Surveys the common political, social and ethnic forces and historical trends in nine French-speaking African states, newly independent between 1958-1961.

A history of slavery during the 19th and 20th centuries in three former French colonies.

Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged. Three core themes guide the analysis: development, contingency and entanglement. The chapters consider the ways in which decolonization was governed and moderated by concerns about development and profit. A complementary focus on contingency allows deeper consideration of how colonial powers planned for ‘colonial futures’, and how divergent voices greeted the end of empire. Thinking about entanglements likewise stresses both the connections that existed between the British and French empires in Africa, and those that endured beyond the formal transfer of power.

How the CFA Franc enabled France to continue its colonies in Africa.

France experienced a period of crisis following World War I when the relationship between the nation and its colonies became a subject of public debate. The French Imperial Nation-State focuses on two intersecting movements that redefined imperial politics—colonial humanism led by administrative reformers in West Africa and the Paris-based Negritude project, comprising African and Caribbean elites. Gary Wilder develops a sophisticated account of the contradictory character of colonial government and examines the cultural nationalism of Negritude as a multifaceted movement rooted in an alternative black public sphere. He argues that interwar France must be understood as an imperial nation-state—an integrated sociopolitical system that linked a parliamentary republic to an administrative empire. An interdisciplinary study of colonial modernity combining French history, colonial studies, and social theory, The French Imperial Nation-State will compel readers to revise conventional assumptions about the distinctions between republicanism and racism, metropolitan and colonial societies, and national and transnational processes.

A Vietnamese cook, a German journalist, and a Senegalese student--what did they have in common? They were all suspicious persons kept under surveillance by French colonial authorities in West Africa in the 1920s and 1930s. Colonial Suspects looks at the web of surveillance set up by the French government during the twentieth century as France's empire slipped into crisis. As French West Africa and the French Empire more generally underwent fundamental transformations during the interwar years, French colonial authorities pivoted from a stated policy of "assimilation" to that of "association." Surveillance of both colonial subjects and visitors traveling through the colonies increased in scope. The effect of this change in policy was profound: a "culture of suspicion" became deeply ingrained in French West African society. Kathleen Keller notes that the surveillance techniques developed over time by the French included "shadowing, postal control, port police, informants, denunciations, home searches, and gossip." This ad hoc approach to colonial surveillance mostly proved ineffectual, however, and French colonies became transitory spaces where a global cast of characters intermixed and French power remained precarious. Increasingly, French officials--in the colonies and at home--reacted in short-sighted ways as both perceived and real backlash occurred with respect to communism, pan-Africanism, anticolonialism, black radicalism, and pan-Islamism. Focusing primarily on the port city of Dakar (Senegal), Keller unravels the threads of intrigue, rumor, and misdirection that informed this chaotic period of French colonial history.

After the turn of the twentieth century, schools played a pivotal role in the construction of French West Africa. But as this dynamic, deeply researched study reveals, the expanding school system also became the site of escalating conflicts. As French authorities worked to develop truncated schools for colonial "subjects," many African students and young elites framed educational projects of their own. Weaving together a complex narrative and rich variety of voices, Harry Gamble explores the high stakes of colonial education. With the disruptions of World War II, contests soon took on new configurations. Seeking to forestall postwar challenges to colonial rule, French authorities showed a new willingness to envision broad reforms, in education as in other areas. Exploiting the new context of the Fourth Republic and the extension of citizenship, African politicians demanded an end to separate and inferior schools. Contesting French West Africa critically examines the move toward educational integration that took shape during the immediate postwar period. Growing linkages to the metropolitan school system ultimately had powerful impacts on the course of decolonization and the making of postcolonial Africa.

