West Africa provided colonies that were geographically close to both Britain and France. It is only 5,000km from London docks to Freetown, and 6,000km to Accra. Even after the Suez Canal opened, Delhi was still 10,000km away; and when ships to India had to take the route via the Cape, West Africa formed a vital stopping and coaling point. For France, Abidjan is 5,000km from Bordeaux, and Dakar merely 3,500km - again far closer than their possessions in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

West Africa’s previous contact with Europeans had been limited, and entirely commercial - as a point on the international triangle of the slave trade. All four of the territories dealt with here were changed profoundly by the slave trade - especially the Gold Coast (which was known for a time as the Slave Coast), and Sierra Leone. Slave forts such as Cape Coast castle and Elmina still stand on the Ghanaian coast as a memorial to the trade. Senegal was for a long time a centre of slave-procurement for the Caribbean - while Sierra Leone’s capital is named Freetown after its role in collecting rescued slaves. Yet different territories only gained substantial contact with European administrators at different moments. Senegal had been settled by the French long before the Revolution, while Sierra Leone was founded as a settlement largely for freed slaves in 1787 and taken over by the Crown in 1807. The Gold Coast had also a long history of contact with the Europeans, though not as a settlement in the manner of the colonies further west. The decline of the slave trade saw other Europeans leaving their coastal forts to the British, and a littoral strip known as Gold Coast Colony was effectively under the control of the Europeans from 1821. The largest native power in the region, the Ashanti empire, was conquered in 1874, but its territory not occupied. Côte d’Ivoire had almost no contact with Europeans in the nineteenth century, with only a tiny French settlement at Grand Bassam.

With the exception of the River Senegal and of the Gambia river, neither colonial power had extended any great level of control over the hinterlands of their coastal colonies, until the closing years of the nineteenth century. Gustave Binger and Treich-Lapleine negotiated a series of treaties extending French rule over all of Côte d’Ivoire by 1893. Britain declared a Protectorate in Sierra Leone in 1896, followed by France’s conquest of the whole of Côte d’Ivoire as well as interior Senegal, Upper Volta and French Soudan in 1897-8. With the arrival of Germany in Togo, the status of the Gold Coast needed to be confirmed - and Britain annexed Ashanti as well as the Northern Territories in 1904.

By 1900, therefore, Europeans had just confirmed their rule over the four African colonies, with approximately the same borders as are in place today. This does not mean that Europeans had penetrated everywhere until the 1910s and 1920s. Félix Houphoët-Boigny, the future President of Côte d’Ivoire, was already alive before the French arrived at his Baoulé village of Yammasoukro. However, by this date, Britain and France were making their first contact with the peoples of the interior, and had the power to make changes to traditional cultures and societies. The vast changes in lifestyle and indigenous identity which contact brought with it are the subject of the following essay.

2. Colonial attitudes and the relationship to the metropole

The purpose of colonial possessions in West Africa was a topic hotly discussed in both metropolitan Britain and France - especially since these possessions in 1900 provided neither historical legitimacy nor trade links. Were African colonies acquired for economic speculation, or were there further imperatives which demanded occupation?

For the British, Lord Salisbury was certain that ‘The colonial policy of Great Britain and France in West Africa has been widely different’, contrasting French expansion by ‘large and constant expenditure, and by a succession of military expeditions’ with Britain’s ‘policy of advance by commercial enterprise.’² The Manchester Guardian went further to say that: ‘It is not the habit of the English people to set out with their eyes open on a career of conquest and annexation. The conquests which we make are forced upon us.’³ French commentators generally agreed with them: in the words of Jules Blois in 1903 ‘The Englishman hasn’t the false pretension to be loved; he wishes to be comfortable and to “make money”. His goal has been attained.’⁴

French colonial theorists did not see colonies in quite such nakedly economic terms. Gabriel Charmes, a prominent journalist of the Third Republic, wrote before the French conquest that ‘If in these immense regions where only fanaticism and brigandage reign today, France were to bring - even at the price of spilled blood - peace, commerce, tolerance, who could say this was a poor use of force? Having taught millions of men civilisation, freedom would fill it with the pride that makes great peoples.⁵ This attitude was unchanged by the end of the colonial period, with Charles de Gaulle admitting in 1961 ‘We have made colonies and colonised, we do not blush, for without us these countries would not have had the good fortune to know humanity.’⁶

Ultimate independence?

Part of the difference in these attitudes must stem from the difference in long-term intentions for the different colonies. In France, a theme in overseas expansion was the furtherance of universal ‘civilisation’, whose model remained the Enlightenment belief in Reason and the rights of Man - in short, French culture. In spreading this, as Lord Hailey wrote in his 1956 African Survey, ‘the underlying assumption remained that, on a long view, the future of the overseas territories must be one of eventual integration with France in a larger political unit.’⁷ The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 made it clear that ‘The aims of France's civilizing mission accomplished in the colonies rules out any idea of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French empire bloc; the eventual constitution, however remote, of self-government in the colonies is out of the question.’⁸ Britain, on the other hand, had just agreed through the Cripps Offer that the fundamental purpose of her rule in India was to prepare it for self-government and independence. Particularly in West Africa, this was always her ultimate aim. Guggisberg, the Governor of Gold Coast, only half-joked in 1923, ‘You are men and brothers with us. Some of you are very finely educated. We will give you self-government and see how you can govern yourselves. If that movement were to come within the next hundred years… Manchester merchants would be wise to cut their losses and start trade with some other part of the world.’⁹

Expansion into the interior & the role of traditional chiefs

The differences in attitude towards the role of Europeans in Africa also led to differences in the way the Europeans governed Africa. Previous possessions had tended to be coastal enclaves ruled directly from Europe and assimilated to it, and the assimilation was so great that black Africans identified themselves far more with the colonial rulers than with the peoples of the African interior. The Lagos Times gives an example of this:

‘It is to … the hopeful development of Fourah Bay College of Sierra Leone, that we look chiefly for the production of powerful Native forces which… will urge their way into the interior, commingle with its free and independent tribes, import knowledge to them, and with and by them form intelligent and powerful Christian Negro States.’ ¹⁰

It also shows how coastal enclaves could even be spurred to nationalistic enthusiasm against other European nations. In 1891, the Lagos Times declared that ‘We “black Englishmen”… cannot sit still and see her [England] robbed of the well-earned fruits of her sagacity, enterprise and goodwill’ [i.e. by French expansion].¹¹

