French Policy and the Origins of the Scramble for West Africa

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Newbury ◽  
A. S. Kanya-Forstner
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
West African ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Formal Expansion ◽  
New Imperialism ◽  
The Government

This paper is a contribution to the current debate about the origins of the scramble for West Africa. It analyses the internal dynamics of French expansion and argues that the crucial change in French African policy occurred not in 1882–3, as commonly assumed, but in 1879–80. The policies adopted at this time, although their roots can be traced back to the governorship of Louis Faidherbe in Senegal, were distinguished by a new willingness on the part of the government in Paris to establish political as well as economic claims to West African territory, and by its readiness to bear the financial and military burdens of territorial expansion. Changes in French domestic politics or foreign relations cannot adequately account for this transition from informal to formal expansion, nor can it be explained solely in terms of commercial agitation in France or West Africa. The influence of public opinion and of colonial agents on the formulation of policy was more significant, but the crucial decisions were taken by the policy-makers themselves, and in particular by Charles de Freycinet (Minister of Public Works and later Prime Minister) and Admiral Jean Jauréguiberry (Minister of Marine and Colonies). They, above all, were responsible for inaugurating the era of French imperialism in West Africa. The new imperialism was most apparent in the drive to create a vast territorial empire in the Sudanese interior. But it was also evident in the intensification of commercial rivalries along the West African coast, and the paper argues that French actions there in 1882–3 were the continuation of policies adopted three years before rather than immediate responses to the British occupation of Egypt or to the growth of popular support for African expansion. Accordingly, the beginnings of French imperialism in West Africa are advanced as the principal cause of the scramble.

‘Our Strike’: Equality, Anticolonial Politics and the 1947–48 Railway Strike in French West Africa

1996 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Labor History ◽  
West African ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Union Leadership ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
New Imperialism ◽  
African Community ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War

This essay is both a reinterpretation of the place of the French West African railway strike in labor history and part of an exploration of its effects on politics and political memory. This vast strike needs to be studied in railway depots from Senegal to the Ivory Coast. Historians need both to engage the fictional version of the strike in Ousmanne Sembene'sGod's Bits of Woodand avoid being caught up in it. Interviews in the key railway and union town of Thiès, Senegal, suggest that strike veterans want to distinguish an experience they regard as their own from the novelist's portrayal. They accept the heroic vision of the strike, but offer different interpretations of its relationship to family and community and suggest that its political implications include co-optation and betrayal as much as anticolonial solidarity. Interviews complement the reports of police spies as sources for the historian. The central irony of the strike is that it was sustained on the basis of railwaymen's integration into local communities but that its central demand took railwaymen into a professionally defined, nonracial category of railwayman. The strike thus needs to be situated in relation to French efforts to define a new imperialism for the post-war era and the government's inability to control the implications of its own actions and rhetoric. Negotiating with a new, young, politically aware railway union leadership in 1946 and 1947, officials were unwilling to defend the old racial wage scales, accepted in principle thecadre uniquedemanded by the union, but fought over the question of power – who was to decide the details that would give such a cadre meaning? The article analyzes the tension between the principles of nonracial equality and African community among the railwaymen and that between colonial power and notions of assimilation and development within the government. It examines the extent to which the strike remained a railway strike or spilled over into a wider and longer term question of proletarian solidarity and anticolonial mobilization.

scholarly journals Impact of incessant kidnappings on the external relations: A case study of Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-227
Author(s):  
Yusuf Kamaluddeen Ibrahim ◽  
Abdullahi Ayoade Ahmad ◽  
Sani Shehu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
African Country ◽  
West African ◽  
West African Country ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
External Relations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Growing Population

