Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
The partition of Africa had left France in nominal possession of most of the region between the Sahara and the Congo river. It is likely, however, that well under half the population of this region had come under French rule, for the greater part of French territory consisted of desert or arid savanna. From 1904, the government-general of French West Africa, based on Dakar, provided a colonial form of federation for seven territories: Senegal, Mauritania, Upper Senegal and Niger, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast, Guinea and a territory east of the river Niger which was still under military rule. This whole area was about nine times the size of France; the population was probably between 11 and 15 million. To the south-east, France ruled four territories: Gabon, Moyen-Congo, Ubangi-Shari and Chad; from 1908–10 these were brought under a federal government at Brazzaville and they were collectively known as French Equatorial Africa, with a population one-third to one-quarter that of its vast neighbour. A large part of French black Africa – wherever ‘pacification’ was in progress – remained under military authority; this applied to Mauritania until 1905 and to Chad until 1920. In the interior of each colony there were areas where penetration was either precarious or non-existent; this was the case in much of French Equatorial Africa, the arid Sahel, with its nomadic population, and the densely forested parts of the Ivory Coast. Such areas were slow to come under civil administration, if only because of shortage of personnel.
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