Forced labor drained a fifth of Upper Volta’s able-bodied men yearly

Evidence

Research is providing a picture of the scale and the devastating impact recruitments could have upon local economies. Buell recorded a total of 49,000 workers recruited from Upper Volta for railroad construction in Ivory Coast and the Western Sudan between 1921 and 1925 (Native Problem, I: I043). Between 1920 and 1930 the administration recruited an addi- tional I5,839 Africans, or approximately IAOO annually, from the colony to work for three separate French enterprises (David, Les navetanes, pp. 154-158). The circle of Koudougou in Upper Volta lost an average of 3,117 workers a year, out of a total able-bodied male population of 6o,ooo, to forced wage labor between 1925 and 1931; most of this labor was directed to either the Ivory Coast railroad or European-owned forest or cocoa concessions (Cordell and Gregory “Labour Reservoirs and Population/’ pp. 222-223). — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1412

Categorization

• QUESTION: The source data on Upper Volta labor recruitment raises the question of how these losses compounded over years to permanently reshape local economies and demographics.