$Unique_ID{COW01525} $Pretitle{374} $Title{Guinea Chapter 2B. French Rule to World War II} $Subtitle{} $Author{George L. Harris} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{french african colonial schools africans chiefs district civil school colonies} $Date{1973} $Log{Figure 3.*0152501.scf } Country: Guinea Book: Area Handbook for Guinea Author: George L. Harris Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1973 Chapter 2B. French Rule to World War II French Colonial Policy Public discussion of colonial policy in France during the latter 1800s and into the twentieth century revolved around two principal concepts, one labeled assimilation, the other association. The assimilation policy was based on the assumption that all men are equal and thus should be treated alike and reflected the universalist and egalitarian ideas of the French Revolution. At the same time, however, the idea of universalism was tied to French culture, which proponents of assimilation indirectly maintained was superior to all others. Thus in practice assimilation meant the extension of the French language and French institutions, laws, and customs to the people of the colony. In contrast, under the concept of association Africans were to keep their own customs-insofar as these were compatible with French aims-and different systems of laws and institutions would be applied in the colonies to the French and the Africans. Advocates of the concept left no doubt, however, that the French were to be the rulers and the Africans the subjects. In actual practice colonial policy as applied in Guinea (and other West African colonies) was one neither of assimilation nor of association. The assimilation concept of French cultural superiority was embraced by most colonial administrators, who saw themselves as the instruments of a civilizing mission and felt that the African subject should be happy to accept the free gift of French culture. The idea of equal citizenship implied in assimilation was not in general accepted, however; and although provision for citizenship was made, the procedure and requirements resulted in its being granted to relatively few individuals. The concept of association also soon became a hollow term describing French-developed procedures that increasingly relegated the African to an inferior status and concentrated more and more power in French hands. Some colonial administrators did advocate continuance of the traditional chieftainships, but nothing came of this. Early in the colonial era chiefs who opposed the French were eliminated, and others willing to accept a subordinate status were appointed. The administrative authority of such chiefs was reduced to the execution of French orders, and their judicial powers were curtailed and brought under French supervision. Parallel with their loss of temporal power occurred a diminution of their religious role and prestige. Eventually, except in remote villages, the French ruled either directly or through chiefs who functioned essentially as French agents. [See Figure 3.: Guinea, Formation of the Colony of French Guinea] French African colonial policy in general was best described as highly pragmatic. The real aim of the colonial administration was to integrate the colony into an imperial system that would bring the greatest benefit and glory to the mother country. There was no change in this policy from the late nineteenth century to World War II as businessmen and bureaucrats developed vested interests in the system and successfully resisted any real liberalization of policies, despite the agitation against colonial exploitation that developed in France in the 1930s. In general, French public opinion was too preoccupied most of the time with domestic affairs to take great interest in colonial matters. These were the special domain of the bureaucracy under the Ministry of the Colonies, which administered all overseas possessions except Algeria (treated as part of Metropolitan France) and the protectorates of Morocco, Tunisia, and the Levant. The only concessions made by bureaucracy to liberal public opinion were minor reforms that led to administrative decentralization, the establishment of consultative councils on which Africans had a few seats, and the granting of French citizenship to a few Africans on an individual basis. The Colonial Administration In 1895 French Guinea became a part of a larger West African colonial administrative grouping, French West Africa, which was constituted that year by decree of the president of the French Republic. French West Africa was headed by a governor general, but the several colonies retained substantial autonomy, including their own fiscal systems and services. In 1904 a new federal structure was established, and defined powers and responsibilities were assigned to the federal government. The colonial governments had separate budgets, but certain revenues and the provision of specified services were reserved to the federal government. The governor general and governors (lieutenant governors from 1902 to 1937) were appointed by the French president on the recommendation of the minister of the colonies, under whose jurisdiction French West Africa fell. The Ministry of the Colonies was assisted by several councils. Of these, the Supreme Council for Overseas France (Conseil Superieur de la France d' Outre-Mer), until 1937 known as the Supreme Council for the Colonies, was the most important for West Africa. The council was composed of a small number of parliamentary deputies from the colonies-including one from West Africa (from Senegal)-delegates elected by French citizens in the colonies, and a few representatives of African interests nominated by colonial governors. Each colony had its own Council of Administration whose members, at first appointed, were elected after 1925. In French Guinea, the council consisted of two French citizens elected by the local chambers of agriculture and commerce and two subjects elected by an electoral college drawn from seven categories of Africans, such as civil servants, persons with prescribed property or educational qualifications, and those who had been officially cited for loyalty to France. French Guinea, like other colonial components of French West Africa, was divided into administrative districts (cercles). The basic unit of territorial administration, the district was headed by a district commandant (commandant de cercle), a civil official with