The French in West Africa

The French in West Africa http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his312/lectures/fren-occ.htm The French in West Africa by Jim Jones (Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved) Go to the syllabus , the reading on Egypt or the reading on British imperialism. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Algeria 3. Senegal 4. Soudan 5. Ivory Coast 6. Dahomey 7. French Motivation for Imperialism INTRODUCTION France's experience in Africa was conditioned by two things. First, France had a longstanding interest in the region bordering the Mediterranean Sea thanks to its own coast line between Italy and Spain, its active role in the Crusades and its incorporation into the Roman Empire. Second, France lost most of its original overseas empire in the Seven Years War (1756-1763) and the Napoleonic Wars (1790s-1815) and it Locations mentioned in this reading suffered a major setback in its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War 1 of 6 10/17/16, 1:40 PM The French in West Africa http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his312/lectures/fren-occ.htm (1870-1871). Thus, French imperialism was an effort to regain lost power rather than a continuation of previous successes, and its African empire grew out of developments along the North African coast. ALGERIA The French first occupied African soil in Algeria in 1830. Relations between France and Algiers had long been adversarial, such as when Louis XIV ordered the bombardment of Algiers in 1684 as part of an effort to retrieve Christian slaves. The French launched raids against the cities of North Africa's "Barbary Coast" after the Napoleonic Wars, charging that they harbored pirates. Although the piracy stopped after peace was restored in 1815, relations with France remained very tense. In 1828 Hussein, the Dey (Ottoman governor) of Algiers, struck French consul Pierre Deval with his fly whisk. Whether it was an accident or not, Deval reported it back to his king as an insult and two years later, Charles X used it as a pretext to invade Algiers on 5 July 1830. The French quickly occupied the city, but that ignited resistance in the Algerian interior. During two wars fought between 1832 and 1837, rural Berbers united behind a Berber leader named Abd al-Qadir (alternate spelling: Abd el-Kader) to oppose the French. After a third war against al-Qadir's forces failed to defeat him in 1840-1841, the French began to use terror tactics. Besides destroying wells and crops, on two occasions French military forces pursued al-Qadir into land claimed by Morocco--an independent country--and finally captured him in 1847. To quiet Moroccan protests, France signed the Treaty of Tangier on September 10, 1844 which provided French recognition of Moroccan independence and promises not to invade Morocco again. Berber uprisings continued in central Algeria until 1873 when the French occupied the strategically- located oasis of El Golea (modern name El Meniaa), 540 miles south of Algiers. Resistance continued deeper in the desert and in 1880-1881, the nomadic Tuaregs wiped out an expedition led by the French Colonel Paul Flatters as it tried to survey a railroad route across the Sahara Desert. Resistance continued in the desert until 1932 when the use of airplanes, radios and trucks made it possible to locate and pursue nomads. [NOTE: Resistance by desert dwellers against outsiders flared up occasionally after that, and led to guerilla warfare against the independent governments of Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger as recently as 2012.] SENEGAL The French invasion south of the Sahara began place along the Senegalese coast in 1843 under the leadership of Governor General Bouet Willaumez. He initiated a period of expansion by capturing the port of St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River and allowing privately-owned trading companies (mostly from Bordeaux) to handle the administration of the town. That ended in 1848 when the new French government of the Second Republic took over the local administration. 2 of 6 10/17/16, 1:40 PM The French in West Africa http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his312/lectures/fren-occ.htm After the Second Republic gave way to the Second Empire in 1852, French expansion in Senegal resumed during the administration of Governor Louis Faidherbe, a military officer. From 1854 to 1863, he directed a series of expeditions that established a line of French forts along the lower Senegal River as far east as Médine. During the same period, the French government took complete control over the local administration of the port city of St. Louis from the Bordeaux merchant firms. