Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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THE BOOM OF THE 1920S
clearance and
the
consequent displacement
of
people.
In 1931
Jamot set up
a
preventive service
in
Wagadugu, which
in
1932
became part of the AMI, was revived as a mobile service in 1934
and became a specialised service in 1939. By then, 143,000 victims
of sleeping-sickness had been tracked down and after 1941 only
the central region
of the
lower Ivory Coast experienced
any
recrudescence
of
the disease.
Educational plans
in
1924 stressed the need
to
form
an
elite
loyal
to the
colonial cause. Public instruction
in
French West
Africa tended increasingly to imitate metropolitan French models.
An international congress
on
education
in
1931 concluded that
the French policy
of
assimilation went
too far, and in
1935
a
British visitor to the William Ponty School, near Dakar, remarked,
'They are French
in
everything but the colour
of
their skins.
>s8
This trend ran counter
to
the educational aims
of
missionaries,
who preferred to make use of vernacular languages, though from
1922 these were officially banned
in all
schools.
59
Government
provision for secular schools expanded rapidly after the war. By
1924 there were 29,000 children
in
the government schools
of
French West Africa: more than twice as many as
in
1910. There
were also
5,700
in
mission schools; these could
now
receive
subsidies if they broadly conformed to patterns of state education,
but throughout the 1920s and 1930s they accounted for
at
most
one-sixth
of
all schoolchildren
in
French West Africa. Besides,
most people remained beyond the reach
of
any school: even
in
Dahomey
it
is unlikely that more than 10 per cent
of
school-age
children went to school in 1939. Throughout French West Africa
in 1938 there were less than 70,000 schoolchildren out
of
some
12 million people;
in
impoverished French Equatorial Africa
there were scarcely 20,000 out
of
five million.
This narrow base largely comprised village
or
district schools
where, owing
to
staff shortages,
the
teacher
was
often
an
unqualified African, perhaps an ex-interpreter or a literate soldier,
who was left to his own resources and was seldom visited by an
inspector.
60
After four years, the most promising pupils might
58
W. B.
Mumford,
in W. B.
Mumford and
G. St J.
Orde Browne, Africans learn
to
be
French
(London, n.d. [1936]), 47.
19
In the Ivory Coast, the catechism was translated into Nzima
in
1911, Ebrie in 1923,
Dida
in
1932 and Atie (Akye)
in
1934.
60
The school at Kandy, in northern Dahomey, was founded in 1910 but not inspected
until 1919.
371
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
gain entry to a senior primary school: in 1935 there were eight
such schools, with 1,000 places, in French West Africa. From
these, pupils might proceed to schools of marine engineering or
midwifery in Dakar, or to a teacher-training college: by the late
1930s there was one near Abidjan and one near Bamako as well
as the William Ponty School, which also prepared Africans for
entry to a medical school in Dakar (founded in 1918) and a
veterinary school in Bamako. Secondary education on the French
pattern was provided, mainly though not exclusively for whites,
by schools at St Louis and Dakar. The first taught up to university
entrance standard from 1920; the second, only from 1940. A
special effort to provide state-supported education was made in
the mandated territories, where the rapid diffusion of the French
language was needed to counter the considerable achievements of
German mission teaching. In Cameroun, by 1926, ten regional
schools with 1,850 pupils led to the high school at Yaounde, which
prepared Africans for posts in government and teaching.
Vocational training was supposed to be available in each capital,
and it was sponsored by the railway administration, but in practice
little was provided, except on the job: the need for staff was so
great that it was enough to be literate to be sure of finding work.
On the eve of the Second World War, education was still the
privilege of a very small minority — small enough to be absorbed
without risk by the colonial system while contributing to the cult
of the diploma, the guarantee of social advancement.
First results
However restricted all these efforts, their first results were soon
apparent. While population statistics for the period are very
unreliable, it is clear that from 1925 and especially in the 1930s
there was a reversal of earlier demographic decline. Dahomey was
thought to number 840,000 people in 1920, 963,000 in 1925, one
million in 1930 and 1.3 million in 1935. Cameroun was thought
to number 1.9mm 1926, 2.2mm 1931 and 2.5mm 1937. In French
Equatorial Africa, an upward trend seems to have begun just after
the depression of the 1930s.
Colonial trade was boosted by French prosperity in the 1920s.
