“Try to Make a Fresh Start”: Dahomean Politicians Rethinking Oil Palm Development in the Late Colonial Period (1957-1960)

Abstract This article looks at the final years of French colonial rule in Dahomey through the lens of development policies concerning the territory’s main resource: the oil palm tree. It examines how the Dahomean leaders dealt with the issue of development once the Loi Cadre allowed them to have a say in the matter. I argue that the Dahomeans were crucial in finding new development strategies even before formal independence. It also tries to assess the extent to which these solutions followed or departed from previous colonial attempts. The article therefore first describes the main features of colonial oil palm development in Dahomey since the end of the Second World War. Second, it depicts how Dahomean leaders rethought the development approach and why they found in the “syndicate association” the institutional tool to implement it. Finally, it argues that this solution, which combined features of Soviet and Israeli cooperatives with approaches specific to African socialism, was different from any other option previously considered by the colonial administration. By analysing late colonialism from a non-French perspective, this article argues that the Africans were no less crucial actors than the Europeans in the making of the late colonial state.