Roberts A.D. The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7: from 1905 to 1940
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FRENCH BLACK AFRICA
At the end of 1933 Kouyate was expelled from the Communist
Party for failing to toe the party line, but he continued to agitate
for African liberation and he collaborated with George Padmore
in trying vainly to organise a Negro World Unity Congress. The
Popular Front helped him to create the French Federation of the
Youth of Black Africa and he presented a plan for decolonisation
to the governor-general in Dakar in 1937. Soon afterwards he
launched the first Association of West African Students, but when
war broke out the Vichy regime deported him and he died in 1942.
Even before this, the approaching war-clouds in Europe had
distracted public attention from anti-colonial politics. Besides, it
was the problem of cultural identity which now most concerned
young black intellectuals in Paris. They realised that France was
only interested in' assimilating' them
as
full citizens insofar
as
they
had adopted Western modes of thought and had rejected ancestral
values.
83
In reaction, they explored the nature of being African:
this was a theme of the magazine Uiitudiant noir, which was
founded in 1934 by Aime Cesaire, a poet from the Antilles, and
Leopold Sedar Senghor from Senegal, who taught in a French
secondary school (and was the first African qualified to do so).
It was they who formulated the concept of
nigritude,
a transitional
form of militancy which was to exert much influence in French
Africa.
CONCLUSION
On the eve of the Second World War, French black Africa found
itself at a crucial stage in its development. On the one hand, it
seemed to be marking time: economic plans had made little
progress, there had been no political reform, social agitation had
collapsed and nationalist claims appeared to have subsided.
Nonetheless, the preconditions for rapid change were all there.
The traumatic experience of the First World War and the
profound upheavals caused by the depression had transformed the
relations of French Africa with the outside world and had
accordingly modified its internal structures. The region was no
longer a more or less negligible dependency of the metropolis;
it was beginning to play a significant role within the Western
capitalist system. The Second World War was to project it into
a new universe.
8j
In 1956 there were only
2,1
j6 black French citizens in French West Africa, apart
from 76,000 in the communes of Senegal who were citizens by birth.
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MADAGASCAR
MADAGASCAR
In 1905 the population of Madagascar was perhaps around three
million, mostly concentrated on the central plateau and the eastern
littoral. Gallieni, who retired as governor-general in that year, had
transformed the military regions into some twenty provinces;
these in turn comprised about eighty districts, and 700 cantons
under Malagasy chiefs. It had been Gallieni's intention to enforce
zpolitiquedes
races,
whereby the hegemony of the Merina monarchy
over neighbouring peoples would be curtailed and local leadership
encouraged. In practice this policy met with limited success. The
Merina continued to exert great influence outside their own
kingdom, for they retained the head-start in literacy given them
by Christian missions; the only two schools in the coastal regions
were suppressed in 1909. Thus the lower ranks of the colonial
administration were largely staffed by the former ruling class of
the Merina, some of whom also became petty traders. In any case,
the administration rapidly became more authoritarian as it busied
itself with the collection of taxes and the mobilisation of labour
to create an export economy virtually from scratch.
During the early years of the century there was a considerable
influx of immigrants: by 1905 they numbered 16,500. Many were
Indian and Chinese traders, and about
8,000
were French, of
whom half came from Reunion. Several hoped to make fortunes
by washing gold out of rivers on the eastern edge of the plateau.
For a few years, gold was the island's chief export: in 1909,
production amounted to 130,000 oz (half that of the Gold Coast),
but thereafter exports rapidly declined. For the Malagasy, wild
rubber was another instant source of income, but by 1910 supplies
had been almost exhausted. White settlers turned to vanilla, coffee
or cloves, and some obtained extensive grants of land on the
eastern side of the island; but before 1914 exports of such tropical
crops were insignificant. By 1910, and for the next two decades,
the economy depended heavily on exports of rice, the main
indigenous staple, and of hides and meat from the large and
numerous herds of indigenous cattle. The promotion of rice
exports was associated with a large-scale process of internal
colonisation: the suppression of warfare among the Sakalava
enabled many people from the east and south-east to migrate
westwards and introduce irrigated rice cultivation in this sparsely
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MADAGASCAR
populated region. The trade in high-bulk commodities gained
greatly from the opening in 1913 of a railway from Tananarive,
the capital, to the port of Tamatave.
