The bureaucratic policy of suspect surveillance

This study analyses the history of the Department of Political and Administrative Affairs (DAPA) focusing on its role and contribution to the French conquest and subsequent colonisation of French West Africa (FWA). It focuses on its primary remit which concerned the surveillance of ''suspicious'' figures in the colonial public arena. It seeks to show how this creation met the requirements of the colonial cultural project in AOF. To do this she examines the circumstances surrounding the creation of this department and the many reforms it underwent between 1845 and 1957. More concretely it analyses the techniques used by the DAPA to identify suspects and equip itself with the appropriate tools to monitor the figures most representative of suspicion and censor the ideas of which they are the supposed or real producers or vehicles.