The French Invasion of the Upper Senegal River and Payment Issues, 1880–1900

Introduction

What makes a specific substance accepted as money? Although countless researchers have provided various answers to this question, Africa, where commodity money was used until the beginning of the 20th century, and records of the transition from commodity to colonial currencies have been preserved, might be a perfect place to provide an inductive answer.¹

This study focuses on the issue of payments in the French territory of the Upper Senegal River, which occurred from 1880 to the beginning of the twentieth century, when the French invasion of the interior of West Africa rapidly advanced. Unlike coastal areas, which had early contact with European merchants, bringing currencies into the interior was cumbersome and costly. The challenges for the French in this newly conquered area were, first, how to pay the salaries of people who were involved in this invasion and the costs of the materials and services procured from the local population and, second, how to accomplish the collection of taxes in the newly acquired territories.

Among the boxes containing documents on different subjects stored in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer (hereafter ANOM) in France, the author discovered several documents relating to this topic; this suggests that it must have been of great interest to the French colonial authorities, and these sources provide a new perspective on French colonization and money in the West African interior, albeit from the unilateral perspective of the colonizers.²

It is well known that certain commodities used in transactions, often perceived by Westerners as bartering, functioned as currencies. Technically, any commodity can serve in this role if the other party agrees to accept it. However, in a social unit composed of many different people, specific commodities with certain features, such as uniformity, divisibility, durability, and “availability but not excessive abundance,” began to play this role and function as de facto money among the members of that society.³ In this region, cotton cloth, silver coins, and salt bars were often used as units of account and as the final means of payment.

Among these commodity currencies, the most important commodity that the French brought into this region and used as a means of payment was the indigo-dyed cotton cloth guinée, which is 15 meters long, one meter wide, and weighs approximately two kilograms.⁴ This cloth was initially produced in Pondicherry, the capital of French India. Later, several Indian and European companies provided various products.⁵ However, treating different types of guinée as having the same value of money was not easy, and the cloth also required cumbersome transport tasks because of its weight. Although the government expected silver coins to replace it, they were also heavy compared to banknotes. Furthermore, since silver coins were always in short supply in the inland areas of West Africa, the colonizers were interested in not sending them back to the home country for payment.

France, therefore, attempted to introduce less transaction-costly means of payment. In particular, this article reveals that the bills issued by the treasury served as a means of payment and credit and functioned to keep silver coins in circulation in the hinterland. The phenomenon of bills issued by the treasury functioning as currency instead of the central bank’s note is unacceptable today when adherence to fiscal discipline and the central bank’s independence are the norm. Nevertheless, according to Patrice Baubeau, in France, Treasurers and the Ministry of Finance also played an important role in the money supply until after World War II.⁶ Furthermore, even earlier, several cases in the French colonial empire have been reported in which government agencies issued bills to cover cash shortages, which were eventually used as a means of remittance to Metropolitan France. For example, Juliette Françoise showed that in the late eighteenth century, bills of exchange were drawn by the Superintendent of the Naval treasury in Paris for payment on the Islands of France and Bourbon (Mauritius and Réunion), which often led the Ministry of Navy in Paris to exceed its budget.⁷ The bills of exchange drawn by this naval finance officer can be said to be a prototype of the “traite du Trésor (drafts on the treasury) for the colonies,” on which this article focuses.

The fact that the French treasury was actively involved in supplying currency to the colonies is probably not unrelated to the fact that France was more enthusiastic about tax collection than Britain in West Africa from an early stage; Christofaro and Nakao’s article in this volume focusing on the Haut Volta and Gold Coast border region describes how the French tax collection policy, from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the 20th century, was much more rigorous than the British policy, obliging the inhabitants of the Haut Volta territory to search desperately for the franc to pay taxes. This fact should have pressured the local people to recognize the franc as a necessary means of payment or currency.

The remainder of this article first provides an overview of the region and French colonization. Then, treasury services in this region are explained in the period before the formation of the Federation of French West Africa. Next, we explore how cotton cloth, silver coins, and drafts on the treasury were introduced using public money and how people reacted to these different forms of currency. In particular, the novelty of this study is that it shows that the French treasury was strongly involved in the supply and dissemination of currency in the interior of West Africa, which France had just conquered.

The Territories of the Upper Senegal River and Their Colonization

In 1817, territorial disputes with the British around the time of the Revolution ended, and Saint-Louis, Gorée, and some small trading forts in Senegambia officially became French territories. Using them as bases, France gradually extended its territories into inland West Africa. In particular, Fort Médine, located on the left bank of the Upper Senegal River, played an important role in the French invasion inland in the second half of the nineteenth century.

By the mid-nineteenth century, Médine had become the most important inland nexus for economic trade between French and indigenous merchants. The Maures, who live in the Sahel region, brought salt and gum Arabic from the north to this town.⁸ Both humans and livestock demanded salt in inland West Africa, and gum Arabic, which was specially demanded by the developing textile industries in Europe, was exchanged for guinée, brought in from India to Europe and then on to Saint Louis. In 1879, Brière de l’Isle, the Governor of Senegal (1876–1881), built a military post further inland in Bafoulabé. Shortly thereafter, the construction of a railroad connecting Kayes, located 12 km northwest of Médine, and Bafoulabé began.

