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The Black Man's Burden: The Cost of Colonization of French West Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2014

Elise Huillery
Elise Huillery*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Sciences Po, 28 rue des Saints Pères, 75007 Paris, France. E-mail: elise.huillery@sciences-po.fr.
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Abstract

Was colonization costly for France? Did French taxpayers contribute to colonies’ development? This article reveals that French West Africa's colonization took only 0.29 percent of French annual expenditures, including 0.24 percent for military and central administration and 0.05 percent for French West Africa's development. For West Africans, the contribution from French taxpayers was almost negligible: mainland France provided about 2 percent of French West Africa's revenue. In fact, colonization was a considerable burden for African taxpayers since French civil servants’ salaries absorbed a disproportionate share of local expenditures.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , March 2014 , pp. 1 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2014 

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Footnotes

I thank the editor Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, two anonymous referees, Jean-Marie Baland, Denis Cogneau, Frederic Cooper, Esther Duflo, Mamadou Diouf, Rui Estevez, Leigh Gardner, Kevin O'Rourke, Thomas Piketty, and Gilles Postel-Vinay for helpful comments, as well as numerous seminar audiences. I am grateful to the ACI “Histoire longue et répartition des ressources en Afrique” led by Denis Cogneau for funding and to Urbain Kouadio at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for administrative assistance extracting the colonial budgets. All errors are my own.

References

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