In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War. Yet just fifteen years later France had decolonized, and by 1960 only a few small island territories remained under French control.The process of decolonization in Indochina and Algeria has been widely studied, but much less has been written about decolonization in France's largest colony, French West Africa. Here, the French approach was regarded as exemplary -- that is, a smooth transition successfully managed by well intentioned French politicians and enlightened African leaders. Overturning this received wisdom, Chafer argues that the rapid unfurling of events after the Second World War was a complex , piecemeal and unpredictable process, resulting in a 'successful decolonization' that was achieved largely by accident. At independence, the winners assumed the reins of political power, while the losers were often repressed, imprisoned or silenced.This important book challenges the traditional dichotomy between 'imperial' and 'colonial' history and will be of interest to students of imperial and French history, politics and international relations, development and post-colonial studies.

Living Beyond Boundaries: West African Servicemen in French Colonial Conflicts, 1908-1962, is a history of French West African colonial soldiers who served in French Empire. Known by the misnomer tirailleurs sénégalais, these servicemen contributed to the expansion, maintenance, and defense of France's presence on several continents. The complex identity and shifting purpose of this institution were directly linked to French colonialism, but determined by numerous actors and settings. The men in the ranks of the tirailleurs sénégalais came from France's colonial federations in sub-Saharan Africa--French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa. During the twentieth century, tirailleurs sénégalais' deployed to North Africa, the Levant, Indochina, and Madagascar, where their exploits brought them into contact with other imperial populations. Tirailleurs sénégalais played crucial roles in assembling and disassembling French empire. The tirailleurs sénégalais provide a unique West African perspective of France's colonial empire that challenges national and French colonial readings of this colonial military institution. Tirailleurs sénégalais were colonial soldiers and intermediaries who experienced French colonialism unlike other colonized peoples. As employees of the colonial state, West African soldiers were often among the first populations to experience novel colonial policy. As soldiers, they implemented those policies in foreign colonial populations. However, these men were not simply the conveyors of colonialism. Their imperial assignments in colonial wars evidenced the importance of lateral exchanges of knowledge and experience between colonial populations linked together by France's presence. The tirailleurs sénégalais demonstrate that the core-periphery model of historicizing colonialism, where information and historical causality flow unidirectionally from the French metropole into its colonies, is limited in portraying how people experienced colonialism. The roles of women and wives in the tirailleurs sénégalais' history attest to the significance of cross-colonial exchange in the French colonial world. West African women followed their soldier/husbands to North Africa and Madagascar. Repatriating soldiers brought foreign wives home to French West Africa from Syria, Lebanon, and Indochina. Regardless of their origin or the setting of their interactions with soldiers, women affected the decisions that West African men made regarding their military service. By accounting for the importance of wives and marriage, this project also illustrates how women and soldiers challenged a secular colonial state to redefine marriage. Soldiers and wives convinced the colonial state to allot family allowances to polygynous Muslim West African soldiers. By emphasizing the importance of foreign women and cross-colonial exchange in the history of the tirailleurs sénégalais, this project problematizes histories of federal colonial institutions that are circumscribed by the boundaries of modern nation-states. Due to its composition and the range of its deployments, the tirailleurs sénégalais was an international enterprise. When shoehorned into the national history of a contemporary West African country, the tirailleurs sénégalais become a tool for interrogating French colonialism in that West African. These histories overemphasize the hand of France in the histories of West Africans and neglect the global influences on men who made French empire. When viewed through the lens of empire, the tirailleurs sénégalais also challenge the periodization of the colonial period. West Africans fought in the French-Algerian conflict after their home colonies were sovereign nations. The veterans of the tirailleurs sénégalais continue to rely on this historical relationship through the collection of their pensions. This project is informed by archival, published, and oral sources. They sources provide a nuanced understanding of the various worlds that tirailleurs sénégalais traipsed through in the twentieth century. The first half of this dissertation relies on French archival materials and published memoirs. These written sources were penned predominantly by French