“Passive Manifestation”

In 1932, the administration noticed that the phenomenon of “passive manifestation” spread from Mono and the Porto-Novo to the rest of the colony. Tax resistance took on different forms. First of all, some people decided to migrate in order not to pay the tax. The new governor, Marcel de Coppet, stated in his 1933 political report that “entire villages were running away as soon as a chief or guard was announced.”^{Footnote 38} Violent outbursts also broke out against some tax collectors.^{Footnote 39} The most common way to protest was through nonviolent actions and refusal to pay the tax. For the first time, the French administration had to face a generalized boycott. On December 31, 1932, the remaining tax amount was 3.5 million francs, due mainly to the South-Dahomean cercles (Table 1).

Table 1.

Proportion of the remaining tax amount in the South-Dahomean Cercles, 1932

Source:

ANS, 2G32/15, 1932 annual political report.

In 1933, only 57 percent of the amount expected for the year had been collected.^{Footnote 40} Collection slightly improved by 1934, even though the population in some areas such as Allada, Ouidah, and Porto-Novo above all still refused to pay the tax. On April 30, 1934, the capital city had only paid 9.82 percent of its tax.^{Footnote 41} Governor de Coppet considered the “bad taxpayers” of Porto-Novo to be “wealthy people,” “évolués.” Thus he decided to lower local civil servants’ salaries in order to force them to pay all their capitation tax.^{Footnote 42} The economic crisis alone was not the only cause of the fiscal deficit. In 1921–22, the colony had already been affected by a great depression that had not had an impact on tax collection. Governor de Coppet claimed that there was a “passive, consensual resistance” of people who “had enough money, but refused to pay.”^{Footnote 43} As a result, the administration made the distinction between two kinds of taxpayers: those who were willing and those who were unwilling to pay, and it accused many newspapers in the colony of encouraging the latter.^{Footnote 44}

The “Évolués” Speak for the Dahomeans

In 1930, only two newspapers existed in the colony; four years later, their number reached eleven.^{Footnote 45} In his 1932 annual report, Governor Aujas linked the fiscal deficit to their influence and explained that “one of the consequences of this campaign [was] a remaining tax amount difficult to appreciate.”^{Footnote 46} As the situation worsened in 1933, Governor de Coppet castigated “the press campaign against the capitation tax,” led by these “few leaders.”^{Footnote 47} Such criticism can also be explained by the fact that to a great extent the new évolué elite had been touched by the crisis. Among the new editors one could identify many former business agents working as intermediaries for large commercial companies that had greatly suffered from the downfall of price commodities. It also explains why Governor de Coppet claimed that the “journalistic career” was the only one not affected by the crisis.^{Footnote 48} However, the categorical interests of the évolués soon turned to the defense of the general interest.^{Footnote 49} Starting with the end of 1932 and until 1934, the articles dealt mainly with the crisis, its consequences on the population, and the ways the capitation tax was collected.

Taking advantage of the lack of representative systems, journalists explained that they had a “primordial duty . . . in representing and defending the general interests of the native taxpayers facing the tax office.”^{Footnote 50}La Voix du Dahomey’s editorial staff believed that the colony budget should match the income of its population. Budgetary cuts and savings were necessary in order to lower the fiscal pressure.^{Footnote 51} The local administration was accused of having increased its spending and was criticized for not having reduced the capitation tax.^{Footnote 52} Many African chiefs were regularly blamed for violent and abusive behaviors. In the Etoile du Dahomey, Eugène Tossou d’Almeida claimed that it was the “greatest scourge in the country.”^{Footnote 53} In September 1934, Le Courrier du Golfe du Bénin published an article that caused a great stir among the population. It blew the whistle on the violence, the double payments, and these “rotten officers that were always trying to mislead their administration and who were undoubtedly the determining cause of the country’s sufferings.”^{Footnote 54}

If one can qualify the influence of the French-written press on a colony wherein 99 percent of the people were illiterate, Governor de Coppet was convinced that it was powerful and dangerous and claimed that “each sheet was written in the villages, each article perfidiously spread and commented upon in the huts.”^{Footnote 55} A teacher wrote to the Voix du Dahomey to testify that copies of the newspapers made it into the villages and were often translated into the local dialect.^{Footnote 56} It was also because the évolués wrote to serve their citizen fellows that their influence was so strong. Their most common action was the dispatching of anonymous letters addressed to the administrators and governors. They questioned the chefs de canton or the commandants de cercle’s methods of tax collection. In 1933, the subdivision chief of the Porto-Novo cercle received a letter containing death threats: “If I keep going into these villages to bother them with my guards regarding their taxes, I will be turned into a corpse.” This letter shows that the campaign of the Dahomean press paid off and that some readers were no longer hesitating to go from blackmail to menacing the authorities.”^{Footnote 57}

