Hoover Institution Press. Stanford University. 1971. 279 p.
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IV. — The Locus of Power
Robert
Delavignette entitled his work on the career of colonial administration
Les Vrais chefs de l’empire. No title could have been more aptly chosen,
for until World War II the colonial administrators were the men who shaped the
empire, its almost undisputed masters. Their role until 1914 will be discussed
in this chapter.
The importance of the administrators stemmed from three factors: the decentralized
nature of the colonial administration, overseas French administrative doctrine,
and the extensive powers given the commandants de cercles. All three ensured them
a central position in the formation of the empire while in effect minimizing the
influence of their superiors in the administrative hierarchy.
On paper the French overseas administration seemed a highly centralized organization.
A very clear hierarchy of authority had been established: the minister of colonies
in Paris; the governors-general who presided over the colonial federations in Dakar,
Brazzaville, and Tananarive; the governors of the individual colonies; and finally
the commandants de cercles. The reality, however, was quite different. Delavignette
best summed up the situation when he wrote that in the colonial administration “there
was none of this bureaucratic centralization that saps the energy. The commandant
did not wait for orders from the governor of Zinder, [and] the f overnor of Zinder
for those coming from the governor-general in Dakar.” 1
A number of factors disrupted the administrative pyramid. One of these was the
geographic distance that separated the various levels of the hierarchy. Slow communications
before World War I often made it difficult for authorities to see that their policies
were executed by their subordinates. The higher an official stood on the hierarchical
ladder, the less he knew about specific problems and the less capable he felt of
solving them.
Colonial ministers in Paris were most helpless of all-they were not only separated
from the colonies by the ocean, but also seldom technically equipped to handle
the problems that arose. Not until the 1920s did any ministers have colonial experience 2. At least two ministers had been avowed anticolonialists before taking office.
Etienne Clémentel, who served in 1905, won a certain notoriety for his naiveté in colonial matters. It is said that when Clémentel took over the ministry
of colonies, the sight of the French possessions on a world map inspired him to
say, “The colonies—I did not know there were so many of them!”
Some ministers, of course, made serious attempts to acquaint themselves with the
colonies, even going so far as to visit them. But these official tours were usually
limited to the colonial capitals and of little use in educating the ministers to
their tasks. And even though a minister acquired some competence in colonial questions,
he might lose office at any time; the instability of French governments meant that
on the average his term of office was barely more than one year 3.
The central administration in Paris had been organized to prevent the development
of strong centralized authority. In fact, the law of 1894 which had established
the ministry of colonies had declared that it should be an administration sufficiently
decentralized not to strangle official initiative in the colonies or to stunt the
development of the colonies 4. On the contrary, the law had stipulated that the
ministry should establish institutions that would be suitable for each colony 5.
As a result, rather than being organized along functional lines, the central administration
was divided into regional bureaus. These bureaus did not keep close control over
the colonies, and their responsibilities and powers were rather unclear. In 1910
Adolphe Messimy, reporter of the colonial budget and future minister of colonies,
described the ministry as “a grouping of confused services.” 6
Six years later, Gratien Candace, reporter on the colonial budget and deputy from
the Antilles, complained that the officials in Paris had to deal with such diverse
problems that they had no expertise in any field and were forced therefore to leave
full responsibility to the governors. Candace favored dividing the ministry of
colonies along functional rather than geographical lines, so that officials might
develop expertise in a given field. For example, he blamed the regional organization
for the haphazard development of public instruction overseas: “for several
years nobody [in the ministry] has had any interest in the spread of primary and
professional education in the colonies.” 7
The personnel in the central administration were poorly equipped to advise the
ministers on colonial policy, since few officials in the ministry had ever been
in the colonies. Although a decree of 1896 had required two years of service in
the field for all officials serving in the ministry, this provision was not enforced.
A ministerial order in 1907 suffered the same fate; the staff members of the ministry
at Rue Oudinot had no inclination to go to the tropics.
It is difficult to explain how the officials managed to flout the regulations of
the ministry. General Messimy, who had been one of the most efficient ministers
of colonies before World War I, observed in the 1930s:
The French functionaries do not want to go to the colonies; believe me, I … tried everything ... but without success. I tried to introduce at Rue Oudinot the principle that all functionaries of the ministry would have to go overseas. The repugnance [to this order I was so lively that some of these gentlemen would have resigned rather than leave Paris, even for only six months 8.
In 1917 Governor-General Van Vollenhoven of AOF suggested a possible remedy for
the split between the functionaries in Paris and those in the field-that the Corps
of Colonial Administrators and the higher bureaucracy be merged to form a single
unit, and that the ministry be run by administrators temporarily serving in Paris.
That method, he believed, would confront the central administration with the realities
of colonial life 9.
After 1919 a small number of administrators were called to serve in Paris, thus
bringing some direct knowledge of the colonies to the ministry. But not until a
quarter of a century later was Van Vollenhoven's scheme implemented; in 1942 the
Corps was merged with the higher bureaucracy of the central administration. Although
slow in coming, the integration of the ministry personnel with that of the overseas
officials-when it finally occurred in 1942–compares favorably with the British
practice, which until the end of colonial rule continued to divide the men in the
field strictly from the Colonial Office.
As in most other branches of the French bureaucracy, a corps of colonial inspectors
was personally responsible to the minister of colonies and reported to him on the
overseas administration. The Corps of Colonial Inspectors, founded in 1887, was
an elite organization recruited through an extremely difficult examination; a number
of its members were former administrators. The inspectors were the missi dominici
of the ministers; their integrity and fairness were generally recognized. They
were few in number; twenty-six in 1905, thirty-three in 1917, twenty-nine in 1935
10. Because of the immensity of the empire and the multifarious activities on which
they were required to report they could visit only a limited number of colonies
each year. The more remote colonies were often neglected; in 1930, for example,
Niger was inspected for the first time-only partially-and Mauritania had never
been inspected at all 11. As a result, the inspectors were of limited use in ensuring
centralized control. At the most, they supplied the central administration with
information for the exercise of the only function that Van Vollenhoven had thought
necessary for the metropole: a veto over any action in the colonies that might “not
be worthy of France or which might threaten her sovereignty.” 12
Even this function was sometimes too difficult for the metropole. When Brazza inspected
the Congo in 1905 on a special mission, he discovered examples of severe maladministration
about which Paris knew nothing. He wrote the minister of colonies:
During my voyage I have acquired the definite impression that the ministry has been kept ignorant of the real conditions of the natives and the manner in which they have been treated 13.
Personal limitations and the nature of the administrative structure made it impossible
for the ministers of colonies to keep themselves well informed about the colonies.