Nigeria is a West African country, endowed with a rapidly growing population of over 206 million, with over 500 languages and 250 ethnic groups. It's Africa's most densely populated country and the world's largest black nation. The integration of these complex entities into a unified body has proved difficult since the country's 1914 amalgamation. The government is challenged with violence and military dictatorships, endemic corruption, and abject poverty that intensifies heinous crimes, including kidnapping. The menacing impact of the phenomenon ravaged throughout the country resulted in many lives lost, and cripple the economy. Even though it's enshrined in the Nigerian 1999 Constitution, chapter 2, section 14(2b), that the protection of lives and property is the state's core responsibility. The study aims to uncover the effects of kidnapping on Nigeria's foreign relations. The study adopted a qualitative method, using secondary sources and world-system theory. The study found that failure to address the root causes of kidnapping is why kidnapping prevails in the country. Consequently, these study develop some measures and panacea to the country's deteriorated and incessant insecurity challenges. Noticeably, heinous crimes will be eradicated and replaced with economic wellbeing and strengthen the country's external relations.

scholarly journals Guinea- Bissau

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (312) ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Central Bank ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
West African ◽  
Guinea Bissau ◽  
The Government ◽  
External Sector ◽  
The Imf

A technical assistance (TA) mission on external sector statistics (ESS) visited Guinea-Bissau during February 3 to 7, 2020. The mission was conducted in Bissau at the request of the National Directorate for Guinea-Bissau of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO-DNGB). The mission assisted in improving the quality of ESS. This was the fourth and final mission under the JSA-AFR project for improving ESS in 17 francophone countries of Central and West Africa, financed by the government of Japan and administered by the IMF.

The Archival System of Former French West Africa

1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (01) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
G. Wesley Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Current Status ◽  
World War ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Parent Organization ◽  
Equatorial Africa ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

In September and October of 1964, I visited the various centers once forming links in the archival system of French West Africa. Contrary to what occurred in Equatorial Africa, the French left these archival holdings in place, except for current material which was shipped to the rue Oudinot (Ministry of Colonies) in Paris. The center of the West African system was the Archives of the Government-General in Dakar (later the High Commission). Based originally on the Senegalese holdings, this archive became an independent agency of the federal government and was the parent organization of subsidiary archives for Senegal, Mauritania, Soudan, Upper Volta, Niger, Dahomey, Ivory Coast, and Guinea. It was parallel in structure to the Institut Français d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), which also had its headquarters in Dakar and maintained subsidiary centers for each territory. In some cases, the archives and IFAN centers were amalgamated (during World War II) and the history of the two organizations is often inseparable. This survey is an attempt to describe the establishment and development of these archival centers, how their material was organized and can be used for research, and their current status in the independent countries.

Forced Labour in British West Africa: The Case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast 1906–1927

1973 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger G. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Death Rate ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Public Works ◽  
Compound System ◽  
High Death Rate ◽  
High Death ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
The Government ◽  
Northern Territories

It has been argued that forced labour in British West Africa did not extend to recruitment for commercial companies. One case that appears to have been overlooked is that of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast where, at various times between 1906 and 1924, recruitment for the privately-owned gold mines of the Tarkwa-Prestea area was associated with government recruitment for public works—itself on the shadowy borderline between ‘communal’ and ‘forced’ labour.Organized recruitment for the mines was adjudged necessary because of the reluctance of local labour to work underground. The independent attitudes of even recruited labour led the mines to associate their requests for organized recruitment with pressure for much tighter labour discipline, including bringing suits for breach of contract under criminal law and the introduction of a pass law and compound system. However, these schemes were rejected by the government.The period of greatest government assistance to mine recruitment, 1920–4, ended when the high death rate among labourers at the mines was revealed and the government suspended recruitment. It is the contention of this paper that the high death rate was due not only to poor health conditions at the mines, but also to forced recruitment in a situation where there was considerable voluntary labour migration. Under these circumstances the chiefs were obliged to supply the weaker members of the community.

Failing to Stem the Tide: Lebanese Migration to French West Africa and the Competing Prerogatives of the Imperial State

2011 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Kerim Arsan
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Palm Oil ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
West African ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
The Government ◽  
Territorial Government ◽  
Mediterranean Migration ◽  
Imperial State

In the years before 1939, the functionaries of Afrique Occidentale Française, or AOF, as France's West African possessions were known, consistently failed to introduce effective legislative controls upon Eastern Mediterranean migration under their purview. This was not for lack of trying; from 1905 onwards, administrators both in the territorial government of Guinea and in the Government-General of the Federation in Dakar repeatedly attempted to close their gates to these interlopers of empire, most of them from present-day Lebanon, who first began to venture into West Africa in the last years of the nineteenth century. By the late 1930s, some six thousand citizens of the Mandatory states of Lebanon and Syria resided across AOF. Most worked as produce brokers, shopkeepers, and traders, buying up groundnuts, palm oil, or kola nuts from African producers, and supplying them in turn with consumer goods such as textiles and clothes, processed foodstuffs, alcohol, and matches. Despite their attempts to channel and stem this flow of men and women, AOF administrators proved unable to impose effective legislative checks upon their movements.

