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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
Akan chief in traditional attire
Courtesy Robert Handloff
In 1886, to support its claims of effective occupation,
France
again assumed direct control of its West African coastal
trading
posts and embarked on an accelerated program of
exploration in the
interior. In 1887 Lieutenant Louis Binger began a two-year
journey
that traversed parts of Côte d'Ivoire's interior. By the
end of the
journey, he had concluded four treaties establishing
French
protectorates in Côte d'Ivoire. Also in 1887, Verdier's
agent,
Maurice Treich-Laplène, negotiated five additional
agreements that
extended French influence from the headwaters of the Niger
River
Basin through Côte d'Ivoire.
By the end of the 1880s, France had established what
passed for
effective control over the coastal regions of Côte
d'Ivoire, and in
1889 Britain recognized French sovereignty in the area.
That same
year, France named Treich-Laplène titular governor of the
territory. In 1893 Côte d'Ivoire was made a French colony,
and then
Captain Binger was appointed governor. Agreements with
Liberia in
1892 and with Britain in 1893 determined the eastern and
western
boundaries of the colony, but the northern boundary was
not fixed
until 1947 because of efforts by the French government to
attach
parts of Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso) and French
Sudan
(present-day Mali) to Côte d'Ivoire for economic and
administrative
reasons.
Throughout the process of partition, the Africans were
little
concerned with the occasional white person who came
wandering by.
Many local rulers in small, isolated communities did not
understand
or, more often, were misled by the Europeans about the
significance
of treaties that compromised their authority. Other local
leaders,
however, thought that the Europeans could solve economic
problems
or become allies in the event of a dispute with
belligerent
neighbors. In the end, the loss of land and freedom by all
the
local rulers resulted more from their inability to counter
European
deception and brute strength than from a loss of will to
respond to
European encroachment.
Throughout the early years of French rule, French
military
contingents were sent inland to establish new posts. The
African
population resisted French penetration and settlement,
even in
areas where treaties of protection had been in force.
Among those
offering greatest resistance was Samori Touré, who in the
1880s and
1890s was establishing an empire that extended over large
parts of
present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire.
Samori's
large, well-equipped army, which could manufacture and
repair its
own firearms, attracted strong support throughout the
region. The
French responded to Samori's expansion of regional control
with
military pressure. French campaigns against Samori, which
were met
with fierce resistance, intensified in the mid-1890s until
he was
captured in 1898.
France's imposition of a head tax in 1900, aimed at
enabling
the colony to undertake a public works program, provoked a
number
of revolts. Ivoirians viewed the tax as a violation of the
terms of
the protectorate treaties because it seemed that France
was now
demanding the equivalent of a coutume from the
local kings
rather than the reverse. Much of the population,
especially in the
interior, also considered the tax a humiliating symbol of
submission.
Data as of November 1988
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