From early on Upper Senegal and Niger was wracked by violence in the face of colonial reorganization and taxation.

The latter engulfed much of the Niger valley and was suppressed by four French columns arriving from Dori, Gao, Tahoua, and Zinder.

[2] A decree of 2 March 1907 added the cercles of Fada N'gourma and Say, which had been part of the colony of French Dahomey (present-day Benin).

Between November 1915 and February 1917, the Colony of Upper Senegal and Niger witnessed vastly popular, temporarily successful, and sustained armed opposition to the colonial government in its western Volta region, which is referred to as the Volta-Bani War.

[5] This was the most significant armed opposition to colonial authority organized anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa in the period preceding World War II.