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

1911 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-373
Author(s):  
Norman Dwight Harris
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Senegal River ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Dark Continent ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The One

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.”

‘King of West Africa’? Bernard Bourdillon and the Politics of the West African Governors' Conference, 1940–1942

Itinerario ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-38
Author(s):  
Ayodeji Olukoju
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Second World War ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
War Effort ◽  
French Colonies ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Second World

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and the collapse of French resistance to the German onslaught a year later were momentous events which had far-reaching implications for France, Britain, and their colonies. In West Africa, the war affected existing patterns of inter-state relations within and across the French/British imperial divides, which were further complicated for the British by the emergence of two blocs in the French colonial empire – Vichy and Free French. It was in this context that the West African Governors' Conference was created in 1940 to coordinate the war effort and to manage relations with the French colonies.

Mapping Senegambia: Legacies of Ambition and the Failure of an Early Colonial Venture

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Sven Outram-Leman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Senegal River ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Secure Access ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
River Niger

Britain's short-lived Province of Senegambia (1765–1783) was part of an expansion effort in the region driven by a desire to secure access to the gum trade of the Senegal river. Drawing on Britain's knowledge of France's dealings with the Upper-Senegal region it was complemented by the adoption of French cartography, edited to illustrate a new colonial identity. It is argued here that there was an additional motive of developing closer contact with the African interior. This pre-dates the establishment of the African Association in 1788 and its subsequent and better-known expeditions to the River Niger. In contrast to the French, however, the British struggled to engage with the region. This paper approaches the topic from a perspective of cartographic history. It highlights Thomas Jeffery's map of ‘Senegambia Proper’ (1768), copied from Jean Baptiste Bourguingnon d'Anville's ’Carte Particuliére de la Côte Occidentale de l'Afrique' (1751) and illustrative of several obstacles facing both British map-making and colonial expansion in mid-eighteenth century Africa. It is argued that the later enquiries and map-making activities of the African Association, which were hoped to lead to the colonisation of West Africa, built upon these experiences of failure in Senegambia.

A curious case of nematode parasitism in a West African Hadada, Gevonticus hagedash

1945 ◽  
Vol 21 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 99-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phyllis A. Clapham
Keyword(s):  
Small Intestine ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
West African ◽  
The West ◽  
The Family ◽  
Nematode Parasitism

In the following article is described an interesting parasitic condition which is difficult to interpret. The small intestine of an Hadada, Geronticus hagedash, was brought back from the West Coast of Africa by Major T. A. Cockburn, M.D., R.A.M.C, who kindly passed it to me for further examination. The bird is a member of the family Plataleidae, living in wooded districts in West Africa in the neighbourhood of water and feeding on invertebrates, mainly annelids and small crustaceans which it finds at the bottom of ponds and streams in the mud.

Photography, Identity, and Migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Johann Le Guelte
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Identification Practices

This article examines the politics of interwar colonial identification practices put into place by the French colonial state in order to curtail the mobility of colonial (im)migrants. I argue that photography was used as a tool of imperial control in both French West Africa (AOF) and metropolitan France, since colonial men’s inability to provide the required photographic portraits often prevented them from moving around the empire. In response, colonial subjects appropriated photography in alternative ways to subvert these administrative restrictions. Moreover, they took advantage of metropolitan racial stereotypes to contest Western identification practices.

scholarly journals The explorer as hero: ‘Le Fidèle Apatou’ in the French wilderness

2004 ◽  
Vol 78 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 197-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth M. Bilby
Keyword(s):  
French Guiana ◽  
Life Story ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
French Culture ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Important Position ◽  
The One ◽  
And Function

Reconstructs the life story and activities of the Aluku Maroon Captain Apatu in French Guiana. Author describes how Apatu aligned with and aided French explorer Jules Cerveaux in exploring the Amazon region in the late 1870s, and maintained contacts with other French colonial figures. Partly because his role and achievements in colonial expansion were valued by the French, Apatu became an important intermediary between the French and the Aluku Maroons. Author further outlines how Apatu due to these French contacts, and also a journey to Paris, adapted to and assimilated French culture, although he maintained his sense of Aluku identity. He sketches the context of the French-Aluku contacts through Apatu, discussing how Apatu's political position and ambitions sometimes met with distrust and tensions with fellow-Aluku. He further indicates that Aluku alliance with the French probably was intended as a protection against intrusions of the rivaling Ndyuka Maroons. Apatu maintained his important position and function as intermediary between French and other whites on the one hand, and the Aluku on the other up to his death in 1908. Author pays particular attention to how Apatu, and after him other Aluku, absorbed "Frenchness" while maintaining an Aluku identity. This, he argues, has remained relevant up to the present, in light of assimilation policies by the French in French Guiana, increasingly affecting the Aluku since the 1970s and threatening their Maroon culture.

