Play as · WW1 1914 · L1 · French West African districts
Upper Senegal and Niger (future Upper Volta) - 1914
There is no Upper Volta colony in 1914. The districts that will form it in 1919 sit within Upper Senegal and Niger, one component of French West Africa. Ouagadougou is a vital political centre because the Moro Naba and the layered Mossi chiefly system command loyalties that French conquest has not erased. Other societies to the west and southwest follow different authorities and remember their own encounters with advancing colonial columns. A circle boundary drawn by France cannot make these systems interchangeable. Your administration is small, dependent on interpreters, guards, appointed chiefs, and established rulers who may cooperate for reasons of their own. Direct orders can therefore produce apparent obedience while shifting burdens onto households least able to object. Begin by mapping who settles land disputes, organizes collective work, controls access to markets, and can call men together. Consult several sources in each district before treating a chief’s promise as a population count. The campaign is played from Ouagadougou, but neither it nor Bamako can continuously supervise the dispersed villages and seasonal routes on the map. France holds formal sovereignty and commands the armed forces. Your practical power rests on bargains whose credibility will be tested when the European war raises demands for men, grain, taxes, and carriers.
Starting position
The future Upper Volta districts are landlocked and have no railway in 1914. Roads are limited, rivers are seasonally useful or obstructive rather than dependable transport arteries, and most official travel relies on foot, bicycle, horse, or carriers. Trade follows several southern outlets toward the Gold Coast, Ivory Coast, and Dahomey as well as administrative routes toward Bamako. Those competing paths are an economic fact and a political lever: high taxes, poor prices, or forced labour can send workers and produce toward a different colony. Millet and sorghum underpin food security; livestock, cotton, shea products, craft production, and regional markets add value without replacing the grain harvest. Do not build a treasury plan around exports that require transport the territory does not possess. Maintain wells and market roads, protect seed reserves, and schedule public work outside the busiest agricultural periods. Labour migration can bring cash and commercial knowledge, yet it also removes hands from farms and makes recruitment figures unreliable. A road completed by uncompensated carriers may appear as an asset while leaving nearby villages short of food. Invest where a route lowers the cost of reaching an existing market, and compare official customs receipts with prices across colonial borders before assuming patrols can force commerce into French channels.
What turns the campaign
Wartime mobilization turns mediation into the first campaign crisis. Tirailleurs sénégalais are recruited throughout French West Africa, including these districts, despite the federal force’s name. Chiefs asked to deliver quotas may protect dependants, nominate rivals, or send men already planning to migrate south. Families face recruitment alongside head taxes, porterage, grain demands, and compulsory work. One demand may be survivable; several imposed without a shared calendar can break a household. Inspect recruitment lists by village and lineage, preserve essential cultivators and herders, and compensate carriers whose absence sustains French operations. A high total dispatched quickly can please Dakar while damaging next season’s revenue and food supply. Resistance is not merely a military statistic. The great Volta-Bani uprising begins in 1915, beyond the opening year, and must remain a future possibility rather than a revolt already underway. Its prospect should sharpen attention to accumulated coercion, uneven chiefly authority, and communities able to coordinate beyond a single district. Reinforcing every post drains supplies; indiscriminate arrests can unite grievances that remain separate. Use market reports, migration flows, and refusals of labour as early evidence. The decisive choice is whether to moderate metropolitan demands while there is still room to negotiate, or discover too late that formal control concealed a broad capacity for organized resistance.
Signature challenge
The Kingdom Beneath the Circles
The distinctive contest is between the French administrative grid and political landscapes older than it. Mossi courts can transmit messages and organize resources at a scale the colonial service envies, but using them as simple tax offices changes the relationships that give them authority. Elsewhere, relying on Mossi models can misread societies organized through different local institutions. Meet the Moro Naba as a political actor rather than decorative tradition, then test agreements through village-level outcomes. If chiefs collect levies, record how burdens are divided and create an appeal beyond the collector. If roads are required, let communities influence routes and timing so the work also serves their markets and wells. Southern migration deserves the same care: restrictions may trap labourers without creating employment, while uncontrolled departures can hollow out tax registers and farms. Maintain information links to Gold Coast and Ivory Coast markets and recognize that colonial boundaries do not end kinship or trade. Success does not mean inventing Upper Volta five years early. It means keeping these districts fed and governable inside Upper Senegal and Niger while preserving enough political trust to withstand war. A campaign that respects the difference between negotiated influence and military possession gains warning, labour, and revenue. One that confuses them may hold Ouagadougou yet lose the country beyond each road.
Try the Upper Senegal and Niger (future Upper Volta) campaign
Negotiate power across the Mossi districts before wartime extraction unites resistance.
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