The conquest of the West African interior trebled the population under British rule - it was no longer possible to rule through the collaboration of évolué elites. In the interior, the solution was to woo the traditional chiefs and rulers of the interior. As the Colonial Office admitted in 1920,

‘European culture has inevitably made little progress in West Africa generally; in the capitals there is a small body of men who have assimilated in very varying degrees European ideals, but who in doing so have rendered themselves less able to interpret the aspirations of their fellow-countrymen. In these circumstances the essential duty of the Government towards the native population lies in the maintenance of effective and just government, the protection of the natives in person and property, and the provision of gradual means of developing a higher form of civilization.’¹²

Direct rule over the Protectorates in Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast, together with the subjection of the Senegalese and Ivoirien hinterland formed a new chapter in colonial policy - the primary aim was a military pacification rather than a genuine attempt to assimilate. The reality of European control remained so recent and so military that they had to make use of authoritarian ruling practices. Even Chaudié, the Governor-General of Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) wrote to the Ministry of Colonies in February 1897 along these lines. ‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that we should govern the Fouta Djallon with the institutions that we found there. Without appearing to change the actual institutions we will remain the only masters of the country though the intermediary of the almamys, who can only remain in power thanks to us and who will succeed in doing the police work necessary to maintain the tranquillity of the populations and the security of the roads.’¹³ In much the same way, British doctrine towards new Protectorates emphasised control though the existing ruling class. Lord Lugard, Governor-General of Nigeria, wrote 'In the earlier stages of British rule, it is desirable to retain the native authority and to work through and by the native emirs. At the same time it is feasible by degrees to bring them gradually into approximation with our ideas of justice and humanity. The chief civil officers of the Provinces are to be called Residents, which implies one who carries on diplomatic relations rather than Commissioners or Administrators.'¹⁴

Different roles of the State

The new French territories were marked out from those sharing the benefits of French liberalism by the institution of the indigènat. Natives were treated as sujets, and if traditional authorities were maintained, they only maintained their power in name. Traditional Muslim Tribunals were replaced by Native Tribunals, whose official language after 1911 was French. French administrators chose local chiefs and primarily as administrative auxiliaries - competence in the French language was as important as belonging to a ruling lineage. As Joost van Vollenhoven, Governor-General of AOF said in 1917 ‘The native chief is only an auxiliary instrument… they have no power of their own of any kind, for there are not two authorities in the cercle: French authority and native authority; there is only one.’¹⁵ Even in a retrospective account of the French colonial era, the military nature of French rule over her new African territories highlighted: ‘the administrative structures introduced into Africa were even more military than those created by Napoleon in the mother country, based on the hierarchical pyramid of the army.’ ¹⁶ For the British territories, such a military feel did not last long after the initial occupation of the Protectorate areas - not least because of the very small numbers of troops that were available to British administrators, especially for extended periods. Military expediencies had to be replaced, and ‘Indirect Rule’ returned. Lord Hailey summarised the governance of the Ashanti territories by saying ‘It is not unnatural that when the Government first entered on the administration of Ashanti, its outlook on native policy should have been largely dictated by military considerations. In 1896 the Asantehene and certain members of his family, together with seven of the Head Chiefs, had been deported. The Confederacy had been formally dissolved. However, Nana Prempeh was restored as Omanhene of Kumasi in 1926, and the Confederacy was restored in 1935.’¹⁷

These actions showed the almost arbitrary power which could be wielded by the Europeans - all the more arbitrary in AOF, where the administrative structure was so centralised that decisions were made not even in Dakar but in Paris. British administrators did at least provide some local flexibility, with Native Authorities, Courts and Treasuries. Lugard spoke of ‘allowing the natives to run their own domestic affairs, in proportion to the ability’, and establishing ‘the broad principle of municipal responsibility, graduated according to the needs of the community, and the measure of its ability to accept, and discharge satisfactorily, the independent or quasi-independent powers.’¹⁸ To gauge the efficiency of this system, we need only look at the numbers of Europeans in each set of territories. By 1925, there were only 200 administrators - including those sick or on leave - for 20m Nigerians. By contrast there were 526 French administrators for an AOF population of 15m. However, it remains true that especially in the Protectorates, colonial rule was absolute and arbitrary, since the precariousness of the military situation meant that colonisers had no choice but to reject any restrictions on their power. In the French areas the continued military presence until comparatively late made this doubly noticeable. Sir John Harris, making a tour in 1912 commented ‘None but Frenchmen should go to the colonies of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”, for there is less Liberty, less Equality and no Fraternity in the French colonies for white or black.’¹⁹

3. Education as a tool for cultural assimilation

Especially in British Africa, educational activity was largely neglected by the civil government in favour of Christian mission societies. Evangelisation in West Africa met with very little success, especially in the Muslim-dominated areas away from the littoral on the Gulf of Guinea. 48% of Senegal’s population is Muslim - a percentage substantially unchanged since French occupation in 1885. From the beginning of the 20th century, the government gradually replaced religious learning with a largely secular school system. Education served an entirely different purpose for the government than it had for the missionaries - it was crucial in reducing native resistance to the white outsiders. Governor-General William Ponty of AOF sent a circular in 1909 to all governors, which urged them to reduce of the powers of native and Muslim leaders, and to exert pressure on chiefs to send their children to French schools. As the Inspector of Education for the AOF commented ten years later, ‘The first requirement of the education which we give in our colonies should be one of practical utility, first of all for us and then for the natives.’²⁰ In British Africa, special schools fulfilled a similar function in catering for the children of local chiefs. The prospectus for Bo School in Sierra Leone made it clear that ‘Mende pupils will be taught in such a manner as to ensure’ that they were ‘not educated enough to become senior officials or leaders of any kind of national political movement.’²¹

As in India, British education policy did aim to transform native outlook - and not merely try to stave off reaction and rebellion. However, colonial administrators rarely looked on the assimilated and western-educated African with as much sympathy as they did his more exotic confrères. Sir Harry Johnston, in reviewing Lugard’s Dual Mandate, said that ‘there is little doubt that the Mohammedan Negro, Negroid, Fula, Hausa, or Tuareg is a more likeable, attractive personality than the Christian Negro of Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold Coast or Southern Nigeria.… in my early journeys in West Africa I felt far more respect for the Yorubas in their stately dress than for the Christian or Pagan blacks of Lagos and Egbaland with their preposterous, tall chimney-pot hats, their gaudy Manchester prints, or suits and double-breasted waistcoats.’ ²² French administrators shared Johnston’s enthusiastic view of the peaceful and stable nature of African Muslims - even though Islam formed one of the most resilient barriers to European assimilation. A French colonial journal stated in 1912 that ‘Not only does the religion of the Prophet not constitute a threat for us on the black continent, but the obstacles it placed before us at the beginning of the conquest are in the process of disappearing. Islamicised Negroes are on the whole gentle people who are grateful for the security which our arms have brought them; they only think of living in peace in the shade of our power.’²³

