Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
1905-1914
NIGER
BORNU I
Maiduguri* if 1 »
* Area of Wongo-s revolt. 1928-9
Areas of
concession companies to
1930:
CFHC Cie
Forest*™ du
Haul-Congo
CFSO Cie.Foresnero Sangha-Oubangui
CSHO Cie.desSultanaisdu Haut-Oubangui
SHO SociiliS du Haul
-O9000*
I I Land over 1000metres
km
Maiadi
9 French Equatorial Africa and Cameroun, 1939
341
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
consequently declared no amortisation nor ploughed back any of
their funds. As a result, virtually all the profits were taken home
every year to France and distributed to the shareholders. As soon
as supplies of rubber and ivory ceased, the companies were able
to halt their activities with minimum losses. In fact, some of these
companies survived until the expiry of the monopolies (1925-30)
or even later, and were able to negotiate terms for their surrender:
in 1929 the Societe du Haut-Ogooue, with 11 million hectares,
received ' by way of indemnity' an area of
3
5,000
hectares which
was not finally allocated until after the Second World War. The
Compagnie Forestiere Sangha-Oubangui, with 48 million
hectares, had, since
1911,
reorganised a dozen former concessions
on the Congo and Ubangi-Shari boundaries. According to an
inspector in 1913, 'this powerful company has systematically
neglected everything except for the collection of rubber';
11
and
although in 1925 it was still involved in the cruel abuses
denounced by Andre Gide,
12
its monopoly was extended until
1935.
French Equatorial Africa remained, indeed, the Cinderella
of the empire; in 1920 the number of agents and of factories was
smaller than it had been in 1905 and as yet no serious public works
had been undertaken.
In French West Africa, on the other hand, business was
booming. Exports were still, on the eve of the First World War,
based half on the collection of produce (rubber from the Ivory
Coast and Guinea, timber from the Ivory Coast, palm produce
from Dahomey) and half on the cultivation of Senegalese
groundnuts. The Compagnie Francaise de PAfrique Occidentale
(CFAO) and the Societe Commerciale de l'Ouest-Africain
(SCOA) began to dominate the market, together with other
business firms, mainly Senegalese, such as Vezia or Peyrissac,
which were active on the coast and along the rivers and railways.
These firms obtained produce from peasants in exchange for
poor-quality consumer goods. Although excesses were not as
great as those committed in French Equatorial Africa, profits
resulted more from favourable margins than from the volume of
the traffic. A respectable ratio between profits and total turnover
" 'Rapport general sur les compagnies concessionnaires', 1913, Archives Rationales,
Section Outre-Mer, Concessions IV, 9.
12
A. Gide, Voyage au Congo:
camels de route
(Paris, 1927),
2
51;
see also M. Hornet,
Congo,
terre de soufframes (Paris, 1934), 153.
342
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1905-1914
20
-
10
1900 05
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
1900
05 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
French West Africa
French Equatorial Africa
Local public capital
•
Net metropolitan contribution Private capital
••
Fig. 5. Sources of capital investment: seven-year moving averages. Values
shown in terms of 1914 francs (millions)
Source: Travaux de
la
Recherche co-operative
sur programme,
326,
collated
by
C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, CNRS, Paris
was established (that
of
CFAO
was
about
1:13,
supported
in
1912-13 by profits
of
40
per cent,
a
rate which was never attained
again).
Another result was the exceptional yield
on
shares, which
began
to
attract investors
in the
metropolis
to
these colonial
enterprises, reputed
to
give
a
handsome return precisely because
they cost very little.
In West Africa,
in
contrast
to
Equatorial Africa,
the
French
made a great effort
in
this period
to
organise
an
improved system
for transporting collected produce. Taken
as a
whole, annual
expenditure
on
public works fluctuated before
the war
between
30
m and 40 m
francs, which
was
nearly
ten
times
the
total
for
Equatorial Africa and nearly three times that for Madagascar. Half
this expenditure was met by the federation and represented a third
of the total local colonial budgets.
13
It
was between 1902 and 1910
that
the
principal railway works were undertaken:
the
Senegal-
Niger
line,
completed in
1905;
the line parallel with the river from
13
C.
