Le docteur Colin, l'or du Bambouk et la « colonisation moderne ».

Abstract

H. Brunschwig — Dr. Paul Colin, the Bambuk Gold and 'Modem Colonisation'. In his quest for the Bambuk gold, Dr. Paul Colin did not look only for his personal enrichment. He was a believer in the doctrine of 'modem colonisation' developed by the imperialist theoreticians of the 'eighties. This doctrine, however, addressed itself to investors and specialists—engineers, agronomists, businessmen—rather than to common people lacking both in capital and technical training. The collaboration, from 1854 to 1865, between Faidherbe, Maurel and Prom, and the Senegalese traders was quite exceptional — even so the governor had kept a monopoly of political action. Dr. Colin failed because he was not supported by metropolitan business circles, because he had no commercial ability, and because he took political initiatives. His analysis of precolonial trade in the Western Sudan, the opposition he met with from military and administrative omcers indifferent to economie development, remind one of the case of O. Pastre de Sanderval, Paul Soleillet, D. de Rivoyre and other explorers who finally were not integrated into the administration. This cornes as a confirmation of A. S. Kanya-Forstner's thesis on the French conquest of the Western Sudan, to the effect that up to 1914, French imperialism, as against its Belgian, German, and, to a degree, British counterparts, was politically rather than economically motivated.