Louis Brière de l'Isle
Louis Brière de l'Isle | |
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Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur | |
Other work | Governor of Senegal |
Louis Alexandre Esprit Gaston Brière de l'Isle (24 June 1827 – 19 June 1896) was a French Army general who achieved distinction firstly as Governor of Senegal (1876–81), and then as general-in-chief of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps during the Sino-French War (August 1884–April 1885).
Military career to 1871
Louis Briere de l'Isle was born on 4 June 1827 in
Briere de l'Isle was made Chef d'escadron in 1862, and inspecteur des affaires indigènes at Tây Ninh in 1863.
At the outbreak of the
Governor of Sénégal
After the war, Brière de l'Isle was named Governor of Sénégal from 1876 to 1881. He took an important role in the French conquest of Senegal.
Kanya-Forstner describes him as "an authoritarian ruler who angered French commercial interests and turned the colony into a quasi-military dictatorship".
Expansion into the Middle Niger
In April 1873 Brière de l'Isle, had sent
Brière de l'Isle was committed to expanding French control over the middle Niger River valley, but unlike many of his predecessors the French governments of the late 1870s were more willing to sanction (or accept) direct conquest of territory. Ironically the merchant houses based in Saint-Louis were in this period still hesitant about direct control of the hinterlands, preferring to work through their own trade networks and the series of French military trading posts. In this way as well, Brière de l'Isle was representative of the next stage in French colonialism.[7]
Final pacification of Senegal
In 1876 and 1877, Brière de l'Isle saw to it that the last remaining
French Guinea
To the south (in what is today Guinea), he began a series of offensives in Rivières du Sud occupying positions near Benty in 1879 and seizing the islands of Kakoutlaye and Matakong. This, with the expansion in Fouta Djallon, laid the basis for the formal creation of Rivières du Sud colony in 1882.
Conflict with the Toucouleur Empire
In 1878 he sent another French force against the
This marked the beginning of the conquest of the
This same commitment to military expansion led to Brière de l'Isle dismissal when the political winds in Paris changed. Admiral Georges Charles Cloué was named Minister of the Navy in 1881, and the Governor was warned that expansion of the rail line to the Niger River was a low priority, to be pressed by civilian (business) interests only, removing the Marine involvement in its construction. Cloué ordered the governor to cease military operations pushing east of Kita. Within weeks Brière de l'Isle ordered his military protege Lieutenant Colonel Gustave Borgnis-Desbordes to launch a punitive expedition to the Niger and seize the small town at Bamako. Brière de l'Isle was recalled on 11 March 1881 in response. By the end of 1881 Senegal had its first civilian governor, Marie Auguste Deville de Perière.[11]
Foundation for the conquest of French Soudan
While it fell to Borgnis-Desbordes,
...marks the real beginning of the phase of French expansion in Africa christened "military imperialism" by Kanya-Forstner. For the next twenty years marine commanders, not government ministers, would determine the pace and extent of French expansion along the road to Timbuktu.[12]
Giving its military commanders sufficient cover to act unilaterally (if unlawfully), this territory was quickly expanded through conquest to the east, and renamed French Sudan in 1890.
Tonkin
Promoted brigadier (général de brigade) in 1881, Brière de l'Isle was given command of the 1st Brigade of the
In September 1884, shortly after the outbreak of the
Brière de l'Isle's record of substantial military achievement was marred at the end of March 1885 by the controversial
In May 1885, in consequence of its expansion into a two-division army corps, Brière de l'Isle was replaced in command of the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps by General Henri Roussel de Courcy. He was offered command of the 1st Division of the expanded expeditionary corps, and accepted only on condition that General François de Négrier was given command of the 2nd Division. The army ministry granted this request, and Brière de l'Isle served under de Courcy's command for several months. De Courcy was an arrogant and obtuse commander, unwilling to listen to advice from his more experienced juniors, and relations between the two men soon plummeted. Brière de l'Isle disagreed with de Courcy's unimaginative pacification strategy in Tonkin and his failure to take effective quarantine measures to deal with a cholera outbreak in August 1885. In October 1885, with Annam and Tonkin in open insurrection against French rule and the Tonkin Expeditionary Corps decimated by cholera, he decided that he had had enough. Unable to stomach working for de Courcy any longer, he left Tonkin and returned to France.[16]
Final years
Brière de l'Isle was appointed Adjutant Inspector General of Marine Infantry from 1888 to 1891, then Inspector General from 1892 to 1893. He died on 19 June 1896, Saint-Leu–Taverny, Seine-et-Oise Department (now in Val-d'Oise Department), France.