Already, trading firms had profited during the war from inflated
prices and the government's bulk purchases of so-called strategic
372
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THE BOOM OF THE 1920S
supplies (oil-products
and
rubber). After
the
brief slump
of
1921-2,
when the price
of
palm-oil fell from 4,200
to
1,300 francs
per ton, the upward trend was resumed and maintained until 1930,
encouraged
by the
massive inflation
of
the franc
up
to
1926
(the
Poincare franc, introduced
in
1928,
was
worth
not
more than
one-fifth
of
the gold franc
of
1913). With
new
opportunities
for
profit from speculation, there was
a
proliferation of colonial firms,
especially in commerce. On the eve of the depression, black Africa
had
107
companies which were quoted
on
the
Bourse
in
Paris
(compared with
22
founded between 1900
and
1914), including
29
new
commercial ventures,
48
plantation companies,
21 in
forestry,
11 in
mining,
11 in
banking
and
real estate,
and 7
transport companies. Between 1924
and
1930
the
CFAO made
annual profits
of
25
to
30 per cent,
as in
pre-war days.
The
share
capital of SCO A increased almost tenfold from 1920 to 1928 (from
18m
to
157m
francs);
its
value quadrupled
in
real terms.
Diversification
was
undertaken: SCOA
and
CFAO enlarged
on
their traditional bases
of
groundnuts
in
Senegal,
the
Ivory Coast
and Guinea, and moved into Gold Coast cocoa and Nigerian palm
produce and tin. By i93oCFAOhad
191
branches and SCOA 145.
Various factors facilitated diversification: machines were applied
to
the
processing
of
primary products
and
firms were absorbed
or became subsidiaries.
In
the
hinterland,
a
feeder network
of
freight transport
was
developed
by
Levantines
who
had
first
arrived early
in the
century
but
mostly came when Syria
and
Lebanon became French mandates. They readily settled
in the
interior, learned local languages
and
lent money
on
patriarchal
lines,
at
annual rates
of
interest
of
up
to
50
per
cent.
The principal export continued
to be
groundnuts, which
in
1938 still contributed almost half the total value
of
exports from
French West Africa.
61
The
completion
of the
Thies-Kayes
railway
in
1923 caused
an
agricultural revolution
in
Senegal
by
opening
up
Sine-Saloum. Kaolack became
the
chief outlet
for
exports, which doubled between 1914
and
1930.
In
Guinea
the
banana plantations
of
Europeans began
to
mature, yielding 6,000
61
Groundnuts
1920
63
in French
1925
60
West Africa:
1928
5)
percentage
1930
46
of total
1932
value
of
exports
«935
53
1938
45
375
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
10,000
-
Imports
Exports
i,
•,, i,
r
1
11111111111
\
•4
1111
/
i
•
111
/
/
1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1939
Fig. 7. Ivory Coast: imports and exports, by weight (metric tons)
tons
in
1929
and
52,000 tons
in
1938
—
perhaps
a
third
of
total
consumption
in
France.
In
the Ivory Coast, where exports
in
1914
had consisted almost entirely of ivory and wild rubber, commercial
agriculture began
in the
south-east
and
Ndenye country,
contributing
17 per
cent
of
export tonnage
in 1930.
CorTee-
production remained very small (1,000 tons
in
1933),
but
that
of
cocoa rose between 1919
and
1929 from
860 to
16,500 tons,
41
per cent by value of total exports. In German Kamerun, plantations
(both German and native) had flourished and during the war vast
concessions were taken over: some were let without much success
to French companies while others were alienated
in
freehold,
including
the
8,000
hectares taken
in
1926
by
the Caoutchoucs
et
cacaos
du
Cameroun. However, the government favoured smaller
concessions; 216
of
less than 200 hectares were granted between
1922
and
1929.
In
1924
it set up a
scheme
for
promoting African
enterprise through co-operatives
and
technical assistance. From
1918 cocoa was cultivated all over the coastal region;
it
remained
mediocre
in
quality and fetched
a
very poor price,
but
from 1933
cocoa
and
palm produce made
up 70 per
cent
of the
value
of
exports.
In
Gabon the void left by the collapse
of
the wild-rubber
trade was filled
by
the production
of
okoume
wood. The Germans
had bought
it for
cabinet-making and 130,000 tons were exported
in 1914.
The war
ruined this trade
but the
wood was well suited
for lamination and veneering
to
meet the needs of the burgeoning
aircraft industry. Exports rose
to
380,000 tons
in
1930, exceeded
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THE BOOM OF THE 1920S
only by the record of 407,000 tons
in
1937. The former con-
cessionary companies in the coastal zone surrendered their rights
to great forestry companies. It was the golden age of the timber
trade: prices rose from 30-60 francs
a
ton in 1913 to 700-800
francs
a
ton just before the depression. The Consortium des
grands reseaux francais, which had founded the colony's timber
industry and specialised in railway sleepers, then employed some
40 whites and 1,500 Africans and used mechanised saws and
workshops, Decauville trucks, steam-haulage and cranes. Inde-
pendent African participation was obstructed by the suppression
of unauthorised tree-felling and by the expense of mechanisation.
