bboc/18_Black_Africa_under_French_colonization.tex

\chapter{Black Africa under French colonization}

\chapterauthor{Jean SURET-CANALE}

During the nineteenth century, the old colonial slave and mercantile system gradually disappeared to make way for \enquote{modern} colonization, the one that reigned from the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century.

This \enquote{modern} colonization is marked by a return to protectionism within the \enquote{imperial} framework:
each great power reserves for itself the markets of its colonies and zones of influence which now cover the whole world.

France, which from 1830 embarked on the conquest of Algeria, completed its \enquote{old colonies} inherited from the Old Regime and returned in 1815, by new acquisitions, under the July Monarchy and under the Second Empire.

But it was the Third Republic who realized, between 1876 and 1903, the constitution of a vast Empire, whose centerpieces, economically speaking, were North Africa and Indochina, but whose largest part was in tropical Africa, with French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, to which were added in 1918 most of the former German colonies of Cameroon and Togo.
Together in one piece, by the Sahara, with the French domains of North Africa, completed in the Indian Ocean by Madagascar and the territory of Djibouti.

In the \enquote{new way} colonization, the financial groups, resulting from the merger, by concentration, of the large industrial and banking enterprises, shared the markets, substituting monopoly for free competition, and, in the colonies, gave the export of capital the first place, in relation to the export of goods and the import of raw materials.
French black Africa, from this point of view, is an exception.
Exploitation remains essentially commercial, monopolized by a limited number of Marseille and Bordeaux firms, integrated late into financial capital, having limited their investments to a minimum and practice the exchange of picking or culture products provided by the traditional peasantry for imported goods (fabrics, hardware, small tools).

\section{The Colonial conquest}

The division of the African continent, from coastal trading posts inherited from the time of the slave trade, will take place roughly from 1876 to 1900.

It will oppose France especially to Great Britain, in a rivalry that will culminate in 1898 with the Fachoda \enquote{incident}, when the Marchand Mission, trying to establish a link between Central Africa and Djibouti, will clash with the English troops of Kitchener, on the Upper Nile.
France will have to abandon its claims in this area. But, most of the partition completed, the \enquote{Entente cordiale} concluded in 1904 will put an end to the Franco-British conflict.

The colonial conquest was covered with humanitarian pretexts: 
it was a question of putting an end to the slave trade and slavery, of eliminating the \enquote{bloody kinglets} who set Africa on fire and blood, of opening Africa to trade, and thus to civilization.
The missionary (mainly Catholic in the French domain) is, for the conquest of souls, associated with the officer and the administrator.

In 1884-1885, the African Conference in Berlin, bringing together the main European powers and the United States, affirmed, in the name of these principles, the right of the European powers to divide Africa.

Colonial practice, as we shall see, will be somewhat distant from the proclaimed principles.

For the French military, the conquest of Africa, in the aftermath of the defeat of 1871 and the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, is a way to regain lost military glory, and, in an often perilous adventure, to gain notoriety and stripes.

The military and traders are sometimes divided, when, for example, the political authority claims to prohibit, to the chagrin of traders, the import of firearms and ammunition. 
But, on the whole, the territorial stranglehold serves the interests of European trade, which eliminates competition from African traders and establishes, from coast to inland, its network of factories where local products are exchanged for imported goods.

The resistance of the African heads of state, Lat Dior in Senegal, Ahmadou in Sudan (now Mali), Samory in Upper Guinea, Béhanzin in Dahomey (present-day Benin), etc., will be broken because of the superiority of the conquerors in armament (rapid-fire rifles, artillery); 
the resistance of the \enquote{stateless} populations, living in autonomous tribal or village communities, will take longer to overcome, and will continue very much before in the twentieth century (\enquote{pacification} of the forest Ivory Coast from 1908 to 1916; insurgency of the Gbayas in Equatorial Africa, from 1928 to 1931). 
The Saharan borders of Mauritania and Morocco were not submitted until 1936.

The \enquote{treaties} concluded with the African sovereigns, which founded the \enquote{rights} of France against its colonial competitors, will be outrageously reduced to paper rags as soon as the colonial authorities find it in their interest:
thus, in French West Africa, a simple decree of October 23, 1904 simply annexed the territories \enquote{under protectorate}.

\section{Methods of warfare}

The methods of warfare are expeditious and ruthless. As European troops could only be reduced, local recruitment would be required, and it was mainly African soldiers who would conquer Africa on behalf of France.

