French West Africa
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French West Africa (French: Afrique occidentale française, AOF) was a federation of eight French colonial territories in Africa: Mauritania, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea (now Guinea), Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and Dahomey (now Benin).
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[edit] History
Originally created in 1895 as a union of Senegal, French Sudan, French Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire only, the federation was placed on a permanent footing in 1904 with a governor-general based first in Saint-Louis, then (from 1902) in Dakar (both in Senegal, the oldest French settlement). The AOF subsequently expanded to neighbouring French-ruled territories: Dahomey was added in 1904, after having been put under colonial tutelage in 1892; Mauritania in 1920,[1] and when the territory of Upper Volta was divided from French Soudan by colonial decree in 1921, it automatically also entered the AOF.[2] Between 1934 and 1937, the League of Nations Mandate territory of French Togoland was subsumbed into Dahomey, and between its seizure from Germany in World War I and independence it was administered through the AOF. In 1904, both Mauritania and Niger were classed "Military Territories": ruled by the AOF in conjunction with officers of the French Colonial Forces.
Throughout the history of the AOF, individual colonies and military territories were reorganised numerous times,[1] as was the Government General in Dakar. In theory the Governors General of the AOF reported directly to the Minister of Colonies in Paris, while individual colonies and territories reported only to Dakar.
The federation ceased to exist after the September 1958 referendum on the future French Community, in which the constituent territories voted to became autonomous republics except for Guinea,[3] which voted overwhelmingly for independence. Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Upper Volta and Dahomey subsequently formed the short-lived Sahel-Benin Union, later the Conseil de l'Entente.
[edit] Governors General of the AOF[2]
- Jean Baptiste Chaudier : 1895-1900
- Noel Ballay : 1900-1902
- Ernest Roume : 1902-1907
- William Merlaud-Ponty : 1908-1915
- François Joseph Clozel : 1916
- Joost van Vollenhoven : 1917-1918
- Martial Merlin : 1918-1923
- Jules Carde : 1923-1930
- Jules Brévie : 1930-1936
- Marcel de Coppet : 1936-1938
- Léon Cayla : 1939-1940
- Pierre Boisson : 1940-1943
- Pierre Cournarie : 1943-1946
- René Barthès : 1946-1948
- Paul Béchard : 1948-1951
- Bernard Cornut-Gentille : 1952-1956
- Gaston Custin : 1956-1957.
[edit] High Commissioners of the AOF
- Gaston Custin : 1957-1958
- Pierre Messmer : 1958
[edit] Size and borders
With an area of some 4,689,000 square kilometres (1,810,000 sq mi) (mostly the desert or semi-desert interior of Mauritania, Sudan and Niger) extending from Africa's westernmost point to the depths of the Sahara, the federation contained more than ten million inhabitants at its creation, and some 25 million at its dissolution.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ for a progression of maps of the border changes of individual sub entities, see:
WHKMLA Historical Atlas of French West Africa. - ^ www.worldstatesmen.org/Senegal.html
- Robert Aldrich. Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion. Palgrave MacMillan (1996) ISBN 0312160003.
- Alice L. Conklin. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa 1895-1930. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1998), ISBN 9780804729994.
- Patrick Manning. Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa, 1880-1995. Cambridge University Press (1998) ISBN 0521642558.
- Jean Suret-Canale. Afrique Noire: l'Ere Coloniale (Editions Sociales, Paris, 1971); Eng. translation, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900 1945. (New York, 1971).
- Crawford Young. The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective. Yale University Press (1994) ISBN 0300068794
[edit] External links
- Map of the progression of French West African imperialism in the period 1885-1920. Related maps of French West African expansion are at sandafayre.com, Sandafayre Stamp Atlas: French West Africa. Dated 2000, retrieved January 2008.
