Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE I93OS
outlet for their agricultural produce. Between 1929 and 1935
France's share of exports from French Equatorial Africa rose from
34 to 73 per cent, and her share of exports from French West
Africa rose from 62 to 80 per cent. Meanwhile, there had been
a marked improvement in the barter terms of trade for French
black Africa; since 1925 these had been depressed by low prices
for exported foodstuffs, but from 1930 they were more than offset
by falling prices for imported manufactures. All in all, then, the
colonial trading firms did reasonably well; the hardest hit were
those, such
as
SCOA, which were most closely linked to European
banks.
Public finance, however, was transformed by the depression.
Already, France had decided that preserving colonial financial
autonomy mattered less than boosting colonial exports. The onset
of the depression strengthened the case for metropolitan
intervention: colonial budgets depended heavily on customs
revenues and were thus much affected by stagnation or decline
in the value (as distinct from the volume) of
trade.
In 1931 France
was authorised to make substantial loans for developing railways,
roads,
harbours and other installations. The loans were made at
4 or 5 per cent interest and were to be repaid within 50 years,
though these terms had to be waived in the case of French
Equatorial Africa. In fact, the loans were used to offset local
deficits as well as to support new ventures; besides, only half the
allocation for French West Africa (1,750m francs = £i4tn) had
actually been advanced by 1940. Still, there was an important new
stress on the value of technical expertise, following the tour of
French West Africa in 1931-2 by the former inspector of finance,
Edmond Giscard d'Estaing. Comments or proposals from the
field which had once languished in the files could now be directed
to technical specialists within the government. Such experts now
advocated a 'dualist' strategy for colonial development: capital
investment was to be concentrated in the most accessible zones
and other regions would have to be content with windfalls. In
193
2,
a
special organisation was set up to develop
a
huge irrigation
scheme on the middle Niger for growing rice and cotton. There
was fresh talk about railways eastwards across the Soudan and
even across the Sahara. Industrialisation was left to the private
sector, which refrained from competing with metropolitan
business and still confined itself to the processing of raw materials:
381
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
between 1935
and
1939 exports
of
shelled groundnuts from
Senegal rose from a tenth to half the total, while groundnut oil,
hitherto produced only for the local market, was also exported.
It was not only France, however, which came
to
the aid
of
colonial budgets: Africans also made
a
major contribution.
Colonial governors sought to compensate for falling export prices
by increased output.
To
this end,
the
number
of
provident
societies in French West Africa increased fivefold between 1929
and 1933. Meanwhile, some had incurred huge debts. At the depth
of
the
depression, farmers sold groundnuts very cheaply
to
commercial firms which
in
due course sold part, whether
for
food or seed, for three times as much to societies who paid with
loans on which they were still paying interest fifteen years later.
Such practices were checked
in
1933 when
the
societies were
authorised to arrange the sale of their members' produce, despite
the traders' protests, but this only served
to
tighten the grip of
government on local production.
A
further incentive to African
production was specifically intended
to
foster
the
growth
of
private ownership.
In
1931, the Caisse
de
Credit agricole was
established for lending either to recognised collectives such as the
provident societies
or
else
to
'assimilated' Africans with
registered private property.
67
This encouraged
the
small-scale
African planter to develop land for the benefit of himself and his
descendants rather than his extended family (which was some-
times matrilineal). Such credit also gave rise
to
speculation:
in
land among certain canton chiefs and
in
millet among town-
dwellers in time of food shortage. There was a remarkable increase
in the number, if not the total value, of African savings accounts,
though this may be said
to
have reflected the rise of an African
minority with a vested interest in pauperisation.
For most people,
the
most powerful incentive
to
increase
production was simply the level of
taxation.
Poll-tax had doubled
everywhere between 1925
and
1930;
by
1935
it
had been still
further increased in French Equatorial Africa and elsewhere it was
only slightly reduced. Despite protests from local officials,
it
remained French policy to exercise great caution before making
tax reductions: taxation constituted ' the very foundation of our
67
In
French West Africa, freehold could
be
obtained through
the
process
of
immalriculation, and
by
1937 Africans had obtained 18,500 such titles, covering 1,900
sq.
km; half were
in
Senegal and most were
in
towns.