In their ignorance they could scarcely formulate intelligent policy. The functionaries
of the ministry complained in a collective letter that there was no long range
direction; rather, colonial affairs were being handled on a day-by-day basis 14.
Charles Regismanset, who served as director of political affairs of the ministry.
of colonies, was even more definite: “It is abundantly clear that France
has no colonial program, and in maintaining this negative attitude, she is faithful
to a tradition. She has no program and has never had one.” 15
Planning of overseas policies might have developed through the interchange of information
among the colonial powers, but this scarcely existed. Although comparative colonization
was taught at the Ecole Coloniale and French officials participated in international
colonial conferences, the ministry of colonies seems to have had little interest
in the overseas experiences of other colonial powers. The association of functionaries
of the ministry of colonies claimed in 1911:
The minister is completely uninterested in foreign colonial policy: England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the United States, and Japan can conquer, administer, [and] lose half the globe without arousing his curiosity. He ignores the Anglo-Indian empire, the greatest colonial achievement in the world 16.
In addition to his lack of interest, it was difficult for a minister to procure
information about other colonial powers because the ministry lacked translators.
Every time it sought to learn the content of a document published by another imperial
power, it had to send the document to the ministry of foreign affairs for translation-a
tedious process which thoroughly dampened curiosity 17.
The ministry of colonies was not a highly desirable post; when cabinets were formed
it was usually one of the last ones filled and usually fell to a time-server or
a mediocrity. The personal qualities of the ministers, together with the structure
of the administration at Rue Oudinot, made it unlikely that the ministry would
closely control overseas officials.
Rather than being made in Paris, colonial policy tended to be made in Dakar, Brazzaville,
or Tananarive. In their letter of 1911, functionaries of the ministry of colonies
complained that “the minister avoids giving orders to the governors-general
and the governors as much as possible.” Also–and this they found intolerable-the
overseas officials were giving the minister orders 18. Fifteen years later the
journalist Robert Doucet described the ministers as only rubber stamps for the
governors-general 19. A former governor who served in the interwar years confirmed
Doucet's description:
In my thirty years in the colonial administration, I never received an instruction from the ministry of colonies. We were the real rulers of the empire; no one told us what to do. In theory, the ministry of colonies had control over everything, but in practice, it did not care to exercise this authority. Its only real function was to receive our requests and recommendations and transform them into decrees. Besides, the minister of colonies was a rather weak character; no one really cared what he thought or what he did. We were the ones who had the authority 20.
In terms of experience, the governors-general were better equipped than were
the ministers to supervise the administrative hierarchy beneath them. Of the nine
governors-general serving in AOF between 1904 and World War II, for example, all
except Ernest Rourne (1902-1908) had previously served overseas, and even he had
acquired some knowledge of the colonies as director of political affairs at the
ministry. All the other governors-general, in fact, with the exception of Joost
Van Vollenhoven (1917), had at some time served in a cercle.
But the staff officers of the governors-general were as a rule less well prepared
than were the governors-general to handle colonial problems. Until 1913 the governor-generals'
staffs consisted of a separate corps, that of the secretariat-general; its tasks
were exclusively bureaucratic, and its members received no experience in bush administration.
But after that time, the secretariat in the French colonies was merged with the
Corps of Colonial Administrators. Gennan and British colonial administration, on
the other hand, retained the division between the secretariat and the men in the
field. In theory the merger of the secretariat with the Corps meant that the members
of the secretariat received experience in the bush while the administrators served
some time as desk officers. The members of the secretariat, however, made such
deplorable bush administrators that the governors preferred to keep them at desk
jobs. When Van Vollenhoven became govemor-general, he tried to have all his desk
officers serve in the bush; such an experience, he thought, would “renew
their ideas, would make them more effective.” 21 But others did not follow
his procedure, and it was to be several years after World War I before desk officers
and bush administrators were interchanged with any regularity.
Surrounded as they were by an inept staff, the governors-general found it difficult
to supervise closely the work of their subordinate colonial governors, to say nothing
of the individual commandants. Instead they spent most of their time coordinating
the administration of the colonies that constituted the federation and acting as
intermediaries between the individual governors and the ministry of colonies. Engrossed
in these bureaucratic tasks, even the most experienced governors-general often
had only a vague idea of what was going on in their colonies.
One might assume that the governors could supervise the commandants de cercles
closely, for they were almost exclusively recruited from the top rank of the Corps
of Colonial Administrators. Frequent inspection tours within the colony would have
ensured close control over their subordinates, but for the most part the governors
were tied down to the colonial capitals writing reports and compiling statistics
and, thus like the governors-general, had little control over their subordinates.
In any case, travel was difficult; many of the colonies were so large or their
roads in such poor condition that during the rainy season some regions were virtually
inaccessible. At the turn of the century, it took three months for officials appointed
to Oubangui-Tchad during the rainy season to reach their destination. As a rule,
the governor regularly supervised only the cercles located closest to the administrative
capital.
The lack of control by their superiors led the administrators to practice various
subterfuges. Eager to win fast promotion by mounting ambitious projects and fearful
that these might be vetoed in advance by a cautious governor or an official in
Paris, the administrators often kept their superiors ignorant of what they were
doing until they had finished whatever project they had begun. One of the main
explorers and conquerors of the Sudan, BorgnisDesbordes, told Leroy-Beaulieu: “When
I am on an expedition, my first concern is to cut the telegraph line.” 22
Some civilian administrators also adopted this attitude; a number of them deliberately
failed to report to their superiors for long periods of time. The commissioner-general
of the Congo noted in the late 1880s that one subordinate “hardly writes
to me and does not inform me of anything.” 23 A few decades later, Governor-General
William Ponty described “the old school of administrators” as being
composed of those who know “little about official regulations”; and,
he could have added, nor care less 24.
During this early period some administrators took on the airs of proconsuls. The
governor of the archipelago of the Comores wrote in 1888 of one of his subordinates:
He does not understand, and never will, that he is not the real chief, nor the sovereign of the island, but that he is dependent upon the governor of Mayotte. … He is just like M … who was surprised at not being given the gun salute when he came to Mayotte 25.
In at least one instance an administrator personalized his authority to such an
extent that when he was away from his post, he left his wife in charge, with authority
to tax, judge, and imprison the local inhabitants 26.
The experience of Gallieni in Madagascar at the turn of the century is worth recounting
because it illustrates how little the governors could control their subordinates.
More than almost any other French colonial official, Gallieni constantly moved
around and supervised his own men. Later he described his method:
In the Sudan I was constantly on horseback, stopping at the most ten days in important places in order to solve on the spot problems which were presented to me. Ten years later in Madagascar I also passed the greatest part of my time travelling by filanzane [a chair carried by porters] and later, when the roads permitted travel more easily, by coach, by car, and often by boat.
