| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 304 words from this article are provided below; about 671 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sub-Saharan Africa

Monica M. van Beusekom. Negotiating Development: African Farmers and Colonial Experts at the Office du Niger, 1920–1960. (Social History of Africa Series.) Portsmouth: Heinemann. 2002. Pp. xxxviii, 214. $65.00.

The Office du Niger was colonial French West Africa's biggest agricultural development project. A product of the interwar infatuation with science and engineering, the Office du Niger was designed to remake nature by irrigating 1.8 million hectares in the semi-arid and sparsely populated region of French Soudan and to feed France's voracious appetite for cotton and Senegal's population of peanut farmers with rice, who in turn would supply the metropole's oil-seed industry. The raw materials shortages during World War I made French policy makers keenly aware of the potential of its colonies to supply the metropole with raw materials as well as troops. In 1921, Colonial Minister Albert Sarraut presented the National Assembly with an ambitious improvement program for France's empire. Sarraut's program linked economic development to the moral, political, and social progress of France's colonial subjects. It was to be a program of mutual betterment in which the ideas of social evolutionism prevailed and the French expert was pitted against the benighted native. The Office du Niger failed to deliver either the products or the social improvement France expected. Explaining that failure is central to Monica M. van Beusekom's book. 1

Van Beusekom's book contributes to the field of development studies by providing a rich case study of the transformations and failure of a major project. The value of the Office du Niger as a case study is that it had such a long run. Although the author stops her study at the independence of Mali in 1960, the Office du Niger persisted into the independence period and continues to this day, although in substantially altered form. . . .

There are about 671 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.