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930s
native system and to meddle with it would threaten both the
political life of the country and the possibility of a balanced
budget'.
68
Thus the burden of poll-tax was heaviest just when
export prices were lowest; furthermore, poll-tax was levied
collectively, and that of defaulters had to be paid by their
neighbours. In Guinea and the Ivory Coast, people are known to
have paid out more in cash than they earned: they had to part
with their only securities — silver coins or gold trinkets. In Niger,
the depression compounded a local
crisis:
increasing demands for
forced labour (for
a
railway extension and
a
government plantation
at Niamey) took no account of the seasonal needs of domestic
agriculture which were highly sensitive to slight variations in
rainfall; besides, food-production had suffered from the exodus
of young people to the Gold Coast in protest against tax increases.
In 1930 there was a plague of
locusts;
in 1931 there was a famine,
and in some areas the death-rate exceeded 50 per cent.
69
Even
outside such disaster areas, many people abandoned hope of
surviving on the land. By
1936
the population of Dakar was 92,000
and that of Abidjan was 17,500: together, they had grown by 71
per cent since 1931. The population of Conakry (13,500) had
doubled and that of Wagadugu (14,200) had risen by 30 per cent.
Relatively few people, however, were employed: in 1936 there
were only 167,000 wage-earners throughout French West Africa
— barely 1 per cent of the population. Official control over
patterns of migration was facilitated by changes in administrative
organisation designed to save money: once Upper Volta had been
divided, in 1931, between the Ivory Coast, Soudan and Niger it
was easier to divert the Mossi from the Gold Coast towards
Abidjan, which in 1934 became the capital of the Ivory Coast.
70
In the wake of the depression, the French economy was clearly
revealed as exploiting colonial peoples.
71
This can be measured
M
Reply
of
the Commissioner
to
the Territory
of
the Cameroun
to
provincial chiefs,
Circular
68, 19
September 1932,
and 78, 29
April 1938. Yaounde, Archives
du
Cameroun, APA
-
10895/A.
60
M. Sellier, 'Notes sur
le
peuplement et Phistoire du cercle de Niamey', manuscript,
1951,84; cited by F. Fuglestad,' La Grande Famine de 1931 dans l'ouest nigerien', Revue
fraitfaise dhistoire doutre-mer, 1974, 61, no.222,
2;.
70
In
193
j,
in
a
rapprochement between France and Fascist Italy, in face of the growing
Nazi threat from Germany, the border between Libya and Chad was moved 100
km
further south, but this agreement was denounced
by
Italy
in
1938.
71
Cf. A.
Emmanuel, L'£change inigal (Paris, 1969) and
S.
Amin, L'£cbange
ine'gal
it la
lot de
la
valeur (Paris, 1973).
383
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
in two ways. Up to 1930 there was a broad congruence between
movements in African cash earnings and the basic wage of French
manual workers.
72
Thereafter, the gap steadily widened, despite
barter terms of trade which were relatively favourable to the
colonies. Meanwhile, capital gains were increasingly transferred
to France. In 1930 the value of capital transfers from French West
Africa was two-thirds that of private investments in fixed capital
there and only one-fifth that of total exports. By 1938 the value
of such transfers was four times that of such investments and
one-third that of exports.
73
In June 1936 there was a brief but important change of
direction in French politics: Leon Blum formed a Popular Front
government of Socialists and Radicals with Communist support.
This was firmly committed to state direction of the economy, but
it also proclaimed the need 'to extract from the colonial system
the maximum of social justice and of human potential'
74
— it was
the people's welfare which ensured economic growth rather than
the reverse. The Popular Front recommended a reduction of
poll-tax in Africa, and laid stress on food-production and storage:
silos,
wells and roads were to be preferred to large-scale projects
such as the Niger irrigation scheme which was already failing for
want of proper research and treated its African ' settlers' as if they
were convicts. In medicine, the Front stressed preventive care,
promoted by mobile teams in the bush, rather than advanced
methods of cure that were only available in towns. Furthermore,
the Front believed that France should not simply lend to her
colonies; she should also give to them. Already, in 1934, an
Economic Conference of Metropolitan and Overseas France had
sought to emulate Britain's Colonial Development Act of 1929
by proposing a 'National Fund for Public Works in France
Overseas', up to
70
per cent of which would be financed by France
herself.