Education as a means to 'progress'

As the century progressed and the military threats to French and British rule abated somewhat, it was possible to use education as a genuine tool for ‘progress’: but both colonial powers had radically different views on what form this progress should take. Themes of economic education were not unique to France and Britain by any means. The American black leader Booker T. Washington stressed that ‘the education of my people should be directed… upon the everyday practical things of life…something which they will be permitted to do in the community in which they reside.’²⁴ Washington’s rhetoric was in fact often much more critical of blacks - and his call for vocational education was stronger - than colonial administrators themselves. It was the black leader who said ‘We are trying to instil into the Negro mind that if education does not make the Negro humble, simple and of service to the community then it will not be encouraged’- not a Frenchman or British administrator.²⁵ British educational policy largely followed in the wake of Washington’s ideas. In The Dual Mandate, Lord Lugard wrote ‘The object which education in Africa must have in view, must be to fit the ordinary individual to fill a useful part in his environment… and to ensure that the exceptional individual shall use his abilities for the advancement of the community and not to its detriment, or to the subversion of constituted authority.’ ²⁶ As with all African territories, education did not extend to providing scientific or medical training. Even in wartime, European armies were reluctant to give blacks education which might make them less inclined to agriculture or ‘a useful part in his environment.’

Just one year after Lugard, the French thinker Albert Sarraut rebutted his ideas and expounded on how education should further the quintessentially French idea of mise en valeur - the exploitation of African human resources. ‘To educate the natives is assuredly our duty,’ he said, ‘…but this fundamental duty coincides with our obvious economic, administrative, military and political interest. Education has as its first result the amelioration of the value of production by increasing in the mass of native workers the quality of intelligence and the variety of skills: it should in addition pick out and train from among the labouring masses élites of collaborators who, as technical assistants, foremen, employees or clerks will make up for the numerical insufficiency of Europeans and satisfy the growing demands of colonial agricultural, industrial and commercial enterprises.’²⁷ Achieving such a European-style economy required a change in African cultural and social practices, which could only be brought about by education. Governor-General Brévié said in 1935 that ‘however pressing may be the need for economic change and the development of natural resources, our mission in Africa is to bring about a cultural renaissance, a piece of creative work in human material, an association of two races which can be brought about only by a free and wholehearted acceptance of the African by the French.’²⁸ This directly contradicted the established British educational doctrine, that education ‘should train a generation able to achieve ideals of its own, without a slavish imitation of Europeans, capable and willing to assume its own definite sphere of public and civic work, and to shape its own future.’²⁹ Lugard went even further than this, and declared that from the Nigerian experience, ‘the impact of European civilization on tropical races has indeed a tendency to undermine that respect for authority which is the basis of social order.’³⁰

This divergence of attitude towards the aim of native education mirrored the colonial powers’ attitudes towards cultural assimilation in general. Until the second quarter of the twentieth century, the syllabus and aims of education did not greatly matter, since few Africans attended European schools. When in subsequent years Africans did attend school, they too began to imbibe the divergent versions of progress - economic education under the British; cultural education under the French.

4. Mise en valeur - the exploitation of African resources

According to the theory of mise en valeur, the natural products, land and human resources of Africa were to be exploited under French leadership, to the benefit of both Africans and French. In reality the intensive focus upon improving the African producer’s health and farming reflected a conviction that Africans would never progress unless the French made them progress.³¹ This can be seen by the coercive powers which French governments kept to themselves after the initial military pacification of the African hinterland. Twenty years after France established her rule throughout French West Africa, the vast mass of the population still had the inferior status of sujet: they had no political rights, were subject to summary administrative justice and were liable for the corvée (forced labour). Although these measures directly contradicted Republican principles - the desire to abolish the corvée was a key cause of the Revolution - nevertheless the French did not even recognise the rights of their African subjects to become genuine citizens. Out of a total population of fifteen million in AOF in 1936, there were only 2,136 French citizens - excepting the citizens of the four towns or Quatre Communes of Senegal - of which only around 500 had acquired French citizenship. Africans in British territories were often technically not British subjects at all, but remained under the jurisdiction of their own Native Authorities, of which more later.

Forced labour or the corvée was not a complete novelty in West Africa, since slavery was already a prominent source of labour in both coastal regions and the Muslim empires of the interior. The West African region provided most of the slaves that went to the Americas. The abolition of the international slave-trade many years before did not diminish its prominence inside African society. However, when the region was under European rule, there was a conflict between the concepts of freedom from slavery and the need for cheap labour to complete the mise en valeur. The French answer to this was to reverse logic. A report to the Minister of Commerce suggested in 1901 ‘The black does not like work and is totally unaccustomed to the idea of saving; he does not realise that idleness keeps him in a state of absolute economic inferiority. It is therefore necessary to use the institutions by which he is ruled, in this case slavery, to improve his circumstances and afterwards gently lead him into an apprenticeship of freedom.’³² In advocating a system of forced labour, French administrators ignored the fact that they were subverting the whole course of Republican doctrine. They even managed to find supporters from those sections of the African community who benefited from the slave-based system. Blaise Diagne, the first black deputy in the French parliament, even defended the corvée system at the ILO conference in Geneva in 1930 - to the disbelief of other countries. Réné Mercier, speaking shortly afterwards, said ‘a single method appeared capable in certain cases of overcoming the inertia of the natives: the use of constraint, forced labour.’³³

Rise in cash-crop cultivation

The second part of the mise en valeur was to exploit the natural resources of colonies, by encouraging those crops which had the greatest value in the European market. Although Britain was not so firm in its labour policy, cash-crops remained a similar priority in both sets of colonies - from the very beginning of the colonial era. Senegal’s peanut plantations - which were mostly in the coastal zone already settled by the French - expanded so greatly that they already made up 71% of Senegalese exports. In 1891, Gold Coast was an economy dominated by indigenous agriculture, forest products and traditional crafts; twenty years later, it was the world’s largest producer of cocoa, and the mining industry exported over 280,000 ounces of gold. The introduction of rubber in Côte d’Ivoire soon created one of the world’s largest rubber-exporters.