In any case, most production still depended heavily on manual
labour, so that under-population was a real problem.
The economic boom had contradictory results in France and
Africa. While colonial
firms
made swift
progress,
Africans endured
harsh exploitation without benefiting from the dynamic effects of
inflation. They met newly created wants by buying imported
goods at metropolitan prices, but they were paid for their produce
at little more than pre-war rates.
62
Wages lagged far behind prices.
Immediately before the war, wages ranged from 50 centimes to
one or two francs a day; a casual worker for the administration
got 70 centimes a day; a tree-feller in Gabon got 10—15 francs a
month and a trader's agent 40 francs. These figures had at most
doubled by 1930, when banana workers in Guinea were hard put
to it to obtain a rise from 2 francs to 2.50 a day; in 1929 casual
workers in Gabon were awarded
2
francs a day. Rates for contract
workers were appreciably higher: in 1911 402 men were engaged
on contract for railway work in Dahomey at 14 francs a day for
300 days, whereas
5,000
workers were recruited orally for 2.90
francs a day.
63
There were, however, exceptions to this pattern,
which explain the rapid growth of non-contracted migrant labour.
From Upper Volta and Guinea there was an annual exodus of
people — perhaps 50,000 in 1930 — to harvest groundnuts in
Senegal. These casual workers, in addition to food rations, could
make up to 1,500 francs in a season, or a daily wage of around
62
It
is this fact which chiefly explains the hostility towards the cultivation of cotton:
in 1930 the official price was between
i
franc and 1.2$ francs per kilo of picked lint,
but only $0 centimes were paid
in
Ouhame-Nana, Ubangi-Shari (compared with
60
centimes
in
1913).
63
A.
Cocou,
'Les Travailleurs du chemin
de
fer' (these
de 3e
cycle,
University
of
Paris-VH,
1977).
375
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
12 francs.
64
Tax-levels,
by
contrast, showed no such variations:
everywhere they kept pace with inflation. From 1914 to 1929, the
taxes paid by Africans rose from 26.6m francs to 175m in French
West Africa, from 22m
to
127m
in
Madagascar and from 4.4m
to
30.5
m in French Equatorial Africa. Even if allowance is made
for more efficient collection, the annual burden
of
tax rose from
1-5 francs before
the war to 15-25
francs
in
1929-30
and
sometimes even 50-75 francs
in
the most prosperous zones, such
as Gabon, southern Dahomey and Senegal.
It is usually held that
it
was the need
to
pay tax in cash which
obliged Africans
to
work
on the
land.
The
reality
is
more
complex. Initially compulsion undoubtedly played
a
part,
especially
in
French Equatorial Africa, where wages
on
conces-
sions were
so
low
as to
offer no incentive
to
take part willingly
in the cash economy. On the other hand, statistics
for
the most
commercialised activity
of the
period, groundnut production,
show that between
1921
and 1929 only
10
per cent of a cultivator's
working time was needed for paying fiscal dues.
65
The extension
of groundnut cultivation was,
by and
large, achieved without
resort
to
force. One possible stimulus might seem
to
have been
a change in consumer habits, to judge from the net ratio between
the volume
of
exports and that
of
imports
of
consumer goods,
but this chiefly related
to
town-dwellers.
In
the bush, rice from
Indo-China remained a luxury, and the farmer in the Sahel could,
if pressed, meet his own clothing needs with strips of locally-made
cotton cloth. Over much
of
French West Africa
the
most
widespread stimulus
to
cash-crop cultivation was indebtedness,
aggravated
by
inflation. Recurrent food shortages
in
Senegal
impelled groundnut cultivators either to consume supplies of seed
and replace them just when prices were highest or else
to
obtain
food by mortgaging part of the next harvest.
In
1905-6 there was
a great famine
in
Sine-Saloum and the government lent farmers
seed and foodstuffs, repayable
in
kind
at
5 per cent interest. The
success
of
this scheme prompted the institution
in
French West
Africa of provident societies to build up food reserves, sink wells,
and popularise investment
in
commercial agriculture. Several
64
L.
