France’s postwar colonial policy fixed West Africa as a raw-materials producer

Evidence

From this policy, it was a small step toward envisioning a whole new role for West Africa in the postwar metropolitan economy. A colonial conference organized by Colonial Minister Andre Maginot in 1917, to which administrators, businessmen with colonial interests, and politicians were invited, determined that West Africa should remain a producer of raw materials; it also insisted on increasing production of fatty oils and of cotton, cocoa, and timber. In this context, the need for rational development was emphasized even more than before the war. The conference recommended an expansion of public works, more scientific research into crop yields, modernization of African farming techniques, and greater investment in the social welfare of their subjects. Maginot’s successor at the Ministry of Colonies, Henri Simon, created the department’s first Direction of Economic Affairs, to plan postwar colonial development. Simon’s successor, Albert Sarraut, further developed the principles of the Maginot Conference before the Chamber of Deputies in 1921, when he outlined his famous investment program for the rational development of France’s overseas territories. Sarraut suggested that more than one billion francs be earmarked for investment in railways, ports, and irrigation in West Africa, as well as schools, health care, and research facilities; he failed, however, to offer a realistic plan for financing this program. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 758

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theme of metropole-periphery economic extraction and ‘mise en valeur’ ideology that recurs across French colonial historiography and modernization theory.