'Faire du nègre': military aspects of population planning in French West Africa, 1920-1940

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Book chapter

Title:	'Faire du nègre': military aspects of population planning in French West Africa, 1920-1940
Author:	Echenberg, M.
Book title:	African population and capitalism: historical perspectives
Year:	1987
Pages:	95-108
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	French-speaking Africa West Africa France
Subjects:	population policy colonialism military recruitment
Abstract:	This chapter explores two demographic aspects of French military policy in West Africa in the interwar years. First, it examines the tentative, quasiscientific efforts of French planners in the early 1920s to measure the size of the cohort of males in their twentieth year in the West African colonies. Second, it explains how military recruitment policy affected overall migration. Avoidance of military service through absenteeism and flight was so extensive and systematic that it became a significant motive in the patterns of regional migration that emerged in the interwar era. Migration as resistance to the military recruiter mainly involved the flight of individuals in their twentieth year, but refugees often included older and younger brothers and other kin, who feared being taken as hostages or substitutes. The 'bons absents', as the French labeled the absentees, usually far outnumbered those actually drafted.