extensive powers, who was directly responsible to the governor. Some districts were divided into subdivisions headed by assistant administrators. The urban centers of Conakry, Kankan, and Kindia were given separate administrative status as communes in 1920. They were headed by appointed French mayors assisted by appointed councils, half of whose members were French citizens and half African subjects. French administrative officials belonged to a career colonial service made up of colonial administrators and a lower category of civil servants. The first were graduates of a special school in Paris; most colonial governors and district commandants came from this group. Below them were civil servants who were recruited, trained, and employed locally to serve as assistants and clerks; they could not rise higher than the post of chief of a subdivision. Educated Africans were admitted to this category. The district and subdivision were the smallest units directly administered by French officials. Below them was the province under an African chief. The province in turn was divided into cantons and villages-each also under an African chief, all of whom had been reduced to adjuncts of the colonial administration. The provincial chief-the office was not everywhere present-nominally had authority over the chiefs of the cantons in his province and, through them, over the village chiefs in the area. Some villages, however, were outside this pyramidal scheme, their chiefs being directly under the French authorities. The French apparently were not altogether satisfied with the office of provincial chief-reminiscent in rank of the once-powerful independent regional chieftainships-and sought to dispense with it whenever possible. Chiefs were chosen from among those Africans believed to be loyal to the French. A traditional chief might be confirmed in office, but appointment frequently went to individuals who had been clerks or interpreters in the French service or to graduates of the School for the Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters at Saint-Louis, Senegal (founded in 1856 by General Louis Faidherbe, when governor of the colony). The main responsibilities of the chiefs were to collect taxes, to supply the French authorities with the labor required for public works and other activities and to provide men for military service. Provincial and canton chiefs were paid a salary. Village chiefs were remunerated with a share of the taxes they collected. Their share was progressively reduced with delay in the collection of taxes, and the chief received nothing if taxes were not in by a certain date. As agents of an alien authority, the chiefs were distrusted by the community and had no power beyond that derived from their French superiors. They were mainly distrusted, however, because of their reputation, which many of them deserved, for maladministration and corruption. In 1919 councils of local notables (conseils de notables indigenes) were established in the districts to advise the commandants on such matters as taxation and labor conscription. The councils were intended to help create native understanding of government policies and support for them but, having only limited advisory power and being dominated by the French (district commandants were council presidents), the councils had little value as channels of African opinion. The Administration of Justice Justice was administered separately for French citizens and African subjects. For French citizens primary civil jurisdiction was exercised by a court of the first instance in Conakry and criminal jurisdiction by the Court of Assizes, also located in Conakry. Their decisions could be appealed to the West African Court of Appeal in Dakar and, further, to the Court of Cassation in Paris. For African subjects the administration of justice, at first in the hands of the chiefs, was gradually brought under French supervision. In 1912 the judicial powers of village chiefs were completely abolished, and customary courts (tribunaux indigenes) were created in district and subdivision headquarters. District courts sat under Europeans, but African judges could preside in the subdivisions. In 1925 almost all judicial functions were brought under French supervision. As finally reorganized in 1931, the system of justice for African subjects consisted of customary courts of the first degree composed of two African assessors (lay judges) usually under the presidency of the district administrative officer. The vote of the assessors was, however, deliberative in that at least one assessor had to vote with the president for a decision to be made. These courts had primary jurisdiction in civil actions involving limited sums and in criminal cases in which penalties did not exceed a fine of 2,000 francs or ten years' imprisonment or both. Customary courts of the second degree ordinarily sat in district headquarters and had original and appellate civil jurisdiction but no criminal jurisdiction. They were composed of a French district official, who presided, and two native assessors with a deliberative vote. Unlimited original criminal jurisdiction in serious offenses, with the right to impose the capital penalty, was exercised by a criminal court in each district. Presided over by a district administrator, the criminal court usually had four assessors-two Africans and two Europeans-half of whom had to agree for a judgment to be rendered. The colonial Court of Appeal in Conakry was composed of two senior French officials and two African notables. It had appellate jurisdiction in civil and criminal customary law cases coming from the courts of the first and second degree. The Supreme Customary Court of Appeal (Chambre d'Annulation) in Dakar had final appellate jurisdiction in all customary and civil and criminal cases. The basic drawbacks in the system of justice for African subjects were the absence of a unified penal code, the ignorance of many of the French officials of African concepts and customs, and the cumbersome appellate procedure, which made appeal practically impossible in criminal cases (where appeals had to be initiated by the procurators) and extremely difficult in civil ones. There was a shortage of courts and of judicial officials. Many offenses were not brought to court, whereas others might be punished too severely or too lightly by African standards. In civil cases local customary law was frequently misunderstood and