Faidherbe, governor of Senegal under the Second Empire, had created the first units of \enquote{Senegalese riflemen}, who will retain this name, although later recruited mainly outside of Senegal.

Bonuses and pay can attract future soldiers: but in the conquest of Sudan, it was often done differently. 
When the need for manpower arose, registers of \enquote{voluntary engagements} were opened in the \enquote{posts} (garrisons). 
Forewarned, the slave traders brought their \enquote{goods}: the \enquote{captive} in good condition of service was bought in general (in the years 1895-1900) for less than 300 francs. 
Sold against receipt and signature of an \enquote{act of liberation}, the captive was supposed, after being \enquote{released}, to have committed himself \enquote{voluntarily}.

In the great campaigns, in addition to the regular troops, the \enquote{auxiliaries} were widely called upon, recruited without being paid, against a promise of participation in looting, and in particular in the partition of the vanquished reduced to slavery. 
A French officer, participating in the capture of Sikasso (Mali) in 1898, described the \enquote{sack} of the city as follows:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{After the siege, the assault... The order for looting is given. Everything is taken or killed. All the captives, about 4,000, gathered in herds.}\rfootnote{This quote and the next are not terminated in the original text}

\enquote{The colonel starts the distribution. He wrote himself on a notebook, then gave it up saying, \enquote{Share this amongst you}. The sharing took place with arguments and blows. 
Then, on the way! Each European received a woman of his choice... 
We did the 40-kilometer stages with these captives. Children and all those who are tired are killed with butts and bayonets...}

\enquote{The corpses were left by the side of the roads... In these same stages, the men requisitioned on their way to carry the millet remained five days without rations; receive 50 rope blows if they take a handful of the millet they carry.}\footnote{Quoted by P. Vigné d’Octon, \emph{La gloire du sabre} (The glory of saber), Paris, Flammarion, 1900, p.131 and following (Notes from a witness to the capture of Sikasso).}.
\end{quote}

Another author explains: \enquote{The scenes that accompanied, last year, the capture of Sikasso, were only the reproduction of those that had followed the sack of Ségou, Nioro, and all the villages conquered by our weapons ... 
It is by the hundreds, by the thousands, that our incessant columns thus increase the number of slaves...}\footnote{Jean Rodes, A look at Sudan, \emph{La revue Blanche} (The White review), November 1st 1899.}.

When, in the session of the Chamber of Deputies of 30 November 1900, Vigne d'Octon denounced the horrors of the conquest of Sudan, Le Myre de Vilers, a good-natured colonial, replied: 
\enquote{Our honourable colleague is attacking enforcement agents; I blame governments; they cannot ignore that by sending troops several thousand kilometers from their base of operations, without means of transport, without food, without exchange goods, the troops are forced to live on the inhabitant, to requisition countless carriers, who sow the paths of their corpses...}\footnote{Chamber of Deputies, sitting of 30 November 1900 (Annales de la Chambre des Députés, 1900, p. 580).}.

The African wars of the nineteenth century were limited in their effects by the mediocrity of armament; they devastated only certain regions. 
On the contrary, the wars of colonial conquest raged everywhere, not sparing the \enquote{friendly} villages, removed from destruction but ruined almost as much by the requisitions of grain, cattle, carriers.

A peak in horror was reached in 1899, by the \enquote{Mission Voulet-Chanoine} (named after the two captains who commanded it). 
These two officers had already \enquote{distinguished} themselves in Mossi country (now Burkina Faso) by their \enquote{Prussian} methods.

Leaving Sudan, they must join on Lake Chad the Missions Foureau-Lamy, who left from Algeria, and Gentil, who left from Congo, to ensure the French takeover of the northern shore of Chad, and achieve the continuity of French possessions on the African continent. 
Too heavy, having to cross an area lacking food resources and water, the mission will multiply the atrocities, which will reveal in France a member of the mission, dismissed following dissensions.
We will cite here only one example: on the night of January 8 to 9, 1899, reconnaissances are prescribed:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Patrols must approach the villages, seize them with knives, kill everything that resists, take the inhabitants into captivity, seize the herds. 
On the morning of the 9th the reconnaissance returned to the camp with 250 oxen, 500 sheep, 28 horses, 80 prisoners. A few riflemen were wounded. 
In order to \enquote{make an example}, Captain Voulet had twenty women mothers, with young children and udders, taken and had them killed with spears, a few hundred meters from the camp. 
The bodies were later found by the commander of Say's post}\footnote{P. Vigné d’Octon, \emph{op. cit.}, pp. 40-41.}.
\end{quote}

