In this book, Gamble shows how colonial schooling intersected with colonial policy and politics in French West Africa during the first half of the twentieth century. Highlighting a variety of voices and points of view—ranging from officials at the Colonial Ministry to administrators stationed in West Africa and educated African elites—Gamble makes the case that as they debated colonial education policy, French and African participants delineated competing visions for the future of French colonialism in the region. Gamble’s argument builds on, and extends, existing scholarship in a useful way, successfully connecting the main narrative to larger historical currents in both metropolitan France and in French West Africa.
Each of the book’s eight chapters represents a moment when “struggles over education, the colonial order, and the shape of the future burst into an expanding public sphere” (9). Chapters 1 and 2 explore how French officials used education policy to undermine a...