Coquery-Vidrovitch
etal.,'
Commerce, investissements et profits dans l'Outre-Mer
francais', unpublished Mss., CNRS, Paris.
343
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
Kayes to the junction at Thies, which was not finished until 1924;
the line from Guinea to the Niger (Conakry to Kankan), finished
in 1914; the Ivory Coast railway from Abidjan to Bouake
(1904—12); and the line in Dahomey from Cotonou to Save
(1902-12); this last was the only one built by private enterprise
(and it was bought out by the government in 1930). The high cost
of construction and the advent of motor-lorries help to explain
why the railway network was never unified. All the same, these
railways caused a realignment of the great economic axes,
involving the displacement and regrouping of populations. In the
Futa Jalon, for example, Timbo, the
atmami's
capital, which was
perched high on the plateau, lost almost all its inhabitants to the
new valley station, Mamou, which was created in 1908 and by 1912
comprised 75 Europeans, 150 Syrians and 2,000 Africans.
14
Meanwhile, in order to secure maritime outlets, major harbour
works were undertaken. The port of Dakar was completed in
1910,
and the wharf at Grand Bassam, taken over by the Ivory
Coast government in 1907, was restored to working order in
1907-13,
at the same time as were most of the secondary ports
of call in the colony.
In Senegal, particularly in Sine-Saloum, this was the period
when the groundnut economy, already well established, was
launched on modern lines. Between 1904 and 1906 production
rose to equal that of millet, and between 1906 and
1914
it increased
from 100,000 tons to nearly 300,000 tons a year, though it still
occupied only one-third of the cultivated area. The railway thus
made possible an entirely new commercial substructure which
subverted ancient trading practices and gradually imposed the
monetary system, though the mechanised shelling and crushing
of groundnuts was introduced only during the war. In the Ivory
Coast, by contrast, African agriculture had hardly begun to
contribute to exports by 1905. The territory provides an excellent
example of the gradual diffusion of
a
hierarchical trading economy,
in which from the beginning there was much alienation of land.
Land was reserved for settlers by the decree of 1904, which
declared all non-private land to be ' vacant and under no owner-
ship'
and that of 1906, which required that private ownership
should be registered. From 1906 to 1924 only 61 African
14
J. Mangolte, 'Lc Chemin de fer de Konakry au Niger (1890-1914)', Revue /ranfaise
(Thistoire doutre-mer, 1968, 55.no. 198, 98-9.
344
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1905-1914
properties were thus registered, representing a total of 150
hectares. Most villages felt themselves excluded from this 'new
world'. Outside Grand Bassam there were few European traders,
but every outpost attracted a business quarter, especially near the
ports and railway stations, at the junctions of paths in active use,
as at Tiassale and Zaranu, or in the ancient trading centres of the
north, such as Bonduku and Buna. Around 1908 Governor
Angoulvant recommended the creation of official markets:
regularly stocked — and taxed — they favoured the organisation
of regional networks which were already dominated by the major
import-export firms. SCOA established itself in the Ivory Coast
in 1908. In exchange for cloth, hardware and foodstuffs, such as
salt, rice and tinned goods from Europe, the basic exports were
still kola, timber, and rubber; the last represented more than half
the total value of exports up to 1911. Produce from plantations
remained marginal: 3,600 tons of cocoa and barely 100 tons of
coffee as late as 1920. In 1912, collective rights of access to oil
palms were restricted in favour of proprietary rights; this
reinforced the privileged position of the Societe des huileries et
plantations de Cote d'lvoire. Maison Verdier, on the other hand,
which had become the Compagnie francaise de Kong, diversified
its enterprises and the Societe francaise de Cote d'lvoire launched
forestry projects in Sassandra. However, pre-colonial trading
patterns persisted: Dyula and Yarse caravans came south to
Bouake and to Kumasi in the Gold Coast, with livestock and strips
of cotton cloth, in exchange for kola, Hausa cloths and gold,
which were subsequently resold in Mossi country.