The cultivation of cash-crops required three factors: cheap labour, available seeds and infrastructure to transport products to internal and overseas markets. Better forms of transport could radically reduce cost-barriers to an internationally-based trade system - aside from their military use. Clozel said in 1904 that ‘the policy of great works, railways, ports, roads, canals, intelligently designed, can exercise a direct and immediate effect on the pacification and commercial movement of a new country.’³⁵ In 1874, the British constructed a railway solely to transport troops to fight the Ashanti War, but its subsequent use for commerce radically advanced. In 1909 the cost of head-loading in the Gold Coast ranged from 3s 1d to 5s per ton per mile, depending on the commodities carried. Hand-carts and cask-rolling cost from 1s 2½d to 1s 11d. The charge by rail averaged 11¼d in 1903, but dropped to between 4d and 7½d in the 1920s, while the motor lorry cost as little as 3d per ton per mile in 1930.³⁶ The railways therefore released a large portion of the workforce from porterage to other roles, as well as increasing mobility to take up jobs elsewhere, fostering the mise en valeur of the human populations of the region. Railways also could act as a means of cultural change - another fact deliberately exploited by colonial powers. The Colonial Office highlighted this with pride, regarding the Sierra Leone railway. ‘What a civiliser this railway has been!’ wrote Sir Harry Johnston, pointing the contrast between old and new by the story of the polite attendant at the refreshment-bar some two-thirds of the way up the line, whom he identified as a man formerly on trial for killing and eating a human victim. ³⁷

Mobile labour market

This anecdote also illustrates well the role of changing patterns of transportation and economic production in creating a mobile labour market. People for the first time now were able to move from one place to another for the purpose of finding work. This was eagerly seized upon by those who saw a flexible labour market as an integral part of a human mise en valeur. This aim had in fact been present from the very beginning, especially in French Africa where it tied in with the official support for use of forced labour. In fact, Duchêne told the International Colonial Congress in 1900 that ‘The idea that seems the best for achieving the employment of native labour, would be to impose on the blacks relatively high taxes… and in default of payment they would incur a sentence of forced labour.’³⁸ New railways and ports created a cash-crop economy where none had existed beforehand - and the new political units which the colonial powers created also helped migration within them and especially to the developing towns. One of the most important of these was, as Duchêne highlighted, the new institution of direct taxation of non-citizens. This not only raised money for troops and administration, but also forced African peasants to grow crops for cash - thus aiding the development of a genuine colonial economy.³⁹ Imposition of taxes by the French in areas without cash-crops forced some young men to migrate to towns so that they could earn a monetary wage capable of paying both their own and their rural family’s taxes. So great was French zeal in this area that the policy gave no benefit to their colonies. Many Mossi from Upper Volta preferred to migrate to the Gold Coast than to Ivory Coast; since in the latter they would have worse pay, double taxation, forced-labour, conscription and chiefly exactions.⁴⁰

The scale of the population movements caused by the new colonial agricultural system was enormous. Quite apart from conditions forcing population movements, local labour resources in export-producing regions were insufficient, so extra hands had to be imported from other parts of West Africa. The Colonial Office records in 1920 that ‘It is estimated that some 3,500 labourers, few of whom become permanent residents, enter the Colony every year in search of employment. In the past, a certain number of native artisans used to leave the Gold Coast every year to get work as skilled labourers in adjoining territories. This emigration, however, is ceasing as the local demand increases. Unskilled labour is supplied to Ashanti in considerable quantities from the Northern Territories. In 1916, one-half of the inhabitants of Kumasi, or about 12,000 persons, were from the north.’ ⁴⁰ The greatest number of immigrants moved from the African interior, towards the coastal cash-crop areas. From 1921-29, Upper Volta supplied 49,000 men for the construction of the railways in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal, and 43,000 to European plantations in Côte d’Ivoire. Tellingly, Upper Volta was attached to Côte d’Ivoire in 1932 to make for easier access to Voltaique labour.⁴¹ The 1931 Gold Coast census records 289,216 immigrants in total - two-thirds of whom from French West Africa and mostly Voltaiques.⁴²

The majority of migrant labours joined plantations on a seasonal basis, and the navétane quickly became an essential ingredient of pattern of cash-crop agriculture. In the 1920s the groundnut farms of Senegal and Gambia attracted between 60,000 and 70,000 temporary immigrants each year, and 150,000 to 200,000 labourers entered the Gold Coast annually to work on the cocoa farms. It was a difficult if not impossible task to pursue a viable cultural assimilation policy on such a migrant and agricultural population - geographically and occupationally remote from the authorities. Education in European values required an understanding of European lifestyles - in other words for Africans themselves to settle in a literate, wage-earning, town-based society where education was of value. It required an African social upheaval, concentrating West Africa’s small population into towns under European and governmental supervision.

5. African social upheaval - war and urbanisation

The numbers of migrants to towns at the beginning of the twentieth century remained very small, and most town-dwellers remained either those born there or in the town’s immediate hinterland. Freetown, in Sierra Leone, had a sharply stratified social structure in 1891, with a majority of the 22,000 population being Creoles, descendants of freed slaves. By 1911, the population had risen to 34,090, of which Creoles still made up exactly a half. The degree of existing assimilation can be seen from the fact that 18,652 Christians of various sects were counted in that year’s Census.⁴³ Accra’s population was 14,842 in 1901, and over the next ten years, this increased by 50%, exactly in line with the rest of the country. Figures for the size of towns in French West Africa are difficult to gather, especially in the first quarter of the twentieth century. French censuses remained merely vague estimations of the entire population of AOF until 1936. However, Dakar probably contained around 18,000 people in 1901, with St-Louis the largest town in Senegal with just under 30,000.

