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‘CIRCLE OF IRON’: AFRICAN COLONIAL EMPLOYEES AND THE INTERPRETATION OF COLONIAL RULE IN FRENCH WEST AFRICA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2003

EMILY LYNN OSBORN
EMILY LYNN OSBORN
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
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Abstract

This article investigates the role of African colonial employees in the functioning of the colonial state in French West Africa. Case studies from the 1890s and early 1900s demonstrate that in the transition from conquest to occupation, low-level African colonial intermediaries continually shaped the localized meanings that colonialism acquired in practice. Well-placed African colonial intermediaries in the colonies of Guinée Française and Soudan Français often controlled the dissemination of information and knowledge in the interactions of French colonial officials with local elites and members of the general population. The contributions of these African employees to the daily operations of the French colonial state show that scholars have long overlooked a cadre of men who played a significant role in shaping colonial rule.

Keywords

Guinea-ConakryMalicolonial intermediaries
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 44 , Issue 1 , March 2003 , pp. 29 - 50
Copyright
© 2003 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The research on which this article is based was funded by a Fulbright IIE fellowship and the Department of History, Stanford University. I am indebted to the many men and women of Upper Guinée whom I interviewed for the larger project, and the archivists of the Archives Nationales de la Guinée, Guinea-Conakry (ANG), and the Archives Nationales du Sénégal in Dakar, Sénégal (ANS). I thank two anonymous readers for their comments. I also appreciate suggestions made by Walter Hawthorne, Richard Roberts and Thomas Spear. This paper was presented in a previous form at the African Studies Association in Houston, 2000; it has also beneÆted from insights made by participants in the History Seminar, the Johns Hopkins University and the Africa Workshop at the University of Michigan.