The arrival of Jules Ferry, an advocate of colonial expansion, as Prime Minister in 1880 encouraged the French invasion of inland West Africa. However, at that time, the office in charge of the colonies was only a minor adjunct of the Ministry of the Navy. Even after the Ministry of the Colonies was created in 1894, it remained a minor player within the government.⁹ During the Third Republic, government cabinets changed frequently, and colonial policy oscillated between the proand anti-expansion camps. Furthermore, the governors and French officers arriving in the colonies were frequently replaced.

Consequently, the local corps of soldiers played an important role in French colonial expansion in West Africa. In 1857, an imperial decree of Napoleon III had already created a battalion-sized infantry regiment known as the Senegalese tirailleurs (tirailleurs sénégalais), modeled after the Algerian Zouaves and Spahis. By ministerial dispatches on 29 September 1882 and 18 January 1883, the Senegalese tirailleurs were divided into two units, the second of which was placed in Médine and moved to Kayes in 1892. In the same year, by the decree of 23 April 1892, a decision was made to create a new regiment of French Sudanese tirailleurs (tirailleurs soudanais), which was formed on July 1.¹⁰ In this manner, French military campaigns over the West African interior were carried out by a limited number of French officers and by African contingents recruited on the spot.

As a result of these soldiers’ contributions, France steadily expanded its inland dominion, and the colony boundaries were often revised accordingly. Until 1880, the territories of the Upper Senegal River were administered as a mere part of the colony of Senegal and its dependencies. However, by a decree of 6 September 1880, the territory of Haut Sénégal was created. Subsequently, with the decree of 20 July 1881, it was renamed Haut-Fleuve, a colony dependent on the central government in Senegal. As shown in Figure 1, in 1880, the Tukulor Empire stood tall as if to block the expansion of this new colony. Nevertheless, France conquered Ségou in 1890 and Nioro, the empire’s capital, in 1891. On October 22, 1890, the Superior Commander was subsequently delegated control over the administrative services of this region, and a new colony, French Sudan, was established. Finally, a decree on 16 June 1895 made the colony of French Sudan a part of French West Africa.¹¹

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Figure 1.

The Upper Senegal River area circa 1880s. Source: Made by the author based on the map in John Hanson and David Robinson, After the Jihad: The Reign of Ahmad al-Kabir in the Western Sudan (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1991), 23.

Treasury Services before the Formation of the Federation of French West Africa

After France made Senegal an official colony in 1817, approximately 20 years were needed to develop a fully functional administrative structure. The Treasury Service Office (Service de Trésorerie) was subsequently created there by the royal ordinance of 31 May 1838, which stipulated the general regulations of the public accounting system and fiscal services. Napoleon III then issued an imperial decree to determine the principle of public accounting for all colonies on 26 September 1855. Finally, by the decree of 20 November 1882, a complete fiscal regime was instituted, applying to all French colonies.

This decree of 20 November consisted of nine titles and 230 articles. It clarified the role of the colony’s Treasurer-Payers (trésoriers-payeurs), who were the heads of all organizations related to government finance in the colony. Each Treasurer-Payer was charged with the receipt and disbursement of all funds that entered his colony’s metropolitan or local budget and was responsible for money movement services for the colony under his jurisdiction (Art.154). In larger colonies, under this Treasurer-Payer, a Treasurer-Particular (trésorier-particulier) was assigned to a part of the colonial territory based on its importance under the order of the Minister of Finance. In the case of the Senegal colony at the end of the nineteenth century, the Treasurer-Payer was deployed in Saint Louis, and the Treasurer-Particular was in Gorée. Both had to provide a deposit of 15,000 francs, also by order of the Minister of Finance, before holding office; it was a rather large deposit, considering that as of 1880, the annual salary of this colony’s Director of the Interior (Directeur de l’Intérieur) was only 10,000 francs.¹² In remote areas, Deputy Treasurers were also assigned.

Tax collectors (percepteurs) were also appointed by the order of the Governor. They, too, had to provide a cash deposit. However, in addition to their fixed salaries, tax collectors could receive a percentage (fixed by colonial decree) of the sums they collected; this provided them with an incentive for tax collection. In each military post, accounting officers (receveurs comptables) who worked under the supervision of the Treasurer-Payer and Treasurer-Particular were appointed. They were also subjected to scrutiny from the Accountant General’s office in Paris, to which all accounts had to be annually reported.

Nevertheless, setting up such an administrative structure immediately after acquiring new territories would have been difficult. On the front line, personnel in temporary roles, who were called special agents (agent spécial), were responsible for accounting duties. They were deployed in remote areas where no chiefs of administration, services, or agents of the treasury existed and fulfilled the functions of an accountant. Commanding officers of a cercle (district) or poste (military post) supervised them.¹³

In any era, embezzlement and loss of funds are significant risks in organizational operations. Moreover, in war-torn lands far from the home country, the possibility that finances would not be strictly controlled was high. Nevertheless, the profligate spending by the Ministry of the Navy in the eighteenth century that Françoise discussed seemed to lead to the establishment of rigorous fiscal controls over a colony in West Africa in the next century. The enactment of the regulations for the execution of the budget of the territories around the Upper Senegal River on 11 April 1884 by the Ministry of Navy led to the publication of an instructional document titled Instruction on Accounting for Expenditures in Cash and Guinée in the Colony’s Posts and on the Upper River (hereafter, Instruction 1884). This document set new accounting rules for expenses using silver coins and cotton cloth for colonial military posts on the Upper Senegal River.¹⁴

Although Instruction 1884 was too detailed and impractical for a commander-in-chief to enforce in a warlike setting, it is noteworthy that the French authorities identified cotton cloth as a legitimate means of payment and established ways to control it within their accounting system. The Instruction demonstrated the French government’s strong commitment to managing commodity monies in the same way as specie in inland areas far from Saint Louis. However, it was not as easy as it sounds.