Slow urban growth 1901-31

The large-scale exploitation of the interior of Africa for European profit created flows of trade leading to the coastal towns, and it was natural for human resources to follow this flow towards the coast as well. However, the proportion of the total population residing in the principal city remained fairly constant in each case. Accra increased threefold in the years to 1931 - but as Gold Coast’s population increased as well, it remained less than 2% of the country. Freetown’s population rose at a slower rate - but broadly remained at 2.5-3% of the population of Sierra Leone. The growth of such leading towns formed a similar pattern across West Africa, and can be seen from statistical analysis of the censuses - which unfortunately leave us reliant on British data. In Nigeria, the 1921 censuses found 7 towns growing in population over the previous ten years and 10 declining - an aggregate decline of 0.3% pa. The 1931 census, on the other hand, shows an aggregate growth of 0.5%. This urban growth resulted almost organically from the export orientation of the colonial economy. The structural elements changing the pattern of urban growth between 1900-31 were predominantly the transport networks. French railways were built east from Thiès to Kayes, and on to Bamako. Another crawled through Côte d’Ivoire into Upper Volta. Transport patterns also altered settlement patterns, such that railways created new settlements, and even whole new towns sprung up. Governor-General Ernest Roume commented as early as 1902 that ‘A dirt road creates a void; a railroad or steamboat brings the population back, and with it a fecund and joyous activity. This phenomenon, which was so strikingly apparent on the Dakar - Saint-Louis line, is recurring in exactly the identical fashion on the Kayes - Koulikolo line; on the finished part of the line from Conakry to the Niger, a new town, Kindia, has sprung up at the temporary terminus.’⁴⁴ In British Africa, the Sierra Leone Railway was carrying traffic from the 1920s, and in Nigeria, the railway line built 1896-1930 saw river-ports decline in the face of consolidation around railway depots such as Enugu, Port Harcourt, Zaria and Ebute Metta (near Lagos).

Africans were also now starting to come into contact with European governments. World War I saw Europeans need African assistance for the first time, instead of giving theirs. 68,821 Africans from the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Nigeria were involved in the conflicts in Kamerun, Mesopotamia and East Africa, either as porters, naval ratings or soldiers in the British army - sustaining a casualty rate of 10%.⁴⁵ Such was the French need for troops that they accepted the ambassadorship of Blaise Diagne, the deputy for Senegal, with a personal rank above that of the Governor-General. In 1918 alone he managed to recruit over 50,000 soldiers, with the promise of full French citizenship rather than their previous status as sujets. As Diagne said in 1917 ‘if we can be here to legislate, it is because we are French citizens; and, if we are such, we demand the right to serve in the same quality as all French citizens.’ 175,000 black Africans were eventually employed in Europe by the French, with a 17% casualty rate. The spectacular French collapse in 1940 curtailed similar military demands in the Second World War, but the British introduced conscription in their territories - and again black soldiers were introduced into a white man’s world of high pay and ideas of political equality.

World War, rapid urbanisation and poverty

In Africa itself, the demands of total war in Europe after 1914 created many more opportunities than burdens for black Africans. Conscription and mobilisation of European men opened up posts in commercial companies and administration to educated African élites - urban posts that brought their holders into a closer contact with French values. In July 1918, the Chief of the Economic Affairs Service said ‘Due to the extension of the port of Dakar, the local workforce is no longer sufficient to assure that both public services and private interests can be handled. We have to answer the current crisis by appealing to foreign workers.’⁴⁶ The tragic loss of life on the Western Front also ensured that these posts would not quickly be refilled by Europeans, but would remain open to educated Africans such as returning soldiers. However, despite the availability of jobs, the Sierra Leone census of 1921 also noted advance signs of poverty due to rapid urbanisation with insufficient monetary rewards. It reported that ex-soldiers, ‘having through force of circumstance seen something of the doubtful attractions of civilisation… are at present unwilling to return to their uneventful and peaceful lives… in the Protectorate, but prefer to eke out a precarious existence in the crowded capital of the Colony.’⁴⁷ The call of duty and the impossibility of settling back into rural life meant that many African could see advantages in towns that were impossible to fulfil even in the expanding agricultural sector. For those failing to achieve these goals, poverty and destitution awaited.

The same effects and more can be seen with World War II. A Colonial Office official visited Freetown in 1939, and said ‘One cause of congestion and unemployment in Freetown is the influx of natives from the Protectorate… The existing overcrowding of the labour market tends to produce rotational employment, with all its attendant evils.’⁴⁹ However, the demands of war made the reverse inevitable. Following the fall of France in 1940, Sierra Leone and Gold Coast were surrounded by hostile Vichy territories. Defences against possible French assault became urgent, and construction required a massive rise in native labour, especially in the vulnerable areas foremost of which was Freetown itself. The number of Africans employed by the government rose from 10,900 in January 1940 to 48,100 in October 1942. Dakar’s ports were equally strategically-valuable, firstly after tentative British attacks in 1940, and after the defection of the AOF to de Gaulle as a staging post for anti-submarine warfare. Defence projects created a sudden influx of native labour in Accra and Cape Coast as well, to a lesser extent.

However, the completion of projects led to a reduction of the numbers of Africans employed by Europeans - 26,400 in Freetown by April 1945, and declining further to 15,600 by October 1946. Nevertheless, many African workers remained in Freetown, whose population increased from 60,000 (1939) to 90,000 (1942).⁵⁰ The increased population of Freetown combined with fewer jobs available spelled immediate urban poverty - while rents increased by 60% between 1939 and February 1941, and the cost of living increased by 75%.⁵¹ The Sierra Leone Government set up a Survey Committee to investigate the causes of this new poverty. Their report concluded that ‘members have discovered living conditions amongst the working class investigated much worse than anticipated, and in some cases actual starvation… we have observed:

	1. that 90% of the working class households find it extremely difficult to live on the wages they earn.
	2. that over 80% live well over their incomes, incurring huge and perpetual debts in so doing.
	3. that over 75% of the householders are definitely under-fed.
	4. that 50% of the children are physically unfit owing to the fact that they are forced to become breadwinners of the household, some having to sell foo-foo and kerosene in order to get a few pennies to pay their school fees…’52

The sudden popularity of the city as a destination for migrants came about not because of the desire for combat, but because of a sudden market for unskilled labour, in building civil defence projects. The equally-sudden completion of these projects left large numbers of labourers in the towns. The fact that they failed to find new jobs reflects the fundamental divide between the outlook of a rural peasant and that of a town-dweller. Survival in towns required different skills, such as literacy, commercial sense and professional ability, none of which were available to the average migrant navétane. Town life required immigrants to uproot their traditional view of society, and to replace it with something new.

