Does the West African Colonial Tax (CFA Franc) serve as an extension of Haitian Revolution’s “Indemnity” ?
Creators: name: Couloute, Carmine
Publisher: name: University of Chicago
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Colonial Tax
subject: Indemnity
subject: Haitian Revolution
subject: CFA Franc
subject: Françafrique

description: Colonialism in Africa is usually narrated through a European gaze of imperial conquest, the Scramble of Africa, and decolonization. However, although Africa now occupies the “ ambiguous temporality of the postcolonial ( Hall, 1996) the realities of decolonization remain bound by new imperialisms and the pursuit of recognition in the form of postcolonial statehood and sovereignty. This appeal for recognition by an international community of sovereign states continues to enact violence and extract resources from nominally independent African states. The postcolonial tax is a principal form of neocolonial violence and extraction. . This historical relation of colonial extraction draws on the foundational precedent of post-revolutionary Haiti and is later extended to former French West African colonies. The need for recognition gave rise to the French colonial tax in exchange for the colonial states; sovereignty. The consequence of this search for recognition of postcolonial sovereignty draws on historical parallels by the states that the French colonial tax is imposed upon. These parallels and shared historicity can be seen in various post-colonial-states like Haiti, though the indemnity imposed after the Haitian Revolution and the former French West African colonies indemnity through the use of the CFA Francs pervasive influence, strengthened by the policy of Françafrique as a form of colonial tax which preserves French West Africa’s predatory relationship with France. In turn, this thesis examines parallels between the Haitian indemnity and its legacies bound by the perils of the recognition of postcolonial sovereignty, which ushers in mechanisms of new imperialism and indemnity in the form of the West African French Colonial Tax. To explore the parallels between Haiti's indemnity and Françafrique, I will discuss the search for recognition of postcolonial sovereignty as a form of colonial tax as a means of maintaining a “colonial global economy (Bhambra, 2021).” The colonial tax is tied to the efforts of these postcolonial states search of their sovereignty, in the colonial global economy that fails to “acknowledge the significance of colonial relations which underpin the processes, as formative of, and continuous with them (Bhambra, 2021)” The ties to the colonial structure by force forms a legacy of the search for state sovereignty, in the post-colonial world. For example, although Haiti is considered as an independent state, its current state is connected to Haitian indemnity. Secondly, although the French West-African former colonies are free, they are still bound to the policy of Françafrique. Both can be seen as coercive agreements established by the French state to keep the umbilical cord that attaches the colony to the core. This umbilical cord remains attached due to former colonies; pursuit of political sovereignty and economic independence. However, former colonies are starved by the imperial core by an umbilical cord that takes valuable nutrients and returns poison. This poison fuels these post-colonial states with a sense of inferiority. This inferiority allows the French state to prey on their weak sovereignty, and fuel the postcolonial states' search for recognition by the core as a result this system builds a model in which the accumulation by dispossession is carried out in the present.