West African Challenge to Empire

Culture and History in the Volta-Bani Anticolonial War

Mahir ?aul, Patrick Royer, Mahir Şaul

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780821441183
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia africana

West African Challenge to Empire examines the anticolonial war in the Volta and Bani region in 1915–16. It was the largest challenge that the French ever faced in their West African colonial empire, and one of the largest armed oppositions to colonialism anywhere in Africa. How such a movement could be organized in the face of European technological superiority despite the fact that this region is generally described as having consisted of rival villages and descent groups is a puzzle. In this jointly written book the two authors provide a detailed political and military history of this event based on archival research and ethnographic fieldwork. Using cultural and sociological analysis, it probes the origins of the movement, its internal organization, its strategy, and the reasons for its initial success and why it spread.

In 2001 the authors of West African Challenge to Empire were awarded the Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology by the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Note on Spelling and Maps
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The West Volta in the Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 2: The Muslim Houses of the Volta and the Beginnings of French Occupation
• Chapter 3: An Incomplete Colonial Occupation
• Chapter 4: Before the Storm
• Chapter 5: The Call to Arms
• Chapter 6: The First Victories of the Anticolonial Party
• Chapter 7: Terror as Strategy: The War in the Cercle of Dedougou
• Chapter 8: The War in the Cercle of Bobo-Dioulasso
• Chapter 9: The Pilgrim and the Shrines: The War in Koutiala, San, and Bandiagara
• Chapter 10: East of the Volta: The War in the Cercle of Ouagadougou
• Conclusion
• Appendix: Letters Used as Evidence in the Muslim Conspiracy Trials
• Notes
• Glossary of Colonial Terms
• Archival Sources
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Place Names