Aujas,
'La
Region
du
Sine-Saloum', Bulletin
du
Comite historiqut
et
scientifique de
FAOF', 1929, 1/2,
94-1
jz, cited by M. Mbodj, 'Un exemple d'economie coloniale, Le
Sine-Saloum' (these de 3e cycle, University
of
Paris-VII, 1978).
'*
Ibid.
376
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THE BOOM OF THE 1920S
were formed in parts of Senegal and Guinea, but in general they
attracted limited support,
and in
1915 membership was made
compulsory within any province where
a
society existed. So
far
from being a tool for local self-help, the provident society tended
to become another arm of government: from
1923
each
commandant
had full powers over the local society's budget. Furthermore, the
societies lent
at
high interest rates:
30 per
cent soon became
normal. And
if
crop failure,
or
the fear of it, sucked the farmer
into
a
cycle
of
debt, inflation could make
it a
vicious spiral:
as
the purchasing power of his franc declined, he needed more and
more money to meet not only his own material wants but social
obligations once discharged by gifts
in
kind — whether slaves,
animals, gold-dust
or
cloth. All too often the farmer could only
settle his debts by allowing an agent, often Lebanese, to dispose
of his harvest.
New centres
of
resistance
In 1923 there were major disturbances at Porto-Novo, Dahomey.
Popular discontents briefly combined with those
of
the young
educated
elite.
Among the latter, the foremost critic of government
was Louis Hunkarin. The son of ex-King Toffa's blacksmith, he
had left high school in Dakar in 1906 and after a spell of teaching
became a journalist, working at first alongside Blaise Diagne. As
an anti-colonial radical, Hunkarin spent as much time in Paris as
in Dakar or Porto-Novo and was in and out of
gaol.
In
1917 the
first African newspaper appeared
in
Dahomey, clandestine and
hand-written: the
Recadere de
Behantyn.
Then came the slump
of
1921-2;
the government tried
to
make
up for
loss
of
customs
revenue
by
increasing
the
poll-tax and trading-licence
fee
and
imposing
a tax on
European-style houses.
In
February
1923
protest was instigated by
evolue's'm
the Franco-Muslim Committee,
supported by the local section of the League for the Rights of Man
and by King Toffa's dynastic opponents. People
in
Porto-Novo
refused to pay the increased taxes, demonstrated in the streets and
shouted down
a
delegation
of
canton chiefs. Workers
in the
private sector and
at
the port
of
Cotonou went
on
strike. The
government responded fiercely:
it
declared
a
state
of
siege,
imposed a collective fine of 360,000 francs and exiled the activists
(Hunkarin spent the next ten years in Mauritania).
377
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
In 1925 there were strikes on the Dakar—St Louis railway and
among Bambara building the Thies—Kayes line; the latter at least
forced the government to listen to their demands, for fellow
Bambara soldiers refused to march against them. But for most of
the decade, blacks from French West Africa voiced their protest
chiefly in France. In 1924 a Dahomeyan lawyer, Kodjo Tovalou-
Houenou, founded in Paris the' Universal League for the Defence
of the Black Race': its journal,
Continents,
was attacked by Blaise
Diagne, who since 1914 had been a deputy for Senegal. From the
early 1920s the French Communist Party sought to reach African
ex-soldiers and workers in France through the Intercolonial
Union; one of its most active members was Lamine Senghor, an
ex-soldier who had returned to France in 1922. It so happened
that the best students from the William Ponty School were now
sent to Aix-en-Provence to prepare for their diploma examina-
tions.
Thus in 1926 Senghor was able to enlist the help of young
African communist students in founding the Committee (from
1928 the League) for the Defence of the Negro Race. The
problems of these students were sympathetically described in the
Senegalese press by Lamine Gueye, a lawyer who served as mayor
of St Louis in 1925-7. Otherwise, their movement had little
impact in Senegal, but it was in touch with nearly all the militant
Africans who passed through Paris.
In 1929 a section of the League was formed in Cameroun by
Victor Ganty, originally from Guyana. Ganty had tried to found
a spiritualist church in Cameroun, but he now contrived to
associate modernist protests with the traditional anti-colonial
sentiments of the Douala notables. He succeeded Richard Manga
Bell as head of the France-Cameroun Association and in 1931
presented to the League of Nations a petition for the ' defence of
black citizens of Cameroun'. African dissidents in Paris may also
have exerted some influence on Andre Matswa, a veteran of the
Rif war in 1925, though the 'Friends of the Original Inhabitants
of French Equatorial Africa', which he founded in Paris in 1926,
aspired only to the 'mirage of citizenship' as in Senegal. Matswa
returned to Brazzaville, where his movement had remarkable
success among the Kongo; it then spread to Libreville and
Bangui. By 1929 it had 13,000 members in Bangui and the scale
of demonstrations by workers there alarmed the government,
which swiftly suppressed it. In 1930 Matswa was convicted on a
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S
pretext of currency offences and deported
to
Chad; he escaped,
but died
in
detention
in
1942. His followers moved away from
political action
to
messianism: Matswa himself became, like
Simon Kimbangu, a mythical and semi-divine hero. All the same,
he had briefly revealed
a
growing consciousness
of
the colonial
condition.
