Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), French protectorate of
Years: 1843 - 1959
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Louis Édouard Bouët signs treaties with the kings of the Grand Bassam and Assinie regions of the Ivory Coast in 1843-1844, placing their territories under a French protectorate.
He had joined Britain sending an army to China during Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion (1860), but French ventures had failed to establish influence in Japan (1867) and Korea (1866).
To carry out his new overseas projects, Napoleon III has created a new Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies, and appointed an energetic minister, Prosper, Marquis of Chasseloup-Laubat, to head it.
A key part of the enterprise is the modernization of the French Navy; he has begun the construction of fifteen powerful screw steamers; and a fleet of steam powered troop transports.
The French Navy has become the second most powerful in the world, after Britain's.
He has also created a new force of colonial troops, including elite units of naval infantry, Zouaves, the Chasseurs d'Afrique, and Algerian sharpshooters, and he has expanded the Foreign Legion, which had been founded in 1831 and had fought well in the Crimea, Italy and Mexico.
French overseas territories have tripled in area; in 1870 they cover almost a million square kilometers, and control nearly five million inhabitants.
While soldiers, administrators, businessmen and missionaries come and go, very few Frenchmen permanently settle in the colonies, apart from some in Algeria.
The colonial trade reaches six hundred million francs, but the profits are overwhelmed by the expenses.
However, a major goal is the 'Mission civilisatrice', the mission to spread French culture, language and religion, and this has proven successful.
The Gold Coast is the region of West Africa which is now Akanland.
The Gold Coast, Slave Coast, and Ivory Coast are named after the resources there.
Early uses of the term refer literally to the coast and not the interior.
It is not until the nineteenth century that the term comes to refer to areas that are far from the coast.
It is to the east of the Ivory Coast and to the west of the Slave Coast.
The first Europeans to arrive at the coast had been the Portuguese in 1471, who had encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial deposits of gold in the soil.
In 1482, the Portuguese had built the Castle of Elmina, the first European settlement on the Gold Coast.
From here they had traded slaves, gold, knives, beads, mirrors, rum and guns.
News of the successful trading had spread quickly, and eventually British, Dutch, Danish, Prussian and Swedish traders arrived as well.
The European traders had built several forts along the coastline.
The Gold Coast had long been a name for the region used by Europeans because of the large gold resources found in the area.
The slave trade has been the principal exchange for many years.
The British Gold Coast had been formed in 1867 when the British government abolishes the African Company of Merchants and seizes privately held lands along the coast.
They also had taken over the remaining interests of other European countries, annexing the Danish Gold Coast in 1850 and the Dutch Gold Coast, including Fort Elmina, in 1872.
Britain has steadily expanded its colony through the invasion of local kingdoms as well, particularly the Ashanti and Fante confederacies.
The Ashanti people, who are the largest ethnic community in the region, had controlled much of the territory before the Europeans arrived and are often in conflict with them.
Four wars, the Anglo-Ashanti Wars, are fought between the Ashanti (Asante) and the British, who are sometimes allied with the Fante.
During the First Anglo-Ashanti War (1863–1864), the two groups had fought because of a disagreement over an Ashanti chief and slavery.
France and Germany bring all the European powers with interests in Africa together at the Berlin Conference in 1885.
Its principal objective is to rationalize what will become known as the European scramble for colonies in Africa.
Prince Otto von Bismarck also wants a greater role in Africa for Germany, which he thinks he can achieve in part by fostering competition between France and Britain.
The agreement signed by all participants in 1885 stipulates that on the African coastline only European annexations or spheres of influence that involve effective occupation by Europeans will be recognized.
Another agreement in 1890 will extend this rule to the interior of Africa and set off a scramble for territory, primarily by France, Britain, Portugal, and Belgium.
France, to support its claims of effective occupation, again assumes direct control of its West African coastal trading posts in 1886 and embarks on an accelerated program of exploration in the interior.
Lieutenant Louis Binger begins a two-year journey in 1887 that will traverse parts of Cote d'lvoire's interior.
By the end of the journey, he will have concluded four treaties establishing French protectorates in Cote d'lvoire.
Also in 1887, Verdier's agent, Maurice Treich-Laplene, negotiates five additional agreements that extend French influence from the headwaters of the Niger River Basin through Cote d'lvoire.
The French government had abandoned its colonial ambitions and withdrawn its military garrisons from its French West African trading posts, leaving them in the care of resident merchants, due to the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the subsequent annexation by Germany of the French region of Alsace-Lorraine.
The trading post at Grand-Bassam in Cote d'lvoire had been left in the care of a shipper from Marseille, Arthur Verdier, who in 1878 is named resident of the Establishment of Cote d'lvoire.
It is made up primarily of Americo-Liberians, who will maintain social, economic and political dominance well into the twentieth century, repeating patterns of European colonists in other nations in Africa.
Competition for office is usually contained within the party; a party nomination virtually ensures election.
Pressure from the United Kingdom, which controls Sierra Leone to the northwest, and France, with its interests in the north and east, leads to a loss of Liberia's claims to extensive territories.
Both Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast annex territories.
Liberia struggles to attract investment to develop infrastructure and a larger, industrial economy.
French military contingents in West Africa are sent inland to establish new posts throughout the early years of French rule.
The African population resists French penetration and settlement, even in areas where treaties of protection have been in force.
Among those offering greatest resistance is Samori Ture, who in the 1880s and 1890s is establishing an empire that extends over large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Cote d'lvoire.
Samori's large, well-equipped army, which can manufacture and repair its own firearms, attracts strong support throughout the region.
The French respond to Samori's expansion of regional control with military pressure.
French campaigns against Samori, which are met with fierce resistance, intensify in the mid- 1890s until he is captured in 1898.
France has established what passes for effective control over the coastal regions of Cote d'lvoire by the end of the 1880s, and in 1889 Britain recognizes French sovereignty in the area.
This same year, France names Treich-Laplene titular governor of the territory.
In 1893 Cote d'lvoire is made a French colony, and Captain Binger is appointed governor.
Agreements with Liberia in 1892 and with Britain in 1893 determine the eastern and western boundaries of the colony, but the northern boundary will not be 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 Cote d'lvoire for economic and administrative reasons.