The federation’s prosperity was pegged to Senegalese peanut exports.

Evidence

According to statistics provided by Guiraud, L’arachide senegalaise (p. 37), peanut exports increased from I48,843 metric tons (34,575,000 fr.) in I903 to 242,084 metric tons (59,229,000 fr.) in I9I3. This was in direct proportion to the increase in total federal revenues, suggesting the extent to which the federation’s prosperity was pegged to the trade in Senegalese groundnuts. Figures from I9I7 confirm the extent to which Senegal led the federation in wealth. While its foreign trade amounted to 275,997,6I 5 fr., the respective figures for the next two richest colonies, Guinea and Ivory Coast, were 36,650,245 fr. and 25,839,820 fr. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1035

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to the economic mechanisms of colonial extraction seen in other French West Africa histories.

Related

• Senegalese groundnut exports drove the entire federation’s prosperity (similarity 0.94)
• Senegal’s peanut wealth rested on preserving the old chiefly aristocracy (similarity 0.82)
• French peanut profits depended on preserving precolonial chiefly structures (similarity 0.82)
• French colonial development rhetoric failed economically in West Africa (similarity 0.79)
• Geography and transportation costs, not just French policy, limited West African export integration. (similarity 0.79)
• French West African trade barely grew in the federation’s first decade (similarity 0.78)