The Merchants and General Faidherbe. Aspects of French Expansion in Sénégal in the 1850's

Abstract

In December, 1851, Hilaire and Marc Maurel, part-owners and managers of the Maurel and Prom Company of Bordeaux, began a concerted movement among the main firms engaged in trade with Senegal to bring about fundamental changes, both in the way firms like theirs traded with the Senegalese and Mauritanians, and in the political relationships which had existed up until then between the French in their small enclaves, and the surrounding African state Systems. Synthesizing many specifie ideas which had been recommended, over the years, by certain business leaders and naval officers, like Bouët-Willaumez, Marc Maurel wrote a long petition or memoir, signed by numerous influential persons of Saint-Louis and addressed to the Governor of Senegal, which presented a cogent, commercially justified, argument in favor of using French military power on a limited scale to accomplish two principal objects. First, he wished to exempt French trading and navigational along the Senegal River from any form of control, fiscal or political, by the African rulers. Secondly, he wished to prevent the Mauritanian nomads of the right bank, as well as disorderly éléments from the left, from raiding the sedentary farmers south of the Senéegal River, and interfering with their cultivation of peanuts, a staple which Marc Maurel and Hilaire Maurel thought would become the economie mainstay of the French commercial establishment in Senegambia. Acting through two bordelais officiais, Ducos, the Minister of the Navy, and Mestro, the Director of the Colonies, both of whom had close ties to bordelaises companies which did business in Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa, Hilaire and Marc Maurel were able to prevail upon both of them to give specifie sets of instructions to Governor Protet, Faidherbe's predecessor, ordering him to initiate the sort of commercial and political changes recommended by their memoir. Then, by 1854, because they and other important wholesalers had lost faith in Protet's ability to bring about these changes, they took steps to have him removed and replaced by Captain Faidherbe, who had been Director of the Engineer Corps in Saint-Louis since November, 1852. The Maurel and Prom Company supported Faidherbe through his two periods of rule, defended him against his detractors, and advised him on how to fulfill their recommendations. Despite his reputation for spectacular military activity, he followed their lead in favoring only a limited form of French colonial domination in Senegambia, which would leave most of the Senegambia states independent but cowed by French arms and willing to trade on the terms of the Bordeaux wholesalers. Captain Jauréguiberry, Faidherbe's replacement after 1861, ran afoul of most of the principal wholesalers of Saint-Louis and alienated most of his subordinates as well because he attempted to introduce a more centralized form of direct colonial rule in the hinterland than had Faidherbe, which resulted in a rebellion in Fouta-Toro. Within a year of his arrivai, they took steps to have him recalled and Faidherbe, returned to the governorship. Faidherbe successfully restored the previous System of limited occupation and non-rule (except for the cases of Walo and Cayor) and left Sénégal for good in 1865.