Commemoration
- There is a Rue Brière de l'Isle in Toulon, the site of a major naval base in southern France.
- While a Rue Brière de l'Isle remains in central Dakar, the Rue Brière de l'Isle in Saint-Louis has been renamed Rue Abdoulaye Seck.
- Prior to independence, the Avenue Brière de l'Isle ran by the Colonial Governors Place in central Hanoi, Vietnam.
- Barracks of the 5eme Régiment Interarmes d'Outre-Mer in Djibouti are named Quartier Brière de l'Isle.
- In colonial Indochina, a major French base in Hanoi was named fort Brière-de-l'Isle. It was taken by the Japanese from Franco-Vietnamese colonial forces in a bloody battle on 9 March 1945.[17]
Offices held
Notes
- ^ James M. Haley 1861 French Conquest of Saigon: Battle of the Ky Hoa Forts, Vietnam Magazine, June 2006.
- ^ N. Hardoin. Francis & allemands: histoire anecdotique de la guerre de 1870-1871. Garnier frères (1888) pp. 275, 448, 524, 531, 608.
- ^ Kanya-Forstner, p. 57.
- ^ Kanya-Forstner, pp. 55-70; Pakenham pp. 112, 165-68.
- ^ "The purpose of these diplomatic negotiations was to prepare for the ultimate battles of conquest, not avoid them." Colvin (1981) p. 136.
- ^ Kanya-Forstner, pp. 67-71
- ^ Klein (1998) pp. 59, 61, 78, 145.
See also: C. W. Newbury and A. S. Kanya-Forstner. French Policy and the Origins of the Scramble for West Africa. The Journal of African History, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1969), pp. 253-276. - ^ Mamadou Diouf (1990) pp. 255-262.
- ^ Colvin (1981), p.136.
- ^ Kanya-Forstner (1969), pp. 57-59
- ^ Kanya-Forstner (1969), p.86. Pakenham, pp. 168, 177-78, 182.
- ^ Vandervort (1998) p. 117.
- ^ Thomazi, 183–9
- ^ Thomazi, 234–48
- ^ Thomazi, 256–61
- ^ Thomazi, 266–84
- ^ servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr, archive of Colonial police forces of Indochina. Archived 2007-06-29 at the Wayback Machine
References
- Military resume from www.military-photos.com/briere.htm
- A. S. Kanya-Forstner. The Conquest of the Western Sudan A Study in French Military Imperialism. Cambridge University Press (1969), ISBN 978-0-521-07378-3
- Thomas Pakenham. The Scramble for Africa. Harper-Collins, New York, (1992), ISBN 0-380-71999-1
- ISBN 0-521-59678-5
- Thomazi, A., La conquête de l'Indochine (Paris, 1934)
- Bruce Vandervort. Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–1914. Indiana University Press, (1998), ISBN 0-253-21178-6
- (in French) Mamadou Diouf. Le Kajoor au XIXe siècle: pouvoir ceddo et conquête coloniale. KARTHALA Editions, Senegal (1990), ISBN 2-86537-216-2
- Portions of this article were translated from the French language Wikipedia article fr:Louis Brière de l'Isle (2008-06-30). That article cites:
- (in French) Francine Ndiaye, « La colonie du Sénégal au temps de Brière de l'Isle, 1876–1881 », Bulletin de l'IFAN, série B, n° 30, 1968