"The cultivator is tired": Senegalese Councilors and the Struggle over Development in the Late Colonial Senegal River Valley

Abstract: In an extraordinary April 1956 meeting, Senegalese territorial councilors confronted French colonial administrators over a massive agricultural project designed to transform the Senegal River Valley. The Mission d'Aménagement du fleuve Sénégal (MAS) was one of several postwar colonial development initiatives that France pursued to bolster its economy and reassert political authority over its empire. I argue that in the 1956 meeting, the councilors did more than critique the impact of one project on the rural communities they represented. They articulated a vision of agrarian political economy that diverged dramatically from the aims and infrastructures of French colonial capitalism.