However, the country's trade was already firmly under French
control. By 1908 France accounted for nearly 80 per cent of both
imports and exports, and this proportion was sustained
throughout the period. Madagascar, as an isolated and captive
market, paid heavily for its imports, while exports were at the
mercy of monopolistic shipping companies. Customs dues yielded
less than 4 per cent of government revenue between 1905 and
1920;
instead, Malagasy tax-payers were heavily burdened. In
1905 the poll-tax represented 45 days' wages and sometimes
absorbed the whole of a cash income. In 1909-11 the government
began to regroup the population in hamlets of not less than thirty
dwellings, and to suppress shifting slash-and-burn cultivation.
Taxation was frequently levied in the form of labour dues, which
drove many Malagasy into a kind of feudal service with settlers.
Peoples of the south-east, such as the Antesaka, went north in
large numbers to work, first on the railway and then on vanilla
or coffee plantations. And at this early stage in colonial rule, its
benefits, such as they were, were very unevenly spread: outside
Imerina, the provinces contributed on average twice as much to
the budget as they received from it. Even so, the educated Merina
had a particular grievance of their own. They felt especially
threatened by the arrival of Augagneur, governor-general from
1905 to 1910. He was a French politician, a strident republican
and militant freemason, who set himself to curb the influence of
the Christian missions. His offer in 1909 of French citizenship to
those who could pass a stringent test of French culture was
received as an insult by the Merina intelligentsia: they saw it as
a threat to their own new identity as both patriotic and Protestant
Merina. Some radicals, led by a minister of the church, Ravelo-
jaona, looked to Meiji Japan as a source of inspiration. Such
circles engendered in 1913 a secret society, the VVS (Vy Vato
Sakelika), which became the germ of a national movement.
The First World War aggravated the constraints of colonial
rule:
41,000 men served in Europe; 4,000 were killed. The island
was valued by France as a source of cheap rice, manioc, butter
beans (Cape peas), skins and beef extract. The demands of war
also stimulated the production of graphite: 35,000 tonnes were
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exported in 1917 and much was carried to the sea by porters.
Railway construction and other public works were promoted by
the technocratic governor-general Garbit
(1914—17,
1920-24): by
1923 there were lines between Tananarive and Antsirabe, and
between Moramanga and Lake Alaotra. These were built with
forced labour, which was also applied during these years to
plantations of coffee and vanilla; in addition to their own
employees, settlers were provided by government with workers
fulfilling the obligation to perform
30
days of paid labour per year.
Between
1914
and
1921
prices rose fivefold while cash wages were
only doubled; yet in
1919
the poll-tax was increased by two-thirds.
There were still other burdens: in 1917-18 the island was afflicted
by a severe drought, and in 1919 influenza killed over 100,000
people. In places, social tension became acute. In 1915-18 there
was unrest among the pastoral peoples of the south-west, the
Antandroy, Bara and Mahafaly; ironically, this was facilitated by
the government's campaign to reduce the powers of local
dynasties. And at the end of 1915 the government was alarmed
by rumours of a conspiracy by the VVS, several of whom were
arrested and heavily sentenced, though they were released in 1918.
This incident reflected the government's concern to appease the
fears of settlers whose economic importance had been enhanced
by the war. For some years they had used the virulent local press
to call for a share in government. In 1921 a conference of the
Delegations Economiques et Financieres was convened, and in
1924 this became a consultative assembly in which settlers
regularly attacked the cost of government. They failed to obtain
any legislative power, but they continued to benefit from laws on
land and labour.
Under Governor-General Olivier (1924-30), the administration
began to move away from its earlier reliance on settlers as the
mainstay of the economy; their incipient feudalism was overlaid
by the more or less enlightened despotism of a government which
assumed the main role in organising production. The mobilisation
of labour remained a high priority, but investments were now
made in improving its strength and skills. In 1926 forced labour
service for public works was introduced; this was partly applied
to the building of a railway from Fianarantsoa to the coast, but
also to extending the network of motorable roads, which between
1925 and 1933 increased from 2,400 km to 14,500 km. This
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simplified administration; it also extended the potential area of
small-scale cash-crop production. The health services were ex-
panded and the population, hitherto static or in decline, began to
increase, though plague was a serious worry in the 1920s and was
not brought under control until 1937. Government commitment
to primary education, which had begun with Gallieni, persisted.
By 1930 there were more children in state primary schools than
in those of the missions, and about a quarter of the relevant
age-group
was
in
school:
a
much higher proportion than anywhere
in French-speaking black Africa. Malagasy was now accepted as
the medium of primary-school instruction. A school in Tananarive
trained students for entry to the medical school and the lower
ranks of the civil service. The administration of justice gave
greater scope for Malagasy customary law, while from 1927 tax
was assessed on property and products rather than persons.
