Guinea - French Expansion
Until the mid-1800s French power in West Africa was largely centered in Saint-Louis and the lie de Gorée in Senegal, other French holdings being little more than trading areas occupied or used by French merchants. There was little enthusiasm in France for the acquisition of colonies although, after the accession of Napoleon III in 1848, the government announced that it would actively promote the development of trade in Senegal and extension of French influence toward the interior.
In 1854 Captain (later General) Louis Faidherbe arrived in Senegal as governor. Faidherbe was convinced that access to the Sudan hinterland and its trade and French control of such access were vital to the development of a viable French commerce in the region. This aim, which he pursued throughout his long tenure (1854—61 and 1863—65), had an important influence on the military officers who later led the way in the acquisition of the French West African colonies.
Faidherbe's arrival coincided with a period of militant Islamic revival and the formation in the western Sudan of the Toucouleur Empire of Al Haj Omar. Originally from the Fouta Toro, Al Haj Omar had established himself at Dinguiraye in present-day Upper Guinea in 1850. Using this as a base, he organized a large military force, which included many Toucouleur people, and began the conquest, partly by conversion and partly by arms, of native states lying to the north and northeast.
Although Al Haj Omar appears to have been interested in cooperation with the French, recognizing the value of their trade to provide him with arms, Faidherbe perceived militant Islamism as a threat to his own goal and the safety of the coastal settlements. In 1857 his forces halted the Muslim advance at Médina (at which a French fort had been built in 1855) on the upper Senegal River, and Al Haj Omar's main thrust then turned eastward. Al Haj Omar was killed in 1864, but his son Ahmadu continued to hold areas of eastern Guinea until the Toucouleur Empire was defeated by the French in 1893.
The French drive toward the interior of West Africa ended for a time, however, when Faidherbe left Senegal in 1865. His immediate successor favored extension of activities along the present Guinea coast, and in 1866 a French military detachment was sent to garrison Boké; the following year a military post was established at Benti. French political control of the coastal area of Guinea was strengthened, meanwhile, when the ruler of Forécariah placed himself and his people under French suzerainty and protection in 1865, and similar actions were taken by the Landouma and Nalou in treaties in 1866.
During this time in Metropolitan France, Napoleon III's Second Empire was experiencing increasing financial problems. There seemed little profit in pursuing an active policy of annexation of colonial territories, and a new governor sent to Senegal in 1869 was instructed to emphasize the peaceful consolidation of trade. The French interest in colonial expansion was further weakened by defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871; it remained largely dormant until the end of the decade.
The 1880s — the decade in which the so-called scramble for Africa by the principal European powers started — and the 1890s brought a major division of West Africa between Great Britain and France. Individuals directly involved in this action included several French military officers in West Africa who were imbued by Faidherbe's vision of empire and who conducted campaigns and political intrigues frequently without prior approval from the civilian authorities in France. Moreover, in contrast to British goals, which were for a long time basically concerned with the protection of economic spheres of interest, French operations were in fact military conquests aimed at securing colonial territory.
The goal of these French officers ruled out any accommodation with indigenous states other than as a temporary expedient. In the Guinea area it resulted in a major and lengthy conflict with the powerful Manding Empire of Samory Touré, a Malinké, that began in the mid-1880s and ended only in 1898. In the early 1800s the Manding descendants of the Mali Empire inhabited a large area centering generally in the old Manding heartland between Siguiri in modern Guinea and Bamako in Mali. They were only loosely organized politically but possessed an underlying feeling of national cohesion and a pride in their history stemming from the glories of the Mali Empire. By about 1870 several small Manding states had been welded together by Samory, a former trader and a convert to Islam, who set up his capital at Bissandougou, near present-day Kérouané.
By the mid-1880s Samory's empire covered most of present-day Upper Guinea and the Forest Region, as well as parts of Mali and Ivory Coast. In 1885 the French attempted to occupy the Bouré gold-producing region held by Samory but were forced to withdraw. The next year, however, Samory signed a treaty of friendship with France in which he gave up all territory (mainly in Guinea) north of the Niger River. Although subsequently refuted by Samory, the French claimed that he had accepted a protectorate status; this turned out to be an important point in later British-French negotiations and in British decisions not to help Samory.
In the latter 1880s French penetration into Guinea was essentially peaceful. The British and the French governments, their economies and their French West African trade seriously affected by an international recession, had little interest in military ventures and sought to resolve colonial problems by compromise. During this time Samory, concerned over future French ambitions, approached the British for a mutual agreement. Merchants in Sierra Leone favored collaboration as offering possibilities for access to trade in the interior, but Samory's offer appears to have been given little consideration in Great Britain. In 1889 a British-French boundaries agreement established an interior demarcation line for Sierra Leone, in effect leaving the western Sudan interior to the French.
The relative lull in French West African military operations after 1885 was broken by an attack on the Toucouleur Empire in 1889. The attack was mounted by one of the so-called Sudan officers, French military men who during the next decade often took matters into their own hands but whose military exploits brought them national acclaim from a public that became increasingly colony-minded during the 1890s. As part of their effort to conquer the western Sudan interior for France, an attempt was made to induce the king of Sikasso to attack Samory's empire, which was seen as a major obstacle to their goal. Samory, upon learning of this, repudiated his earlier treaty with the French. The French then advanced into Guinea and took Bissandougou in 1891. A Samory offer to cede his empire to the British in return for their help was of no avail, and a bloody, destructive, and societally highly disruptive war was fought during which his forces finally withdrew eastward completely out of Guinea. The war ended only with the capitulation of Samory in 1898.
Modern African attitudes toward Samory have been described as ambiguous by West African scholars. His earlier conquests and especially his later resistance to the French advance are remembered for the great suffering, and in some places the considerable depopulation, they caused, which included selling captives into slavery to obtain funds for arms and cavalry horses. There is little question, however, of his military and administrative abilities, and he has been given great credit for his struggle to maintain independence. In modern Guinea Samory is popularly regarded as a national hero and as a symbol of resistance to colonialism.
A significant feature of Samory's empire was the spread of Islam among the Manding and other peoples included in it. Samory himself originally held indigenous religious beliefs (although his ancestors had at one time been Muslims) but was converted to Islam, probably around the mid-1800s. His Islamic belief was to some extent pragmatic, and it was not until about 1880, several years after acquiring broad political power, that he began a jihad to convert unbelievers. During the succeeding years, however, Islamic practices were introduced throughout the area under his control, and by the empire's demise in 1898 a substantial number of individuals had been brought into the faith.
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