The Coin of the African Realm

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Herbst
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Regional Economies ◽  
African Countries ◽  
New Strategies

This chapter examines the politics of the currency in West Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century. A public series of debates over the nature of the currency occurred in West Africa during both the colonial and independence periods. Since 1983, West African countries have been pioneers in Africa in developing new strategies to combat overvaluation of the currency and reduce the control of government over the currency supply. The chapter charts the evolution of West African currencies as boundaries and explores their relationship to state consolidation. It shows that leaders in African capitals managed to make the units they ruled increasingly distinct from the international and regional economies, but the greater salience of the currency did not end up promoting state consolidation. Rather, winning the ability to determine the value of the currency led to a series of disastrous decisions that severely weakened the states themselves.

scholarly journals Determinants of Insurance Penetration in West African Countries: A Panel Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 350
Author(s):  
Odunayo Olarewaju ◽  
Thabiso Msomi
Keyword(s):  
Banking Sector ◽  
West African ◽  
Education Sector ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Distributed Lag ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Short Run ◽  
Auto Regressive ◽  
Insurance Penetration ◽  
The Government

This study analyses the long- and short-term dynamics of the determinants of insurance penetration for the period 1999Q1 to 2019Q4 in 15 West African countries. The panel auto regressive distributed lag model was used on the quarterly data gathered. A cointegrating and short-run momentous connection was discovered between insurance penetration along with the independent variables, which were education, productivity, dependency, inflation and income. The error correction term’s significance and negative sign demonstrate that all variables are heading towards long-run equilibrium at a moderate speed of 56.4%. This further affirms that education, productivity, dependency, inflation and income determine insurance penetration in West Africa in the long run. In addition, the short-run causality revealed that all the pairs of regressors could jointly cause insurance penetration. The findings of this study recommend that the economy-wide policies by the government and the regulators of insurance markets in these economies should be informed by these significant factors. The restructuring of the education sector to ensure finance-related modules cut across every faculty in the higher education sector is also recommended. Furthermore, Bancassurance is also recommended to boost the easy penetration of the insurance sector using the relationship with the banking sector as a pathway.

scholarly journals Hybrid insolation forcing of Pliocene monsoon dynamics in West Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rony R. Kuechler ◽  
Lydie M. Dupont ◽  
Enno Schefuß
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Climate Changes ◽  
West African Monsoon ◽  
West African ◽  
Latitudinal Gradients ◽  
Glacial Cycle ◽  
Time Intervals ◽  
Continental Hydrology ◽  
Insolation Forcing ◽  
The Last Glacial

Abstract. The Pliocene is regarded as a potential analogue for future climate with conditions generally warmer-than-today and higher-than-preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels. Here we present the first orbitally resolved records of continental hydrology and vegetation changes from West Africa for two Pliocene time intervals (5.0–4.6 Ma, 3.6–3.0 Ma), which we compare with records from the last glacial cycle (Kuechler et al., 2013). Our results indicate that changes in local insolation alone are insufficient to explain the full degree of hydrologic variations. Generally two modes of interacting insolation forcings are observed: during eccentricity maxima, when precession was strong, the West African monsoon was driven by summer insolation; during eccentricity minima, when precession-driven variations in local insolation were minimal, obliquity-driven changes in the summer latitudinal insolation gradient became dominant. This hybrid monsoonal forcing concept explains orbitally controlled tropical climate changes, incorporating the forcing mechanism of latitudinal gradients for the Pliocene, which probably increased in importance during subsequent Northern Hemisphere glaciations.

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