“This is what has to be done. In one month I shall return to see if everything is executed.” That was the phrase that I constantly pronounced during my long and numerous inspection tours. In this manner all my people were always forewarned, and everyone competed to show me the progress accomplished when I returned 27.
Yet in spite of all his activity, Gallieni failed to detect and to prevent some
of the worst abuses. He had abolished slavery, but his subordinates in Madagascar
virtually re-established it disguised as a harsh system of labor dues. Gallieni
had ordered that the members of forced labor gangs should be paid and fed regularly,
but his orders were so badly executed that during 1896-1897 one-fifth of the local
inhabitants employed in public works died 28.
Governor-General Roume of AOF was dissatisfied with the limited control that the
governors were able to establish over their commandants, and in 1906 he ordered
each governor to appoint an inspector of administrative affairs in his colony who
would tour each cercle within the colony and report on its administration. The
Corps of Colonial Inspectors, under the direct orders of the minister of colonies,
was charged with inspecting the whole overseas French establishment, while the
localinspectors of administrative affairs were limited to inspecting the administration
of the commandants de cercles. Rourne's plan was sound but, limited by a shortage
of personnel, the governors were often unable to spare an administrator as inspector
of administrative affairs, or could appoint him for only brief spans of time. In
the 1920s and even the 1930s several cercles within AOF had still never been visited
by an inspector of administrative affairs. Thus, even within the individual colonies,
establishing a centralized administration had proved impossible. A high official
visiting the Ivory Coast in the 1930s noted the relatively limited control exercised
by the governors over the commandants; in fact, it seemed to him that the colony “now
resembles a federation of cercles, which the commandants rule according to their
own whim.” 29
Accounts of two eminent bush administrators illustrate the relative freedom from
their administrative superiors enjoyed by the commandants. Maurice Delafosse, who
served before World War I, described how he was unable to keep up with the stream
of regulations and decrees that were pouring out from the different bureaucratic
offices. Finally he decided to ignore them:
I fall peacefully asleep on the growing pile of official journals and explanatory circulars, leaving it to chance to guide me.... I administer haphazardly. Sometimes by a lucky coincidence I make the decision which should have been made. Usually I make one that no text, new or old, could justify; then my error usually passes unperceived 30.
Delavignette approvingly gives an example of an administrator in the 1920s who “stuck
departmental circulars in his trouser pockets before he had read them” and
then at the end of the day threw them together with his trousers into the linen
basket 31.
The attitudes expressed by Delafosse and Delavignette were by no means foreign
to the spirit of the French colonial administration. Both Gallieni and Van Vollenhoven
had by their example and writing instilled into the colonial administration a doctrine
stressing a maximum of personal initiative by the men serving on the spot. The
honor and respect in which both were held by their contemporaries and by later
generations of French officials assured for their doctrines an important role in
the shaping of French administrative practice. Gallieni first attracted attention
by his successful military expedition to the Sudan. Later he effectively established
French military domination over the northern part of French Indochina, and in 1896
he was called upon to organize the French administration in Madagascar. His unique
personality inspired many anecdotes. In the heat of battle he was known to take
out a book of poetry and calmly read from it. His own writings and those of his
admiring disciple, Lyautey, showed him to be a passionate man of action, possessing
admirable self-control, intense selfreliance, and a deep distrust of red tape and
French bureaucracy.
Gallieni wrote that at all points the policy-makers of the hierarchy must seek
information and advice from local administrators and give them maximum leeway. “The
higher administration must depend upon the good sense and the initiative of territorial
commanders who are in direct contact with the local population.” 32 Disliking
red tape, Gallieni declared in a famous dictum: “Our administrators and officials
must defend, in the name of good sense, the interests with which they are charged,
and must not fight them in the name of regulations.” 33 In an equally celebrated
passage, Lyautey recounted how as a young man in Indochina he had first met Gallieni.
He had been assigned to Gallieni's headquarters, and on the first evening, Colonel
Gallieni asked if Lyautey had brought with him the manual of regulations. When
Lyautey said he had, the colonel asked for the manual, packed it up in gray paper
and told his newly acquired disciple: “I shall send all of this to Hanoi.
I do not want you to be tempted to look at it while you are with me; these breviaries
would only confuse you; it is on the spot, while commanding men and things, that
you will learn your profession.” 34 While encouraging trusted subordinates
such as Lyautey to be independent, Gallieni still supervised closely the men under
his command. If in practice he did not always adhere to his own doctrine, that
doctrine gained importance in its own right, since it was widely read and admired
by colonial administrators.
Van Vollenhoven's message was similar to that of Gallieni. The son of Dutch parents
living in Algeria who had become naturalized French citizens, Van Vollenhoven graduated
at the top of his class at the Ecole Coloniale in 1903. The tall, blond, and quiet
student won the admiration of his peers and teachers by his earnestness and brilliance.
His law thesis on the Algerian peasantry was acclaimed by several colonial authorities.
Rather than go overseas, Van Vollenhoven entered the central administration in
Paris, where he impressed his superiors by his hard work. He received unusually
rapid advancement and was made interim governor of Guinea and then Senegal in 1907,
when he was only thirty years old. In 1914 he became France's youngest governor-general
when he was appointed to administer Indochina, and three years later he took over
the post of governor-general of AOF. However, he soon resigned that position to
fight in the trenches 35, where he died a hero's death for his adopted country.
This premature end to his brilliant career gave Van Vollenhoven a kind of sacrosanct
position in the minds of most French colonial administrators 36. In brief and forceful
circulars, which were cited by French governors until the very end of the colonial
era, Van Vollenhoven expressed the need for an administration freed from theory
and adapted to the realities of the local situation. He mistrusted desk-bound administrators,
and emphasized the importance of giving a free hand to the men in the field who
had daily contact with the local realities. “To attempt to administer a colony
by decrees from behind a desk,” he wrote, “is really nonsense.” 37
At another time he declared, “Only one's presence, personal contact, counts.
The circular is zero.”38
If the nature of the administrative structure itself and an influential strain
of colonial doctrine tended to emphasize the importance of the man on the spot-that
is, the commandant-then we must note the formal powers delegated to him. He was
given wide powers, because in the end he was the man charged with transforming
into reality on the local scene the schemes of his superiors either in the colonial
capitals or in Paris.