In 1936 the Popular Front government called
a
conference
of colonial governors-general which approved a similar scheme.
However, the money was not forthcoming and a bill to create such
72
A. Vanhaeverbeke,
Remuneration
du travail el
commerce
extericur...au
Senegal
(Louvain,
•97°).
*55-
71
Calculations based on postal transfers; cf. C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, 'Mutation de
Pimperialisme colonial francais dans les annees }o\ African
Economic
History, 1977, 4,
103-52.
74
Minister of Colonies Marius Moutet, undated note, Archives nationales, Section
Outre-Mer, Affaires politiques, PA 28 (1).
386
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE 193OS
a fund was thrown out by the Senate in 1939." The Front itself
fell from power in July 1937,
76
and its one major economic reform
was the partial replacement of unpaid forced labour by an
additional tax in cash: the number of
days
worked by such labour
fell from 28 million in 1933 to 12 million in 1938.
New thinking about the colonies in Paris evoked few echoes
within Africa. The state might be more assertive; the technocrat
might enjoy a new-found authority; but official concern with
efficient exploitation did not necessarily harmonise with the
prejudices and vested interests of white colonial society. In the
course of the century, this had become increasingly heterogeneous.
In the Ivory Coast before 1914, civil servants had predominated
among whites in employment, but by 1934 they were no more
than a third; there were as many traders, while a quarter were
planters.
77
Three-quarters of the white population were French
people who mostly sought to return to France: whatever might
have taken him to Africa, no Frenchman was a true settler, for
he did not intend to live out his life in a colony. Keenly aware
of being a handful of aliens (less than
5,000
in the Ivory Coast
in 1939), whites closed ranks against the surrounding mass of
Africans, whom they feared and despised. True, the old stereotype
of the savage had been modified: ' the African' was now a tool,
but by the same token he was accused of incompetence as well
as inferiority. The half-caste child was abandoned to its black
mother, yet whites deluded themselves with talk of the ' heroic
organisation of the colonial world' and its 'vocation for
sacrifice'.
78
Social contacts across the colour line were mostly
confined to the unavoidable requirements of public life. Geo-
graphical segregation in towns had been legalised since the
epidemics at the turn of the century: a 'white plateau' for
government offices and residences was isolated from the business
quarter and the African locations. The white sense of common
identity was reinforced in the local club. Membership was
75
The idea was realised
in
1946, with the creation
of
FIDES, the Fund for Economic
and Social Investment and Development, and its financial agency, the Central Bank
of
Overseas France.
76
It had in
fact lasted nearly twice
as
long
as the
average duration
of
French
governments between 1920 and 1940. Such instability masked underlying continuities
(cf. Theodore Zeldin, France 1848-194J: politics and anger (Oxford, 1979), 22J-6),
but
few colonial ministers held office for more than
a
year.
77
A.
Tirefort, 'Le "bon temps'" (these
de
3e cycle, EHESS, Paris, 1979).
78
R.
Delavignette, Service africain (Paris, 1946), ch.
1.
387
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
restricted to whites and
a
sprinkling of black French citizens (in
the Ivory Coast there was one in 1914 and 114 in 1939): all alike
belonged to the White Power. True, by the 1950s white society
had
its
own divisions:
an
upper layer
of
officers, senior civil
servants, professional men, business executives, managers,
the
occasional cleric; and a lower layer of clerks, technicians, traders
and the smaller proprietors. There were also the outcasts: those
who had vanished from white society by setting up house with
a black woman or simply by losing their money; the poor white
was very much
a
phenomenon
of
the 1930s. The advent
of
the
Popular Front, by airing questions about social justice, inflamed
the tensions within white communities. Nonetheless there
re-
mained
a
basic conflict between the official commitment,
at
least
in theory,
to a
gradual policy of' civilisation' and 'integration'
and the concern
of
colonists
in
general
to
defend the
'
colonial
situation', i.e. the racial
status
quo.
