Tax riots, Clashes and Circulations in the French West Africa (AOF): the 1902-1903 insurrection in the country of Palaka (Northern Ivory Coast)

Abstract

The main objective of this article is to highlight the role of migration as a way to avoid tax collection in the AOF through the study of the Palakas’s revolt in 1902-1903. Located northwest of the city of Jula Kong, in northern Ivory Coast, Palaka belongs to the ethnical, cultural and linguistic group Senufo, which is classified according to Maurice Delafossu, Baumann and Wastermann in the voltaic set which includes Ivory Coast, the Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) and French Sudan (Mali). Remembering these facts is not fortuitous. It explains the intensity of the circulations performed by the Palaka people - who broke with the colonial order - between the three colonies of the Federation through the support from ancient social networks on both sides of the colonial borders to protest against the hut tax and work. The present study aims primarily to understand the sources of colonial violence, analyzing the implications of implications of the Finance Act of 1900 in terms fiscal pressure which led to a double confrontation between the French and the Palakan insurgents, and between the latter and local leaders. The second strand of this study examines the modes of expression of this tax riot through the intensity of the insurgents’ circulation through different territories. It also tested the repressive apparatus of the colonial state, showing the limits of the French model of development.