Map Quiz

Locate ten of the following countries. Be as clear as possible in your labeling.

Mozambique KenyaAngola SenegalSierra Leone EthiopiaNigeria GhanaZimbabwe AlgeriaUganda

“Effective Occupation” and African Responses

“Resistance” and “Collaboration”

• Not late 19th-century terms

• WWII connotations

• Came into wide use during the first years of African history as an academic discipline—which coincided with decolonization and nationalist movements

“Primary” vs. “Secondary” Resistance

• Essentially a chronological distinction—opposition to initial colonial incursion vs. opposition to colonial administration

• Both terms tend to privilege overt, organized resistance

• Everyday resistance (“weapons of the weak”) can easily be overlooked

• Is all resistance activity explicitly anti-colonial?

Goals/Aims

• In some cases (Samori, for example), Africans sought to prevent Europeans from entering their territory

• In most cases, however, goals were less unequivocal

• Many leaders sought to maintain their power (Ahmadu Seku and Kabaka Mwanga, for example)

• In some cases, “collaboration” was actually an attempt to maintain existing authority

• Sometimes resistance to colonial incursion overlapped with resistance to existing authorities (for example, on the Swahili Coast)

• Collaboration with colonial rule could also be a form of resistance to existing authorities (Mourides of Senegal, female converts to Christianity, etc.)

• Goals and aims varied among groups—elites/commoners, men/women, youth/elders—and were sometimes at odds with one another

• Significantly, the total expulsion of Europeans was rarely set up as a goal

“Deviancy Amplification”

• Contravention of laws leads to stricter enforcement

• Stricter enforcement breeds resentment

• Resentment encourages increased contravention of laws and support of those who break laws

• This in turn leads to stricter enforcement and so forth

Structures of Colonial Rule

• Taxes

• Law

• Health and Welfare Infrastructure

Taxes

• Taxation the most common understanding of “effective occupation”

• Various types of taxes, including forced labor and taxes in kind

• Tax collection systems often engaged local elites

• Taxation used as a way to drive Africans into labor market or into cash-crop agriculture

Law• Indigénat: highlights the arbitrary nature of

colonial authority• Customary law vs. civil law—identity

defined in terms of legal jurisdiction• Manipulations of “tradition”—whose version

of tradition to use?• “Repugnancy clause” mitigated effect of

customary law• The problem of Muslim law—is it civil law or

customary law? Can it exempt converts from customary law?

Law, con’t.• Laws can be legitimate for two reasons:

– Made by a legitimate authority– Overlap with existing values

Is contravention of the law as understood by the colonial power necessarily an “anti-colonial” act?

Health and Welfare

• Attempts at legitimation—civilizing mission

• Maintenance of labor force

• Building on infrastructure of Christian missions

• Idiom of sanitation and health a means for particularly intimate control

• Post-WWI League of Nations “mandates” intensified this trend

Types of Colonial Administration

• Direct rule

• Indirect rule

• In practice, both types of rule involved relatively small numbers of European colonial administrators and relied heavily on cooperation of local elites

Direct Rule

• Africans answerable directly to colonial representatives

• Tended to undermine existing hierarchies

• Common in “tropical” regions

• Evident in Houseboy

Indirect Rule

• Africans answerable to “Native authorities,” answerable in turn to colonial representatives

• Where hierarchical structures existed, indirect rule tended to seek to prop them up—where “acceptable” leaders did not exist, “warrant chiefs” were created

• Developed in Northern Nigeria—a region with a strong, centralized state

From The Dual Mandate in Tropical Africa, Frederick Lugard

…though the [colonial] power imposes the taxes (whether direct in the form of an income tax or indirect as customs dues, &c.), and the general rate of the former is fixed by the Governor, the actual assessment is in the hands of the native ruler and his representatives-the district and village heads -guided and assisted by the British staff. It therefore appears to the taxpayer as a tax imposed by his own native, ruler, though he knows that the vigilant eye of the District Officer will see that no unauthorised exactions are made, and that any injustice will be remedied. Since the salaries of the ruler and the officials of the " Native Administration " are paid out of their own native treasury funds, they cannot be regarded by him as officials paid by Government.

The Dual Mandate, con’t.

• Principles do not change, but their mode of application may and should vary with the customs, the traditions, and the prejudices of each unit. The task of the administrative officer is to clothe his principles in the garb of evolution, of revolution; to make it apparent alike to the educated native, the conservative Moslem, and the primitive pagan, in his own degree, that the policy of the Government is not antagonistic but progressive-sympathetic to his aspiration and the guardian of his natural rights. The Governor looks the administrative staff to keep in touch with native thought and feeling, and to report fully to himself, in order that he in turn may be able to support them and recognise their work.

Theories of Colonial Rule• Assimilationism

-Focus on ability of African to become more like Europeans

-Christian missions, African franchise

-Emphasis on unified legal systems, modernity

• Associationism-Focus on differences between Africans and Europeans—sometimes including biological

-Segregation, including liberal segregationism

-Emphasis on local/customary law, traditions

Senegal and the Murids

Initial Contacts

• 1588: port of Gorée established by the Dutch

• 1659: French create settlement of St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River

• 1677: French take over Goree from the Dutch

Quatre Communes

• St. Louis, Dakar, Rufisque, Gorée• 1834: Free inhabitants of the four cities

were granted French citizenship• 1848: Slavery was abolished within the

four cities, broad-based manhood suffrage was introduced (with some property requirements) for local governance

• 1914: Blaise Daigné elected to National Assembly

Inland Senegal

• Semi-Muslim Wolof Kingdom resisted by religious groups

• Social life governed in part by Sufi brotherhoods, including the Tijaniyya and the Qadiriyya, led by marabouts

• French colonial imposition occurred rather violently in the late 1880s and early 1890s—using, in part, troops recruited from coastal areas

Amadou Bamba

• 1853-1927• Founder of the Sufi

brotherhood of the Murids (1883)

• Perceived by French as a threat, sent into exile 1895-1907

• Returned to power as an advocate for pacifism/acceptance of French rule

Murids (aka Mourides or Muridiyya)

• Advocated an integration of work and religious study

• Organized in tight, hierarchical communities—focus on agricultural production

• Talibés (students/ followers) included many ex-slaves

After realizing the situation of the French Government and what it comports of justice, benevolence and power, in all its lands, and knowing how happy are its friends and how miserable its enemies, and convinced that no people, however powerful, can rival the French government or oppose, unless they be blinded by their ignorance, I have decided to give…some advice to my Muslim brothers that they not be drawn into wars, that they reflect on the consequences of things and that Satan, always the friend of disorder, not be able to deceive them…

The French Government, thanks to God, has not opposed the profession of faith but on the contrary has been friendly towards Muslims and encouraged them to practice (their religion). We have noted that in many of the lands of the blacks that, thanks to French occupation, the inhabitants who, far from being Muslim were pillagers, living at the expense of the traveler and the weak, have changed to become calm and peaceful and that now, among them, the sheep and jackals march together.