men, but the voices and agency of West African troops emerge in critical moments. These sources also portray French biases towards the tirailleurs sénégalais, as well as the ways in West African intermediaries contributed to French knowledge regarding their recruits. Roughly one hundred interviews conducted with veterans and their families inform the second half of this dissertation. Memory and oral history added complexity to the history presented by archival military documents. A source fraught with its own biases and omissions, veterans' memory of the past enriched this dissertation with anecdotal evidence. Their memories also illustrated how the fifty years since independence have influenced how they give importance particular events in their personal histories as soldiers and veterans. Living Beyond Boundaries chronologically, and geographically follows tirailleurs sénégalais' imperial engagements in Morocco, Syria-Lebanon, Indochina, Madagascar, and Algeria. The West Africans in this dissertation were soldiers in the employment of France and large-scale conflicts act as the chronological framing device of this dissertation. Each chapter takes place in different imperial locations, but each analyzes recurring themes that illustrate how West Africans experienced the French colonial military and how they maintained empire. Chapter One introduces tirailleurs sénégalais and situates them within several genres of historical literature and accounts for the institution's nineteenth-century history. Chapter Two analyzes their deployment in the Moroccan "pacification" campaign, between 1908 and 1914. Tirailleurs sénégalais' deployment in North Africa was an experiment that served as the springboard for subsequent deployments in French empire. The Moroccan campaign tested the adaptability of West African servicemen to military life in temperate climates, as well as challenged the French assumptions about their sub-Saharan African troops. The outbreak of the Great War brought the tirailleurs sénégalais to France. Chapter Three deals with pivotal legislation that reshaped the tirailleurs sénégalais. The Blaise Diagne Laws of 1915 and 1916 passed as result of the crises of the Great War. These laws secured citizenship for a minority of West Africans, who became obligated to service in the French military. The renegotiation of citizenship for military service led to the bifurcation of West African soldiers in the French Armed Forces--West African citizens served in the French metropolitan army and West African subjects in the tirailleurs sénégalais. Their experiences as soldiers diverged after the ratification of this legislation. After the armistice in 1918, tirailleurs sénégalais were diverted from France to serve in recently acquired French mandate territories--Syria and Lebanon. Chapter Four takes place in the interwar period, when the tirailleurs sénégalais' role in empire was redefined as they fought in small-scale conflicts in the Levant and Morocco. The financial crisis of the 1920s and 1930s negatively impacted the colonial military's effort to improve and professionalize the tirailleurs sénégalais. The "hollow years" witnessed important processes in thetirailleurs sénégalais. The French military's attempt to professionalize the tirailleurs sénégalais was also thwarted by their paradoxical move to reestablish racial hierarchy in empire. The outbreak of World War II brought schizophrenia, paranoia and fratricide to the tirailleurs sénégalais. Chapter Five studies the division of empire into factions aligned with Free France and Vichy France. The tirailleurs sénégalais existed on both sides of this divide and found themselves facing one another on the battlefields of Syria when Allied forces attacked Vichy forces there. French Indochina fell under the authority of neighboring Japan and West African soldiers relied on romantic relationships with Indochinese women to survive the war. The reversals of World War II encouraged postwar challenges to France's authority in several of its colonies. Tirailleurs sénégalais' participated in these events as colonizers and colonized peoples. The conclusion of hostilities in France were eclipsed by the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence. Chapter Six addresses the nine-year guerilla war in Indochina, where tirailleurs sénégalais found themselves overwhelmed by the intimacy and violence of close fighting quarters. This chapter is informed by veterans and their widows' memories, which illuminated the personal and psychological characteristics of this conflict. This was the first large-scale anti-colonial war where evidence suggests that tirailleurs sénégalais questioned their role in French colonialism. Deserters abandoned the French army for political reasons and for love. The romantic relationships between soldiers and Indochinese women led to the international migrations of inter-racial families to West Africa. West African communities dealt with the aftermath of the French-Indochinese Ware as their sons' families integrated into their households. After the conclusion of the Indochinese conflict in 1954, some tirailleurs sénégalais were redeployed immediately to the battlefields of Algeria. Chapter Seven uses the French-Algerian war as a backdrop for troops' demobilization and West Africa's decolonization. The French Constitutional Referendum in ...