Dead-End Scandal in M'Pésoba: Local Politics and Colonial Justice in French West Africa, 1913–18

Abstract This article scrutinizes recent histories of colonial and international law that use metropolitan reactions to the ‘scandals of empire’ to project a reform-oriented version of European colonialism. In French West Africa, most scandals never reached the level of metropolitan debate; they hit dead ends in colonial bureaucracies. Analyzing one dead-end scandal, the M'Pésoba Affair, this article argues that colonial justice on the ground often adhered to a politics of expediency, not a reformist rule of law. To maintain their precarious grip on power, colonial administrators had to simultaneously appease their superiors, economic interests, and powerful African actors. Resolving the M'Pésoba Affair, for one, entailed navigating the complex entanglements of cotton production, chiefly disputes, Islamic policy, and interracial sexual relationships in a backwater of empire marked by anticolonial revolt and world war. Especially in moments of crisis, political constraints shaped the application of justice.