Volta-Bani War
1915-1917 uprising in French West Africa
The Volta-Bani War was an anti-colonial rebellion that mostly took place in the area between the Bani River and the Volta River (now modern Burkina Faso and Mali) between 1915 and 1917. It was fought between a heterogeneous coalition of villages and the Troupes coloniales. Fighting also occurred between the coalition and villages that were either loyal to the French government or sought to remain neutral.
Around one thousand villages joined the rebellion representing up to 900,000 people. At peak strength, the rebels could gather 20,000 to 30,000 men, with approximately up to 130,000 people having fought against the French throughout the war. French authorities mobilized 5,000 troops, mostly Senegalese Tirailleurs and local auxiliaries, who were better equipped and supported by six cannon and four machine-gun units. The total number of deaths is impossible to determine with many poorly documented battles occurring between the coalition and villages that either refused to join them or had sided with the French. At least 30,000 Africans, including civilians, were killed, compared to around 300 French soldiers. French forces did not discriminate between civilians and combatants, razing about 112 villages to the ground.
The war started after the 1915 rainy season when a group of representatives from around a dozen villages gathered at Bona where they resolved to take up arms against the French occupiers.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7940702. Authority coordinates are 12.463, -3.460. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Volta-Bani War” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.