French West Africa

French West Africa was a federation of French colonial territories in West Africa, administered from Dakar from 1895 until its dissolution in 1958.

Governor-General of French West Africa: The senior colonial official who governed French West Africa from Dakar on behalf of France. The governor-general coordinated the federation’s territorial administrations and represented French authority.
Scramble for Africa: The rapid European partition and occupation of African territory in the late nineteenth century. The federation emerged from France’s territorial expansion during this partition.
Forced labor in French Africa: The coercive recruitment of African people for public works and private economic activity under French rule. Colonial authorities mobilized labor to build infrastructure and support export production.
French Equatorial Africa: A French colonial federation in Central Africa that existed from 1910 to 1958. It was the central African counterpart to French West Africa, with a separate capital and administration.
Dakar: A port city in Senegal and the capital of French West Africa. Dakar housed the federation’s central administration and connected it to Atlantic trade.
French conquest of Senegal: The nineteenth-century expansion of French control from coastal Senegal into its interior. Senegal became the federation’s administrative base and a starting point for expansion.
Office du Niger: A French colonial irrigation and agricultural development project established in the Niger River delta in 1932. Its land and labor policies show how colonial development schemes reshaped communities.
French Somaliland: A French territory on the Horn of Africa, later known as French Afars and Issas and then Djibouti. It remained outside the West African federation despite belonging to the French colonial empire.
French colonial empire: The overseas territories controlled by France from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century. French West Africa was one regional federation within France’s wider colonial empire.
Samori Ture: A West African ruler who led the Wassoulou Empire and resisted French expansion until his capture in 1898. His campaigns and defeat marked a major stage in France’s conquest of the interior.

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