In another village, carriers having been drafted, all the able-bodied men took refuge in the bush. \enquote{The old men, the women, the children alone remained. 
They were taken out and, after having them placed on a row, salvo fires shot them down to the last.}\footnote{Testimony of Sergeant Toureau, dans P. Vigné d’Octon, \emph{op. cit.}, pp. 142-143.}  There were 111 bodies as a result of this \enquote{incident} alone.

Concerned, less about the procedures used and revealed by the press, than about the delay in the mission's planned schedule, the Sudanese authorities sent Lieutenant-Colonel Klobb and Lieutenant Meynier in search of the mission to regain control. 
Fifty years later, Meynier, now a general, describes the traces of the mission as follows:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Wide strides in the grass and on the paths, various abandoned objects, etc. and, above all, burned villages and scattered human bones...
(To Birni Nkoni) we could read on the ground and among the ruins of the small city the various phases of the assault, the fire and the massacre... 
The ditches had been backfilled in places to serve as mass graves and human debris appeared here and there, on which the hunger of large frightened dogs was exerted. 
The more the column advanced, the more frequent and horrific these macabre spectacles became. 
It was, around the large village of Tibery, the corpses of dozens of women hanged in the surrounding groves. 
Or, at the crossroads of two tracks, we discovered the corpse of some guide, suspected of having wanted to mislead the mission. 
The most painful impression was caused by the meeting of two corpses of girls (nine and ten years old) hanging from a large tree branch on the edge of the small village of Koran-Kalgo.}\rfootnote{Not terminated}

\enquote{... In the villages encountered, the wells are almost everywhere filled or polluted by piles of corpses that are difficult to distinguish whether they are animals or humans.}\footnote{General Meynier, \emph{La Mission Joalland-Meynier}, Paris, Éditions de l'Empire français, 1947, pp. 39-40.}.
\end{quote}

When the two officers join Voulet and Chanoine, the latter, furious at being dispossessed of \enquote{their} mission, shoot at them: Klobb is killed, Meynier wounded. 
But when Voulet and Chanoine inform the riflemen that they will create with them an independent Empire on the scene of their conquests, and that they will not return home with their loot, they mutiny, Voulet and Chanoine are killed.
The \enquote{incident} will be attributed to a crisis of madness, and vigilant censorship will ensure for half a century that there is no more talk about this unfortunate case.

\section{The colonial system}

What does the African colonial system look like when it stabilizes at the beginning of the twentieth century, and as it will continue until the fifties of this century?

Until the enactment of the 1946 Constitution, the new colonies (other than those bequeathed by the Old Regime) were abandoned to the arbitrariness of the Head of State.
The sénatus-consulte of 3 May 1854 (under the Second Empire) left the administration of these colonies to the discretion of the Head of State, the Emperor.
The Third Republic maintained this situation, for the benefit of the President of the Republic, who in fact delegated his powers to the government, in practice to the Minister of the Colonies.
Unless expressly provided, laws passed by Parliament are not applicable to the colonies (for example, laws on freedom of the press, or on freedom of association).
The Minister shall legislate by decree, extending to certain colonies, if he deems it appropriate, metropolitan legislation, or instituting special provisions for them.

The colonized are French \enquote{subjects} , but not citizens; they do not vote; they are subject to the discretionary authority of European governors-general, governors and administrators.
Local decrees regulate the status of these \enquote{subjects} known as \enquote{indigenate} 
The European local administration can, by these texts, impose on the subjects by simple administrative decision, without judgment, for reasons as varied as \enquote{negligence in the payment of tax}, \enquote{disobedience to village or canton chiefs}, \enquote{unfounded} complaints, or \enquote{infringement of the respect due to the French authority}, prison sentences and fines.
Governors and Governors General may impose deportation sentences.
The governor of Ivory Coast, Angoulvant, in 1916, regretted that the death penalty was not provided for, but observed that in view of the statistics, deportation led to the same results\footnote{G. Angoulvant, \emph{La pacification de la Côte d'Ivoire} (The pacification of Ivory Coast), Paris, Larose, 1916.}.
Indeed, the sending of deportees from forest regions to Port Étienne, Mauritania, in the middle of the Sahara leaves them only a reduced life expectancy, and the \enquote{notables} affected by this measure are advised to make their will before departure.