6. The urban lifestyle

Expansion of towns

Migrants were drawn to the public works which war necessarily required, including rearmament, modern port facilities, communications etc. Where they differed from the previous colonial projects was that these remained consciously in the main trading and population centres on the coast, rather than across the country. They also gave workers experience of the high wages of the city at the time when war was making fiscal discipline harder. In the early 1930s, Solinké navetanes from the upper reaches of the Senegal river abandoned navetanat for longer-term temporary urban employment, although often still seasonal. Navetanes could earn 1,200-1,500 francs for 5 months work on the fields, while labourers in town could earn over 4,000 francs per year - less money per month, but work was available all year round. Each time they returned, urban wages had risen: wages in Dakar doubled between 1922-30. Increases were consolidated despite the great reduction in the peanut market in the early 1930s, and African wages remained constant through the course of the Depression. The growth in the urban labour market at the expense of the large plantations was noted by administrators, such as Robert Delavignette in 1935. He said ‘the navetane wonders at the flood of merchandise. He hires out his services once more, as a day labourer this time, to build up dunes of peanuts in bulk, or forts of peanuts in sacks… He becomes an ant in the ant-hill of dockers.’⁵³ The Dakar census of 1955 records 4390 Soninké residents and only 448 seasonal migrants. More importantly, they brought their women with them - the same census records that 44% were adult males and 25% were adult females.⁵⁴ 19th and 20th century Senegalese towns had a seasonal existence, with their busiest time being the annual peanut harvest. Now, employment was year-round. 1927-33 saw the construction of a new petroleum harbour in Dakar, and this was soon surrounded by an industrial zone. Peanut processing plants were created in Dakar and Kaolack. Water & electricity were extended to all Senegalese cities. This process saw all the principal coastal cities in West Africa double their population or more in the years from 1920-50, as can be seen from the table.

New patterns of work

Patterns of employment slowly adapted to the needs of a city life, away from the agricultural background of most immigrants. There are several problems in trying to measure if adaptation did indeed take place, most obviously from the fact that in Afrique Occidentale Française, the first large-scale census only took place in 1955. Even when the results of this census were released, it became clear that key data was unavailable. In 1961, from an African population in Dakar of 224,180 people aged 14 and older, only 93,580 (41.7%) declared a particular profession. Even this figure of 93,580 also included unemployed workers who had previously held a job, but had lost it.⁵⁶ Reasons for this very low figure vary, but the most common reasons were that the workers in question were either unskilled labours and/or functionally illiterate. The census itself was an impossible document for those without learning - though its very existence proves how the government came into more and more contact with individuals in their African colonies. Barclays Bank confirmed this small figure of salaried workers in Sierra Leone. ‘In 1956 the number of men working for employers with not less than six employees was 45,551 - out of a total population in Sierra Leone of 2.13m. The number of persons working for employers with fewer than six employees is estimated at about 32,500, including domestic servants. Only about 80,000 of the adult male population, therefore, are in receipt of wages.’⁵⁷

Other government statistics did give evidence of changing patterns of employment. Numbers of Africans working for employers employing 10 or more people rose steadily in the post-war period. The figure in Freetown in January 1946 was 17,600, while six years later in 1953, 20,500 Africans were employed by companies of 10 employees or more - an increase - 16%.⁵⁸

To some extent, the higher wages paid by employers in the town even to unskilled labourers helped to increase the rate of specialisation and adaptation to the urban patterns of work. The Colonial Office highlighted the better remuneration for skilled and city-based trades. As far back as 1920, ‘wages on the Gold Coast are high as compared with those paid in eastern Colonies. The rates for domestic servants vary from £1 to £6 per month, £1 10s. being the average. The Government rate for carriers is 1s. a day and 3d. subsistence money. Contract labourers and carriers under contract for a period of months are paid at the same rate. Native carpenters, masons and smiths find employment easily at wages of from 1s. 6d. to 4s. 8d. a day.’⁶³ The level of material wealth increased further as large-scale and skilled construction and artisan contracts multiplied in coastal towns. Even for the unskilled, it was still possible to make the economic switch into the demands of city life. The Colonial Office noted that ‘The Sierra Leone woman, has developed an extraordinary faculty for trading, which she hands on to her children, who begin business life as soon as they can toddle about with a little calabash containing perhaps a single pineapple or a few bananas on their woolly heads.’⁶⁴

Destruction of old traditions

A first consequence of massively-changing population patterns was a straining of traditional patterns of authority and lifestyle. Economically, city-dwellers such as artisans were forced to rely on individual talents rather than the team-working involved in agriculture. Both geography and culture definitively set young migrants apart from the rural societies they were brought up in. Other demographic features of the newly-expanding towns also militated against the continuity of existing tribal and ethnic institutions. Cities were predominantly young, with up to 2/3 of the population under the age of 30. By contrast, the respected leaders of tribal groupings were invariably the elders - precisely the people who were not available to guide migrant workers in the new towns. Native Africans did not consider town life as being a stable and permanent family environment - there was a notable lack of females, at least until the early 1940s, and consequently very few married couples. In Accra in 1960, the male:female ratio was 114:100 - rising to 152:100 in the 25-44 age range.⁶⁵ In Abidjan the male:female ratio in 1955 was 139:100, and 188:100 for those aged 25-44.⁶⁶

Though many migrants attempted to maintain links with their families and their home villages - by sending money or occasional visits - geographic dislocation strained the capacity of these traditional support networks to regulate communal life. Traditional networks could not function in a town-based environment: migrant chiefs had authority over neither local chiefs nor municipal administrations; existing local chiefs had no jurisdiction over the new migrants in their areas. Land and property became flashpoints, especially where it was legally impossible to sell or alienate tribal land - as was the case across Gold Coast. Where it was possible, high prices caused great resentment and sporadic inter-ethnic conflicts. The increasing numbers coming into towns spilled over traditional borders, destroyed efforts to segregate ethnic groups, and also challenged the capacity of chiefs of the Native Authority to keep control. In British West Africa the differing needs of municipal self-government and Native Authorities brought educated townsmen into direct conflict with the chiefs of the coastal areas. Local tribal chiefs found themselves confronted with a situation in which, for example, ‘a trader or farmer, or a town gentleman who knows little or nothing or cares very little for what we hold very dear, who has been honoured with a petty chieftaincy, regards himself as the future ruler of Ibadan.’⁶⁷ This difficulty was hardly resolved by the end of colonial rule, and still haunts the independent governments of Ghana and Nigeria today.