scholarly journals 4. A Preliminary Notice of the Akazga Ordeal of West Africa, and of its Active Principle

1869 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 159-162
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Fraser
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Active Principle ◽  
The West ◽  
North And South ◽  
Adjacent Island

This ordeal poison is referred to in the works of Du Chaillu and Winwood Reade; and several of its toxic properties have been described by MM. Pecholier et Saintpierre. A few specimens were sent to this country in 1864 by the Rev. A. Bushnell of Baraka, and these were very kindly given to the author by Mr Thomson of Glasgow; and a further supply came from the same quarter in 1865. These gentlemen, and Dr Nassau of Bonita, supplied valuable and interesting information regarding its employment.The poison is known in Africa as Akazga, Boundou (or M'Boundou), Ikaja, and Quai; Akazga being probably derived from nkazga, which signifies pain or hurt. It is used as an ordeal for the detection of real and superstitious crimes on the West Coast of Africa, in a large district which extends north and south of the equator, and many miles inland, and also in the adjacent island of Corisco.

Republican Imperialisms

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 118-142
Author(s):  
Christina Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Advocacy Groups ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Colonial Empire ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
History Of Empire

In the 1880s and 1890s, a wave of histories of colonial empire appeared in France. But even though they were produced by members of similar republican colonial advocacy groups, these accounts narrated the history of empire in contradictory ways. Some positioned “colonial empire” as an enterprise with ancient roots, while others treated modern colonization as distinct. Some argued that French colonial empire was a unique enterprise in line with republican ideals, but others insisted that it was a European-wide project that transcended domestic political questions. By tracing the differences between these accounts, this article highlights the flexibility that characterized late nineteenth-century republican understandings of empire. It also points to the ways republican advocates for colonial expansion during this period looked both historically and comparatively to legitimize their visions for empire’s future in France.

Andrew Beveridge Curror (1811–1844): collecting natural history specimens while preventing the slave trade along the west coast of Africa

Phytotaxa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 436 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-156
Author(s):  
ESTRELA FIGUEIREDO ◽  
GIDEON F. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Type Specimens ◽  
The West ◽  
Biographical Information ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
Plant Names

For nine years, from 1835 until his death, the British-born Andrew Beveridge Curror (27 October 1811–11 July 1844) served as surgeon on different ships of the British Royal Navy. From 1839 he sailed on ships of the West Africa Squadron, which aimed at the curtailment of the slave trade along Africa’s west coast. Curror additionally had a strong interest in natural history and collected from continental Africa and Atlantic islands what would become the type specimens of several plant names. We provide biographical information on Curror and an analysis and appreciation of his collecting activities. We additionally provide a list of Curror’s collections that could be located.

The System of Native Administration in Tanganyika

Africa ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 302-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. F. Perham
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
East Africa ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
The West ◽  
General Sense ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Indirect Rule

Opening ParagraphThe object of my visit to Southern and Eastern Africa was to make a comparative study, but I intend in this paper to deal with Tanganyika. This is not because I over-estimate its importance or its singularity. Indirect rule in its general sense is not an invention of this age, and even in the special sense it has acquired during the last twenty years the classic example is in Nigeria. I know that you will all feel with me what a privilege it is for us to meet here at the invitation and in the presence of that administrator whose career was first bound up with the acquisition of East Africa and then with the construction of the system of government in West Africa, the influence of which now reacts upon the East. Exactly what Tanganyika owes to Nigeria could only, perhaps, be learned by ‘listening in’ at a conversation between Lord Lugard and Sir Donald Cameron of a kind that we may suspect has been taking place during the last few weeks. I certainly do not know myself, though I hope to go out shortly to the West Coast in order to find out, if only in part.

scholarly journals FORMATION OF T0MB0L0 AT THE WEST COAST OF IWO-JIMA

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (19) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Toshiyuki Shigemura ◽  
Jouji Takasugi ◽  
Yoshihiro Komiya
Keyword(s):  
West Coast ◽  
Field Measurements ◽  
Northern Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Sea Floor ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Variation Rate ◽  
Induced Currents ◽  
The One ◽  
Dominant Direction

This paper intends to clarify why and how such a huge tombolo having a surface area of 1,700,000 m2 has been formed at the west coast of Iwojima for relatively short period of 33 years after 1945. Analyses are performed on various data obtained through literature survey and field measurements to determine the growth rate of tombolo and variation rate of shore and sea floor surrounding the island. Model tests are also made on the formation of tombolo. The followings are the conclusions derived through the analyses: (1). Source of the sediments is the one produced at the northern part of island where sea floor has been lifting at a rate exceeding 30 cm per year, (2). Waves with dominant direction of N to NE which appear in fall and winter erode the northern coast and currents induced by these waves carry these sediments southward along both coasts of the island. (3). Waves with dominant direction of S to SE which appear in summer and their induced currents carry the sediments northward along both coasts of the island.

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