Many complaints were equally brought about in the courts of law. In 1932, a man named Vodounon Kpôton pressed charges for aggravated assault against his neighborhood chief in relation to the tax collection.^{Footnote 58} The plaintiff was arrested by the cercle administrator. The Porto-Novo press denounced this situation in its October 1933 issue, as well as its general manager, who warned the Ligue des droits de l’Homme in Dakar.^{Footnote 59} The director of the Courrier du Golfe du Bénin, Blaise Kuassi, also intervened and sent a letter to the Commandant de cercle. He advised Vodounon Kpôton’s family to press charges with the public prosecutor of the French Republic.^{Footnote 60} The plaintiff was finally sentenced to one month by the tribunal of the cercle for “calumnious denunciation.”^{Footnote 61}

Indeed, the administration still had trouble to find out solutions to cope with the protests. The government lowered the capitation tax again in 1932, down to 26 francs. The amounts in the registers diminished by 13.55 percent between 1931 and 1933, but the people still refused to pay. Convinced that “the reluctance to pay one’s taxes would always end up by waning when faced with violent actions,” the administration put into practice an extremely repressive policy from the very beginning.^{Footnote 62}

Punishing the Debtors

In early 1932, criticism against Governor Blacher’s policy did not take long to be expressed. In May, he had to answer to growing concerns and demanded that the remaining amount be collected.^{Footnote 63} In his yearly political report, the administrator of the Allada cercle claimed that he was “trying the impossible” in order to “stimulate” the people by using the sanctions under the indigénat. ^{Footnote 64} In the southern part of the colony, the number of reprimands increased and reached 2,829 for the year. Between January and July 1932, 71 percent of the arrests were related to the “hindrance or bad-will” in the payment of taxes. This trend peaked in 1933 at 8,700. In 1934, there were still 7,500 punishments, which meant that almost 2 percent of the Dahomeans were sentenced under the indigénat (around 400,000 people) (Figure 3).^{Footnote 65}

Fig. 3.

Increase in the number of disciplinary punishments in the colony of Dahomey (January 1932–December 1933) Source: ANB, 2F85 and ANS, 17G97.

In other AOF colonies, disciplinary punishments related to economic factors were also important, but the number of sanctions inflicted was lower. Historian Georges Mondongou points out that even though the economic crisis also had a deep impact in Oubangui-Chari, it did not cause a drop in the fiscal income (Table 2).^{Footnote 66}

Table 2.

The proportion of punishments inflicted when collecting the tax or when accomplishing tax-related tasks

Source:

ANS, 17G97, Indigénat . . . , Statistical information based on the last three years, Director of Political and Administrative Affairs of Afrique occidentale française, Rougier to M. Labouret, October 29, 1935.

The exceptional nature of the Dahomean mobilization was undoubtedly the result of the influence of the évolués, who led an active campaign in their relationship with the Métropole in order to denounce the attitude of the administration.

Echoes of the Crisis on the Continent

The current mobilization of the évolués raised concerns in France. In 1933, one of Governor de Coppet’s projects was met with much criticism. In August, he allowed the “peaceful and rapid demonstration of the tirailleurs detachments” to join administrators during the tax collection.^{Footnote 67} In November, he considered the permanent stationing of troops in the southern part of the colony.^{Footnote 68} Newspapers in Dahomey strongly criticized such hasty project.^{Footnote 69}

