Across French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa the indigenat, a summary disciplinary code applied to colonial subjects, underpinned a system of unpaid prestation labour, forced crop cultivation and requisition for public works. The largest single project, the Congo-Ocean railway from Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire (1921-34), drew workers by force from across Equatorial Africa; Britannica records 15,000-20,000 African deaths and Stanford historian J. P. Daughton puts the toll at at least 20,000, from disease, exhaustion and violence. Military conscription for the two world wars removed roughly 200,000 men in each conflict, and recruitment drives helped provoke the Volta-Bani war of 1915-16, one of the largest anti-colonial revolts in French Africa, suppressed with heavy loss of life. Whole communities fled across borders to British territory to avoid recruiters, a movement colonial officials recorded with alarm. Forced labour was abolished in April 1946 by the law carried by Felix Houphouet-Boigny, and the indigenat was ended the same year.
The French colonial administration conscripted African men for military service and public works and punished evasion under the indigenat code
Colonial enumerations, themselves rough head-tax counts, put French West Africa at about 14-15 million and French Equatorial Africa at about 3 million in the 1930s. These counts were made by the same administration that levied the labour and were widely understood to undercount, since registration meant liability.
The range combines 15,000-20,000 railway deaths (Britannica) or at least 20,000 (Daughton) with deaths in the Volta-Bani repression, usually put at tens of thousands including famine deaths, and with unquantified mortality in other labour requisitions. Combat deaths of conscripted tirailleurs in Europe are not included here.
French administrative records, the 1927 Gide and Londres exposes and Daughton's archival work document requisition of labour, punitive expeditions and village burning during recruitment.
Senegal, Central African Rep., Congo, Burkina Faso, France