There were however no political concessions. True, local
councils of notables chose representatives for the Delegations
Economiques et Financieres, but these Malagasy members met
separately from the Europeans and were quite ineffective. In
theory, of
course,
French naturalisation was a possible avenue to
political rights; in practice, the door was closed, if only because
the requisite education was virtually unavailable. And it was the
acquisition of French citizenship which became the chief goal of
Madagascar's first real nationalist movement. This was initiated
by Ralaimongo (18 8 3-1942), a Betsileo and former Protestant
teacher who had served in France during the war and stayed on
there, making contact with socialists. Back in Madagascar, he
founded in 1923 a French-language newspaper, for political
discussion in Malagasy was forbidden. The paper attacked colonial
abuses, encouraged passive resistance among plantation workers,
and demanded both mass naturalisation and Madagascar's trans-
formation into a French
departement.
Ralaimongo's followers were
a small but motley group, including former members of the VVS,
a Creole settler and two French Communists. In May 1929 they
mounted a demonstration in Tananarive; Ralaimongo was placed
under house arrest and others were imprisoned.
When the world-wide economic depression struck in 1930, the
island's economy was already in difficulties. Prices for graphite
and vanilla fell by 50 per cent in 1927-8: in 1929, vanilla exports
exceeded world consumption. Between 1926 and 1934 cyclones
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devastated plantations
on the
east coast. Many settlers were
brought near ruin and could not repay loans from the government.
To rescue settlers, Governor-General Cayla (1930—9) persuaded
the French government to add bonuses to depressed export prices,
but this also encouraged Malagasy production which was further
fostered
by
government propaganda.
In
1934 the government
reckoned that the costs of the Malagasy producer were half those
of the settler. By 1935 Malagasy producers occupied more than
two-thirds of the area under cash-crops such as coffee, cloves and
vanilla. It was largely due to Malagasy planters that in the course
of the 1930s coffee became the island's chief export: by 1938
it
contributed 36 per cent
of
the total value
of
exports and
the
quantity,
at
41,000 tonnes, was close
to
that exported from
Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika combined. Clove production also
rose sharply: 6,000 tonnes were exported
in
1938, compared
to
8,000
from Zanzibar. Thus among the peoples along the eastern
littoral dependence on migrant wage-labour was diminished, and
some were able
to
register title
to
land, under
a
scheme begun
in 1929. The basis for
a
rural middle class was being laid. Yet
political ambitions seemed
no
nearer fulfilment.
In
1936
the
advent
of
the Popular Front government
in
France led
to
the
release
of
demonstrators gaoled
in
1929, while
a
strike
in
Tananarive (now a town of 140,000 inhabitants) was rewarded by
the tentative recognition of trade-union rights for Malagasy.
In
1938 access to French citizenship was slightly eased, but in 1939
it was enjoyed by
less
than
8,000
Malagasy.
National independence,
not assimilation, was now
the
prevailing ambition
of
literate
Malagasy, though the unification
of
the country by
a
dynamic
bourgeoisie, on a foundation of nationalism and modernism, was
still
a
distant objective.
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CHAPTER
8
BRITISH WEST AFRICA AND LIBERIA
This chapter is concerned with those parts
of
West Africa where
by 1918 English
was
established
as the
principal language
of
government. They included
the
independent black republic
of
Liberia, the British possessions
of
the Gambia, Sierra Leone,
the
Gold Coast and Nigeria, and sections
of
the mandated territories
of the former German Kamerun and Togo which were adminis-
tratively attached
to
Nigeria
and the
Gold Coast, respectively,
following the First World War. Varying in size from the Gambia,
its 4,003 square miles drawn out along the Gambia river for three
hundred miles,
to
Nigeria, which covered over 356,000 square
miles,
they encompassed
a
diversity
of
ecological zones: coastal
swamps, tropical rainforests, savanna, sahel, montane and riverain
regions. These contrasts
had
fostered long-established internal
commerce and export trade, sustained in turn by some of the most
populous areas
in
tropical Africa.
The
pre-colonial political
institutions
in
what became anglophone West Africa had ranged
from ancient forest kingdoms and Islamic theocracies to a variety
of stateless societies.
By
1905 they
had
been incorporated
in a
number
of
colonial polities which were themselves
far
from
homogeneous.
The British West African possessions were constitutionally
rather untidy ' multiple dependencies', consisting of older coastal
'settled' colonies linked to larger hinterland protectorates.