The instructions issued by the governor of the Sudan in 1897 give a vivid idea
of the multiple functions the administrators were required to fulfill. These instructions
informed the administrators that they were the governor's representatives in all
official business and were in charge of supervising tax collection in their cercles
and of assuring “a wise growth in the revenue of the local budget.” They
were the sole civil officers and drew up all official acts. Each administrator
was expected to take a census, map his region, and draw up an inventory of its
soil, agriculture, mines, and forests. Construction of public works-roae, bridges,
caravan routes, wells, and marketplaceswas an important function. So also was education,
for the administrator must direct the French primary schools and survey the Islamic
ones. He was expected to help the local population by offering advice for the improvement
of agriculture, by encouraging the growth of rubber and cotton, and by helping
to destroy locusts. In the Northern Sudan he was even expected to establish ostrich
farms for the plumed hats of Europe 39.
A manual issued in the Sudan in 1911 established further tasks for the administrators.
It ordered them to visit every village in their cercles at least once a year and
to act as propagandists for French colonization by informing the local populations
of the benefits they enjoyed as a result of French rule: light taxes, complete
safety of travel, and liberation from former tyrannical rule. The administrators
were also to encourage local self-improvement in the villages, preaching the merits
of hard work, advising as to suitable crops, and encouraging the villagers to produce
for the commercial market 40.
These multifarious functions made the administrators truly “jacks of an trades,” as
one governor called them. Delafosse drew up an imposing list of the many roles
that the administrator was called upon to fill: “secretary, accountant, tax
collector, judge, notary, bailiff, road surveyor, architect, mason, carpenter,
gardener, postman, transportation agent, army supply sergeant , horse dealer, physician,
meteorologist, male nurse, pharmacist, topographer, corporal, police commissioner,
inspector of the sûreté....” 41 Even the many-faceted Renaissance
man, he remarked, would hardly have possessed enough talents for the French empire.
In addition to his administrative tasks, the commandant combined executive and
judicial functions: after apprehending criminals, he had to try them as well. In
civil cases he presided over the traditional courts. By a decree of September 30,
1887 42, the indigénat code was established which gave colonial administrators
disciplinary powers over all “natives” who were not French citizens.
The indigénat code had already been in use in Algeria in the 1840s. In order
to ensure their authority, the officers of the bureaux arabes had been given the
right to impose fines or short prison terms without trial for actions that would
not have been considered unlawful in France. The law of 1887 set the limit of punishment
under the indigénat at fifteen days in jail or a 100-franc fine. The offenses
punishable under the indigénat system were clearly defined. In time, the
list increased; by 1888 it included sixteen different offenses 43.
The indigénat was considered indispensable for the smooth functioning of
the administration. Twenty-five years after its adoption, Governor-General Ponty
described it as “a summary but indispensable means of repression in a country
only recently occupied” whose population was “as yet primitive.” In
time, however, Ponty hoped that the indigénat code would be employed less
frequently and rigorously “as the country becomes civilized, as the natives
evolve, and as the regular courts are charged with the cases.” 44
The indigénat code has often been indicted for its harshness. By specifying
the punishable offenses and their respective punishments, however, the code was
intended, within an authoritarian framework, to set limits to the powers which
the administrators could exercise over the people they ruled. But too frequently
they failed to respect those limitations. The indigénat did not allow flogging
as a punishment, but it was used with some frequency before World War I. Although
imprisonment was limited to only fourteen days, administrators were known to give
cumulative sentences of several fourteen-day periods. In order to ensure that the
administrators would not impose unfair fines, they were required to keep a book
where they inscribed all cases in which they had used their disciplinary powers.
Some administrators, however, hid their own excesses by not registering them in
their books. In 1904 Governor-General Roume of AOF sent a circular to the administrators
in which he charged them with having failed to utilize the indigénat in
the manner in which it had been intended, and he called on the administrators to
be more careful and systematic in obeying the limitations of the law 45. The main
fault of the authoritarian judicial system which the French had established was
the lack of recourse against the whims of the administrators, for, as Roume noted, “the
native has no way of appealing his punishment.” 46 In 1912 Roume's successor
Ponty also found it necessary to admonish the administrators for their misuse of
the indigénat; there had been too many cases of excessive punishment, he
wrote 47. Two years later Ponty complained again about the same malpractices. He
observed that there was no uniform application of the disciplinary punishments,
but rather that they varied from cercle to cercle, depending on the whims of the
individual administrators. The use of the indigenat in the Ivory Coast he singled
out as being “incontestably too severe.” 48
If individual administrators may be blamed for acts of brutality the metropole
also bears its fair share of responsibility. For Parliament, while proclaiming
French ideals of colonization, provided only limited funds for the colonies.
In the 1820s the treasury of each colony paid its expenses from local tax and customs
revenues; when these resources were not sufficient, the metropole paid the difference.
After the middle of the nineteenth century the colonial treasuries were saddled
with an increasing proportion of the expenses; the mother country paid only those
that could strictly be considered “expenses of sovereignty,” such as
the salary of the administrative personnel. After the expansion of the empire in
the late nineteenth century Parliament considered even those costs too burdensome
and by a law of April 13, 1900, it established the principle that “all civil
expenses including that of the gendarmerie should be supported by the budgets of
the colonies.”49
The French government financed a decreasing proportion of colonial expenditures.
In 1896, the budget of the French colonies had totaled 175 million francs, of which
45 percent had been contributed by the metropole; in 1910 the total budgets of
the colonies had doubled to 355.7 million francs. But in 1910, the metropole contributed
nearly the same sum as fifteen years earlier-and now it represented only 25 percent
of the colonial expenses 50.
Only with the greatest reluctance did the metropole finance deficits. Since the
governors were strongly encouraged to balance their budgets they minimized expenditures
while heavily taxing local resources. As part of the tax burden, the French imposed
forced labor on all colonies. In Madagascar during Gallieni's rule part of the
tax burden amounted to fifty days of labor a year for every adult male; later it
was reduced to thirty days. In AOF the heavy contingents of forced labor drafted
to build the Dakar-Niger railroad disrupted the lives of people in whole regions;
in the words of the minister of colonies “villages have been partly deserted
... and harvests nearly abandoned.” 51
The railroad, to be sure, was built for the purpose of helping the French West
African colonies develop, but in some cases forced labor was employed for totally
useless projects. In one instance an administrator used thousands of labor days
to construct an imposing but unnecessary plaza in the capital of his cercle; another
built bridges which, because of his ignorance of architecture, soon collapsed.
Frequently the administrators, insensitive to the needs of the local populations,
imposed excessive taxes upon them. This practice was blamed by an inspector for
the series of violent uprisings that broke out in the Sudan during World War I.
To varying degrees, wrote the inspector, the French administrators in the Sudan
conceived of the Africans' duties
… to be boundless while their rights on the other hand are reduced to nothing. With what rigor taxes are levied in many cases! And in the cercles, the prestations, the portages, how often are they misapplied! It is so easy to impose them. … 52
In addition to a head tax, the administration taxed certain forms of property,
such as cattle and rice fields, forcing the populations to enter a money economy.