Public Expenditures with Cotton Cloth Money and the Associated Complications

Although its size and weight decreased over time, a piece of guinée was approximately fifteen meters long, one meter wide, and 1.5 to 4 kilograms in weight, as shown in Table 1. Some types of guinée were accepted as currency, especially in areas inhabited by the Maures, which are surrounded by the Senegal River, the Niger River, and the Sahel; it was too bulky to be used for day-to-day transactions, and it seems to have functioned not only as a means of exchange but also as a means of credit. Some types of guinée were divided into elbow-to-hand lengths (approximately 50 centimeters), allowing them to be used for lower-denomination payments.¹⁵

The method of government procurement of cloth also changed significantly in the early 1880s. Initially, guinée was procured from local merchants in the Upper Senegal River using the Senegal colony’s budget. A report by the commander of Médine in 1881 revealed that a piece of guinée was procured for 19.52–20.62 francs.¹⁶ Since guinée was sold in Saint Louis for approximately 10 francs, these inland prices were absolutely excessive. However, around 1882, as with other products dispatched to the Upper Senegal River, the government began obtaining guinée in Bordeaux, the southwestern region of Metropolitan France, through competitive bidding, using the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies budget.¹⁷

In order to use guinée for public expenditures, it was necessary to determine the official value of a unit of it. Essentially, although the size and quality of this cotton cloth varied according to the supplier, guinée had been counted by the “piece” since the establishment of trade statistics between metropolitan France and colonies in 1826, regardless of size. However, Instruction 1884 determined that the meter was the only unit to be used for counting guinée and that the conversion rate for official payment of this cloth was set at 0.80 francs per meter.¹⁸ However, applying the same conversion rate to essentially different things led to much confusion, as we will see later. Furthermore, in 1887–88, the colonial authorities determined different conversion rates for each town: the rate for a meter of guinée was reduced to 0.66 francs for the areas between Bakel and Diamou, closer to Saint Louis, but increased to 1.3 francs in Bamako, far inland.¹⁹ This fact suggests that the length of guinée cloth in Bamako, equivalent to the same amount in francs, was about half of that in Bakel. This difference probably reflects the cloth’s market value in the interior, where higher transportation costs were involved.

In the sense that it was a token supplied by public funds, the guinée was in the same position as drafts on the treasury. Naturally, these drafts could not be used for any other purpose, whereas the cloth had value as an object. If the real value of the cloth exceeded its face value, there was a concern that it would be used more as cloth than as money and that the amount of cloth money in circulation would decrease. For this reason, we assume that the colonial authorities needed to be aware of the market value of the cloth and set its face value carefully.

Almost one month after the publication of Instruction 1884, the administrative office of Haut Fleuve estimated its 1884–85 budget for guinée acquisition.²⁰ The required number of pieces of guinée was estimated to be 40,000 based on the average annual number for the previous three years.²¹ Since one piece of guinée cost almost 9 francs in Bordeaux in 1884, as shown in Table 1, 400,000 francs were budgeted to procure 40,000 pieces. Buhan et Teisseire, a trading house in Bordeaux, first won a government procurement order for 250,000 francs on 12 July 1884.²² According to the contract that resulted from the winning bid between the company and the Ministry of Navy and Colonies, several types of indigo-dyed cloth, 15 meters in length and 0.80 meters in width, were needed: The fabric had to be certified that it met the standard by a custom stamp.²³ In response, Buhan et Teisseire procured guinée from a company called Savana in Pondicherry, the capital of French India. The rightmost column of Table 1 shows the list of guinée supplied by this company to the government and their respective prices as of 10 July 1884.

Not all types of guinée cloth were accepted by the Maures. Therefore, the Ministry of Navy and Colonies was very cautious about introducing a new type of cloth. They did not want to risk refusal by the Maures, which would waste public funds. Among the various types Savana offered in Table 1, AA and X were particularly popular among the Maures and used for payment.²⁴ However, as the white paper under the cloth in Figure 2 shows the weave, the guinée AA was not a high-quality cloth but a coarse, stiff fabric. Furthermore, the procurement of these popular types of guinée was not always smooth. Specifically, brand X was in short supply.²⁵ In June 1885, when the Ministry of Navy and Colonies invited public bids for the urgent procurement of 30,600 pieces of guinée, not one bid was received. Therefore, the Ministry had to conclude a contract to purchase brands X and Z at the more expensive prices that Buhan et Teisseire had quoted.²⁶ Shortly after this incident, the Ministry started to consider obtaining guinée directly from Savana in Pondicherry. Savana provided a wider variety of guinée, and its proposed prices were more attractive than those of Buhan et Teisseire, as shown in the second column on the right of Table 1, potentially reducing costs by ten percent (40,000 francs) per year.²⁷

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Figure 2.

