Freedom And Authority In French West Africa

Originally published in 1950 and updated in 1968, this book discusses the functions and status of native chiefs in what were the French colonies in West Africa. It also examines the relation of the French legal code to native law and custom and the activities of Christian missions. Analysing changes which took place in the early 20th century as a result of Africa's entry into the world economy, the book includes proposals for increasing agricultural production and co-operative marketing.

Explores the elements that have shaped the particular political dynamics of the 14 former French colonies in west and equatorial Africa while allowing them to remain part of a unique francophone sociopolitical community.

In an effort to restore its world-power status after the humiliation of defeat and occupation, France was eager to maintain its overseas empire at the end of the Second World War. Yet just fifteen years later France had decolonized, and by 1960 only a few small island territories remained under French control.The process of decolonization in Indochina and Algeria has been widely studied, but much less has been written about decolonization in France's largest colony, French West Africa. Here, the French approach was regarded as exemplary -- that is, a smooth transition successfully managed by well intentioned French politicians and enlightened African leaders. Overturning this received wisdom, Chafer argues that the rapid unfurling of events after the Second World War was a complex , piecemeal and unpredictable process, resulting in a 'successful decolonization' that was achieved largely by accident. At independence, the winners assumed the reins of political power, while the losers were often repressed, imprisoned or silenced.This important book challenges the traditional dichotomy between 'imperial' and 'colonial' history and will be of interest to students of imperial and French history, politics and international relations, development and post-colonial studies.

Offers comparative historical, anthropological and legal perspectives on the ways in which French and British colonial administrations interacted with the diversity of Islamic legal schools, scholars, and practices in Africa.

"Bringing together a wide diversity of authors based on three continents and from different disciplinary backgrounds, this book offers analyses of a wide range of factors that characterize and that are shaping the future of the African Sahel. In forty chapters, organized in nine sections, the book examines this complex and rapidly changing region on multiple dimensions. Collectively, the book attempts to offer an understanding of the specificity of the Sahel, and to examine its core characteristics as shaped by the geographic, cultural, and political parameters that define it. Following a series of chapters focused on the shaping of the Sahelian space as a region, six chapters explore the distinct national trajectories of the countries of the political Sahel: Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Chad. The extraordinary combination of environmental, economic and political challenges, and the ways in which Sahelian states and societies have responded, are the primary focus of the three subsequent sections, while the various parameters of the lived realities of these societies in motion are explored in the four final sections of the book. Transversally throughout, the chapters aim to offer an interdisciplinary and holistic view of the challenges and the dynamics that are shaping a region at an historical crossroads, and an understanding of the many factors that feed and perpetuate its vulnerabilities and fragilities, as well as its sources of resilience"--