Based on their networks of branch establishments, the European
business firms also depended on African collaborators: the Dyula,
Appolonian or Nzima pedlars who specialised in gathering
supplies of latex rubber and timber, or Senegalese who had often
arrived at the same time as the railway and stayed to work on their
own account. Some African traders even set up local branches on
the European pattern, but their resources were very meagre. Most
entered the service of the overseas business houses, or simply held
to their pre-colonial system, which was founded on bargaining
rather than on credit and which suited the prevailing weakness
of the monetary system. Nevertheless, from 1907 onwards, the
columns of African troops acquired the habit of making their
purchases in French coinage, while the porters were paid in cash.
345
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
After 1910 the administration began to refuse local money, such
as cowries or lengths of copper, and from 1917 onwards taxes had
to be paid in French currency. Even though exports, which were
always of greater tonnage, continued to be notably inferior in
value to imports, the cash economy steadily entrenched
itself.
By and large, the economic exploitation of French Africa was
still in its infancy. In 1914, imperial trade represented scarcely
more than 10 per cent of France's trade, and of this black Africa
and Madagascar accounted for less than 14 per cent. French
investments in the empire were indeed a substantial proportion
of all investments abroad (not far short of the
2 5
per cent invested
in Russia), but of this sum black Africa accounted for less than
20
per cent. The African empire south of the Sahara cost very little,
but it brought in practically nothing. After the collapse of the wild
rubber market in
1911,
the catastrophic drought of the year 1913
marked the beginning of a distressing cycle of poverty and famine,
which was followed by the war.
' Native policy'
Despite the stereotyped antithesis between the 'indirect rule'
of the British and the assimilating centralism of the French, the
latter were much concerned at this period to obtain the
collaboration of local chiefs. The underlying aim of French policy
was to break down the cohesion of local communities by fostering
individualism through the judicious distribution of rewards:
many chiefs, Muslim and animist alike, allied themselves with the
administration to the detriment of their subjects. Due to shortage
of personnel, there was little direct administration. In Senegal, a
decree of 1904 had supposedly ended the distinction between
territories under direct government and protectorates, but the
latter were maintained until the 1920s. Direct government was
confined to the towns and the coastal areas from Dakar to St
Louis,
up to two kilometres inland, and scarcely extended more
than one kilometre from the ports and railway stations. Elsewhere,
Africans were subject to the
indigenat,
as enforced by the chiefs
in charge of each of the cantons into which provinces were
divided.
Colonial policy was pragmatic, in the sense that it was adapted
to local conditions. Certainly there was a great temptation to
346
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1905-1914
suppress the existing chiefs;
on
the other hand,
the
ruling families,
already enjoying
the
authority
due to
their rank, were more ready
to
be of
service than
any
other class.
In any
case, French attitudes
varied. Sometimes both
the
title
and
office
of a
local ruler
had
faded
out
before their time,
as in Bur
Salum, Senegal, where
the
country
was
soon broken
up
into districts which were purely
administrative.
Not far
away, however,
in
Sine,
the
chiefs were
retained until 1963.
In
Futa Jalon (Guinea),
the
office
of
almami
was suppressed
in 1912, but the
prestige
of the
great ruling
families
was
maintained
in the
interest
of the
government. They
retained, moreover, such officially discarded prerogatives
as the
right
to own
personal slaves; this
was the
source
of
their
agricultural prosperity
and
their accustomed prestige,
and it
also
helped them
to
meet demands
for
forced labour
and
conscription.
Where chieftainship
had
been destroyed,
or had
simply never
existed,
it was
created
by the
French, much
as the
British created
' warrant chiefs'
in
southern Nigeria.
In the
Gurunsi country
of
the upper Volta,
for
example,
the
administrators managed,
by the
judicious choice
of
chiefs,
to
divide
the
territory into units
corresponding more
or
less with
the
former state of affairs.
It was
the same
in the
Congo, where Governor-General Merlin admitted
in
1909: 'It is
impossible
in the
colonies
to
proceed
by
direct
administration, that
is to say, of the
kind which needs
no
native
intermediary. This means that
it is
necessary everywhere
to
implement
a
policy
of
co-operation with
the
native chiefs.'
15
He
accordingly recommended that influential families should
be
sought
out,
whom
it
'would
be
sufficient
to
invest with
a
modicum of authority'. From 1916 onwards there was
an
attempt
to institute
a
complete hierarchy
of
local leaders; this
was
tried
first in
the
district of the Kongo,
and
from 1922 onwards extended
throughout
the
colony. This hierarchy reached upwards from
the
village chief
(who was
liable
to
delegate some
of his
powers
to
the
capitas
or
headman
of
hamlets)
to the
subdivisional
chief, by
way
of
the territorial chief and
the
tribal
chief.
