French Equatorial Africa

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chapter 6 French Equatorial Africa

1 Introduction

As in Britain, the imperialist wind blew through French politics and society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This renewed interest in overseas territories originated in a national trauma: the loss of most of the Alsace-Lorraine region to Germany in 1871. This event, a keenly felt humilia- tion, would determine French foreign policy until after World War i. French foreign and, by extension, colonial policy was directed at restoring its status among the other European powers: ‘France had to reforge her prestige in the community of European nations. This, according to Jules Ferry, would have to be done, not on the Rhine, but in Africa.’1 France mitigated its revanchist at- titude to Germany over time as it adjusted its national polities. Weighing the pros and cons of its colonial venture in Africa, France decided on an autono- mous colonial policy. Subordination, centralization, executive supremacy, uniformity and formality characterized French rule of its African territories. However, French criticism of informal empire, the system of rule used by Brit- ain and, to a lesser extent, Germany,2 diminished in the 1890s when France realized that direct rule of the overseas territories was impossible and that it necessarily had to deploy trading companies active on the ground. Despite its preference to acquire African territory by way of occupation, French control over Equatorial Africa originated in the establishment of pro- tectorates by concluding treaties with native rulers in the 1880s and 1890s.3 Once the French and African contracting parties had signed the treaty text, French law, administration and institutions were imported into the protector- ate. French sovereignty being exercised over African territory put considerable strain on both the sovereign rights of the native ruler and native land ownership. It is this tension that gives rise to the two main questions to be addressed in this chapter. First, what property and sovereignty arrangements were made in the treaties and other agreements concluded between the French and the people residing in Equatorial Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century? Second, how did existing sovereignty and property rights fare after the

1 J.J. Cooke, New French Imperialism 1880–1910: The Third Republic and Colonial Expansion (Newton Abbot, Hamden: David and Charles, Archon Books, 1973), 11. 2 See Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 144. 3 Fisch, ‘Africa as Terra Nullius,’ 354–357.

140 chapter 6 treaties had been signed? The main purpose of the current chapter is to estab- lish the facts of the treaty-making practices between France and African rulers as a prelude to assessing the legality of these practices in Chapter 8. First a brief historical background to French presence in Equatorial Africa will be given (§2). Next, the treaty texts and practices between France and native rulers in Central Africa will be analysed and evaluated, with particular at- tention being paid to the transfer of sovereignty over territory and the French approach to native land ownership (§3). Following this exploration, the dis- cussion will shift to the legislation France enacted in Equatorial Africa after the treaties had been concluded (§4) and the interpretation and execution of the treaties (§5). The chapter concludes with some remarks on the issue of the legality of the French colonization of Africa (§6).

2 Historical Background

By the time of Third French Republic was established, France’s imperial history stretched back to the sixteenth century. In the second half of the eighteenth century, France had lost a great deal of territory and influence in India, Can- ada and the Caribbean to Britain. In the early nineteenth century, the French set their heart on imperial expansion in Northern Africa, with the acquisition of Algeria as its first major result4 after its unsuccessful invasion of Egypt in 1798–1801.5 From the seventeenth century onwards, the Senegal in West Africa was the lifeline for French trade.6 West Africa was the springboard for French territorial expansion on the African continent.7 The appropriation of Tunisia in 1881 proved pivotal in the founding of the French Empire and in France’s rehabilitation on the international scene. Although France was especially in- terested in the Arabic part of the continent, Sub-Saharan Africa played a vital role in French colonial practice. French rule was established over a territory stretching 1,400 miles from the lower Congo River to Lake Chad, and consisted of present-day Gabon, the Congo Republic, the Central African Republic and the southern part of Chad. In the late nineteenth century, this area was known

4 J. Sessions, By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011). 5 A.L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford University Press, 1997), 16–19. See Wesseling, Verdeel en heers, 27–28. 6 Wesseling, Verdeel en heers, 218–219. 7 Ibid., 220–232.