The \enquote{attack on the respect due to French authority} is, for example, on the part of an indigenous, forgetting to uncover himself or to make the military salute at the passage of a white leader (and all whites are, more or less, leaders).
When the chief is magnanimous, he is content to have the offender's hat confiscated by a circle guard, with orders to come and look for it \enquote{at the office}, where it will be returned to him with a few strokes of "manigolo", the hippopotamus leather chicote, an obligatory attribute, although not provided for by legislation, of the circle guard.

It is all the more so, of course, any criticism, any claim, against the authority.

Subjects are subject to the so-called personal or capitation tax, payable by all, men and women, from 16 to 60 years of age.
The sum is lump sum, the same for the rich (there are so few!) and for the poor, with a rate that varies according to the region.
On the other hand, settlers (who must be attracted by \enquote{advantages}) are exempt from most of the taxes required in the metropolis.

Subjects are subjected to forced labour: in principle, a few days of \enquote{providing} per year.
But, in case of necessity, the planned number of days is unscrupulously exceeded, and in some cases, the \enquote{required} are sent, for months, hundreds of kilometers away.
Forced labour provides for the construction and maintenance of administrative buildings, tracks and roads, railways.

From 1921 to 1934, the construction of the Congo-Ocean railway, from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville, led to a real massacre, denounced in its time by the journalist Albert Londres\footnote{Albert Londres, \emph{Terre d'ébène} (Ebony earth), Paris, Albin Michel, 1929.}. 
The local requirements were not enough, so workers of 3,000 kilometers or more were brought in from Oubangui-Chari (now central African Republic) and Chad, part on foot, part by the waterway of the Oubangui and Congo. 
The exhaustion of the journey, the epidemics following the crowding on the barges almost without food and in unimaginable hygienic conditions, the passage, for these populations from the savannahs to a humid climate and a different diet, make the required die like flies. 
The survivors must work under the foremen's chicote to drill the rock with shovels and mine bars.

In 1929, Albert Londres estimated the number of dead (while there were still 300 kilometers to be built) at 17,000.
He notes, however, an \enquote{improvement}, since, according to official statistics, mortality, from 45.20\% in 1927, fell to 17.34\% in 1929!\footnote{R. Susset, \emph{La vérité sur le Cameroun et l'A.E.F.} (The truth about Cameroon and A.E.F, Paris, Éd. de la Nouvelle revue critique, 1934.}

Another major project responsible for massacres: the Office du Niger.
In its central part, in present-day Mali, Niger slows down its course and spreads out in multiple arms and lakes: it is the central Niger Delta.
The idea was conceived of developing this area into irrigated perimeters, in order to make it a new Egypt, giving France a national supply of cotton.
The operation was entrusted to administrators and engineers of public works, in complete ignorance of the soil, their reaction to irrigation, the methods of cultivation.
It was in use that it was found that irrigation, after giving below-average yields, resulted in sterilizing the soil by leaching.
Cotton was abandoned for rice.

To \enquote{enhance} the developments of Niger, people from the Mossi country (in present-day Burkina Faso), settled in colonization villages subject to military discipline, with compulsory work from dawn to dusk, prohibition of circulation, and royalty to be paid for the use of facilities and water, were massively deported.

There are other forms of forced labour.

Export crops are encouraged by various means, the simplest of which is the obligation to pay tax.
In regions where the use of money is not widespread, the only way to obtain tax money is to produce and sell products demanded by trading companies, crop products such as peanuts, cotton, coffee, or picking products such as \enquote{herb rubber} (provided by a savannah vine) much sought after at the beginning of the century,  palm oil, kapock.
Farmers are required to supply the markets, placed under the control of the administration and where European traders or their agents buy at the prices of the \enquote{administrative mercurial}, prices set very often well below the real market value. 
In addition, farmers are often defrauded (counterfeit scales, unpaid goods under the pretext of \enquote{poor quality}, but nevertheless marketed afterwards...)

The exaction is even more evident in the regions (especially those of Equatorial Africa) where the regime is that of \enquote{mandatory crops}.

This is the case of Oubangui-Chari (now Central African Republic) and Chad for cotton cultivation, starting from 1929.

