed territories were grouped, as far as pacification and diplomatic conventions would permit, under governors-general who were at once military pro-consuls of empire and civil representatives of republican presidents.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1960

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References

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22 Haut Commissariat, Conseil Supérieur de l'A.O.F., procés-verbaux/5/E/I. Present were Chaudié, Boilève, Mouttet (Director of the Interior, Senegal), Girard (Attorney-General), Linder (Head of Administrative Services, Senegal) and Delavau (Deputy Colonial Commissioner) as secretary.

23 Quinquand, J., ‘De Beeckmann au Fouta-Djallon’ in L'Expansion Française en Afrique Occidentale (Société de l'Histoire des Colonies Françaises, Paris, n.d.), 177.Google Scholar The area, however, was not completely pacified till after the revolt of the Almamy, Alfa Yaya, in 1903. See Demougeot, A., ‘Notes sur l'organisation politique et administrative du Labé avant et depuis l'occupation française’ Mémoires de l'Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, no. 6 (Paris, 1944), 23–9, 47–56.Google Scholar

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26 Ibid. Chaudié to Chautemps, 5 Nov. 1895.

27 Soudan receipts in 1896 for the local budget—as distinct from credits from the State Budget—were 2,034,500 fr. The bulk of these consisted in head taxes, paid in specie, or more usually in gold, ivory, gum and hides—minus 10 per cent of revenue for village chiefs and tax collectors. Other sources were market fees and the oussourou—a caravan tax of one-tenth of produce and one-fortieth part of livestock passing through French territory. Frantz, op. cit. pp. 78–9.Google Scholar

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30 Haut Commissariat, Correspondance Confidentielle/2/B/72, Ballay to Ministère des Colonies, 31 Oct. 1898.Google Scholar

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33 Haut Commissariat, Affaires Administratives/18/G/2, Chaudié to Binger, 23 March 1899.Google Scholar

34 Haut Commissariat, Affaires Administratives/18/G/2. Compare Chaudié to Decrais, 23 Mar. 1899, which was more diplomatically worded and did not mention resignation.Google Scholar

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36 Ibid. Destenave (Commandant of East Macina under de Trentinian), ‘Projet d'organisation politique, administrative et défensive de l'Afrique Occidentale Française’, 1898.

37 Ibid. De Trentinian, ‘Réformes nécessaires dans nos possessions de l'Afrique Occidentale. Nécessité de l'Organisation d'un Gouvernement Général de l'Afrique Occidentale’, 1899.

38 De Trentinian cited figures to show that between 1892 and 1896 France's share of the total trade of the French West African possessions was only 36,000,000 fr. (or 47 per cent), while Great Britain's share of total trade in her West African colonies was 52,000,000 fr. (or 51 per cent). Eight million francs of the French imports, he noted, were destined for the French army; and many imported items, valued as French imports, were of British origin—notably cloth.Google Scholar

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44 Compare the Customs revenues of Lagos Colony and Protectorate which, in 1902, accounted for 90 per cent of general revenues. By 1904, Southern Nigeria earned £766,744 from customs—about one-third as much as the total trade revenues in French West Africa. Blue Books, 1903–5 (Lagos, 19031905).Google Scholar

45 Noel-Eugéne Ballay who had been previously Governor of French Gabon and French Guinea died at Saint-Louis in Jan. 1902.Google Scholar

46 Decree, 15 Oct. 1902, l'Annuaire de l'A.O.F., 1912, 24–6. The Governor-General was also president of the Senegambia-Niger Administrative Council. Senegal now had a Lieutenant-Governor of its own.Google Scholar

47 Haut Commissariat, Affaires Administratives/18/G/3, Roume, ‘Instructions aux Lieutenants-Gouverners’, 11 Nov. 1902. Ernest Roume was a career administrator in the Ministère des Colonies where he had risen to the position of Directeur des Affaires Politiques, Économiques, Administratives, in the Asian, American and Oceanic section. He had travelled widely on missions of inspection, particularly in Indo-China during the Downer administration which he admired as an example for West Africa.Google Scholar

48 Ibid. Doumergue to Roume, 28 Nov. 1902.

49 Haut Commissariat, Conseil de Gouvernement de l'A.O.F., procès-verbaux/5/E/r, 3 and 4, sessions 15 Oct., 19 Dec. 1902, 6 June, 17 Nov. 1903. Present were: Roume, Houry (Commander-in-Chief, French West Africa), Picatier (Director of Public Works), Carpot and Cros (members of the Senegal General Council), Schneider (member of the Ivory Coast Administrative Council), Bruneau (President of the Court of Appeal, Senegal), the Lieutenant-Governors of the four colonies, the Kayes delegate and Malan, Roume's Secretary-General.Google Scholar

50 Ibid. Senegal's loan of 2,654,662 fr. in 1892 and Guinea's loan of 11,648,052 fr. in 1899 and 1901 were recontracted by the Government General for repayment. The loan of 65,000,000 fr. was divided into two parts—40,000,000 fr. of credits issued in 1903, and the remainder in 1905, at 3 per cent interest. The immediate projects for which these credits were to be used were: land reclamation at Saint-Louis, Dakar, Rufisque and port construction (17,050,000 fr.); the Dakar-Saint-Louis-Kayes railway (500,000 fr.); navigation on the Senegal and Niger (5,000,000 fr.); the Guinea railway (17,000,000 fr.); ports and railway in the Ivory Coast (10,000,000 fr.).

51 Decree, 18 Oct. 1904, l'Annuaire de l'A.O.F., 1912, 26–8.Google Scholar

52 Haut Commissariat, Affaires Administratives/18/G/4, Roume, ‘Circulaire relative à l'application du décret du 18 Octobre 1904’, 24 Jan. 1905.Google Scholar

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54 Mauretania joined the federation in 1904, under a civil commissioner.Google Scholar

55 Haut Commissariat, Affaires Administratives/18/G/4, Roume to Ministére des Colonies, 22 June 1904.Google Scholar

56 Haut Cominissariat, Statistiques/22/G/19 and 20. Early demographic data on West Africa are, however, notoriously unreliable.Google Scholar