French West Africa’s extreme underpopulation fundamentally limited colonial infrastructure projects

Evidence

Possessing an area of 4.8 million km and a population of I 3 million, that is to say 2.6 inhabitants per square km, it is impossible for West Africa to increase its production in raw materials and at the same time to constitute a physical plant in the short time spans often envisaged … If one considers that the population, whose native hardiness has been ruined by interminable wars, centuries of slave trade and periodic famine and epidemics, is further reduced on the one hand by the tirailleurs recruited by conscription-a small enough number granted, but that immobilizes a physical elite-and on the other by the farmers engaged in agriculture for export, and that it is obliged to feed itself as well, one is forced to admit that the number of workers available for public works projects is fairly limited. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 767

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Tirailleurs’ — conscripted African soldiers formed into colonial infantry units — is a key colonial-era term.