In cotton areas, each taxpayer is obliged to cultivate a parcel of cotton, of a specific size, and to deliver the products to \enquote{concession companies} that have been given a monopoly on the purchase and processing of cotton.
Under the supervision of the administration and the agents of the companies, and under penalty of sanctions, the peasant must, when the time comes, deliver to the \enquote{buyers} of the company the required cotton.
The price set is ridiculous. It allows, at most, to pay the tax\footnote{See Jean Cabot, \emph{La culture du coton au Tchad} (Cotton cultivation in Chad), Annales de géographie, 1957, pp. 499-508.}.

But this regime is nothing compared to the one to which these same populations were subjected at the beginning of the century.

The \enquote{French Congo}, which in 1910 became French Equatorial Africa, was almost entirely shared between 40 \enquote{concession companies} in 1899. 
The latter have a monopoly on the exploitation of local resources on their territory and, de facto, on trade.\footnote{G. Coquery-Vidrovitch, \emph{Le Congo au temps des grandes compagnies concessionaires (1898-1930)} (The Congo at the time of the big concession companies (1898-1930)), Paris-La Haye, Mouton, 1972.}

They will make almost no investment and many will quickly go bankrupt, after having plucked a few suckers on the stock market.
Those in employment exploit picking\rfootnote{\emph{Ceuillette} in the original text. Many methods for harvesting rubber were used at the time, including picking rubbery lianas. See \cite{Canaby1932}.} rubber, with forced labour paid only as \enquote{harvesting work}, with the companies arguing that the harvested rubber, produced from the soil, belongs to them under their concession.

On what happened, we have the testimony of a missionary, Fr. Daigre, who is also a good-natured colonial:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{To the orders to harvest rubber, most of the villages responded with a refusal, and, to support the administration, flying columns of guards were sent into the country... }
Coercion is used. \enquote{Each village or group of villages was then occupied by one or more guards, assisted by a number of auxiliaries, and the exploitation of rubber began... 
At the end of the month the harvest was brought to the capital where the sale took place at the rate of fifteen pennies per kilogram. 
The administration carried out the weighing and the buyer taking delivery of the goods paid cash, not to the harvesters, but to the official who paid the sum to the village tax. 
The mass thus worked nine consecutive months without receiving any remuneration.}
\end{quote}

The missionary explains that, in the first two years, the populations were able to subsist on their old cassava plantations.
But, little by little, resources are running out. The \enquote{harvesters} have to work further and further away from their villages, as rubber vines become scarce near the villages. 
\enquote{Towards the end of the month, they were given two or three days to go to the village to refuel, but most of the time, they came back empty-handed, the plantations were no longer renewed... 
The sick and small children (who remained in the village) died of starvation. I visited several times a region where the least sick finished off the most affected and ate them; I saw open graves where the corpses had been removed for food. 
Skeletal children searched piles of rubbish for ants and other insects they ate raw. Skulls, shins, dragged around the villages.}\footnote{R. P. Daigre, \emph{Oubangui-Chari, témoignage sur son évolution (1900-1940)} (Oubangui-Chari, testimony on its evolution (1900-1940), Issoudun, Dillen et Cie, 1947, pp. 113-116.}

\section{The exercise of \enquote{French authority}}

As we have said, the authority is entirely held by a hierarchy of European officials: 
Governor General (head of the \enquote{groups of territories} of the A.O.E, the A.E.E. and large colonies such as Madagascar;
Cameroon, a territory under the mandate of the League of Nations, is under the authority of a Governor-General who bears the title of \enquote{High Commissioner}); 
governor, administrator (circle or subdivision commander — the circle sometimes has a few subdivisions, placed under the authority of a junior administrator reporting to the circle commander).

The tasks of the circle commander are: the collection of taxes, the supply and marketing of products required by trading companies, the recruitment of those required for forced labor, and, from the First World War, military recruitment (raising a contingent of conscripts for a three-year military service).

To carry out these tasks, the administrator needs indigenous auxiliaries; it is first of all civil servants (clerical clerks, interpreters) who populate its offices; but it is above all the \enquote{customary chiefs}. 
These leaders sometimes come from the old pre-colonial dynasties; sometimes it is a parvenu, a former gunman, sometimes even a former boy or cook of a governor whom he wanted to reward.