Guinée cloth (Mark AA). Source: Photographed by author on 3 August 2022, ANOM, Sénégal, XVII 21.

This proposal to procure guinée cloth from Savana without going through the bidding process created various conflicts among merchants in Bordeaux and Saint Louis. Chaumel et Durin, a Bordeaux company, was a part-owner of Savana, and this proposal meant that all other merchants in Bordeaux were excluded from the business. In response, Frederic Merle, a Bordeaux merchant, suggested to the Ministry of Navy and Colonies that they offer 1,000 pieces of brand X at 8 fr. 50 and 20,000 pieces of brand GP at 7 fr. 25 as a set.²⁸ However, the Ministry declined this offer because the brand GP, which was woven in Rouen and dyed in Pondicherry, would probably not be accepted by the indigenous peoples in the Upper Senegal River.²⁹ In response, Merle accused the government of deliberately avoiding the purchase of cheaper fabrics.³⁰ This incident sparked a controversy involving stakeholders in both Senegal and Europe regarding whether GP was the same quality cloth as X. In this regard, the French National Archives in Aix-en-Province provides evidence of the different views of the various merchants.³¹ Nine Bordelaise trade houses involved in the business in Senegal signed a document stating that the Maures would accept GP in the same way as X.³² However, Chaumel et Durin’s signature is not included.

In June 1886, the clashes over guinée came to an unexpected end. Lieutenant Colonel Henri Nicolas Frey, who led an expedition as part of the campaign in 1885–1886, proposed, for the next campaign, replacing a part of the guinée textiles with other types of cloth.³³ According to Richard Roberts, in outposts at Bafoulabé, Kita, and Bamako, guinée was nothing more than a type of attractive cloth, and while the cloth was always in demand, other types of cloth were also demanded.³⁴ In particular, in this region, Toile de Vosges, a stout and plain-woven cotton fabric produced in Epinal (Lorraine) for African markets, was very popular.³⁵

In any case, it is true that using cloth as an official payment was inconvenient for the public accounting system.³⁶ A report submitted by Inspector Toussaint Carnavant to the Ministry of the Navy and Colonies on 1 June 1888 claimed that the French treasury was wasting its assets because of this bothersome procedure.³⁷ According to him, the first inconvenience was caused by high transportation costs. He stated that 250,000 francs of cotton cloth, transported to Bafoulabé, weighed 34 tons and required 113 wagons.³⁸ Then, he mentioned, “If we could have brought gourdes (a piece of five-franc coins, each of which weighed 25 g) instead of cotton cloth, they would have weighed no more than 1,250 kg.”³⁹ Second, the numerous varieties of cotton cloth also created a burden in terms of complexity. The third inconvenience was due to defective merchandise. When the cloth became soiled or was torn, its value as money was significantly reduced; this created a discrepancy between the figures on the treasurer’s books and the inventory values.

Finally, in this report, Inspector Carnavant disclosed that Instruction 1884 had not been immediately applied.⁴⁰ This instruction manual required the submission of supporting documents to the Central Audit Office each month. However, this regulation was not respected, at least from the creation of the colony of Haut Sénégal to 1887.⁴¹ Finally, Carnavant explained that some districts in French Sudan preferred French coins to guinée, discussing an example in Bamako where an object with a value of 52 francs in guinée was ceded for 40 francs in silver coins.⁴² The depreciation of commodity money was always a major concern of the colonial authorities.

Silver Coins That Were Accepted by Both Africans and Europeans

In response to Carnavant’s report in 1888, the Minister of the Navy and Colonies immediately decided that using cotton cloth as a currency would be discontinued and replaced by cash. As a transitional measure during the 1888–1889 period, half the remittances to Kayes were to be made in coins and half in cotton cloth.⁴³ At that time, in French West Africa, the coins circulating in France had been brought directly to the colonies rather than minting their own coins. Following the decision, 1,805,000 francs in coins were sent to the Deputy-Treasurer in Kayes for the 1889–1890 campaign.⁴⁴

Table 2 shows the coin combinations requested for this purpose and their numbers, total values, and volumes. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte fixed the value of silver coins at one franc for five grams at 90 percent purity. Table 2 shows that, in terms of the number of pieces, the most common coin was the ½ franc (five grams), but in terms of value and weight, the five-franc silver coin (25 grams) accounted for a more significant percentage. Billons refer to petty coins below the silver limit.⁴⁵ These small-denomination coins were expected to substitute for cowry shells, which served local economic transactions and tax payments in inland areas.⁴⁶ Table 2 also implies that the colonial government had to transport more than nine metric tons of coins in only one year in a place where transportation and infrastructure were not fully developed. Additionally, in October 1890, 1,505,000 francs were sent by a paquebot from Bordeaux to the Governor General of Senegal to replenish funds before the funds in Kayes were depleted.⁴⁷

Transporting coins to these inland territories was a very laborious and costly operation. Near the end of the nineteenth century, coins could be dispatched relatively safely by chartering a paquebot from Bordeaux to Kayes from June to late December. From January to May, however, paquebots could not be used because of the seasonal changes in the river’s depth, and large wooden sailboats were used instead.⁴⁸ Furthermore, it was expensive to charter a paquebot from Bordeaux to Kayes. Consequently, it was common for coins to be sent to Dakar via a regular service implemented by Messageries Maritimes, and from there, they were transferred to a small boat to be transported to Kayes via Saint-Louis.⁴⁹

