Postwar France sought cotton self-sufficiency through Niger Valley irrigation schemes.

Evidence

Cotton was one of the cash crops most in demand by the metropole after the war, and expectations for its successful introduction in West Africa were greatest. Indeed, the idea of expanding cotton cultivation in the African interior had already led, between I9I8 and I923, to grandiose plans for irrigating the Niger Valley under Carde’s predecessor in office, Martial Merlin. During that period, a private consortium of cotton interests put forth a concept of building dams and a system of irrigation canals along the Niger. This consortium was convinced that, once the river was regulated, the Western Sudan could become a vast cotton plantation capable of making France self-sufficient in what had become an increasingly expensive imported commodity. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 785

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of understanding how French republican ‘civilizing’ projects in West Africa were economically self-serving, driven by metropolitan commodity needs.