The head of the canton, let alone the village chiefs who are subordinate to him, enjoys no legitimacy, no stability: 
\enquote{The head of the canton}, writes Governor-General Van Vollenhoven in a circular, \enquote{even if he is the descendant of the king with whom we have dealt, has no power of his own; appointed by us, after a choice in principle discretionary, it is only our instrument.}\footnote{Quoted by R. Cornevin, \emph{L’évolution des chefferies dans l’Afrique noire d’expression française} (The Evolution of Chiefdoms in French-Speaking Black Africa), Recueil Penant, n° 687, juin-août 1961, p. 380.}.

At any time, if he does not fulfill his obligations in the desired way, the leader can be dismissed, imprisoned.

His charges are numerous. Together with the village chiefs appointed on his proposal, he is responsible for collecting the tax, on which he collects a modest rebate. 
He adds, on his behalf, \enquote{customary royalties} and chores, on which the administration turns a blind eye. 
The tax is levied on each head of household, according to the number of its nationals. 
But the amount, calculated for each canton and village according to an approximate \enquote{census}, is flat-rate. 
If the number of real taxable persons is lower than that of the census, the real tax will be increased by the same amount. Those present pay for fictitious recordees, fugitives or the dead.

To collect the tax — and to meet the other obligations that we will see — the chief maintains at his own expense a small troop of henchmen.

To the administrator and ethnologist Gilbert Vieillard, who reproached his \enquote{notables} for surrounding themselves with \enquote{frank scoundrels}, they replied: 
\enquote{Do you want, yes or no, that we collect the tax, that we provide chores and conscripts? We will not achieve this through gentleness and persuasion: 
if people are not afraid of being tied up and beaten, they are laughing at us.}\footnote{Gilbert Vieillard, \emph{Notes sur les Peuls du Fouta-Djalon}(Notes on the Peuls of Fouta-Djalon), Bulletin de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire, Dakar, n° 1, p. 171.}.

Here we see mention of the other two obligations that are those of the chief: 
provide recruits for forced labour; and, since the war of 1914-1918, for conscription (quota fixed for each canton, military service of three years).

The choice is arbitrary: naturally, relatives, friends and protégés of the chiefs are exempted as much as possible; the weight of requisitions and conscription was primarily on the humble, first and foremost the former slaves.

If the chief's followers fail to meet these objectives, the armed force of the circle guards is used, and both the levying of taxes and the recruitment of exploited and conscripts is akin to a raid: 
villages surrounded by surprise, property confiscated and sold at auction, conscripts tied with ropes to be taken to the place of incorporation.

The chief is also obliged to receive and maintain the administrator on tour and his retinue, the circle guards, the various officials passing through. 
Daily life is dominated by fear, the one that stems from arbitrariness: arbitrariness of the leaders and their followers, arbitrariness of the white leaders.

There is no relationship between whites and blacks except from \enquote{boss} to subordinate. Any familiarity, including (and perhaps especially) with those who are called with contemptuous condescension the \enquote{evolved}, those who have followed the school and have become civil servants, teachers, doctors, is frowned upon, possibly sanctioned. 
This is evidenced by this mention in the file of a European official: \enquote{Frequents indigenous people; even receives some at his table. Not made for colonial life.}

In the bush, when the wife of a white man is dissatisfied with his boy or his cook, whether he has broken the teapot or spoiled the sauce, she sends him to the \enquote{office} (of the circle commander) with a note indicating the number of chicote shots to be administered by the guards.

Still in 1944, the socialist Albert Gazier, a member of the Provisional Consultative Assembly of Algiers, having toured our Colonies in Africa, asked about forty Europeans the following question: 
\enquote{Sir (or Madam), do you ever beat your boy?} And he notes, \enquote{I didn't get any negative answers.}\footnote{Testimony during the Colloquium of the Institute of History of the Present Time, published in 1986 by Éditions du CNRS, under the title \emph{Les chemins de la décolonisation de l’Empire français (1936-1956)} (The paths of the decolonization of the French Empire (1936-1956)).}

\section{From colonial legend to reality}

To young French people, through school textbooks, and a whole propaganda (in particular that of the \enquote{Maritime and Colonial League}),
it was argued that France had brought to its colonial populations roads, schools, hospitals, in short progress and civilization and thus, an improvement in their living conditions.

What was the reality?

At the beginning of the century, colonization had set up a network of railways, which remained unfinished: some routes of penetration of the coast to the interior, the junction of which was never realized. 
These narrow-gauge railways (gauge of 1 m instead of 1.44 m for normal railways) were of low capacity. 
They were originally designed for the transport of troops — the rapid transport of armed forces where they were needed. 
Subsequently, they were used to transport local products to ports and, conversely, to transport imported goods.