These factors increased the destruction of traditional communal African life in towns, leaving the question as to what kind of culture would spring up to replace it. The increase in the numbers of native tribesmen (with little command of English) certainly posed administrative problems - and government expediencies focused on creating institutions based on tribal or ethnic ties - whether these actually existed or not. In Freetown - the most closely-studied West African town of the period - the Government suggested that each tribal group would elect an Alimamy (headman) ‘to advise the Government of any bad characters among his people, and aid in the detection of robbery and any other criminal offences by any such characters, and to assist the Government in every way in bringing them to justice.’⁶⁸ The title of Alimamy may have had historical meaning, but the example shows how Europeans preferred to mould existing - but clumsy - institutions, rather than design bespoke - but effective - solutions. Governor Probyn wrote in 1905, saying ‘Ultimately, I arrived at the conclusion that the ‘headman’ system, although apparently retrograde, was in reality the most practical way by which a general improvement in Freetown could be brought about, and it was the only means by which the perilously large emigration into Freetown could be checked.’⁶⁹ In this, the headman system utterly failed. Although ethnic groups did tend to settle in close-knit ghettoes, the system of tribal headmen was being supplanted even before the Second World War. City life required new needs, such as handling of money rather than traditional barter. The phenomenal growth of Friendly Societies to meet this need - originally for specific tribal groups, it is true - set up alternative identity structures to traditional tribal authority.

The massive increases in population came through the immigration of natives, to some extent displacing the existing évolué majorities. In the Quatre Communes of the Senegalese littoral, natives were buttressed by their special status as French citizens - but immigration still upset their economic advantages. The indigenous Lebou only formed 15% of the population of Dakar by 1953. Natives of the British Colonies had no legal protection against immigration from the Protectorate, despite the fact that they too had been assimilated since the late 19th century. The Colonial Secretary was able to tell Parliament in 1882 that ‘the Negroes thoroughly identify themselves with England, and claim a share of her greatness. It is within my knowledge that Winwood Reade’s anecdote of the African policeman’s boast to a Frenchman “Hi, sar. I tink you forget we lick you at Waterloo” is a literal fact.’⁷⁰ The decline of the Creoles is well charted as the 20th century proceeded: where there was a Creole majority of 51% in the Freetown of 1901, by 1948, they were no longer even the largest ethnic group. The process is also well documented by contemporary commentators. Laminah Sankoh said in 1952 ‘The majority of them [Creoles] find it difficult, if not impossible to realise that the people who but yesterday were their ‘boys’ can today claim equality with them… Even when they meet with educated or professional men of Protectorate origin, whose advancement they could not dispute, they still feel that they possess something which the others have not got - culture - which renders them their superior.’⁷¹ Similarly, Roy Lewis said in 1954 ‘Creoles followed the English tradition with fatal fidelity. When they made money, they sought to raise their children above shopkeeping that they might advance that superior Negro culture which was the great hope of the original founders of the settlement. They believe, now as they did then, in education. They believe, with the Victorians, that education makes all things possible to Africans, as to Europeans.’ ⁷² Increasingly, Creoles found that natives from the Protectorate could think precisely the same.

Adaptation to new styles of life

Immigrants from the Protectorates found town life very different to the agricultural economies from their home areas; in order to advance themselves in an urbanised environment, they had to alter some of their cultural outlook. Naturally, new immigrants turned to the most successful examples of adaptation to an urban life, and in the coastal areas, they found people who had done just that. Urban élites were more successful in their dealings with Europeans, and many immigrants in turn felt the need to Europeanise themselves. However, close association with the colonising Europeans sometimes aggravated other factors weakening traditional ties in African society. The Colonial Office reported in 1920 that ‘European culture has inevitably made little progress in West Africa generally; in the capitals there is a small body of men who have assimilated in very varying degrees European ideals, but who in doing so have rendered themselves less able to interpret the aspirations of their fellow-countrymen.’⁷³ Governments may have continued to espouse policies of assimilation which could attract Europeans - 10% of the population of Thiès and Dakar were European - but Europeanisation often severed African society even further.⁷⁴

While some native immigrants tended to Europeanise themselves, another alternative to animist society was the religion of Islam. It has already been noted that Muslim areas were rarely susceptible to Christian missionaries - even if not granted governmental protection from them. On the contrary, Islam was often more popular in the expanding towns, not least because of its perceived anti-colonial nature. Islam was spread by humble blacks rather than rich sunburnt whites - and in the opinion of many European administrators and missionaries was closer to the African mind than the austere Christianity. Also large numbers of prosperous Muslim Africans lived in the towns, giving the religion the kudos of open success. Certainly, immigrants to towns in which there was already a sizeable Muslim population found themselves drawn to conversion for reasons of social status. Michael Banton’s survey of Freetown in the 1950s discovered that ‘Native immigrants into Freetown adopt many Muslim practices in preference to European or tribal ones. Very many of them will not wear European dress when they wish to appear at their best and they will not give their children European christian names.’⁷⁵

In British areas, officials often encouraged the spread of Islam more than they did Christianity. Missionaries in Nigeria, for instance, were seen as a positive bar to European control, and the authorities banned them from the Islamic areas since as Lugard said ‘in a matter solely concerned with religion the Government does not feel justified in compelling a Moslem ruler to grant permission, which but for Government intervention he would refuse.’⁷⁶ More subtly, the very patterns of colonial governance led to opportunities for further conversions to Islam. The demands of the new colonial economy caused population movements across religious frontiers into areas of Muslim dominance, such as the Senegal or North Nigerian groundnut-fields - and animists frequently first came in contact with Islam in plantations or in the expanding cities. Seasonal working practices brought many thousands of Mossi from Upper Volta to work on groundnut fields in Senegal owned by the Muslim brotherhoods.⁷⁷ The wide spread of Islam in Senegal also led to it enjoying favours such as a mosque at the Tirailleurs Sénégalais transit camp in Fréjus, France - and the French army much preferred to encourage Islam as a substitute religion among animists on military service.

7. Urban life and the colonial government

Expatriate Europeans, living in coastal townships, were often very happy to tolerate poor working conditions in areas far away from where they themselves were based. A blind eye was often turned to the institution of slavery. Paul Marty, a commandant de cercle in Guinea, said in 1921, ‘we were very happy with the financial results and we didn’t attempt to discover by what methods… the tax was collected.’⁷⁸ Administrative problems were left to local notables, and Europeans felt themselves responsible merely for guaranteeing peace. However, when Africans began to migrate in large numbers to the towns, where Europeans were local notables, it became far less possible to tolerate visible bad-practice. Governments greatly increased their activity in response to the native influx, and for the first time began to use their regulatory functions. In consequence, more and more Africans came into contact with the government for the first time, and peculiar Western notions of bureaucracy and written laws.