There were also concerns about large amounts of cash being moved and stored in the occupied territories where no Treasurer-Payer was allocated for the colonial authority.⁵⁰ Before the establishment of French Sudan, military bases along the Upper Senegal River had no Treasurer-Payer, only DeputyTreasurer, accountants, and, in some cases, special agents. These special agents were forbidden from keeping funds in their accounts above the fixed amounts determined by their locations, probably for fear of embezzlement: 2,000 francs for Richard Toll, the closest town from Saint Louis, and 20,000 francs for the area upstream of the Senegal River from Bakel.⁵¹ For fear of theft, no new funds were transferred while an agent’s funds exceeded the determined amount. The probable reason special agents in more inland areas were allowed to keep a larger amount of money would be to reduce the number of costly transport trips.

Transporting coins from Kayes to newly conquered villages further inland was another major challenge. In 1888, the railroad between Kayes and Bafoulabé opened, but from the railroad station, silver coins had to be transported to further inland districts via donkeys, horses, or men. Wheelbarrows, known as voiture Lefebvre, were often used.⁵² For example, a letter from the Minister of Finance to the Minister of the Colonies reporting the loss of 5,000 francs en route from Kayes to the new military outpost Kati on 31 December 1898 revealed that they had been transporting currencies with 33 voitures Lefebvre, one of which disappeared at some point.⁵³

As seen in this section, transporting silver coins to the interior around the nineteenth century was very costly and risky. Consequently, the scarcity of coins in the interior was a pressing issue, and measures were needed to resolve it.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Payment with Drafts on the Treasury

In a place where silver coins were in short supply and banknotes did not exist, what payment methods were available to those who did not receive commodity monies? The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Navy and Colonies discussed how to pay wages via European means of payment. As an outcome, by a local decision on 28 October 1882, the Governor of Senegal allowed employees deployed in military posts in the Upper Senegal River basin to be paid up to a quarter of their salaries in mandats de trésorerie (treasury warrants).⁵⁴ Furthermore, the maximum ratio of salaries paid in these mandats was raised to two-thirds in 1888.⁵⁵

The mandat refers to the authorization of payment. This bill contained the date, place, amount, beneficiary’s name, and issuer’s signature. A beneficiary could receive payment at a treasury office or related institution by presenting it, regardless of whether they were in the colony or metropolitan France. Initially, these mandats were issued upon the request of employees in the Upper Senegal River by the Treasurer-Payer in Saint Louis.⁵⁶ Nevertheless, on 4 November 1882, Aristide Vallon, the Governor of Senegal, subsequently decided to authorize the Deputy-Treasurers in the Upper Senegal River to issue them instead of the Treasurer-Payer in Saint Louis, as necessary.⁵⁷

Regarding these two decisions of the Governor of Senegal, on 3 February 1883, the Minister of Finance sent a long letter to the Minister of the Navy complaining about the second decision because these procedures had the risk of allowing these Deputy-Treasurers to request funds beyond the budget controlled by the higher administration in Saint Louis.⁵⁸ Consequently, with the exception of the case of remittances from Kayes to Saint Louis, the second decision to allow Kayes’s financial agent to issue mandats was withdrawn.⁵⁹ As an alternative solution, the Minister of Finance agreed to provide a type of draft on the treasury (traites du trésor) that was only payable in France but was negotiable in the territories of the Upper Senegal River.⁶⁰

These traites were made by the Office-in-charge of the General Movement of Funds under the Ministry of Finance in Paris and issued by the Central Treasury Funds (Caisses centrales du Trésor public) in metropolitan France.⁶¹ Unlike mandats that can be filled in on the spot, the amount was printed on the traites when they were created. According to the Dictionnaire des Finances published in 1894, the drafts on the treasury had denominations of 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1000 francs and were numbered, dated, signed, and stamped at the central cash office.⁶² In all colonies and protectorates, the commanders could pay their supply expenses with these drafts issued by the Central Treasury Funds in Paris for the Ministry of the Navy. They were, strictly speaking, endorsable bills payable only in metropolitan France at 10 or 20 days after sight with prior approval by the Ministry of the Navy. Maurice Kolsky explained that these drafts were similar to commercial papers issued by the state; once endorsed, they could be commercially circulated, like a banknote.⁶³ They were sent to the accountants in the colonies, who secured them in the same safes they used for cash.⁶⁴

As of September 1883, the Minister of Finance allocated 250,000 francs of drafts on the treasury to three towns in this region: 200,000 francs for Kayes, 40,000 francs for Kita, and 10,000 francs for Bamako.⁶⁵ Another example is that just before the establishment of the French Sudan colony, in July 1891, the Ministry of Finance sent, from Bordeaux to Kayes, drafts on the treasury of 600,000 francs and 1,420,000 francs in cash.⁶⁶ From the above, it is clear that these drafts on the treasury complemented cash, although the ratio of cash to drafts likely changed from time to time.