African Responses
While the depression lasted, most Africans were too preoccupied
with the struggle for survival
to
consider revolt, though much
migration was protest. The collision between economic facts and
inherited values produced both social and mental confusion,
in
which people discarded ancestral beliefs and lost all thought of
return to the world before capitalism. There was no sign even of
messianic movements such
as
had flourished during
the
First
World War.
It
was orthodox Islam which gained most from the
new time of troubles. The government saw it as an effective rival
to Communist propaganda: officials received and escorted
the
great Tijani marabout Seydou Nourou, grandson
of
al-Hajj
'Umar, when
he
toured French West Africa
in
the 1930s and
strengthened links between Muslim communities
in
both town
and country. Ironically,
it
was just as the economic crisis was
straining traditional allegiances to breaking-point that the govern-
ment affirmed
its
support
for
'customary' values:
at
first
in
Governor-General Brevie's reorganisation
of
African judicial
procedure in 1931 and then in the codification of' native customs'
from 1935.
It was Africans
in
towns, especially those with
a
Western
education, who clashed most frequently with government during
388
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S
the 1930s. The African elite was very mixed in character, as can
be shown from Dahomey, the ' Latin Quarter' of French Africa
at this period. By 1936 there were 776 literate Africans in
government service, half the total number of
evolues.
There were
the clerks and cashiers of business houses. There were the
Afro-Brazilians, mostly small traders who had compensated for
their commercial decline in earlier years by adopting white culture
and acting as intermediaries in the process of colonisation. They
lived like whites and sent their children to Catholic schools:' For
us blacks, education is a matter of life or death.'" There were also
planters, some Afro-Brazilian, some descended from royalty and
some from government chiefs who had got rich in the conquest:
one such grandee was old Quenum, who sent two sons to study
in France while a third subsidised the Voix
du
Dahomey,
founded
in 1927; it was soon followed by other African newspapers. In
1933 the committee of management of the Voix included thirteen
traders and merchants, seven business employees, four farmers,
an artisan and a civil servant. The paper reflected the growing
self-awareness, as a class, of African small traders hindered by
government from competing with the big trading
houses:
the first
radical article attacked the taxation of businesses according to
turnover. The Voix declared its commitment to evolution, not
revolution, but in defending ' the general interests of the country'
it raised all the key issues: the role of the elite, educational policy,
the condition of the masses, miscarriages of justice, taxation, the
economy. To rally support for the paper, local committees were
set up all over the country: by 1931 there was one in each
province. The circulation of the Voix was only 2,000, but it
disclosed a degree of social awareness which alarmed the govern-
ment. In 1933 the press in Dahomey took up the cause of
Africans in Togo, where 14 had been sentenced to death after tax
riots in Lome. The governor of Dahomey, de Coppet, had a
reputation for favouring social reform and African rights but he
now complained, 'The newspapers show sympathy for certain
extreme forms of Communism... Their influence
is
detestable. I am
determined to fight them. '
8o
The Voix fought back:
' We
are not
rebels, nor revolutionaries, nor Communists, but servants of
France.' Nonetheless, de Coppet blamed it for passive resistance
75
ha Voix
du
Dahomey,
no.
70-71,
November-December 1932.
80
Confidential circular 788 A/AP, 18 November 193). Archives nationales du Benin.
389
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
to taxation in 1934, which was simply due to rural impoverish-
ment. Part of the management of the Voix was brought to trial
and charged with 'the pernicious effect of the paper on the
natives'. However, by the time that judgement was eventually
given, the Popular Front was in power and the climate of opinion
was very different. Generous allowance was made for extenuating
circumstances and the case was seen as a victory for the elite.