Colonial officials-French and others-made the necessity of raising taxes a virtue;
they saw it as having economic, social, and educational value, since it forced
the colonial populations to seek employment or to cultivate crops for a commercial
market 53.
In the French empire the taxation system was probably hardest on the Congolese-the
poorest colonial people with the least means of providing goods or labor. Almost
their only source of cash came from working for the private rubber plantations,
which ruthlessly dictated prices for the rubber collected. Before the war, the
head tax in the Congo was eight francs a year; it was estimated in 1919 that in
order to collect enough rubber to yield this tax money, the inhabitants had to
work between sixty and one hundred twenty days a year, depending on the area in
which the rubber was collected 54.
The dire needs of the budget in the Congo explain to a high degree some of the
atrocities that occurred there. In 1903, Emil Gentil, the commissioner-general
of the Congo, sent a circular to all administrators informing them that their promotions
depended on their ability to raise taxes. Spurred by this incentive, officials
resorted to harsh means. Often on their tax collection trips they found that all
the males had abandoned the village at their approach and in reprisal they took
children and women as hostages, releasing them only when the taxes had been paid.
The system of hostages must have been sanctioned by the commissioner-general, for
he had provided funds for the building of hostage camps in the colony's budget.
These camps were inadequate for the number of hostages they held, and a large number
died because of maltreatment. In one case, a village that did not pay its taxes
was raided and sixty-eight hostages taken; through the intervention of a doctor
they were released five weeks later, but only twenty-one were found alive. The
rest had died of asphyxiation and starvation 55. The administrator who was responsible
for this camp was tried in court, but was found not guilty and was transferred
to another post 56. Such incidents, as Brazza noted, were not isolated phenomena
57.
Thus it seems clear that both the metropole and the administrators in the field
warrant a share of blame. The mother-country by its niggardly economic policy forced
the administrators in the field to be dependent upon the limited financial capacity
of the colonies; and it did not show sufficient concern for the methods employed
in raising the needed funds. The administrators, in their concern to raise their
quota of the budget, forgot Gallieni's dictum that their first obligation was to
the people they ruled rather than to administrative regulations. The administrators
often enough asserted their independence from superior rule, but they seem to have
done so mainly to give themselves greater elbow room. Too few administrators used
their independence for the benefit of the colonial populations.
This lack of concern reflected in part the absence of a clearly defined colonial
doctrine which at most consisted of vague notions about the benefits that French
rule bestowed on the colonial populations. Governor-General Ponty called the form
of benevolent paternalism practiced by the French a policy of “taming.” 58
But ideas like Ponty's did little more than stress the need for continued French
control over its empire; the ideas were incapable of guiding or inspiring the administrators
in their daily activities.
The Corps was recruited from too many sources to enable its members to share a
common ideal. While many of the Ecole Coloniale graduates may have been filled
with the mystique of humanitarianism which J. F. Reste described, too few recruits
came from the school before World War I. Rather, most of the administrators were
men who for one reason or another found themselves overseas; becoming an administrator
provided but a convenient promotion rather than the opportunity for the exercise
of a special vocation or mission.
A doctrine did evolve, however, regarding methods of “native rule”:
this was the doctrine of association. The colonial theory of assimilation which
assumed that the overseas territories would be made over in the image of France,
had been formed in the metropole, and had been advocated by the Ecole Coloniale;
but in the early 1900s the theory of association was adopted-an indication of the
ascendancy gained by the men in the field-the colonial military officers and civilian
administrators. These men had discovered societies that were fundamentally different
both in their political and social organization and in their level of economic
development from those existing in Europe. Rather than make Frenchmen out of the
colonial populations, French rule, the associationists urged, should tutor the
colonial societies and help them evolve according to their own potentialities.
France was to associate herself with the colonial societies. The doctrine of association,
claiming the need for respect of the local societies, implied the need for instituting
indirect rule–that is, rule through the indigenous political structures.
There were a few French officials in Africa who advocated a shift to indirect rule.
Most of them had served in Indochina in the 1890s, where they had come under the
influence of Governor-General Jean Marie de Lanessan. Echoing the thought of a
long line of French officials in Indochina, de Lanessan had established the classical
French argument for indirect rule:
Instead of dissolving the old group of rulers, one should use them; govern with the mandarin and not against him. Since we are and always shall be but an infinite minority, we cannot attempt to substitute ourselves [for them] but at the very most [we can] direct and control [them]. Thus, [we must] not injure any tradition nor change any habits, [but] remind ourselves that in all societies there is a ruling class born to rule, without which nothing can be done 59.
There were, however, relatively few disciples of de Lanessan's doctrine, for although
most administrators claimed to be advocates of the doctrine of association, only
a few were willing to accept its logical correlate-indirect rule.
In stressing the uniqueness of the colonies, many administrators wanted only to
ensure that the colonies would not, as in metropolitan France, be provided democratic
controls over the administrative system. Thus, association was but the continuation
of a policy of domination through the exercise of paternal authoritarianism.
Although a doctrine of indirect rule had developed, the men in the field often
negated its basic assumptions. The French policy of association was similar to
that of indirect rule advocated by the British, but it was less often practiced.
The differences in administrative practice of the two colonial services were due
in part to different national traditions. In Britain the benefits of local rule
in England were widely believed in–especially by the class of men who went
overseas. This system, it was claimed, allowed local problems in Britain to be
dealt with by men who were intimately acquainted with them. It saved the government
from making excessive expenditures, and by limiting the central functions of the
state, it limited its authority and thus presumably created the personal freedom
which the British people valued. In France local rule was never seen in this light.
In a continental country threatened by its neighbors, local rule was considered
a centrifugal force undermining the unity of the nation. In its history the French
people found ample evidence to show that local rights were upheld by feudal and
retrogressive forces, while progressive forces were represented by central authority.
In France, until recently, centralization has been considered a good system, and
local rule a perilous one which gave the enemies of the state a base from which
to challenge it. In effect, one can say that both colonial powers put into practice
the policy of assimilation, for both powers attempted to establish overseas an
administrative pattern similar to that existing in the homeland; the difference
lay in the content of the policies, which was due to the differing traditions of
the mother countries themselves 60.
The original traditions of colonial rule for the two powers were also quite different.
