From islands to territorial empire: The French colonial administration at Gorée and the environmental causes of continental expansion after the Seven Years War

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between islands and the continental shore through the lens of the French colonial administration at Gorée after the Seven Years War. In this period, the French Ministry of the Marine deliberately sought to check French territorial expansion across the globe in order to favor France’s lucrative plantation complex in the Caribbean. As part of this official policy, Gorée was deemed critical for the protection of the French slave trade, but not seen as a point of departure for colonial empire on the African continent. Unreliable provisioning from the metropole, labor shortages, and environmental conditions at Gorée, however, pushed local French administrators to rely on the African mainland for resources, nourishing expansionist ambitions in the process. Focusing on the environmental, geo-political, and commercial dimensions of island-continental interaction at Gorée and the Senegambia’s coast, this article brings into view unaddressed tensions among official French imperial policy, colonial provisioning, and territorial expansion.