Play as · WW1 1914 · L1 · French colony

Senegal Colony - 1914

Senegal opens in 1914 as France's oldest West African colony and the administrative heart of a much larger federation. Saint-Louis remains the colony's capital, but the governor-general of French West Africa works from Dakar, whose harbour and cable connections give it importance far beyond Senegal's borders. This concentration of imperial offices does not make the territory politically uniform. Residents of Dakar, Gorée, Rufisque and Saint-Louis—the Four Communes—occupy an exceptional legal position and elect municipal councils, while most people elsewhere remain French subjects governed through chiefs and the indigénat. Blaise Diagne has just won election to the Chamber of Deputies, becoming the first Black African deputy elected from the communes. His victory creates a channel into metropolitan politics at the same moment that war turns Senegal into a recruiting ground and transport hub. Your authority therefore rests on several overlapping bargains: with elected commune politicians, Muslim leaders, commercial houses, rural chiefs and officials responsible to Dakar. Orders can travel quickly along the coast and railway, yet compliance inland depends on people whose obligations and rights differ sharply. The opening question is whether you use Senegal's unusual institutions to negotiate wartime demands or let federation officials treat political participation as an inconvenience.

Starting position

Senegal possesses the best transport network in French West Africa, although it was designed chiefly to move exports and troops. The completed coastal railway links Dakar with Saint-Louis. East of Thiès, construction is advancing toward Kayes but will not create a continuous Dakar–Niger connection until the 1920s; the older Kayes-to-Niger line therefore remains a separate inland system in 1914. Groundnuts dominate cash-crop production in the western districts; merchants extend credit, farmers accept weather and price risks, and rail charges decide which harvests reach ships profitably. Dakar can receive ocean traffic when wartime shipping is available, repair vessels and redistribute stores across the federation. These are formidable advantages, but they create exposed dependencies. Imported cloth, machinery and food can become scarce, while an export drive competes with millet cultivation and household labour. French forces also draw on the tirailleurs sénégalais, a name applied to West African units recruited well beyond Senegal itself. Local garrisons, police and administrators are small compared with the population they claim to govern. You can reserve wagons for grain and civilian trade, or give military traffic absolute priority. You can stabilize producer credit and market access, or pursue immediate export receipts. Dakar's strength is usable only if locomotives, bridges, port labour and rural supply survive the strain; losing any one of those links turns the colony's celebrated infrastructure into a series of bottlenecks.

What turns the campaign

War immediately intensifies arguments over military recruitment. Voluntary enlistment cannot meet every demand from France, while coercive methods risk flight, concealment and resistance. Diagne can present commune interests in Paris and later becomes central to recruitment negotiations, but he does not speak for every rural community. The Mouride brotherhood and other Muslim networks command trust that colonial officers cannot manufacture, especially across the groundnut basin. Their cooperation may improve information and reduce abuse; attempting to subordinate them can turn a manpower problem into a crisis of legitimacy. Each levy also has an agricultural calendar. Taking young men during planting or harvest reduces food and export output months later, and requisitioning carriers or animals can isolate markets before any battle reaches Senegal. The colony is not a sovereign belligerent: diplomacy and grand strategy are set by France, and Dakar's federal command may redirect local resources to campaigns elsewhere in West Africa. Your meaningful choices lie in implementation. Publish quotas by district, investigate recruiters, provide for soldiers' dependants and preserve a route for appeal, or reward officials solely for numbers delivered. Political rights in the Four Communes make arbitrary policy especially visible, while the unequal treatment outside them makes easy assurances ring hollow. Early turns reward honest accounting of who serves, who profits and which villages bear repeated demands.

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