Intervention and regulation by colonial governments

A good example is from Sierra Leone, where the British government embarked on a vigorous programme to ensure quality among local artisans, by ensuring that they could all perform the basic requirements of their trade. The proof of this was to be a government licence to trade, dependent on proof of knowledge. The ‘Trade Tests’ manual gives as stipulation number 1: ‘All artisans will be required to pass a test before they can obtain the certificate of qualification to be inserted in their registration books.’ These ‘Trade Tests’ all had a common feature, for no matter which trade - proof of literacy and numeracy. A successful candidate ‘Must be able to read and write and know sufficient arithmetic to carry out the necessary measurements and calculations of the trade.’⁷⁹ The sheer range of professions which this volume covered also gives us an excellent impression as to how far scientific and technical education had progressed in West Africa - since one must presume that each of these trades was staffed by Africans rather than Europeans.

Other, more subtle regulatory measures were taken, standardising African practices to better suit European institutions. One of these was the standardisation of surnames. The government of the Gold Coast took special trouble to force literate Africans to take surnames that could fit into the space provided on administrative forms. Even after independence, the Ghana Teachers’ Journal advised its readers that ‘The practice in Ghana is now more and more to adopt the European custom whereby a woman takes her husband's surname when she marries.⁸⁰

Compulsory education

The pressure for these social changes - in particular the fact that literacy had become almost a necessity for the first time - meant that education was given a greater prominence. It is important to note that it was no longer only the colonial government and a tiny évolué élite who desired education. The Abidjan census of 1955 counted 23% of resident males over the age of 14 who were functionally literate, and a further 36% who could speak French.⁸¹ Basic education and literacy quickly became seen as a passport to the higher-paid jobs in the city environment. The new Ghanaian government surveyed its migrant population in 1963. Time and time again respondents, when asked why they had stayed in the village, replied that their lack of education prevented them from getting a good town job. Others, when asked why they had migrated to urban areas, replied that they had been to school, as if this answer provided a full explanation which no sensible person would contest.⁸² As greater numbers of population gathered together, colonial and post-colonial governments across West Africa took this opportunity to boost the level of their attachment to education, both in terms of political commitment and money.

The enormous impact which urbanisation and literate employment had upon the education sector can be seen by the figures for education in the period. In 1938, Senegal had the proudest educational record in AOF. 17,128 children went to school, and were taught by 132 European and 337 African teachers. Yet this number was only an extremely small percentage - 19.5 per 1000 of the total population of school age.⁸³ By 1947, this figure had climbed by tenfold to reach 12.4 per cent. Another decade later, the Gouvernement de Sénégal announced in 1958 that the level of primary school-attendance had reached 22% - with a four-year plan to increase this to 40%. A few months after independence in 1960, the new Senegalese Minister of Education increased the figures further. ‘France has helped us a lot in this regard,’ he commented. ‘Often in spite of us, in spite of the reluctance of the peasants, she imposed education, which doubtless would with time have become obligatory. In 1948 there were only 200 teaching establishments, ten years later there were 435; Senegal counted nearly 100,000 pupils, which makes 29% of the school-age population. This figure is far too small, and should reach 60% by the end of the Four-Year Plan 1960-4… Some more figures will show you how the peasantry has been ignored: 75% scholarity in Dakar, 87% in St-Louis, 15% in M’Bour and 12% in the Kaolack region.’⁸⁴

The above table demonstrates quite conclusively the close correlation between the city and the number of school-age children attending primary education. The trend is repeated in British Africa. The 1960 census recorded that 53.3% of Ghanaian boys aged 6-14 were currently or had been enrolled at school. The equivalent figure is 33.4% for girls. However, inside Accra town itself, the figures dramatically increase to 80.3% for boys and 59.3% for girls.⁸⁶ More surprisingly, 8.6% of boys of the age of 15 or over were still in education, and 4.6% of girls.

Crucially, however, from the point of view of cultural attitudes and aspirations, literacy allowed Africans to read about situations in Europe that they could now relate to themselves. The literate African usually now lived in an city setting, and quite possibly was himself a member of the urban poor created by rapid urbanisation. City employment, based on large construction or industrial sites, could easily bring him more and more into a situation of the metropolitan proletarian poor. This was the message spread both by literature imported from Europe or the rapidly-growing independent press. Indeed, the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière, a leading French political party, opened its membership to Senegalese blacks, in the wake of their victory in the Popular Front of 1936.

Literacy and education were in many ways the keystone to a successful assimilation policy. With successful acquisition of reading, the written word suddenly opened up many different aspirations to a newly-urbanised population. The trading-based economies of the principal coastal cities of West Africa meant that this new outlook could be extended and realised. Africans could develop the same tastes as Europeans, and if they did, then European companies would soon cater for an African demand for their products. The era of literacy in Africa brought with it the era of advertising.

8. Urban luxuries - an international economy of consumption

Expansion of towns

World War II, West African urbanisation, and the massively-expanding colonial economy combined to create a boom in trade with Europe and the wider world. Where Sierra Leone’s external trade was worth £1,819,281 in 1907, by 1918 this had increased to £3,179,207.⁸⁷ By 1953 this was £22,845,842, climbing to £35,224,243 by 1956.⁸⁸ More important still was the rapid increase in imports. In 1931 Côte d’Ivoire imported 28,580 tonnes of foreign goods, but by 1954 this figure had increased to 183,287 tonnes - a rise of 541% over twenty years. Senegal imported a large amounts more foreign goods, though Dakar was the principal port for other AOF countries. 874,811 tonnes - with a value of CFA41bn were imported into Senegal in 1957.

An analysis of imports shows strikingly that imported material primarily reflected the greater prosperity of the colonies - and even more strikingly, it met the aspirations of a city-dwelling public. Growth areas in imports tended to be new technologies and luxuries, as well as increasing levels of fuel and construction materials. In contrast, the traditional sources of metropolitan exports - such as textiles and machined goods - fared much less well.

The agricultural bias of the colonial cash-crop economy encouraged cocoa or coffee production - yet farmers needed to trade their commodities for foodstuffs. This great gap was filled by imports. However, the figures for Côte d’Ivoire show that in this period, the fastest-growing segment of the food sector was not staples, but luxury European foods for an urban setting, such as fresh vegetables and flour. Grains were not native to West Africa, and the taste for bread can be directly traced to the changing tastes under colonial influence. The popularity of other luxury goods such as glassware and automobiles can also be directly traced to European aspirations. Likewise, a significant rise in Africans’ financial capacity can be seen in the popularity of modern European medicines - a rise that could only come about through salaried employment in an urban setting.