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) interrupted French exploration by producing a budget crisis after France was forced to pay Germany for the costs of the war. French exploration resumed in 1875 when a naval officer, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, began to lead the first of three The French post at Bakel on the Senegal River in expeditions intended to find a route to the 1887. Congo River. Savorgnan de Brazza's Source: Joseph Gallieni, Deux campagnes au Soudan Francais efforts resulted in French claims to land along the right bank of the Upper Congo River (as seen from a boat headed downstream) from Lake Chad to the mouth of the Congo. SOUDAN The "French Soudan" or "Western Sudan" should not be confused with the modern country of Sudan, or with the colony that was known as "Anglo-Egyptian Sudan" during most of the 20th century. Although similar in climate and latitude, the British Sudan was located on the east side of Africa near the Nile River while the French Soudan was located west of Lake Chad. The French viewed the Soudan as the link between their holdings in Algeria and Senegal, as well as the gateway to the Congo via Lake Chad. Consequently, the French exhausted an enormous amount of effort to claim it even though its economic value was small. Prior to the 1850s, there was no French presence in the Soudan, although French explorer René Caillié passed through the area enroute to becoming the first European to visit Timbuktu and return to tell about it in 1827-1828. In 1855 Faidherbe's troops began their advance towards the Upper Senegal River and built a fort at Médine, just below the Félou waterfall. Beyond that lay the empire of Ahmadu Tall with its capital at Ségou on the Niger River, and the empire of Samory Touré to the south east, with a capital at Sanankoro on the south side of the Niger River. For a time, the French felt no need to formalize their presence, but as the British began to move inland from the mouth of the Niger River, the French began to fear that the British would seize the Middle 3 of 6 10/17/16, 1:40 PM The French in West Africa http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his312/lectures/fren-occ.htm Niger Valley and perhaps even reach the Upper Senegal Valley. That fear inspired a new episode of French expansion from 1876-1881 when Governor Brière de l'Isle authorized the construction of a railroad to the Niger and the creation of a military government of Haut Senegal et Niger (literally "Upper Senegal and Niger"), an area encompassing the modern states of Mali and Niger. [For more on this episode, see Kanya-Forstner, 1969, 55.] The African empires offered resistance, so it took a decade for the French to conquer Ségou and almost twenty more years to defeat Samory. Resistance continued in the region around Lake Chad until 1900 and in the Sahara Desert until the 1930s. But by 1899, the French were able to place the Soudan under its own administration. IVORY COAST The campaign against Samory Touré dragged on much longer than expected, and by 1887, the French began to send military expeditions north from the "Ivory Coast" in hopes of outflanking Samory. The Ivory Coast, located between the Gold Coast and Liberia, received its name from 16th century traders who knew it as a good source of "elephant teeth." French merchant firms operated long-established Samory Touré, leader of the last major trading posts on the coast at Bassam and Assinie, but anti-French resistance in the western Sudan neither became particularly large or important due to Source: Gallieni, Deux campagnes ... the climate, which Europeans detested, and the lack of adequate port facilities. After the Berlin Conference, the French government used Bassam and Assinie as bases from which to establish claims over as much of the interior as possible. In 1887, an expedition headed inland from Bassam along the Comoe River and in December 1888 at the interior trading town of Kong, it met up with a second detachment sent from the Soudan. In 1891, the French managed to send another column all of the way from the coast to the Soudan and in 1892, Colonel Gustave Binger, recently retired from the military, was named governor of the new colony of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). DAHOMEY By the time the "Scramble for Africa" ended the French had more territory in West Africa than any other European nation. In addition to the places already discussed, the French acquired Tunisia in 1881, the territory surrounding the "three rivers" (French Guinea) in 1893, Morocco in 1911 and even part of German Kamerun (Cameroon) and all of Togo after World War I. But one last acquisition deserves special mention because of the attention it received in France--the conquest of Dahomey. Dahomey was located between British Nigeria and German Togo along what Europeans called the 4 of 6 10/17/16, 1:40 PM The French in West Africa http://courses.wcupa.edu/jones/his312/lectures/fren-occ.htm "Slave Coast." French merchants began to trade there in the 17th century and in 1851, traders from Marseille signed a treaty of protection with King Guezo of Abomey which gave the French the right to build a permanent base on the coast at Ouidah.

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