This last
chief, the
only
one to
receive
a
salary,
was
responsible
for
transmitting
orders
and
enforcing their execution.
The
territorial
chief, who
received
a
percentage
of
the collection
of
taxes
on
condition that
IS
Circular dealing .with
the
occupation
of the
colony,
Journal officiel
AEF, i
August
1909;
cf. R.
Bafouetela,
'La
Politique indigene
de la
France
au
Moyen-Congo' (these
de
3e
cycle, University
of
Paris-VII, 1974).
347
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
he kept the village chiefs satisfied in his own way, was in charge
of compulsory labour, the compilation of taxation lists and the
supervision of markets and agriculture. As for the village
chief,
he had to carry out on the spot a whole range of prescribed tasks.
The same system was adopted
in
Cameroun, following on
the
German legacy. Here, however, there was little connection with
the pre-colonial social structure,
if
only because of the different
pattern of leadership: in Yaounde province
a
thousand or so chiefs
were subordinate to seven higher chiefs and some thirty chiefs of
cantons, instituted in
1925;
each canton comprised between
5,000
and 20,000 people.
Thus the hierarchy of chiefs gradually became an administrative
mechanism. Indeed, even
if
the canton chief did
not
always
correspond to
a
traditional office holder, the basis of his power,
at any rate before 1914, tended
to
remain historical, though he
no longer received either personal dues
or
revenues from
his
judicial duties. These were replaced by a salary and by rebates on
taxation, providing an income which was seldom enough both to
satisfy the chiefs traditional dependants, such as retainers and
medicine men,
and to
meet
his
new responsibilities: lodging
administrators
on
tour, liaising with provincial headquarters,
supporting
a
literate secretary and
a
petty militia. Aided
by a
strong-arm band which knew
the
country well and
did not
hesitate to hold villagers to ransom for their own gain, the canton
chief thus continued to exact gifts, more or less under pressure.
In this
he had
some colonial protection, though
a
hint
of
denunciation by a clerk or a needy business agent could cost him
his office
or
even expose him
to
prison
or
deportation;
it
was
well-known that the misappropriation of taxes or crops was very
common. All the same, the chief was
not
simply
a
traitor,
a
collaborator in the misdeeds of colonisation. The village
chief,
in
particular, was doomed
to
unpopularity:
at
the bottom
of
the
scale,
he
had
to
satisfy
all
demands and had little freedom
of
manoeuvre. Revolts by chiefs,
in
the form of refusal to pay tax
or to recruit conscripts, were not uncommon, especially in French
Equatorial Africa, and some chiefs paid with their lives for their
audacity
or
weakness. However, the administrator was usually
inclined
to
cultivate the goodwill
of
his chiefs, who were both
his executives and his principal sources of information. He tended
to support them against their followers by making the
indigenat
348
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
1905-1914
operate
in
their favour, even sending them detachments
of
police
for purposes
of
repression.
A fundamental
and
lasting double standard
was
thus built into
the position
of
chief.
On the one
hand
he was
exalted,
as a
sign
of the respect shown
to
African 'customs'
and
institutions, which
were reduced,
or
very nearly so,
to the
office of
chief;
on the
other
hand
he was
reminded that
he
owed
his
existence
to the
goodwill
of
the
colonising power
and
could
not
hope
to be
anything
but
its tool. This was indeed
the
message
of
the
famous circular issued
in 1917
by
Governor-General
Van
Vollenhoven,
who
insisted
on
a revaluation
of the
status
of the
chiefs:
'
They have
no
personal
power
of any
kind,
for
there
are not two
authorities
in the
province,
the
French
and the
native,
but
only
one.
Only
the
provincial
commandant
commands
and he
alone
has
responsibility.
The native chief
is
only
an
instrument,
an
auxiliary.'
