‘Le Roi est mort! Vive le roi!’

The Comparative Legacy of Chiefs after the Transfer of Power in British and French West Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID20045810
AuthorsAnthony Kirk-Greene, A H M Kirk‐greene (corresponding author)
Year1995
Pages16-33
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueState and Society in Francophone Africa since Independence (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan UK (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/978-1-349-23826-2_2
OpenAlexW2493362071
ISBN9781349238262
LanguageFR
Citations received2
References cited9

The perceived, or at least the projected, critical distinction between British and French colonial administration in West Africa did not, as might be supposed, find its loudest controversy over the issue of the ultimate goal of colonial policy. On that the two sides were, right up to the final decade of empire, as opposed as they had been at Waterloo 150 years earlier. For it was not until the approval of the loi-cadre in 1956 that the same connecting link could at last be established between, on the one hand, the British undertones of African self-government as the objective, however distinct it might be in the inter-war indeterminedness of 'indefinite time ahead' and brought into closer definition only in the 1943 declaration that 'We are pledged to guide colonial people along the road to self-government within the framework of the British Empire';1 and, on the other, France's unambiguous stand on a single entity, 'La République française, une et indivisible', a constitutional stance reaffirmed in the no less unequivocal premise of the Brazzaville Conference of 1944, that 'the eventual, even far distant, introduction of self-government in the colonies is to be avoided'.2

Administration (probate law) · Art · Colonialism · Declaration · Economic history · Empire · Government (linguistics) · Humanities · Political science · Power (physics) · Premise · African history and culture studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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