The one great rural revolt
of
the period also took place
in
French Equatorial Africa.
On the
borders
of
Moyen-Congo,
Ubangi-Shari and Cameroun, the Baya people had been driven
beyond endurance by nearly thirty years of terror: by recruitment
for
the
railway
and for the
Compagnie Forestiere's rubber-
tapping. In about 1924 a local prophet, Karnou, began preaching
non-violent resistance. Administrators were so thin on the ground
that they did not .hear of this until 1927, and by then Karnou's
many adherents, convinced by magic batons
of
their invulnera-
bility, had taken up arms. More than 350,000 people, including
60,000 warriors, took part in an astonishing display of solidarity
in
an
area previously notorious
for its
fragmented political
structure. Karnou was killed in December 1928, but the insurrec-
tion spread and persisted until
1931,
when the last phase of repres-
sion, the
'
war of the caves', was particularly savage. In its scale,
comparable to that of the Rif war of 1925-6 or the Tonkin revolt
in 1930, in its duration and its impact in France, the revolt was a
dramatic revelation of the failure of colonial policy. The govern-
ment took the measure of Karnou's movement: though it had had
to depend on ancestral values for support in small-scale societies,
the refusal
to
collaborate with
the
occupying power and
the
appeal
for
inter-tribal unity gave
it a
pivotal significance. The
country, impoverished and half-deserted, was numbed
by the
severity of repression: recovery seemed impossible.
THE DEPRESSION
OF THE
1930S
The depression in world trade which began in 1930 had seemingly
contradictory effects in French black Africa. In strictly economic
terms,
its impact was comparatively slight, for by then protection
in trade meant that the French economy acted to some extent as
a
shock-absorber. But the depression transformed French imperial
policy: it stimulated a new emphasis on production for export and
on governmental responsibility for economic infrastructures. This
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
in turn provoked a social crisis, for it was Africans who bore the
brunt of these changes.
Structural
Changes
In terms of external trade, 1930 did not in fact mark any
sudden turning-point: export values from Madagascar had peaked
in 1924, from French West Africa in 1925-6 and from French
Equatorial Africa in 1927. When the world depression struck, its
most immediate effect was on the small white minority, and it
sharply exposed the inadequacy of credit facilities.
66
There were
only two private banks in French West Africa (the Banque
francaise de l'Afrique, established in 1904, and the Banque
Commerciale africaine (1924)), and the speed of withdrawals
forced them to suspend payments. The Banque d'Afrique
occidentale (opened in 1901), which issued currency, was not yet
firmly established and the long slump in private investment
delayed its recovery until 1938—9. On the other hand, colonial
trading firms suffered no loss of business. Export tonnages were
maintained without difficulty, since agriculture was relatively
diversified, at least at the federal level, and France could still
absorb what Africa could produce: it was not, after all, in Africa
that 'over-production' had become a problem. Indeed, the depth
of the depression saw a surge of exports from plantations laid out
in the boom years of 1924-8: cotton from Ubangi-Shari, cocoa
from Gabon and Cameroun, palm products from Congo, coffee
from the Ivory Coast and bananas from Guinea. In an effort to
promote more balanced growth, customs receipts were pooled by
each federation. France sought to guarantee minimum prices for
producers by paying export bonuses to trading firms in West
Africa and by further loans to the governments of Equatorial
Africa. Moreover, since 1928 the Colonial Customs Union had
extended from Madagascar to black Africa a reciprocal agreement
whereby tariffs in France and the colonies protected the products
of both against foreign competition; this was elaborated in
1931-4. France gained a haven for investment capital that was
otherwise boxed in by world recession; the colonies gained a sure
66
Cf. the severe report of the former inspector of finance, Edmond Giscard d'Estaing,
to the Minister of Colonies, on his mission to French West Africa, 1931-2: Archives
nationales, Section Outre-Mcr, Affaires politiques,
5
59.
380
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