Not that the Popular Front tried to re-open the imperial
question. Its main concern was to challenge the rising tide of
fascism in Europe, and henceforward none of the main parties,
including the Communists, called for either independence or
self-government in the colonies. The only constitutional measure
adopted by the Front was to advocate the extension in black Africa
of the former councils of
notables.
But it did take a step forward
in the sphere of labour law. Hitherto, industrial combination in
the colonies had been
a
criminal offence, subject to the penal code:
in 1929 a ministerial despatch declared that' the population of our
colonies has not yet acquired an education which enables it to
appreciate the advantages of labour legislation'.
81
In March 1937
the Popular Front authorised collective bargaining and legalised
trade unions in French West Africa, though it confined member-
ship to those able to speak, read and write French and thus
favoured white rather than black workers. Even so, by the end
of the year there were almost
8,000
members of 42 unions and
16
professional associations. Meanwhile, over 1,500 workers came
out on strike in Senegal, in the docks at Dakar, Rufisque, St Louis
and Kaolack, in bakeries, and in soap and oil factories. This
hastened the implementation in Senegal of decrees introducing an
eight-hour day (nine hours remained the maximum in the rest of
French West Africa), regulating the employment of women and
children and providing compensation for accidents at work. A
start was also made in improving the enforcement of labour law
by reorganising the inspection of work-places.
All the same, there was a widening rift between
evolues
who
could be won over by limited concessions and the rank-and-file
who questioned the whole colonial system and were ready to shed
blood. In 1934 Blaise Diagne died; for twenty years he had
represented the four communes of Senegal in the French parlia-
81
Cited by N. Bernard-Duquenet,'
Le
Front populaire et le probleme des prestations
en AOF\ Cabins fitudts
africaines,
1976, 16, nos. 61-2, 159-72.
390
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THE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S
ment. He was succeeded by the moderate Galandou
Diouf,
who
in 1936 beat off a challenge by the socialist lawyer Lamine Gueye.
There was still a widespread belief among the African elite that
long-awaited reforms were at last within reach: they aspired to
play out the role assigned them by French socialists — to
cooperate with colonial authority as a means of eventually
achieving self-government. But the Popular Front fell from power
in 1937, though its influence lingered in the shape of officials and
teachers whom it had appointed in the colonies. The path of
negotiation and compromise had little appeal to the average
worker. In September 1938 the army was used to put down
a
strike
of railway workers at Thies, leaving six dead and ninety injured.
One
e'volue
who, in the name of African freedom and unity,
refused to' join the colonial system' was Tiemoko Garan Kouyate.
In 1927 he succeeded Lamine Senghor as leader of the African
Young Communists in France and he agitated within the Con-
federation generate du travail (CGT) for the creation of indepen-
dent black trade unions. He proposed a Black Man's Institute in
Paris and in 1931 organised an Anti-Colonial Exhibition in reply
to the International Colonial Exhibition sponsored by Blaise
Diagne and the colonial ministry. In Marseilles, Kouyate founded
a school of Marxist studies and took part in the congresses of the
Third International. In
1931
he began publishing the
CridesNegres
and in 1932 formed the Union of Black Workers. Thereafter,
Kouyate disseminated revolutionary propaganda in Africa. Tracts
and newspapers were sent clandestinely from Europe to the larger
towns; one important tract was called 'The Story of a White
Blackbird' because that was the title of the booklet in which it
was concealed. This tract was the manifesto of the League for the
Struggle for Liberty of the Peoples of Senegal and Soudan,
created by Kouyate in Dakar in 1933 at the instigation of the
colonial section of the French Communist Party. It would seem
to be the first call in French black Africa to national independence:
'We are struggling for the right of the peoples of Senegal to
manage their own affairs by forming
a
national, independent State.
The branches of the League are preparing the workers and
peasants for the great decisive battles of the Senegalese peoples.
>82
82
Archives nationales, Section Outre-Mer, Fonds Slotform, III, }j, cited by Papa I.
Sy, 'Kouyate et l'action anticoloniale de Centre deux guerres' (Memoire de maitrise,
University of Paris-VH, 1978)
39
1
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