West Africans lost their prewar legal press freedoms in the 1920s
Evidence
Freedom of the press did not emerge unscathed. Before the war, citizens in West Africa had legally enjoyed the same freedom of press estab- lished in France by the law of 1881. In the 1920’s, Dakar repeatedly and successfully petitioned Paris for permission to curb this free- dom. Decrees in 1921 and 1928 prohibited the circulation of sedi- tious material, gave Dakar the right to censor all drawings, cartoons, paintings, and emblems considered prejudicial to French authority, and allowed it to suppress the sale, circulation, or publication of any newspaper in any language in West Africa that it considered defam- atory. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 565
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
Related
- French legal rights that applied in the metropole were suspended in West Africa (similarity 0.89)
- Dakar built surveillance files and censorship powers to contain anticolonial dissent. (similarity 0.79)
Broader Connections
- Fear of extremist propaganda drove colonial surveillance expansion in French West Africa
#expands(0.55) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1259 - Black communities in the 1920s-30s lacked press independent of white financial control
#complicates(0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2231