These railways, as well as the carriage tracks, were essentially built and then maintained by forced labour.

Schools? They were designed to provide the colonization with the auxiliary staff it needed, interpreters, administrative clerks, and, at the highest level, teachers and doctors. 
These latter functions were the highest to which an \enquote{native} could claim but always in a subordinate position compared to French teachers and doctors. 
Their diplomas, in fact, were local, and gave access only to the corresponding local administrative functions. 
They were not valid in France, and the absence of courses leading to French diplomas (brevet supérieur and baccalaureate) precluded them from being able to access higher education. 
There was, in each colony (and in Brazzaville for the A.E.F.) an upper primary school; the brightest pupils entered the \enquote{École normale William Ponty}, which trained \enquote{indigenous} teachers and doctors. 
It was only in 1946 that some Ponty graduates were admitted to the Dakar High school, to prepare both parts of the baccalaureate in order to be able to do higher education in France. 
Africans, who, thanks to special circumstances, had been able to pursue higher education in France, such as Lamine Gueye, a lawyer, or Léopold Sédar Senghor, an associate in grammar, were counted on the fingers of one hand.

In 1945, the primary school enrolment rate in A.O.E. did not exceed 5\%; there were only two high schools in A.O.E., in St Louis of Senegal and Dakar, initially reserved for Europeans.
The University of Dakar was not created until the eve of independence, in 1957.

In French Equatorial Africa, the situation was even worse: it was not until 1937 that an education service was created in Brazzaville;
previously the few schools were attached to the \enquote{Political and Administrative Affairs} department. Only one upper primary school existed, in Brazzaville.

Let's move on to public health: the \enquote{Colonial Health Service}, militarized (it was to remain so until independence) was originally reserved for Europeans and troops, incidentally for indigenous officials.

The missions had set up infirmaries or dispensaries.
It was not until 1905 that the \enquote{Indigenous Medical Assistance} was created in the A.O.E., oriented towards mass medicine, with a network of \enquote{indigenous} hospitals (3 in 1910), and dispensaries. 
In 1908 statistics indicate 150,000 patients treated, for 12 million inhabitants.

To endemic diseases (malaria, yellow fever, etc.), colonization added imported diseases, all the more formidable as Africans were not immune and took particularly brutal forms (syphilis, tuberculosis). 
Population displacements following the massive requisitions of labour and the development of trade relations contributed to the spread of epidemics.

The director of the health services of Cameroon could write, in 1945:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Diseases, although they play a very important role in the decay of indigenous populations, are not the only ones responsible, and other causes that facilitate their devastation and whose importance is great but which escape the action of the health service, must be rightly incriminated: 
undernourishment and the almost general lack of nitrogenous foods, an inconsiderate economic policy that, in some regions, has pushed for the development of rich (export, Editor's note) crops to the detriment of food crops, the imbalance that exists between the earnings of the natives and the prices of the most essential items.}\footnote{Médecin-Colonel Farinaud: Medical report 1945. Cité in Afrique noire: l'ère coloniale, op. cit. Cit. p. 493.}.
\end{quote}

As a result, mortality rates, especially infant mortality, are very high.

It is only from the twenties that vaccination campaigns will make an effective contribution to the reduction of mortality.

Among the most formidable diseases, the object of mass prophylaxis, it is worth mentioning trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).

To deal with this, the colonial administration created specialized mobile services. 
However, in order to gather populations, to enumerate them and to carry out screenings, the mobile teams used methods very similar to those used for civilian or military recruitment or tax collection, and similar to manhunting. 
The lack of enthusiasm of the population for the care provided is easily explained:  the mobile teams of nurses and their retinue, in the good colonial tradition, lived on the country, shamelessly demanding food, women, etc. 
The lumbar punctures essential for bacteriological examinations carried out by nurses who were not always skillful and under summary hygienic conditions sometimes led to serious accidents.
On the other hand, the therapy implemented was not without danger, which could lead in case of wrong dosage to serious damage to the nervous system (nephritis, blindness).

It was not until the 50s that the medical and prophylaxis system became truly effective and that we witnessed a \enquote{reversal} of demographic trends, from the decline or stagnation towards growth, and, from about 1955, the explosion.