misapplied. No attorneys were allowed to practice in the customary courts. A particular source of dissatisfaction was the indigenat, a system of summary disciplinary measures under which French administrators had discretionary power to punish their African subjects for minor infractions. Penalties could not exceed a fine of fifteen francs or five days' imprisonment (before 1925 the limits had been 100 francs and two weeks). Besides being arbitrary, the system could be-and often was-abused as a means of discouraging "insolence" or as a device for securing free labor. Social Change French rule brought important changes in the structure of society through the dismantling of the indigenous political and administrative hierarchies. From the early 1900s efforts to suppress serfdom and the slave trade struck at the economic power of a leisured aristocracy (see ch. 5). Many former slaves and serfs, however, had no claim, or only tenuous ones, to land or had to pay high rent and remained economically and psychologically dependent on their former masters; this was particularly true in the Fouta Djallon. Trade, a principal purpose of the colony, created opportunities for new employment for individuals apart from the traditional traveling merchant. The poorly financed African was generally relegated, however, to a secondary role, providing domestic goods to European and Levantine companies and selling consumer items imported by such firms. The introduction of plantation production for export also created new occupations in the late 1930s. Urbanization, although very slow, brought the development of new service requirements and new jobs, as did the expansion of the colonial government. Before World War II the wage economy grew only slowly, however, and the vast majority of the population, which had been recorded at somewhat over 2 million in a census made in the latter 1930s, continued to engage mainly in subsistence agriculture. The French, in the field of culture even more than in that of the economy, brought changes-some deliberately, some indirectly. The French language, culture, and ideas and particularly the introduction of Western educational system resulted in the emergence of a new elite group, the so-called evolues (individuals who had become as much French as they were African). By the 1920s and 1930s this group was largely self-sustaining and self-perpetuating. Children of the members were sent to schools operated for the French and emerged with an outlook vastly different from that of the great mass of Guineans. The first school in Guinea was opened by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Boffa in 1878. In 1890 the school was moved to Conakry, where three years later the first girls' school was opened by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Cluny. The Holy Ghost Fathers opened five more schools during this period. By 1900 the missionary schools had a total enrollment of about 360 children. Anticlerical pressures in France for the secularization of schools in the colonies resulted in the introduction of a state school system in French West Africa in 1903 and led in 1906 to a withdrawal of government subsidies to mission schools that halted their progress. The new system called for separate primary schools for Africans and for French and certain assimilated Africans and children of mixed parentage. The African system was to include rural village schools and regional schools, the latter located at district administrative centers. In Guinea the development of African schools proceeded slowly; three village and twelve regional schools, plus two schools in Conakry, had been established by 1906. The total enrollment was fewer than 1,400. In 1918, after the end of World War I, the French government announced that education was the basis of its policy for Africans and essential to economic progress in the colonies. A broad development plan was laid out, but the cost of implementation was to be met by the colonies; and in Guinea, largely for reasons of expense, educational expansion continued at a slow pace. The worldwide depression of the 1930s also seriously affected expansion, and by 1938 only fifty-five primary schools for Africans (forty-three of them village schools) having an enrollment of under 7,700 students were operating. In addition one government higher primary school and one vocational school accommodated about 200 other African students. There were also three private mission schools having an enrollment of over 900. The chief task of the village schools, which provided three to four years of education, was to spread a knowledge of spoken French and of personal hygiene practices. Reading and writing in French and some arithmetic were also taught. The regional schools offered five to eight years of more formal French, and introduction to practical agriculture, and some vocational training using facilities, if available, at nearby civil or military installations. A primary certificate could be acquired at the regional schools, although scholastically it was well below that offered by the French schools. The academic content of the instruction, which was entirely in French, was of French origin and largely irrelevant to African life. In 1932 a Paris intercolonial conference pointed out that teachers recruited from France had no knowledge of Africa or Africans and that African teachers were trained exactly as those in France were. Moreover, African teachers often taught in rote manner metropolitan subject matter they had learned in order to pass teacher training examinations. Almost all textbooks used in African schools were from France or French Algeria. Guinea's single African higher primary school and an African vocational school, the Georges Poiret School (Ecole Georges Poiret), opened in Conakry in the early 1930s offering two to four-year courses to those who had earned primary certificates. The former turned out junior administrators, the latter foremen or artisans. Both schools accepted only as many pupils as would be required to fill the administration's needs, as they existed solely for this purpose and the French avoided giving instruction to those who would not be able to use it. In 1933 a small agricultural school was opened at Tolo, near Namou, and offered adult classes in the vernacular in agriculture, crafts, and hygiene. This completed the French educational system in Guinea for the African population until after World War II.