A common unity took shape between the évolués in the regions neighboring the Gulf of Guinea.^{Footnote 70} The Dahomean elite networks were extending as far as Metropolitan France, where the echoes were first heard in 1934. La Défense derided the authorities’ project to use troops for tax collection.^{Footnote 71} Albert Nègre, the French representative of Dahomey at the Superior Council, sent a letter to the governor general whereby he defended the population’s attitude against the authorities. He wrote that it did not stem from a “bad will” or a “contradictory attitude,” but from the population’s “impossibility to pay.”^{Footnote 72} On January 11, 1934, two Communist deputies, Lucien-Henri Monjauvis and Arthur Ramette, wrote five questions to the minister of the colonies.^{Footnote 73} Monjauvis wondered whether it was true that the Dahomey natives were forced to pay the taxes due by deceased relatives or by relatives who had left the country. He also explained that he had been overwhelmed with emotion when he read in the press that the French governor of Dahomey had requested the use of 350 tirailleurs from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to collect the tax. He asked how many natives had been brutalized and imprisoned in 1933. The minister of the colonies took the matter very seriously since it was not usual for the national assembly to interfere in colonial matters. Therefore, all colonial authorities had to send statistics of the number of natives sent to prison or fined, but the minister did not communicate these figures in his answer to the deputies.^{Footnote 74} He stated that sending a detachment from the Ivory Coast to Dahomey had nothing to do with the fiscal situation of the colony and that it was a mere rebalancing of the forces deployed in the AOF.

As a consequence of such metropolitan concerns, repressive measures inflicted by the administration started to soften. In a letter sent on March 7, 1934, the governor general asked the governor of Dahomey to invite his administration to give “it more thought when enforcing administrative sanctions.”^{Footnote 75} The administration’s course of action was first of all meant to unsettle the newspapers.

The End of the Newspapers’ Campaign

Newspapers benefited from a lax regime and the only infraction that the colonial authorities could accuse them of was “the lack of respect toward the French authority.”^{Footnote 76} Rather than confronting the press on legal grounds, Governor de Coppet led a different strategy. On September 28, 1933, a new bill urged his Commandants de cercle to create an “official newspaper.”^{Footnote 77} The bill was published the following month in most of the Dahomean press, which made fun of the governor’s decision.^{Footnote 78}

In the early months of 1934, the administration managed to persuade some journalists to collaborate with them.^{Footnote 79} Newspapers such as the Phare du Dahomey, the Tribune Sociale du Dahomey, and even the Presse porto-novienne “willingly” published “the general or economic interest articles” that the administration sent to them.^{Footnote 80} De Coppet’s successor, Jean Desanti, announced in September 1934 the birth of two new complacent newspapers: Le Coeur du Dahomey and Vers la suprême sagesse. ^{Footnote 81}

Another part of the administration’s strategy was more clear-cut. De Coppet sent out instructions for a campaign designed to press charges against editors and newspapers’ managers who were making reprehensible comments. Every time a chef de canton or a civil servant was to be discredited in a newspaper, he was supposed to attack the periodical.^{Footnote 82} In the summer of 1934, many individuals pressed charges against L’Echo des cercles du Dahomey and the Courrier du Golfe du Bénin. Blaise Kuassi was arrested and sentenced to prison on June 6. The administration itself also sued the L’Etoile du Dahomey. As for the La Voix du Dahomey, its offices were searched in September 1934 and its editors were arrested in October. The reason: two short items published in the June–July and August issues suggesting that capitation tax funds were being embezzled and that “a sum of 14,000 Francs was given to a high civil servant by some of the chefs de canton.”^{Footnote 83} In 1935, the leaders of the Presse porto-novienne, Idéal et réalité, and the Courrier du Golfe du Bénin were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from three months to one year for “infringement of the French authorities” or “for offenses and vilification.”

In 1935, fiscal reforms improved the situation. The political report pointed out that the natives’ state of mind had “improved greatly.”^{Footnote 84} Collection of the capitation tax went faster, a phenomenon that was confirmed in 1936, as shown in Table 3.

Table 3.

Rate of the capitation tax collection (1934–1935)

Source:

ANS, annual political reports.

Indeed, it was the consequence of improvement of two convergent elements: first, the improvement of the economic; second, the 1935 tax reforms. The tax rate grew from 23 to 26 francs in the southern cercles and diminished in some poorer regions. The tax was henceforth due for payment throughout the year and could be paid in installments.^{Footnote 85} The establishment of a fiscal card also improved the performance of the system. The card set up a system requiring the use of fiscal stamps. This system allowed the great majority of taxpayers, who were illiterate, to check for themselves that the sum they had paid corresponded to what they really owed. “The Native knows that he pays what he owes and nothing more.”^{Footnote 86} Eventually, in order to improve the tax collection, new census operations were also implemented.^{Footnote 87}