Furthermore, these drafts on the treasury were used in ways that went beyond their original intended purpose; colonial authorities used them to procure silver coins earned by local merchants.⁶⁷ It seems that this intention was there from the beginning. The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, Félix Faure, wrote to the Governor of Senegal, René Servatius, in a letter dated 26 December 1883:

I have the honor of informing you that the Minister of Finance …, considers that the only means that, in his mind, could make it possible to use the funds earned by the traders in the interior and to reduce the amount of cash to be sent to the Upper River consists of authorizing the Deputy-Treasurers to negotiate the traites.⁶⁸

This implies that if the Deputy-Treasurers in the territories of the Upper Senegal River could procure the specie that merchants earned using the traites, the amount of cash to be sent to the territories in the Upper Senegal River could be reduced. Approximately ten years later, in 1892, at the request of a commercial company called Flers d’Exportation, based in the town of Flers near Caen in Normandy, France, the colonial government officially institutionalized the transfer of these bills to merchants in the territories of the Upper Senegal River.⁶⁹

The positive aspects of this decision can be seen in the reactions of the merchants when the decision was reversed. In 1894, the Governor of French Sudan, Louis Archinard, suddenly announced the cessation of negotiations regarding the bills on the treasury with traders in the region, stating that this newly formed colony had no right to draw bills against the treasury.⁷⁰ In response, immediately, the Union Colonial Française (French Colonial Union), a pressure group that had been established the year before to protect French interests in its colonies, filed an objection to this decision and sent a petition to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies.⁷¹ The letter clearly stated that the military administration had used these bills to obtain specie from local merchants and that the merchants used them as an instruments of credit and for the transmission of funds to Saint Louis or metropolitan France.⁷² At that time, the trade houses, especially those originating from Bordeaux, established small stores called comptoirs or boutiques in various parts of this newly established colony. Here, they purchased African commodities, including gum Arabic provided by the Maures and supplied them, in return, cotton cloth brought from Saint Louis and everyday goods to Europeans or local people. Therefore, the merchants could have profited from trading both imported and exported goods, but since the total value of imports was greater than that of exports to France, they had to send a portion of their funds to Saint Louis or France for payment.⁷³ Under these circumstances, the drafts on the treasury allowed the transfer of these funds from the Upper Senegal River to Saint Louis and Metropolitan France to be avoided, enabling silver coins to continue circulating in the interior while also reducing the cost of transferring funds for merchants. In Saint Louis, the Bank of Senegal provided services to redeem drafts on the treasury and supplied local francs.⁷⁴ Alternatively, merchants desiring metropolitan francs could cash them in metropolitan France.

Commodity Currencies Were Still Required for Tax Collection for a While

Newly created colonies always required a budget for governance. The main sources of revenue were capitation taxes and tariffs. In the colony of Senegal, the poll tax was introduced in 1861 and was collected by village chiefs under the control of the local administration.⁷⁵ By the arreté of 31 December 1891, which regulated the financial organization of the protectorates (territories occupied but not yet officially colonized), the commanding officer of districts became responsible for collecting taxes in his territory. However, a lack of specie in the middle and upper basin of the Senegal River often forced them to receive taxes in commodity currencies.

Some tax systems introduced by the French colonial authority were merely continuations of systems before French colonization. For example, by an order on 24 January 1891, the French Sudan authority had institutionalized the oussourou, tariffs that had been imposed on caravan leaders on the northern border of French Sudan. The oussourou derives from usher in Arabic, indicating a ten percent tariff introduced by a ruler of the Tukulor Empire. Initially, the authority allowed tax collection in both guinée and salt. Customs revenues via oussourou were, at the time, fairly important sources of annual revenue in French Sudan. According to the 1893 financial report by Colonel Archinard at the beginning of 1894, French Sudan generated 140,119.98 francs of tariff revenue from oussourou, 27.3 percent of the colony’s total revenue in that year.⁷⁶ Owing to increasingly rigorous surveillance, this volume continued to increase to 420,000 francs in 1895 and to 450,000 francs in 1896.⁷⁷ Furthermore, the majority were likely paid with commodity currencies. For example, at the beginning of 1897, only one-third of the oussourou was paid in cash at the northern border.⁷⁸ The guinée collected as tariffs were reused for customs payments to the chiefs, given as gifts to marabouts, or sold at market prices.⁷⁹

Commodity currencies were also continuously accepted as a means of payment for poll taxes in some circles for a while. In the mid-1890s, even in the middle basin of the Senegal River of the Senegalese colony, receiving guinée to collect a poll tax was admitted due to a lack of coins. However, treating cotton textiles with different characteristics produced by different producers as the same currency was very difficult. In the early 1890s, in addition to Savana’s products, sources mentioned that various types of European guinée were circulated: Shandora from Ankermit (a Dutch company), some imitations named Bombay or Lion provided by British companies, and Belgium guinée. After many controversies, the colonial authority decided to divide guinée into two or three categories, fixing the conversion rates for each, as shown in Table 3, and revising them annually.

Nevertheless, suggesting a conversion table that would satisfy all stakeholders was impossible and created further conflicts. First, the arbitrariness of the decision as to which cotton fabrics to include in the list was noted; this is because the list was drawn up by the Private Council (Conseil Privé) of the colony, which was made up of prominent figures, including merchants.⁸⁰ For example, although Bombay was not very popular, this cloth was not removed from the list because a merchant in Saint Louis, who had much influential power over the Private Council, held an enormous stock of Bombay.⁸¹ Second, there was an increase in complaints from suppliers whose cloth had low official value settings.