In
the
former
the
African population were British subjects
and
were
entitled to various legal rights not enjoyed by 'protected persons'
in the latter. This was further complicated
in
the Gold Coast
by
a tripartite linking
of
the ' settled' coastal colony, beyond which
lay Ashanti (Asante),
a
colony
by
conquest,
and the
hinterland
protectorate
of
the Northern Territories, each separately admin-
istered under
the
governor, while three British administrators
were
in
charge
of the
protectorate
of
Northern Nigeria,
the
protectorate
of
Southern Nigeria,
and the
' settled' colony
and
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protectorate of Lagos. The German colonies were moving from
an era of rather muddled imperial supervision and scandal to that
of so-called 'scientific' colonialism and exploitation. In Liberia,
the non-indigenous Americo-Liberian ruling class struggled to
maintain sovereignty over a country it barely governed against
the threats of encroachment by its erstwhile European allies.
Economically much of the region was already integrated into
the Western commercial system. While subsistence production
remained an important aspect of the domestic economy, West
Africans had demonstrated a willingness to respond to market
incentives. As a result, there was a securely established European
maritime trade based on African small-scale production of export
commodities and natural products. Hence entrenched European
trading firms mounted a strong and sustained opposition to the
competing demands of expatriate mining and plantation interests.
While often locally significant, the plantation and mining sectors
never predominated in anglophone West Africa as they did
elsewhere in colonial Africa. Colonial economic
policies,
monetary
regulations and infrastructural developments in communications,
transport and distributive systems facilitated the extension of the
existing commercial systems into new areas. On the other hand,
despite elements of continuity, by subordinating the internal
domestic economy to the interest of the export sector while
subordinating the latter to external influences, the ' open' colonial
economy represented a fundamental change in the nature of
Afro-European relations.
Differences in colonial legislation, geography, indigenous cult-
ure and socio-economic opportunities influenced the nature and
tempo of local response to the colonial situation. Yet the African
population shared a core of experience derived from the not
dissimilar nature of German, British West African and Americo-
Liberian colonialism. All three adopted paternalistic policies of
indirect native administration; facilitated the expansion of Western
law and education and Christian missions; opened the economy
to foreign exploitation; and sought to justify their economic and
political control on the bases of racial and cultural superiority. The
very nature of indigenous political institutions was altered in the
process of being incorporated into the fabric of colonial
administration. The adoption of cash-crops, and especially long-
term investment in tree-crops such as cocoa, was giving rise to
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new attitudes towards
the
ownership
and
sale
of
land,
the
emergence
of
a
rural capitalist class dependent upon
the
vagaries
of the world market,
and
increasing reliance upon food imports;
there were also subsidiary effects such
as the
decline
in
nutrient
intake resulting from
the
increased
use of
cassava. Areas
of
economic growth such
as
the cities of Lagos, Freetown and Accra,
the Gold Coast cocoa-growing region
of
Akwapim
and the
German plantations
on Mt
Cameroun were the foci
of
migration,
leading
to the
disruption
of
indigenous institutions
and
culture.
Greater mobility
and
wider social intercourse also facilitated
the
spread
of
social
and
epidemic disease, such
as
syphilis
and
gonorrhoea, smallpox
and
sleeping-sickness. Public health servi-
ces provided little defence, for
as
yet they devoted the bulk of their
resources
to the
care
of
Europeans
and the
urban elite.
The burgeoning African
elite,
their status based on educational,
economic
and
social achievement, with their self-conscious class
identity, English
as a
common language and wide-ranging contacts
which
cut
across
the
narrow confines
of
ethnic
and
colonial
political divisions, were already
a
conspicuous element
in
West
African society. Confronted with mounting European racism,
they were becoming increasingly assertive
in
their demands
for
participation
in the
decision-making process
and for
recognition
as spokesmen
of
the new order. Though often
as
remiss
as
many
of
the
traditional leaders when
it
came
to
articulating
the
grievances
and
aspirations
of the
common people, they were
nevertheless
to
foster a new nationalist, and often radical, political
consciousness. Meanwhile, indigenous cultural practices
and
belief systems were strained
by
new problems
and
environments.
Many
of
the coastal areas
of
anglophone West Africa
had
been
exposed
to
generations of sustained Christian missionary activity.
The more concrete mode
of
thought prominent
in
pre-scientific
African supernatural empiricism
1
was
confronted
by an
abstract
and analytical Western mode, though Christian missionary teach-
ings frequently blurred
the
distinction
and
linked Christian faith
with Western material culture.
In
such circumstances,
the
initial
response
to
missionary Christianity was often followed
by
frust-
ration
and
rejection
as the new
religion proved inadequate
as a
system
of
explanation, prediction
and
control.
1
Cf.
Robin Horton, 'African traditional thought and western science', Africa,
1967,
37,
I-I;
idem.,
'African conversion', Africa, 1971, 41,
2.
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