A final word on one of the \enquote{objectives} invoked of colonization: the fight against slavery.

We have seen that at first, that of conquest, slavery, far from retreating, experienced a clear development. 
Subsequently, the prohibition of the slave trade (enacted in A.O.F. only in 1905), then the abolition of slavery, only very gradually became a reality.

The liberation of slaves was commonly applied, toward rebellious or reluctant populations, as a punishment. 
But where the support of the traditional ruling classes was deemed politically necessary, such as in Fouta-Djalon (Guinea) or in the Sahelian Saharo regions, slavery remained intact, and the administration endorsed (or covered up) the practice of the \enquote{resale right} (search, capture and return to their masters of fugitive slaves).
In Guinea, the first census by sampling carried out by the I.N.S.E.E. in 1954-1955, listed separately, in Fouta-Djalon, the \enquote{captives}. 
In Mauritania, the persistence of slavery, with administrative support, was denounced in 1929 by the Dahomean teacher Louis Hunkanrin, who was sentenced to ten years of deportation to Mauritania. 
He denounced the practice in a pamphlet, the text of which he managed to send in France, and which was published by a local section of the League of Human Rights\footnote{J. Suret-Canale, Un pionnier méconnu du mouvement démocratique en Afrique: Louis Hunkanrin, \emph{Études dahoméennes, nouvelle série, no 3} (Dahomean studies, new series n°3), Porto Novo, December 1964, pp. 5-30.}.
This situation was perpetuated after independence and it is known that, most recently, Mauritanian human rights activists, for denouncing this survival, were arrested, imprisoned and convicted.

\section{Demographic data}

The slave trade, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, had already demographically weakened Africa. 
The trauma of the conquest dealt a new blow, perhaps more brutal, although more limited in time. 
The fighting, then the excesses of the carrying and requisitions of men, food, livestock, increase mortality. 
They leave populations weakened, more susceptible to epidemics and other accidents — droughts for example.

\begin{quote}
\enquote{The slightest accident — exceptional drought, invasion of locusts — was dramatized by the simultaneous colonial withdrawal of food and work, without the administration having provided the means for the necessary intervention.}\footnote{C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, \emph{Afrique noire, permanences et ruptures} (Black Africa, permanences and ruptures), Paris, Payot, 1985, p. 52.}
\end{quote}

It was the period 1880-1920 that was the period of the largest demographic decline, moreover impossible to quantify given the mediocrity of statistical information. 
In Dahomey (now Benin), one of the most densely populated and relatively peaceful colonies, there was a decline of 9\% between 1900 and 1920\footnote{\emph{Ibid.}, p. 57.}.
The decline was certainly more noticeable in regions with more limited resources and hit by massive requisitions of men, livestock and food with regard to their resources such as Niger\footnote{See Idrissa Kimba, \emph{La Formation de la colonie du Niger 1880-1920} (The Formation of the Colony of Niger 1880-1920). State thesis, University of Paris VII, 1983.} or Mauritania.

Already depopulated, the regions of the A.E.F. ravaged by the abuses of the concession system (Central African Republic) or by the exploitation of wood 
(Gabon: adult men \enquote{drafted} by two-year contracts to work on the forest sites; villages — where only women, children, and the elderly remain, \enquote{taxed} in cassava to feed the construction sites)
 the fall was even more massive (from 30 to 50\%)\footnote{C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, \emph{op. cit.}, p. 56.}.
 
In the Sudano-Sahelian regions, the great droughts of 1913-1914, 1930-1933, the consequences of which were aggravated by the political-economic context (war of 1914-1918, crisis and depression of the 30s) and finally the drought of 1972 and following, led to famine and famine.

It was not until the 30s that the first effects of mass medicine were felt. 
The Africa of independence has gone from demographic regression to explosion, but the consequences of an economic regime inherited from colonization have maintained to this day misery and undernourishment, aggravated by internal conflicts. 
But that's another story.

\rauthor{Jean Suret-Canale}

The data used here have been largely borrowed from our books:
\emph{Afrique noire occidentale: géographie, civilisations, histoire} (Black West Africa: geography, civilizations, history), Paris, Éditions sociales, 1958 (reedition 1968) 
and \emph{Afrique noire — L'ère coloniale (1900-1945)} (Black Africa- The colonial era (1900-1945)), Paris, Éditions sociales, 1964 (rééd. 1982).