The official value of the cloth did not always match the market value of the product. Consequently, when the market value of a cloth was greater than its official value, in theory, people preferred to consume the product rather than using it to pay taxes. As a result, some merchants likely thought that the official value effectively became the upper limit of the market price. For example, in 1894, a new guinée producer in Flers appealed to the UnderSecretary of State for the Colonies through the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Flers and the Union Coloniale Française, complaining that their products, which they believed to be of equal value to Filature X, were unfairly placed in the same category as foreign imitations named as Bombay and Lion.⁸² Undoubtedly, these conflicts between various stakeholders reduced the incentive for the colonial government to use guinée for tax collection. These episodes highlight the laboriousness of using commodity money, which makes it difficult to standardize the form and quality of money. Fortunately, a large influx of silver coins at the end of the nineteenth century enabled tax payments in cash in the colony of Senegal.⁸³

French Sudan had to accept taxes paid in commodity money longer than Senegal. In this newly conquered French colony, more diverse currencies were circulating: cowry shells, silver coins, cows, sheep, maize, and millet.⁸⁴ The officials in districts collected taxes that were paid with these monies and recorded them in two categories: “argent” (silver coin) and “nature.” The second type was converted into French francs and recorded in a ledger. The commodity currencies collected as tax revenues were consumed by the colonial authority or sold in the market.⁸⁵ However, the high transportation and management costs of these commodity monies after tax collection reduced the absolute value of the budget revenue.⁸⁶ It was natural that colonial governments often expressed their desire to stop collecting taxes with commodity monies.

In 1907, the use of commodity currency for tax payments was prohibited in this region. According to a report on tax collections in the Haut-Sénégal et Niger colony, published in 1907 by William Ponty, the Lieutenant-Gouverneur of this colony at that time, districts in the Upper Senegal River region were already almost exclusively collecting taxes in cash in the first trimester of 1906. In contrast, in more inland areas, taxes were often paid in kind.⁸⁷ However, a year later, except in Bandiagara and Gaoua, many areas were paid in cash, and even in the colonies as a whole, the percentage of taxes paid in nature plummeted from 11.6% to 3.2%.⁸⁸ It indicates that as of 1907, French coins were circulated in this colony, and people started paying their taxes in cash. While it is undeniable that the residents were scrambling to get their hands on francs, there is no doubt that the process of recognizing and accepting French coins had progressed among the local population.

Three Circuits of Currencies in the Territories of the Upper Senegal River

This section summarizes the circuits of three currencies in the Upper Senegal River Region: guinées, silver coins, and drafts on the treasury. Akinobu Kuroda coined “currency circuit” to describe the coupling of a particular money and trade.⁸⁹ In contrast, the circuits of currencies in this section only provide the circuits of each currency; at this stage, the author does not find such a specific coupling between money and trade except in the case of the gum Arabic and guinée trade.

Figure 3 shows the circuits of two monies that local people accepted, guinées and silver coins. First, merchants and financial authorities brought these monies into territories in the Upper Senegal River. Financial authorities paid for goods and services that locals, African soldiers, and merchants provided in these currencies. The choice of which to use must have depended on the intention and circumstances of the recipient and the availability of these currencies. Merchants, often called ‘Négociants’ and ‘Traitants’—which included Europeans, Metis, and black Africans—used these currencies to procure African commodities.⁹⁰ However, bartering and credit transactions were also carried out in parallel. In addition to trading gum Arabic and guinées, the Maures supplied salt and livestock and procured food and everyday goods.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Figure 3.

Circuits of guinées and silver coins before the introduction of treasury drafts.

Locals and merchants also paid taxes and other payments, such as business rights fees (patente), to the colonial authority in these currencies. In this way, these monies circulated among locals, merchants, and colonial authority, and some of them were exchanged for goods brought in from and flowing out to the outside of the region. For example, guinées flowed out to the Sahel region, where the Maures lived. In contrast, silver coins flowed back to Saint Louis and France and also further into the interior. In short, currencies flowed in the direction where each money’s recipients were.

In contrast, Figure 4 shows the change in the circuits of silver coins after the introduction of two drafts on the treasury: traites de Trésor and mandats. Mandats were issued in Saint Louis, whereas traites de Trésor were issued in Paris. Both drafts served to supplement the cash shortfall. However, unlike traites de Trésor, the mandat was not endorsable and had to be cashed at a treasury office or a related institution by the person whose name was on it. It is unclear whether the mandat issued by the Treasurer-Payer in Saint Louis could be cashed in Paris, but at least after being cashed in Saint Louis, it must have been possible to transfer money to Paris without moving specie by using the services of the Bank of Senegal or postal money order services, which started in 1878.⁹¹ On the other hand, the traites were used not only to procure goods from merchants but also to be redeemed with coins that the merchants earned there. Furthermore, the traites the merchants obtained were sent to Paris via Saint Louis, where the bills were cashed out. This created two benefits. First, these drafts ensured that silver coins, once brought in, would remain in circulation inland without flowing out to Saint Louis. Second, this system simultaneously benefited merchants because these drafts freed them from the task and risk of transporting coins to Saint Louis or France.

