French Colonialisn

French Colonialism with a Focus on West Africa

Colonialism is defined by Princeton.edu as the “exploitation by a stronger country of weaker one; the use of the weaker country's resources to strengthen and enrich the stronger country.” Colonialism came in two waves. The first wave was during the 15 to the 18th century and the leaders were the French, Dutch and English. The three countries’ target colonies were Parts of Africa, Indo-China, Vietnam and South Asia. Their reasons for exploiting these countries were to gain territory, and resources such as gold, mineral, spices, plantations, tobacco, sugar, and also access to free labor. The second wave of Colonialism lasted from 18th- 20th century and the leaders were England and France and this time their motivation was they needed new markets, cheap labor, resources and raw materials because it was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the Capitalism.

Now focusing on French Colonialism, their justification for Colonialism was “mission civilisatrice” which means to spread civilization in the form of French language, culture and religion. They felt like they had a mission to accomplish which is to “civilize” those countries seized and to spread their culture.

During the first wave, France began its colonial empire in North America in the 1600s. their two colonies were in Canada which are Quebec and Nova Scotia. As the empire started growing, they started seizing the West Indies along the South American Coast such as French Guiana in 1624, Saint Kitts 1625, Guadeloupe and Martinique 1635, Saint Lucia 1650 and Haiti 1664.

They seized many parts of India such as Chandernagore 1673, Pondichery 1674, Yanam 1723, Mahe 1725 and Karikal 1739. They also began to establish trading posts along West Africa, Senegal in 1624. in 1664 the French East India Company was established to compete for trade in the East. This was the beginning of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade and Senegal played a big role in it. A slave...