Colonial authorities blamed foreign communist propaganda for West African labor unrest without evidence

Evidence

Although there was no evidence that these newspapers were widely circulated, their very presence in port cities and in the depots along the train routes was enough to raise Dakar’s worst suspicions. Its final word on the 1919 work stoppage in Senegal, for example, was that the strikers had believed foreigners’ self-interested encouragement. The draft of the governor general’s speech to the Council of the Government General in 1924 complained about the new elite being worked up by “the actions and propaganda of a certain press with subversive tendencies, and which is making every effort to implant the revolutionary virus in the most evolved milieux.” — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 563

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the pattern of colonial powers attributing native resistance to external subversion rather than genuine local grievances — parallels modern discourse attributing dissent to foreign influence.