French Colonial Expansion in West Africa, The Sudan, and the Sahara

Norman Dwight Harris

American Political Science Review, 1911, vol. 5, issue 3, 353-373

Abstract: The conclusion of a definite treaty of diplomatic alliance between France and Morocco, in February, 1910, marks one of the last steps in a long series of moves to establish for France a vast colonial empire in the Dark Continent. Between the years 1830 and 1850, France acquired the whole of Algeria and Constantine. In 1881 she annexed Tunisia; and, in the ten years that followed, she participated with Germany, Great Britain and Italy, in the race for territory in Africa. But it is only within the past twenty years that she has successfully created a great colonial state there.French colonial enterprise in Africa began in 1637, when Claude de Rochefort built fort St. Louis at the mouth of the Senegal river on the west coast and explored the interior for 100 miles. He was followed during the 18th and early 19th centuries by other intrepid explorers who made settlements at Millicourie on the Guinea coast and at Assinié and Grand Bassam on the Ivory Coast, and who penetrated further and further into the interior until the valiant Réné Caille, after marvelous adventures, reached Timbuktu, near the Upper Niger, in 1837. The French holdings on the Senegal were extended and consolidated into an effective base for future operations by the energetic General Faidherbe from 1854 to 1865, who added the Oulof country as far south as Cape Verde and the kingdom of Cayore, and built the harbor at Darkar. He was the first to recognize the possibilities of West Africa as a colonial center. “Our possession on the West Coast,” he wrote to the Colonial Office, “is possibly the one of all our colonies that has before it the greatest future; and it deserves the whole sympathy and attention of the Empire.”

Date: 1911
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:5:y:1911:i:03:p:353-373_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().