France created Upper Volta colony mainly to exploit Mossi labor
Evidence
In I9I9, the boundary of Haut-Senegal et Niger was redrawn to cre- ate two separate colonies, Western Sudan and Upper Volta, and the mili- tary territory of Niger. In I922, Niger was made a colony. The primary rea- son for carving out the new colony of Upper Volta was the realization that its principal ethnic group, the Mossi, was sufficiently numerous to offer an ideal labor source for public work projects in the rest of the federation, and for the labor-poor colony to its south, Ivory Coast. Upper Volta contained an estimated population of three million-one fourth the total population of French West Africa-of whom more than a million were Mossi. Exact population figures for this period are unknown. Dakar believed that creat- ing a separate administration for this labor source would facilitate its real- location, by force if necessary, throughout West Africa. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1386
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the federation’s forced-labor economy for infrastructure in the interwar period.
Related
- France created Upper Volta purely as a reservoir of forced labor (similarity 0.93)
- French recruiters drained tens of thousands of Upper Volta workers for forced labor (similarity 0.87)
- Each French West African colony’s labor fate hinged on land and population (similarity 0.84)
- Forced labor drained Upper Volta of thousands of workers annually (similarity 0.84)
- Labor coercion concentrated in Ivory Coast, Western Sudan, and Upper Volta. (similarity 0.84)
- Forced cotton cultivation in Upper Volta collapsed food production and then itself (similarity 0.83)
- Forced labor concentrated in colonies with labor shortages or surpluses (similarity 0.83)
- Forced labor drained a fifth of Upper Volta’s able-bodied men yearly (similarity 0.82)
- French planners hoped to make West Africa a cotton plantation for metropolitan self-sufficiency (similarity 0.79)
- Labor requisitions drove tens of thousands of French West Africans to British colonies (similarity 0.79)
- Forced collective cotton cultivation in Upper Volta displaced Africans’ own food crops (similarity 0.78)
- French colonial forced labor abuses helped trigger the ILO’s anti-forced-labor treaty (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Forced labor drained Upper Volta of thousands of workers annually
#expands(0.75) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1413 - French recruiters drained tens of thousands of Upper Volta workers for forced labor
#expands(0.70) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1412 - French colonial administrators knowingly cooperated in coercive labor recruitment
#corroborates(0.50) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 845 - Forced cotton cultivation in Upper Volta collapsed food production and then itself
#complicates(0.45) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1398