Guinea - Early French Activity
French and other European commercial interest was centered on Senegal in the 1700s. The coast of modern Guinea, greatly indented and difficult to navigate, offered little attraction, and throughout the century trade conducted there was largely in the hands of stateless Portuguese and Portuguese half-castes who had settled permanently and had become part of the indigenous societies. British-French wars from about midcentury brought loss of important French settlements in Senegal. They were restored in 1783 only to be lost again during the Napoleonic Wars (1793—1815), which also brought a complete halt to French trade with West Africa.
The Frenchman Gaspard Mollien, survivor of the sinking of the Medusa (off Mauritania), reached Fouta Djallon in 1818, from Senegal. In 1827 René Caillé left Boké, crossed on foot the Fouta Djallon and reached Timbuktu (present Mali).
During the early decades of the 1800s, French influence and French trading activities developed slowly in the coastal area of modern Guinea. Agreements were made with local chiefs for trading privileges in exchange for payment of fees. Among the early agreements was one with the Landouma, a people living upriver from the Rio Nunez estuary, on which a French trading post had been established. Another was concluded with-the neighboring coastal Nalou. Most arrangements were made directly by private traders, although some agreements or treaties may have involved official participation.
For their part, the Englishman Gordon Laing (1826) and the French René Caillié (1828) reached Timbuktu in Mali. In 1837 a French mission recommended that official French trading activities be limited to north of the Casamance River in southern Senegal. Two years later, however, a new Landouma chief raised trading fees; the traders refused to pay, and their houses were destroyed. British and French warships arrived, and the customary fees were reinstated. But trouble over fees continued during the next ten years, and in 1849 a French ship bombarded Boké, the principal Landouma center. This resulted in local acceptance of French sovereignty, the first such instance in the modern Guinea region.
Exports during these years consisted of various locally produced goods and of hides and some gold that came from the Fouta Djallon. Slaves were also an item of trade. The slave trade was made illegal by the French in 1818, and in 1831 France further allowed British naval vessels to stop and search suspected slave ships. The trade was officially abolished in 1848; but the many inlets and estuaries of the Guinea coast offered excellent hiding places for slave ships, and the trade continued until about 1865.
In 1838, the French schooner "La Fine" ascended the Rio Nuńez and a treaty bound France to the Nalou. In 1840, the French admiral Bouet-Willaumez (1808-1871), future governor of Senegal, signed the first treaties with local chiefs of Guinea. By 1858 France was only installed in Boké, which remains vassal of Fouta Djallon. At the same time, in 1850, Lieutenant Hecquart reached Fouta, who recognized France's sovereignty at Boké in 1866, and was occupied militarily.
Finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, the battles for colonial conquests began in Middle and Upper Guinea, that an adventurer, in some ways a visionary, Aimé Olivier, Earl of Sanderval, appeared. In 1880, the Frenchman Olivier de Sanderval laid the foundations of European colonization in the region. In the 1880s, the almamy (sovereign) of Malinke origin, Samory Touré, equipped with modern weapons, took control of the interior of the country. In 1884-1885, following an agreement between the colonial powers of the time (France, Great Britain, Germany and Portugal), the Berlin conference recognized the "rights" of France over the region.
After the Congress of Berlin (1885) and a series of international congresses delimiting the borders, Guinea was first established as a colony dependent on Dakar (Rivers of the South), and in 1891 became an autonomous colony.
The history of the city of Conakry began on May 8, 1887 with the French taking possession of the whole of the island of Tombo (also written Tumbu), and the intention of founding there the capital of The colony of the Rivers of the South. The first constructions did not date until 1889. In 1885 there were about 300 inhabitants divided into two villages, Conakry and Boubinet and in two small groups of huts, Krou Town and Tombo. Conakry counted about 30 buidings. The island was completely covered by a forest of palms.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
