ABSTRACT
The history of France’s action in West Africa during the last ten years has been so remarkable that it deserves to be recorded in some detail, and where possible her policy may be usefully compared with our own. On January 23,1892, the Paris Figaro published a literary supplement entitled “Our African Domain,” in which was set forth by various competent authorities—amongst whom was Captain Binger; * Emile Masqueray, the well-known student of Algerian problems; Georges Rolland, one of the foremost advocates of the Trans-Saharan Railway; and “Harry Alis,” the redoubtable Colonial propagandist, Lord Cromer’s bête noire, whose tragic end will be in the recollection of many—the past achievements, actual position and future aspirations of France in Western and Central Africa. The supplement was divided into five parts, entitled respectively “Algeria”; “Penetration towards the Chad”; “Senegal and Dependencies”; “Our Position on the Gulf of Guinea”; “Congo and Chad.” At the time this supplement appeared, the revival of Colonial ambition in France, which owed its inception largely to the foresight and courage of Jules Ferry, had taken firm root among the élite of French public opinion. But although the seed where it fell gave forth lusty fruit, the sowers were relatively few, and the area under cultivation was still but small in 1892. The Chamber of Deputies was slow to grant fresh credits. Politicians as a whole viewed the eloquence of Eugène Etienne and other exponents of the Ferry school with ill-disguised nervousness, if not with positive apprehension, fearing that the country was being turned from its true business of guarding against possible aggression from Germany, and was playing into Bismarck’s hands by rushing into Colonial adventures which it was known that Bismarck, for his own reasons, was desirous of encouraging. No one party or rather group cared to identify itself too closely with the expansionists, remembering the whirlwind of popular passion which assailed and overwhelmed le Tonkinois. On the other hand, it was not wise to entirely dissociate one’s self from a movement which was steadily gaining a hold over the masses. So Parliament vacillated, and, swayed by contrary winds, voted funds one minute and sought to withdraw them the next.
