French conquest of Senegal
This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. (September 2019) |
French conquest of Senegal | |||||
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Belligerents | |||||
Kingdom of Waalo | France |
The French conquest of Senegal started in 1659 with the establishment of Saint-Louis, Senegal, followed by the French capture of the island of Gorée from the Dutch in 1677, but would only become a full-scale campaign in the 19th century.
First establishments
According to some historians[
Various European powers, such as Portugal, the Netherlands, and England then competed for trade in the area of Senegal from the 16th century onward. The island was captured by the Dutch in 1588, where they established defensive forts and developed trade further.[4]
In 1659, France established the trading post of
The states of the
The Kingdom of Sine remained a modest participant in the Atlantic system, secondary to the larger Wolof, Halpulaar [speakers of the Pulaar language i.e. the Fula and Toucouleur people] or Mandinka polities surrounding it on all sides... As practices of enslavement intensified among other ethnic groups during the 18th century, fueling a lucrative commerce in captives and the rise of internal slavery, the Siin may have been demoted to the rank of second player, in so far as the kingdom was never a major supplier of captives.
— François G. Richard[6]
In his 1968 publication: Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1947-1914, Professor Martin A. Klein notes that, although slavery had existed in Wolof and Serer culture, as well that of their neighbors, the institution of slavery did not exist among the
Conflicts erupted with the Muslims to the north, as when Marabout Nasr al Din attacked Mauritania and the Wolof across the border in 1673, but he was defeated through an alliance between local forces and the French.[5]
19th-century territorial conquests
During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain captured Gorée in 1803 and Saint-Louis in 1809, and proclaimed the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, to which the French had to agree upon recovering the two posts.[5] The 19th century thus saw a decline in the slave trade, and the rise of commodity production instead.[5] The trade of acacia gum, used for dyes for high-quality textiles and for medicine production, became paramount.[5] Peanut cultivation also proved to be a valuable resource for the area.[9]
In the Franco-Trarzan War of 1825, the French started to assert control of the mouth of the Senegal river against the rival state of Trarza.
In the 1850s the French, under the governor
By 1860, the forts built between Médine and St. Louis allowed Faidherbe to launch missions against the Trarza Moors in Waalo (north of the Senegal river), who had previously collected taxes on goods coming to Saint-Louis from the interior. Faidherbe also started the westernization of the area by developing banks, civil administration, and also established an accord with Senegal's religion, Islam.[14]
Expansion continued under Governor
From 1880, France endeavoured to build a railway system, centered around the
The first Governor General of Senegal was named in 1895, overseeing most of the territorial conquests of Western Africa, and in 1904, the territories were formally named French West Africa (AOF: "Afrique Occidentale Française"), of which Senegal was a part and Dakar its capital.
See also
- History of Senegal
- List of colonial heads of French Sénégal
- Assimilation (French colonialism) – a policy that ostensibly offered rights and French citizenship to native Africans colonised by France
- Indigénat – laws and regulations which created in practice an inferior legal status for natives of French colonies from 1881 until the 1940s
Notes
- ^ African glory: the story of vanished Negro civilizations by John Coleman De Graft-Johnson p.121 [1]
- ^ Carter G. Woodson: a historical reader by Carter Godwin Woodson p.43 [2]
- ^ a b African glory: the story of vanished Negro civilizations by John Coleman De Graft-Johnson p.122 [3]
- ^ a b International Dictionary of Historic Places: Middle East and Africa by Trudy Ring p.303 [4]
- ^ a b c d e Encyclopedia of African history Kevin Shillington p.541
- ^ Richard, François G., Recharting Atlantic encounters. Object trajectories and histories of value in the Siin (Senegal) and Senegambia. Archaeological Dialogues 17(1)1–27. Cambridge University Press (2010) [5]
- ISBN 9780804706216
- ISBN 9780230618503 [6](Retrieved 11 July 2019)
- ^ Klein, M. (2007). France's African Colonies. In T. Benjamin (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, (Vol. 2). (pp. 490) Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
- ISBN 9780852552766
- ^ Diouf, Cheikh, "Fiscalité et Domination Coloniale: l'exemple du Sine: 1859-1940", Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar (2005)
- ISBN 0-85224-029-5
- ISBN 0-85224-029-5
- ^ Klein, M. (2007). France's African Colonies. In T. Benjamin (Ed.)Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450, (Vol. 2). (pp. 493) Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.
- ^ a b Slavery and colonial rule in French West Africa Martin A. Klein p. 59 [7]
- ISBN 9780521596787.
- ISBN 9781841629131.
Further reading
- Kanya-Forstner, A.S. (1969). The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-10372-5..
- Saint-Martin, Yves-Jean (1989). Le Sénégal sous le second Empire: Naissance d'un empire colonial (1850-1871) (in French). Paris: Karthala. ISBN 2-86537-201-4.
- Webb, L.A. (1985). "The trade in gum arabic: prelude to French conquest in Senegal". Journal of African History. 26 (2–3): 149–168. S2CID 162162993.