Upper Ivory Coast

Upper Ivory Coast (French: Haute-Côte d'Ivoire) was an administrative region within the French colony of Ivory Coast, French West Africa from 1938 to 1947, consisting of most territories that had previously belonged to the colony of Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso). The headquarters of the Upper Ivory Coast administrative region were at first in Ouagadougou but were later moved to Bobo Dioulasso.[1] Tens of thousands of forced labourers were brought from Upper Ivory Coast to plantations in the southern areas of the colony, through a supposedly voluntary recruitment scheme. The dominant group in Upper Ivory Coast society, the Mossi aristocracy, resented the loss of Upper Volta as a separate colony and pressured French authorities to re-establish it.

  1. ^ International Boundary Study, Vol. 166-172. Geographer, Department of State, 1979. p. 10