ABSTRACT

Foreign conquerors, missionaries, contraband merchants, and slave traders came together in Chad, resulting in a multiplicity of languages, customs, and religious traditions and in uneven demographic distribution. Kanem, which emerged northeast of Lake Chad around A.D. 800 as a viable principality seems to have been established by the nomadic Zaghawa. In the sixteenth century, Baguirmi, a creation of the Barma, emerged to the south east of Lake Chad, establishing its capital at Chad's present Massenya. The French came to Chad through the South, which explains why by 1900 most of the southern region, including Oubangui-Chari, had been annexed without major battles. Chadian respondents and European humanitarians attest to the fact that deaths from hard, forced work, or corvee, ill treatment, beatings, and lack of adequate food were common. The main goals of the colonizer in Chad were to extend the French empire, maintain law and order, and promote economic production in line with the aspirations of the colonizer.