Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0152/01525.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 20KB | 334 lines

$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 pyramid