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Ivory Coast
Index
Koulango village
Engraving from Louis Gustave Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de
Guinée, 1892.
As France consolidated its holdings in Côte d'Ivoire,
it began
to take steps to make the colony self-supporting. In 1900
the
French initiated a policy that made each colony
responsible for
securing the resources--both money and personnel--needed
for its
administration and defense; France would offer assistance
only when
needed.
The public works programs undertaken by the Ivoirian
colonial
government and the exploitation of natural resources
required
massive commitments of labor. The French therefore imposed
a system
of forced labor under which each male adult Ivoirian was
required
to work for ten days each year without compensation as
part of his
obligation to the state. The system was subject to extreme
misuse
and was the most hated aspect of French colonial rule.
Because the
population of Côte d'Ivoire was insufficient to meet the
labor
demand on French plantations and forests, which were among
the
greatest users of labor in the AOF, the French recruited
large
numbers of workers from Upper Volta to work in Côte
d'Ivoire. This
source of labor was so important to the economic life of
Côte
d'Ivoire that in 1932 the AOF annexed a large part of
Upper Volta
to Côte d'Ivoire and administered it as a single colony.
In addition to the political and economic changes
produced by
colonial rule, the French also introduced social
institutions that
brought about fundamental changes to Ivoirian culture.
Catholic
missionaries established a network of churches and primary
schools,
which in time provided the literate Ivoirians needed by
government
and commerce. Some of the wealthier and more ambitious
Ivoirians
continued their educations at the few secondary schools
and at
French universities, adopting European culture and values
and
becoming members of a new African elite. The members of
this elite
were accepted as cultural and social equals by their white
counterparts and were exempt from military and labor
service.
Except in remote rural areas, the colonial government
gradually
destroyed the traditional elite by reducing the local
rulers to
junior civil servants and by indiscriminately appointing
as rulers
people with no legitimate claims to such titles. In areas
where
traditional leaders retained their position and power,
they often
developed strong rivalries with educated Ivoirians who
tried to
usurp that leadership on the grounds that their education
and
modern outlook better suited them for the position.
Data as of November 1988
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