In British India and Nigeria-two areas which served as models for subsequent British
rule-company rule had preceded government administration. Concerned with economical
administration, companies in India and Nigeria established a minimal rule similar
to that later labeled indirect rule. Government administration adopted company
methods; in Nigeria, Lord Lugard drew heavily on administrative traditions established
by George Goldie's Royal Niger Company. In the eighteenth century there had been
company rule in French Senegal, but it had limited itself strictly to trade and
had not been involved in ruling the local populations. If there had been French
company rule, its administration, out of purely economic considerations, would
probably have adopted methods similar to those of British or Dutch company rule-preserving
the public peace with as little interference as possible in local political structures.
Much of British expansion overseas was pursued out of political and strategic necessity,
but French expansion was to a larger extent actively motivated by a desire to affirm
national vitality 61. And for this to become a reality seemed to require widespread
and firm control over the colonies. The traditions of the ancien régime,
of Napoleon, and of the Republic required that administrative control be pervasive
and absolute. Anything less would be an abdication of power and influence. In a
parliamentary debate in 1888, Eugéne Etienne made this point of view clear
when he argued that officials in Indochina should exercise full authority, rather
than serve as mere “advisers” to the local rulers. The latter, he declared,
would be a “politique deffacement” (abdication of authority; loss of
face) 62.
The social backgrounds of the two colonial services also contributed to the differing
manner in which they treated local authority. Although perhaps not sons of the
most distinguished members of British society, nevertheless a very large number
of British administrators could identify themselves with the gentry. And their
education confirmed them in their aristocratic pretensions: a very large proportion
were Oxbridge graduates 63. Perhaps an even greater sign of their gentlemanly education
was the large number who were graduates of the public schools 64. Identified with
the gentry and gentry values, the British administrators had a nostalgic sympathy
for the local chiefs, while the French colonial administrators, most of whom came
from the middle and lower middle classes, had a bourgeois disdain for everything
that was reminiscent of feudalism or monarchism. The exigencies of colonial situations
had their own ironies, sometimes requiring a French administrator of noble blood
to crush a chief or unseat a king, and sometimes putting a commoner in the position
of defending traditional rule. Delavignette described it best when he wrote:
Cavalry Sergeant de la Tour Saint-Ygest, who may have left France because he suffers from the equality brought by the revolution, goes to Upper Senegal-Niger to destroy the Tuaregs-that is, the feudality, the principles and feelings of which are dear to him. On the other hand, the representative of the powers of the Republic in Dakar, a member of French Masonry and the Radical Socialist party, will on the spot, in Africa, be an authoritarian governor, and he will use autocratic methods of rule to lead the natives toward progress 65.
In general, however, the French administrators were ideologically hostile to the local chiefs. Even Delavignette stated:
Many administrators wanted to treat the feudal lords in the same way we had treated them during the French revolution. It was either break them or use them for our purposes. The British administrators had more sympathy for the feudal lords; it was aristocracy respecting aristocracy 66.
Most French administrators were suspicious of the local chiefs and regarded them as backward, feudal elements of unreliable loyalty to France and exploitative of the local populations. The statement made by Louis Binger, the explorer and later governor of the Ivory Coast, about the desirability of suppressing the chiefs, was generally shared by the colonial administration:
When a chief is called Damel, Brack, Bour, Mansa, Almamy, or Naba [different royal titles in West Africa], once he commands a population of more than 25,000 people, he must be suppressed, for otherwise he will destroy instead of organize and regenerate 67.
Republican officials going to the colonies had an inherent suspicion of feudal institutions. Many French officials overseas saw it as their mission to free the local populations from their feudal rulers. In Madagascar, where the Hovas had imposed their rule over the other ethnic groups, Gallieni instituted a policy known as la politique de race; he suppressed the Hova chiefs, replacing them with others chosen from among local ethnic groups. This policy was also carried out in West Africa; in the decade preceding World War I Governor-General William Ponty carried on an ambitious program to crush the chiefdoms. He advocated the need to fight the influence of the local aristocracies in such a manner as to assure us of the sympathy of the multitudes, and suppress the great native chiefs who are nearly always a barrier between us and the administered masses 68.
Ponty's attitude—as that of Gallieni and others-was formed in the Sudan. The struggle against El Hadj Omar in the 1860s and then against Samory in the 1880s and 1890s gave the French a unique view of the African chief. As Lombard writes, the Sudanese experience gave French officials the impression of the African chief as a “fanatic warrior, tyrannizing the populations around him and dominating them by force.” 69 In a speech to Parliament in 1894, Delcassé declared the need to free the colonial masses “trembling under oppression.” And he added, “We must substitute the beneficial unity of the French genius for the many violent tyrannies of kings ... or chiefs.” 70 Later Governor-General Ponty, who had served in the Sudan for several years, wrote his governors in a circular:
My long experience in West Africa among the black populations has permitted me to conclude in the clearest fashion, and you have certainly made the same observation, that the native intermediaries between the mass of the population and the administrators of the cercles or their subordinates are usually nothing but parasites living on the population and existing without profit to the treasury 71.
Ponty's observation was reflected in the reduction of several important chiefdoms in AOF; in Guinea, for example, the prestigious chiefs of Labé and the Futa Djallon were removed. In some cercles his policy was so meticulously practiced that the chiefs were dismissed without being replaced; in one cercle an administrator abolished the chefs de canton, the intermediary chiefs between the village chiefs and the administrator, thus having to give direct orders to 1,085 village chiefs. He explained:
I am not in favor of creating a chef de canton. The more intermediaries there are between the taxpayers and the tax collector, the more chance there is that the money will be lost on the way. The notions of individualism of personal obligations and rights, must be spread among the Africans 72.
For practical purposes of administration, except for rare instances as the above,
the office of chef de canton was generally retained. But the administrators determined
the geographic limits of the canton, the powers of the chiefs, and the persons
who should occupy the position. Former kingdoms like the Futa
Djallon were carved
up into several cantons; the purpose of this division, as an administrative report
put it, was to “Divide in order to rule.” 73
Where the cantons were allowed to be coextensive with the former royal territory,
the ruling house was dethroned or at least an amenable member of the family put
in place of the former chief. In some cases, the administrator appointed his own
houseboy or an interpreter as chief 74. Village chiefs were usually not meddled
with; they were allowed to stay on unless convicted of malfeasance.
It was obviously not only policy drawn up in the colonial capitals or the different
appointments and dismissals of chiefs by the administrators that influenced the
evolution of the French policy toward the chiefs. More important were the attitudes
exhibited by the administrators themselves in their daily contacts with the chiefs.
They felt a keen pride in French culture, and usually refused to show public respect
or pay homage to the chiefs. Many of the administrators serving before World War
I shared the feelings that Binger had expressed in 1892 after having made his exploratory
trip in the lower Sudan region:
I feel that a white man travelling in this country, whoever he may be, should not prostrate himself before a black king, however powerful the latter may be. It is necessary that a white man should inspire respect and consideration wherever he goes; for if the Europeans should ever come here, they should come as masters, as the superior class of society, and not have to bow their heads before indigenous chiefs to whom they are definitely superior in all respects 75.
