Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T03:51:02.797Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Black Man's Burden: The Cost of Colonization of French West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2014

Elise Huillery*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected].

Abstract

Was colonization costly for France? Did French taxpayers contribute to colonies’ development? This article reveals that French West Africa's colonization took only 0.29 percent of French annual expenditures, including 0.24 percent for military and central administration and 0.05 percent for French West Africa's development. For West Africans, the contribution from French taxpayers was almost negligible: mainland France provided about 2 percent of French West Africa's revenue. In fact, colonization was a considerable burden for African taxpayers since French civil servants’ salaries absorbed a disproportionate share of local expenditures.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I thank the editor Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, two anonymous referees, Jean-Marie Baland, Denis Cogneau, Frederic Cooper, Esther Duflo, Mamadou Diouf, Rui Estevez, Leigh Gardner, Kevin O'Rourke, Thomas Piketty, and Gilles Postel-Vinay for helpful comments, as well as numerous seminar audiences. I am grateful to the ACI “Histoire longue et répartition des ressources en Afrique” led by Denis Cogneau for funding and to Urbain Kouadio at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for administrative assistance extracting the colonial budgets. All errors are my own.

References

REFERENCES

Amin, Samir. L'Afrique de l'Ouest bloquée, L’économie politique de la colonisation, 1880-1970. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1971.Google Scholar
Amin, Samir. L’échange inégal et la loi de la valeur. Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1973.Google Scholar
Annuaire de la, Statistique France. Résumé rétrospectif. Paris, INSEE, 1966.Google Scholar
Arghiri, Emmanuel. L’échange inégal, Essai sur les antagonismes dans les rapports économiques internationaux. Paris: Editions François Maspero, 1969.Google Scholar
Bairoch, Paul. Economics and World History, Myths and Paradoxes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Bancel, Nicolas, Blanchard, Pascal, and Lemaire, Sandrine. La fracture coloniale: La société française au prisme de l'héritage colonial. Paris: La Découverte, 2005.Google Scholar
Banerjee, Abhijit, and Iyer, Lakshmi. “History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Tenure Systems in India.” American Economic Review 95, no. 4 (2005): 11901213.Google Scholar
Bloch-Lainé, François. La Zone franc. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956.Google Scholar
Bobrie, François. “Finances publiques et conquête coloniale: le coût budgétaire de l'expansion française entre 1850 et 1913.” Annales 31, no. 6 (1976): 1225–44.Google Scholar
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. “A propos des investissements français outre-mer: l'exemple de l'Ouest Africain, 1910-1965.” In Actes du IIe Congrès des historiens économistes français, La position internationale de la France. Paris: EHESS, 1973.Google Scholar
Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. “Le financement de la ‘mise en valeur’ coloniale, Méthode et premiers résultats.” In Etudes africaines offertes à Henri Brunschwig, 237–52. Paris: EHESS, 1982.Google Scholar
Dardenne, Auguste. Les emprunts publics et le régime de décentralisation financière dans les colonies françaises et les pays de protectorat. Paris: Librairie des publications officielles et du bulletin des lois, 1908.Google Scholar
Davis, Lance, and Huttenback, Robert. Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Political Economy of British Imperialism, 1860-1912. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Edelstein, Michael. “Imperialism: Cost and Benefit.” In The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, edited by Floud, Roderick and Mc Closkey, Donald, 197216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Ferro, Marc. Le Livre noir du colonialisme: XVIe-XXIe siècle, de l'extermination à la repentance. Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, 2003.Google Scholar
Feyrer, James, and Sacerdote, Bruce. “Colonialism and Modern Income: Islands as Natural Experiments.” Review of Economics and Statistics 91, no. 2 (2009): 245-62.Google Scholar
Fitzgerald, Edward. “Did France's Colonial Empire Make Economic Sense? A Perspective from the Postwar Decade, 1946-1956.” The Journal of Economic History 48, no. 2 (1988): 373-85.Google Scholar
Foreman-Peck, James. “Foreign Investment and Imperial Exploitation: Balance of Payments Reconstruction for Nineteenth-Century Britain and India.” Economic History Review 42, no. 3 (1989): 354-74.Google Scholar
Head, Keith, Mayer, Thierry, and Ries, John. “The Erosion of Colonial Trade Linkages After Independence.” Journal of International Economics 81, no. 1 (2010): 114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huillery, Elise. “History Matters: The Long-Term Impact of Colonial Public Investments in French West Africa.” American Economic Journal - Applied Economics 1, no. 2 (2009): 176215.Google Scholar
Huillery, Elise. “The Impact of European Settlement Within French West Africa: Did Pre-Colonial Prosperous Areas Fall Behind?Journal of African Economies 20, no. 2 (2011): 263311.Google Scholar
Jeanneney (Rapport). La Politique de coopération avec les pays en voie de développement. Paris: La Documentation Française, 1963.Google Scholar
Lefeuvre, Daniel. Pour en finir avec la repentance coloniale. Paris: Flammarion, 2006.Google Scholar
Liauzu, Claude. Colonisation. Droit d'inventaire. Paris: Armand Colin, 2004.Google Scholar
Manceron, Gilles. Marianne et ses colonies, une introduction à l'histoire coloniale de la France. Paris: La Découverte, 2005.Google Scholar
Marseille, Jacques. “La politique métropolitaine d'investissements coloniaux dans l'entre-deux guerres.” In Actes du IIe Congrès des historiens économistes français, La position internationale de la France. Paris: EHESS, 1973.Google Scholar
Marseille, Jacques. Empire colonial et capitalisme français, Histoire d'un divorce. Paris: Albin Michel, 1984.Google Scholar
Marseille, Jacques. “La balance des paiements de l'outre-mer sur un siècle, problèmes méthodologiques.” In Actes du colloque “La France et l'outre-mer, un siècle de relations monétaires et financières,” edited by the Comité pour l'Histoire Economique et Financière de la France. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1996.Google Scholar
Messmer, Pierre. Le régime administratif des emprunts coloniaux. Paris: Librairie Sociale et Economique, 1939.Google Scholar
Moggridge, D. E. Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography. London/New York: Routledge, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Brien, Patrick. “The Costs and Benefits of British Imperialism, 1846-1914.” Past and Present 120 (1988): 163200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Offer, Avner. “The British Empire, 1870-1914: A Waste of Money?Economic History Review 46, no. 2 (1993): 215-38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Recherche Coopérative sur Programme (RCP), CNRS, “Commerce, investissements et profits dans l'empire colonial français,” n°326, 1973-1979.Google Scholar
Vanhaeverbeke, André. “Rémunération du travail et commerce extérieur.” Centre de Recherche des pays en développement, 1970.Google Scholar