West African challenge to Empire: Culture and history in the Volta-Bani anticolonial war

Abstract

IN THE FINAL MONTHS OF 1915, the prominent residents of eleven villages in the Volta region of French West Africa gathered around a shrine to take an oath and declare war on the colonial administration . Thus started the Volta-Bani war, one of the last and bloodiest confrontations of the colonial occupation of West Africa. This book presents a historiagraphic account and an anthropological interpretation of this extraordinary series of events. It provides simultaneously a cultural and sociological analysis that reconsiders the historical ethnography of the region. the context for the colonial encounter, and a chronological narrative of the political and military realities of the anticolonial movement. The anticolonial leadership taking the initiative for the war had not gone into this dangerous affair blindly or in a fit of anger. They had calculated their odds well and had undertaken a tremendous effort of preparation. They were well armed, hey knew the art of fighting, they had...