And this kind of pride was not necessarily triggered by ignorance of local institutions or by an exaggerated dedication to assimilatory values. A man like Messimy, who could speak with feeling of the value of local institutions and traditions in the colonies and the need to help the indigenous populations evolve within their own civilizations 76, announced in a flight of rhetoric in the very same book:
We must make countries out of these empty spaces, we must make nations out of these agglomerations of halfcivilized or barbarian peoples, we must organize new states, give them traditions, morals, a political and social organization 77.
There were few colonial officials who at heart did not consider the traditional political institutions undesirable. And they made no effort to show the chiefs any special mark of deference. Van Vollenhoven noted that chiefs were sometimes made to wait for hours outside the French administrator's office, only to be received brusquely by the latter's subordinate 78. In a number of cases the administrators did not hesitate to slap the chiefs publicly 79. When suspected of malfeasance, the chiefs were treated as common criminals; in Madagascar, former Hova chiefs who had been convicted of embezzlement were put into the same chain gangs as their subjects. An administrator who served in the 1920s attested to this general lack of respect for the indigenous chiefs:
We did not take the feudal lords very seriously; we found them rather ridiculous. After the French revolution we could not be expected to return to the middle ages.... We just used to slap them on the back and were rather familiar with them 80.
Of course, this attitude was not always transformed into policy. In certain areas
the French found it convenient to preserve the traditional authority and to try
to rule through it. In Upper Volta the office of Mogo Naba (emperor of the Mossi)
was preserved; in acephalous societies in the Congo, chiefs who had performed only
religious functions were given a political authority which they had never previously
possessed. A chief's power in the precolonial era was sometimes limited by local
intrigues and the potential of popular revolt. The establishment of French rule
automatically removed these former restraints and thus in a sense strengthened
the chiefs 81. Nevertheless, even when this occurred, the administrators hardly
ever thought of the traditional structures as having intrinsic and lasting merit,
as did the British proponents of indirect rule.
Whatever the French administrators' perception of power may have been, as Professor
Brian Weinstein so brilliantly demonstrates, the local realities of power may have
been quite different 82. In Oubangui, for example, Félix Eboué, while
serving as an administrator in the years immediately preceding World War I, thought
he was exploiting local rivalries to consolidate French rule. At the same time,
however, the local inhabitants were conveniently invoking French aid to liquidate
traditional feuds. It would be hard to decide whether the local inhabitants, or
the representative of the French republic, held the upper hand in this particular
relationship. Administrators did not always manipulate local chiefs; sometimes
it was the chiefs who manipulated the French officials. And administrators could
not, because of limitation in their number and turnover of personnel, be as all-powerful
as some of them desired 83.
In several regions French rule led to the breakdown of the chief-system. In the
precolonial era the chiefs had often been able to rule by means of consensus but
under French pressure they were forced to squeeze taxes and labor dues from their
subjects. Their traditional basis of rule was further undermined as they became
little more than French functionaries, and the loss of the chief s traditional
prestige and authority sometimes made it difficult for the French to use them to
control the local populations effectively 84. In 1912, after having reduced the
chiefs, French administration in Labé, Guinea, “gave the impression
of being completely powerless.”85
If chiefly traditional authority broke down, it is worth repeating that the French
presence often bolstered and strengthened the powers of chiefs in some regions,
especially those in which chiefly power had been on the wane, or in which there
had been no previous tradition of a larger political state. But in the face of
the breakdown, or alleged breakdown, of the traditional chief-system, a number
of colonial officials advised that the local hierarchies be preserved. But this
advice was qualified in such a manner that it continued to limit the chiefs' authority;
they were to be considered only as auxiliaries of the French administration. Gallieni,
generally considered an advocate of indirect rule, wrote his administrators:
The native chief [is] to be closely watched, and to be controlled in all his acts, which sometimes are directed by insatiable greed and by personal interests. Whatever the inconvenience they may cause us, it is generally better to conserve this ghost of power to which the native is more accustomed and behind whom we can maneuver more conveniently. A little judgment in choosing him, a little ability in knowing how to incite his self-interest and ambition, will even sometimes make him a useful auxiliary 86.
And Joost Van Vollenhoven, who as governor-general of French West Africa in 1917 did a great deal to encourage better treatment of the chiefs and a strengthening of the chieftain system, nevertheless concluded:
There are not two authorities in the cercle, the French authority and the native authority. There is only one; the commandant de cercle commands; only he is responsible. The native chief is only an instrument, an auxiliary 87.
The adoption of the doctrine of association after 1900 had meant for the metropole the establishment of an administration more sensitive to the local needs of the colonial populations. The colonial administration, purposely decentralized, left nearly full powers to the local commandants. Often hostile to the local political structures they rejected indirect rule, although it was implicit in the doctrine of association. Using the full powers entrusted to them, many French administrators crushed the old political structures in the colonies and substituted their own autocratic rule.
While the metropole proclaimed vague goals about the French mission of civilization
(for which, incidentally, it refused to make any serious financial contributions)
the administrators were permitted to govern according to their whims and inclinations.
The decentralized administrative structure virtually gave a free hand to the man
who wanted to build a bridge, establish a schoolhouse, or help increase local peanut
production; it also gave the administrator in the bush nearly the same freedom
to wreak destruction around him. Alone, living without supervision, and possessing
nearly total powers, some of the officials serving in this early era were prone
to strange impulses. Like Kurtz, the fictional character in Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness, some administrators, freed from the inhibitions of Europe, found a
world of unlimited possibilities in which nothing was forbidden. Delafosse well
described the process:
These [brutal men] are … in our midst, we meet them constantly in the street, and also in the best frequented salons, but their instincts are not revealed, because they are repressed; therefore, these people while in Europe may five and die with an unblemished reputation for perfect honesty. Throw them into the bush without control, freed from the obligations which in France controlled every one of their acts, every one of their gestures; give them an authority which turns their heads, and beyond that demand results without specifying the normal means of attaining them, and these same men who had been honest in Europe, become criminals in Africa 88.
Too seldom was the administration in Paris, or even the higher administration in the colonies, able to check acts of serious brutality. The investigations made after World War I of the events that led to the uprising in D6dougou, Sudan, in 1915-1916 read like a catalogue of horrors. The report found the commandant guilty of the following activities:
In spite of the evidence, an administrative court of inquiry acquitted the commandant, putting the blame on his subordinates. Enough charges, however, remained for the administrator to be tried by a civil court for the murder of one of his prisoners and for the embezzlement of local funds. In reply to the murder charge, his defense cited as extenuating circumstances the administrator's overwork. As for the embezzlement, that evidently was common enough not to be noticed. The administrator was acquitted, later promoted, and upon his retirement in the late 1920s, was allowed to reach the top rank 90.
