Emplacing Africans: Ruralization in French colonial education in West Africa, 1920--1940

Between the two world wars, French-run schools in West Africa experienced a change in structure, purpose and curriculum. Reversing a decades old trend of a liberal arts education that aimed to assimilate all Africans into French culture and society, state-sponsored schools instead directed students toward agricultural and artisan training in the decade before the Second World War. The shift in curriculum accompanied a much larger "ruralization" project in colonial education, as the state sought to fixate Africans both physically and socially outside of European colonial cities. Previous colonial education had created a class of African elite auxiliary colonial agents who demanded increased autonomy and civil rights. In response to such challenges to French authority in West Africa, and in part influenced by ruralist movements in France and in the Empire as a whole, colonial administrators sought to place all Africans in a rural "milieu." The ruralization project involved changes in curriculum and structure at all levels of colonial education, and ascribed all Africans as biologically inherently rural. The project was an intentional and systemic process to remove Africans, culturally and intellectually, front the sinews of French power and opportunities to social mobility through French education. This dissertation chronicles French educational policies that were used to categorize African colonial subjects as culturally, socially, and politically rural. It examines colonial archival documents to explore the origins of the ruralization project, its implementation and suggests possible legacies to France's former colonies.