16
Under
a
' traditional' exterior, therefore, colonial rule both reinforced
and
distorted
the
part played
by the
chiefs,
by
suppressing
the
customary restraints
on
their powers
and by
creating
new
functions
for
them, such
as
tax-collection
and the
presidency
of
native courts. Some
had
been trained
at the St
Louis school
for
the sons
of
chiefs;
17
such educated chiefs were
no
burden
on
France, which
was
skilled
in
making
the
people
of
a
country bear
the cost
of
subjecting their blood-brothers.
In
this process,
chieftainship
was
deprived
of the
religious authority whereby,
through links with the ancestors,
it
had preserved
the
customs
and
property
of
the village
or the
tribe. Thus administration through
chiefs contributed more
to the
dismantling
of the
pre-colonial
structure than
to its
renewal.
The skeletal French administration also depended very heavily
on
the
co-operation
of a
mass
of
minor African employees
—
postmen, labourers, porters
and
foremen
—
whose numbers
and
impact have still
to be
assessed. They, perhaps even more than
the 'traditional' chiefs, were
the
direct
and
effective collaborators
with
the
colonising power. Many
had
received
the
necessary
rudiments
of
education
in the
mission schools. However,
the
separation
of
church
and
state
in
France
in 1905
dealt
a
severe
16
Circular
of
1
j
August
1917,
Bulletin
du
Comite de I'Afrique franfaise, December
1917,
1-2,
270.
11
This
was
seldom
an
institution
in its own
right;
in 1903 it was
absorbed
by the
teacher-training college
at St
Louis; from
1908 to 1922 it was
part
of
the mtdtrsa there;
and
in 1927 it was
annexed
to a
primary school.
349
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
blow
to
missionary teaching, especially that
of
Roman Catholics;
the relative diversity
of
Protestant churches
and
their limited
numbers gave greater scope
for
local initiative.
18
Not
only were
subsidies
to
mission schools halted; various measures restricted
their influence.
In
French West Africa, from 1910, preference
for
posts
in
the public service was given
to
former pupils
of
the state
schools,
and in
1914
a
circular prohibited private schools from
'any
new
development'
and
enjoined
on
them respect
for the
official education programme
and
use
of
the French language.
19
Nevertheless, the state system of education, which was organised
in French West Africa from
1903, did not
develop without
opposition.
By
1910, it accounted
for
only 11,500 schoolchildren.
The aim
of
state schools was openly utilitarian; as instruments
of
propaganda
for
the French cause and language,
it
was the schools'
duty
to
train the auxiliaries
of
colonial rule:
'
To teach the native
to speak
our
language,
to
read
it, to
write
it, to
inculcate
in him
some rudiments
of
arithmetic with some ideas
of
morality, that
is enough
for
the present.'
20
The 1914 programme
is
eloquent
in
this respect: 'Intermediate course: origins
of
French power,
geographical advantages, racial characteristics, great generals,
statesmen, intellectuals, artists.
The
colonising
and
civilising
genius
of
the French,
the
great epochs
of
their history.
'
2I
As for the middle ranks of African employees, they mostly came
from the teacher-training college which was founded
at St
Louis
in 1903, moved
to
Goree island
in 1913 and was
renamed
the
William Ponty School in
1915.
2Z
Indeed, only Senegal could boast
a true elite, originally derived from the Creole society
of
St Louis
and Goree
and
extended
at the
end
of
the nineteenth century
to
Rufisque and Dakar. All
originaires
(Africans born
in
one
of
these
four
communes)
could vote
in
the election
of
a local deputy
to the
French National Assembly,
and
also
in
elections
to the
General
Council
of
Senegal (which exercised limited powers
of
taxation
18
See
chapter
3, p. 160.
"
But the
circular
of
1914 laid down
no
sanction
and
teachers already appointed could
be retained (decree
of 1
August 1922).
20
Governor-General William Ponty, speech
of
1908, cited
by D.
Bouche, ' Autrefois,
notre pays s'appelait
la
Gaule', Cahiers cf etudes africaines,
1968, 8,
110-22.
21
Journal officiel, Dahomey, July
1914.
22
In 1934 the
school
was
moved
to
Sebikhotane, outside Dakar. From
1903 to 1907
the Iicole Faidherbe;
at St
Louis, provided commercial training;
in 1916 it was
revived
on Goree,
for
administrative training
as
well, and
in 1921 it
was absorbed
by the
William
Ponty School.
35°
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008