Joost van Vollenhoven (21 July 1877, Rotterdam – 20 July 1918, Parcy-et-Tigny, Aisne) was a Dutch-born French soldier and colonial administrator. Van Vollenhoven died in the Second Battle of the Marne.
Early life
Joost van Vollenhoven was Dutch by birth. His parents had commercial interests in Algeria, then a French colony, and this is where he grew up, eventually studying law. He took French citizenship in 1899 at the age of 22, and entered the École coloniale to train as a colonial administrator, where he later taught. After his military service in the 1st regiment of Zouaves, he left the army as a reserve sergeant in 1902. By 1903 he was appointed Secretary General of the Ministry of Colonies, and director of finance in 1905. From there he was made Secretary General to the Governor of French Equatorial Africa.
Colonial service
His most important early postings were as acting governor of Senegal and Guinea (1907). Moved to Asia, he became acting Governor-General of French Indochina from January 1914 to 7 April 1915, when he was replaced by Ernest Roume. Later he, like Roume, would be named and Governor-General of French West Africa (1917–1918).
First World War
After 1914 van Vollenhoven had an enormous desire to return to Europe and fight for his adopted country.
In April 1915 he got his chance, having been relieved of his Civil duties he entered the African colonial forces of the RICM (Régiment d'infanterie coloniale du Maroc, later renamed the Régiment d'infanterie-chars de marine). Initially a sergeant, he was almost immediately promoted to position of Sous Lieutenant.
In his first period at the front he was wounded numerous times and received numerous citations for valour. After being wounded in Arras on 25 September 1915, he remained in hospital for 7 months. In April 1916 he is appointed as Chief of the General Staff of the 6th Brigade 6me Brigade Chasseurs au Pied.). He serves on the staff for over a year, until mid-May 1917. Alsace, in the Somme, and in Champagne. He is wounded again in 1917.
Governor General of French West Africa
In May 1917 van Vollenhoven returned to his Civil duties as Governor General of French West Africa - this at the age of 40. His tenure as Governor General had an importance which belies its brevity. It marked a change in both the philosophy and tactics of colonial rule in French West Africa, brought on by crises and revolts which preceded him, and completed by post-war Governors General.
Crisis in the AOF
Van Vollenhoven was recruited to return to West Africa in the midst of crisis both there and in the Metropole. The war was going poorly for the French in Europe. The Governors General Ponty (1908–1915) and Clozel (1915) were under pressure to produce both resources and colonial troops for the war effort. The year 1915 was punctuated by a number of revolts in rural French West Africa over forced conscription into the Senegalese Tirailleurs and growing direct taxation of Africans who had no voice in the governing of the colonies.
Reforms
Van Vollenhoven suspended conscription in the Second zone of West Africa: those area's where the population was governed not by French citizenship law but by the decree system of the Indigénat. Instead he offered inducements to those Africans who held nominal French citizenship in the Four Communes in modern Senegal. Here he induced African leaders such as the elected representative Blaise Diagne and the Senegalese Marabout Amadou Bamba to recruit for the military, with the promise of an extension of democracy after the war. In 1916 the originaires (those Africans born in the theoretically free cities of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Gorée, and Rufisque) were granted full voting rights while maintaining legal protections offered by local customary law. Prior to this, most originaires had feared abandoning their rights to face local courts, and never begun the often arduous process of becoming French citizens.
In 1908, most African voters in Saint-Louis had been removed from the rolls by Governor General Ponty, and in the Decree of 1912, the government said that only originaires who complied with the rigorous demands of those seeking French Citizenship from the outside, would be able to exercise French rights. Even then, originaires were subject to customary and arbitrary law if they stepped outside the Four Communes. The protracted battle by Senegalese Deputy Blaise Diagne, and his help to Van Vollenhoven in recruiting thousands of Africans to fight in World War I, won legal and voting rights were to the originaires with the Loi Blaise Diagne of 29 September 1916