Standard repression-or-concession models assume the state can either punish or co-opt dissent. This study shows a different dynamic: when the colonial state was weak it often withdrew authority instead.

🔎 What This Study Shows

• Colonial governments in French West Africa reduced public investments in districts where chiefs engaged in largely nonviolent disobedience.
• Contrary to a punishment narrative, chieftain disobedience led to lower government taxes and fees on Africans rather than higher taxation.
• Because the state lacked the capacity to punish with higher taxes or to placate with increased investment, it disengaged from hard-to-rule districts.

📚 Evidence Examined

• District-level records from colonial administrations in French West Africa.
• Measures of public investment and of taxes and fees levied on African populations.
• Indicators of chiefs' largely nonviolent disobedience to colonial authority.

✅ Key Findings

• Nonviolent, low-level resistance by local chiefs was followed by measurable cuts in public investment in affected districts.
• Instead of retaliating via taxation, colonial authorities often reduced fiscal demands on Africans in these districts.
• The resulting pattern of withdrawal helps explain stark subnational inequalities in development during colonial rule.

🔍 Why It Matters

• Low-intensity, nonviolent resistance — frequently overlooked in the conflict literature — shaped state–society relations and contributed to patterns of state formation.
• Understanding disengagement as a state response clarifies how capacity constraints, not only choice, produced unequal colonial development.