• Download figure
• Open in new tab
• Download powerpoint

Figure 4.

Circuits of European means of payment after the introduction of treasury drafts.

Conclusion

The methods used to supply money to colonized regions of West Africa varied depending on the colonial power and the circumstances. While many existing studies focus on British West Africa, this study focuses on inland French West Africa, where the involvement of the public sector was more pronounced, and revealed that the colonial government itself provided several different means of payment, including cotton cloth money, using government funds.

The research also revealed that France realized its objectives by cleverly using African institutions rather than unilaterally imposing itself in its way. They initially supplied commodity currencies with public money and expanded their territories by paying them to inhabitants. Next, they allowed tax payments in these commodity currencies based on the African tax system. Nevertheless, it is questionable how much they contributed to colonial management because they depreciated more easily than bank notes or coins, were costly to transport and store, and were inconvenient for accounting books. Instead, maintaining the tax collection practices introduced by African rulers may have been more meaningful initially because enforcing the right to collect taxes must have made residents aware of who their master was. Therefore, as time passed, it was only natural that coins, banknotes, and later colonial currencies would be introduced in place of commodity money to reduce transaction costs. In fact, as of the early 1890s, there was a growing expectation that a branch of the Bank of Senegal would be opened in Kayes; that never happened, however.⁹²

Under these circumstances, the drafts on the treasury that France transported inland along with cash helped keep coins inland and functioned as a means of credit among merchants and a means of payment between the colonies and metropolitan France. In his recent article, Gary Gorton described English inland bills of exchange during the Industrial Revolution in northern England as private money production without banks.⁹³ Similarly, the prototypes of these drafts provided by the French colonial authority were initially bills of exchange used by the Ministry of Navy, and even if they were used only temporarily until the introduction of colonial currency, they caused the phenomenon of public money production without banks in inland West Africa.

Notably, both cloth money and drafts on the treasury, which were introduced as a means of payment using funds from the French treasury, functioned as currencies in the Upper Senegal River basin despite their completely different materials and appearances. This fact seems to support the idea that, as Georges Friedrich Knapp stated, any goods can function smoothly as money, especially if they have the approval of the state.⁹⁴ A concrete way to realize this approval is to designate the substance as a means of payment to the government, that is, as a means of paying taxes. However, just because a currency was determined by a state (including colonial governments), it does not necessarily mean that it will continue to be accepted by locals.

In the case of French West Africa, after coins were sufficiently circulated and the colonial government’s tax collection system took hold, the colonial authority finally prohibited the payment of taxes in commodity money and forced people to pay in francs. Consequently, Africans began to look for francs, thus allowing colonial coinage to penetrate their daily transactions. In other words, forcing people to pay their taxes in francs increased the demand for French coins, maintained their value, and motivated people to earn a daily wage on plantations and public works. While such behavior is hardly voluntary, it can be understood as a result of people’s rational choices in a market created under a coercive government; this is because once the circulation of a currency exceeds a certain threshold, market forces will cause that currency to be chosen by an increasing number of users. In the sense that the government determines it, the currency is a product of the de jure standard, but if it creates a network effect through exchange and this, in turn, stimulates further demand for the currency, it can also be said to be a product of the de facto standard created by the market. Conversely, if it is possible to predict that the currency’s value will fall for some reason, naturally, no one will be seeking it.

The fact that people in Africa make rational choices when selecting a currency can be seen in their arbitrage transactions, which Jane Guyer coined as marginal gains.⁹⁵ Furthermore, although it is often said that the Africans showed their resistance by refusing to accept the currency introduced by the colonial powers, commodity money did not resume even after political independence, making it clear that using coins and banknotes was advantageous for Africans, too, at least in terms of transaction costs. On the other hand, even if a particular substance is chosen as a currency, in Africa, it is common for people to switch to a different currency if its value declines, both in the past and today. Of course, these are not behaviors limited to Africans. Nevertheless, in Africa over the past 150 years, money has been replaced from commodity to colonial and national or regional currencies, and the value has not always been stable. As we have seen in recent years in Zimbabwe and Nigeria, when the value of a country’s currency depreciates significantly, it is not unusual for people to choose Bitcoin or hard currency or those pegged to hard currency. While specific substances can become money through a top-down process by powerful authorities such as the state, money is also created through people’s choices in the market. These facts make Africa an interesting place to understand people’s behavior regarding currency selection and money creation.

Acknowledgments

The previous version of this article was presented at a workshop: Money in West Africa (17 December 2019, Clare Hall, the University of Cambridge), World Economic History Congress 2022 in Paris (29 July 2022), and Imperial and Colonial Currencies Monetary Supply, Policy, and Circulation, 16th–20th centuries (7 June 2024, CHSP, Science Po). I am grateful to Gareth Austin, Patrice Baubeau, Pat Hudson, Juliette Françoise, Hugo Carlier, and Nicolas Delalande for their comments and suggestions on the earlier versions of this article. I extend my deepest gratitude to the anonymous referee for their invaluable and constructive feedback, which has enhanced the overall quality of this manuscript. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 20K01805 and JP 24KK0030 (PI Toyomu Masaki) and JP 19H01513(PI Takeshi Nishimura).