Head taxes alone could not fund French West Africa’s administrative expansion

Evidence

The total revenues allocated the Government General in 1903 amounted to ten and a half million francs, generated largely from head taxes collected in the Sudanese territories. 18 This sum was clearly insufficient to secure the authorized sixty-five-million-franc loan or any future loans. What West Africa still required was an authority capable of generating greater revenues to pay for the administration in Dakar, and wealthy enough to act as a guarantor for outside capital investment. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 157

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how republican France economically rationalized empire; head tax reliance recurs across colonial Africa.