Less serious offenses such as embezzlement, or at least false book accounting,
seem to have been relatively common in the French colonies before the war. Some
administrators apparently had two accounts, one official, and another secret, known
as the caisse noire. Sometimes an administrator might have a pet project, a road,
a bridge, or an agricultural project that did not receive sanction from the governor's
office. In order to finance it, he would falsify his account, or raise illegal
taxes. In a particular case the act might'be useful, but such irregular bookkeeping
meant that the administrators could also pocket cercle funds. The problem of the
caisses noires was so serious that when Angoulvant became governor of the Ivory
Coast in 1908 he questioned every administrator in the colony about his particular
accounting. He was able to get “from several among them confessions of occult
accounting,” and he ordered them to surrender all their secret funds to the
colony's treasury. Angoulvant promised the administrators immunity from prosecution,
but he warned them of the consequences if they persisted in their activities. Seven
years later Angoulvant noted that there had been little change; the administrators
were still continuing the practice of double bookkeeping 91.
The ministry in Paris and the governors in the colonies seem to have accepted with
relative resignation the irresponsibility and brutality of many of the overseas
functionaries. An administrator in the Congo in the 1890s had been certified by
the colony's doctor as not being “in full possession of his mental faculties
because of an overdose of certain drugs and alcohol”; he had burnt down two
villages and his favorite sport seems to have been taking pot shots at people imprudent
enough to walk past his residence. He was retained in the service, and he continued
to spread terror 92. An administrator in Senegal, noted as a chronic alcoholic
in 1911, was allowed to serve fourteen more years until his death in 1925 93.
Since most of the colonies were only recently conquered and “pacified,” the
administration did not seem to think they required better functionaries than they
had. When in 1909 the governor of Dahomey was asked to describe the morality of
one of his administrators serving in what was then a solitary post, he wrote, “Acceptable
for Ouidah.” 94
Because so many of the administrators were of poor quality, a governor when dissatisfied
with his subordinates found that his only option was to recommend transferral to
another colony. When practiced by all colonies, this policy—baptized by one
governor the “politique de débarras” —could lead to some
ironic situations. The governor-general of AOF transferred an administrator accused
of megalomania and rape to Madagascar 95; in exchange he asked for an administrator
from the island colony. The governor-general of Madagascar in turn used this opportunity
to rid himself of one of his worst administrators, an embezzler with a former criminal
record 96. Thus neither governor-general had gained very much.
No matter how inefficient or brutal, most administrators were considered good enough
for service in the Congo. That colony until 1914 was the receptacle for administrators
unwanted in other French territories. When an administrator in Guinea was noted
as having become “bizarre,” he was transferred to the Congo 97; another
was sent there when his governor discovered that he was a neurotic 98; and a drug
addict and several alcoholics were banished to that colony 99.
According to Corps regulations, an administrator suspected of malfeasance was to
be investigated by a commission of inquiry consisting of fellow administrators
within the colony. But as the governor of Dahomey angrily observed in 1915, these
commissions nearly without exception were prejudiced in favor of the accused functionary,
and mitigating circumstances were found for nearly every act of maladministration
100. Because of the leniency of the commissions of inquiry, dismissal from the
Corps was rarely recommended. Of 891 administrators joining the Corps between 1887
and 1910, only five were dismissed; twenty-two resigned but undoubtedly some of
those did so under duress. In addition to its poor quality, the colonial administration
also frequently suffered from a shortage in personnel. In 1898, for example, the
commissioner-general of the Congo informed the minister of colonies that out of
nineteen officials assigned to the Congo, six were in France, or preparing to go
there; the four best were in Chad and Oubangui; three were occupied with special
nonadministrative functions; of the six remaining, one had to be dropped from the
service, one was being investigated for suspicious activities, two were in poor
health, and one could not be trusted alone. “There remains,” as the
commissioner put it, “only one administrator capable of exercising a command.” 101
A small number of administrators thus carried the burden of administering a colony.
Their duties and the climate often took its toll. When Brazza visited Gabon in
1905 he found the administrators there to be “physically and mentally exhausted
and incapable of serving.” 102
The deficiencies of the French administration before World War I were probably
not peculiar to it. No study on a fideby-file basis has been made, for instance,
of the entire British colonial service, but such an enterprise might yield unexpected
results. Historians may have adopted too uncritically the self-image that British
administrators had of themselves as being “plain, tolerant, gentlemanI men;
they were on the whole just, and they were totally incorruptible.” 103
The rather negative picture presented here of the French administrators who served
overseas before 1914 should not obscure the men of high quality and character who
were members of the Corps. There was Henry d'Arboussier, a graduate of the Ecole
Coloniale in 1898, who served most of his career in the Sudanic regions. He spoke
fluent Arabic, Fulani, and Bambara. A good horseman, he frequently toured his cercle
and knew it intimately. According to his superiors' reports, he was very popular
in his region. While administering the area which later became known as Upper Volta
he established friendly relations with the Mogo Naba-so cordial that during the
war the Mossi emperor offered d'Arboussier a cavalry force of 500 men with which
he won Togo from the Germans 104.
Some administrators were deeply interested in encouraging local crop production.
An official serving in Senegal who entered the Corps in 1910 had planted and developed
fruit trees, peanuts, and manioc in several cercles. He and others like him helped
develop the local econorny 105. An administrator in Guinea who entered the Corps
after serving as an agent in the Sudan was described in 1918 as “loving the
natives and exercising great authority over them. He desires to see them evolve
rapidly, especially economically.” 106 The top graduate of the Ecole Coloniale
in 1904 served fourteen years in Madagascar before going to the Ivory Coast where
he won his superior's praise as “the ideal of what an administrator can be:
just, thoughtful, untiringly active, loyal, of superior intenigence.” 107
Educated administrators were not the only ones of high quality. A judge's son with
no secondary education served for nine years as an agent before entering the Corps
in 1908; his governorgeneral characterized him as a “good administrator.
Likes the natives and knows how to be liked by them.” 108
One can multiply the examples of hard-working, conscientious men who served as
colonial administrators. Unfortunately, however, a large proportion of the administrators
before World War I were men of relatively poor quality. Fortunately for the empire,
the methods of recruitment and training that had been developed on the eve of the
war produced after 1920 men who were better qualified and had a more abiding concern
for the welfare of the colonial populations.
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