Louis Faidherbe

Faidherbe was born into a lower-middle-class family in Lille. He was the fifth child of Louis César Joseph Faidherde, a hosier, and his wife, Sophie Monnier.[1] His father died in 1826 when he was seven and he was brought up by his mother.[2] He received his military education at the École Polytechnique and then at the École d'Application in Metz. From 1843 to 1847 he served in Algeria, then for one year in Guadeloupe, and again from 1849 to 1852 in Algeria.[3]

In 1852 he was transferred to Senegal as sub-director of engineers, and in 1854 was promoted chef de bataillon and appointed governor of the colony on December 16. He held this post with one brief interval (1861–1863) until July 1865.

The work he accomplished in French West Africa constitutes his most enduring legacy. At that time France possessed in Senegal little else than the town of Saint-Louis and a strip of coast. Explorers had, however, made known the riches and possibilities of the Niger regions, and Faidherbe formed the design of adding those countries to the French dominions. He even dreamed of creating a French African empire stretching from Senegal to the Red Sea.

The Senegal River valley upon the arrival of Faidherbe (1853).

View of Saint-Louis in the 1860s

Economics

Saint-Louis was placed under formal military control, and a telegraph and road link was set up to the other French colonies in Gorée Island and Rufisque. In 1857, the French seized the inland region between these two from the Lebu Republic, and rechristened their capital Ndakarou as the new colonial city of Dakar. Work was begun on the Dakar–Saint-Louis railway, as well as a rail line along the Senegal into the interior.

Faidherbe Bridge in Saint-Louis

Faidherbe's large-scale projects included the building of bridges and provisioning of fresh drinking water.[9] But Saint-Louis's place as a door of French trade into an African interior began to wane with the expansion of direct colonial rule. Access to its port became increasingly awkward in the age of the steamship; and the completion of the Dakar-Saint Louis railroad in 1885 meant that up-country trade effectively circumvented its port. Large French firms, many from the city of Bordeaux, took over the new commercial networks of the interior, marginalizing the Métis traders who had always been the middle men of upstream commerce.

Faidherbe also placed under direct French control large-scale seasonal groundnut cultivation near the fort systems, and then along the rail lines. This created the navétanes system of seasonal labor migration, first in Cayor, then spreading along the rail lines to Baol and Sine-Saloum, and eventually along the Thies-Kayes railway. This would be a pattern spread throughout French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa well into the 20th century.[10]

Soon after his arrival in Saint-Louis Faidherbe took as a mistress, Diocounda Sidibe (Dionkhounda Siadibi), a fifteen-year-old Sarakolé girl. She helped him in his study of the Wolof, Pular, and Sarakolé languages.[12][13] On 15 February 1857, they had a son, Louis Léon Faidherbe.[13] In 1858, when Faidherbe was 40, he married his 18-year-old niece, Angèle-Emilie Marie Sophie Faidherbe. She was the daughter of his older brother, Romain, who had died eight years earlier. The marriage produced three children: Gaston, Mathilde and Wilhem. Angèle also helped care for Louis, the son of Sidibe.[14]

Another of Faidherbe's nieces, his wife's older sister Clarence, married the naval officer Théophile Aube in May 1861.[15] At the time Aube was serving in Senegal. He would later be promoted to admiral.[16]

Painting by Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq showing Faidherbe at the Battle of Bapaume.

After the defeat of Napoleon III and his French Imperial Army by the Prussian Army in the summer of 1870, colonial officers such as Faidherbe were recalled to France and promoted to higher ranks to command new units and replace generals killed or captured in the war. Faidherbe was promoted to divisional general in November 1870, and in December appointed as commander-in-chief of the Army of the North by the Government of National Defence.[17]

Faidherbe quickly proved himself to be the most able of the generals fighting Prussian forces in the French provinces, and won several small victories against the Prussian First Army at the towns of Ham, Hallue, and Pont-Noyelles. Despite his military skills, Faidherbe was never able to form an army strong enough to seriously worry the Prussians, as his army, composed of raw recruits, suffered immense supply difficulties and low morale in the freezing winter of 1870–1871. The Army of the North performed remarkably well by striking isolated enemy forces and then retreating behind the belt of fortresses around Pas-de-Calais. Ultimately, however, Faidherbe was ordered by Minister of War Leon Gambetta to attack the Prussians – Faidherbe rushed into an open battle at St Quentin and his army was destroyed.

French stamp issued in 1906 honoring Faidherbe

Equestrian statue of Faidherbe by Antonin Mercié in Lille

During the course of his military career Faidherbe was decorated with the five degrees of the Legion of Honor: the Chevalier in 1852, the Officier in 1855, the Commandeur in 1861, the Grand Officier in 1871 and the Grand Croix in 1880.[18]

Faidherbe was named as candidate for the legislature on several lists in the Somme department in the elections of 8 February 1871, and was elected. He decided not to accept his election while retaining his military command in the north. After he resigned from the army he was reelected on 2 July 1871 as representative for the Somme, for Pas-de-Calais and for Nord. He chose to represent Nord.[19][lower-alpha 1] However, he resigned on 26 August 1871 after voting against giving the Assembly the power to define a constitution, because he said the Assembly had given itself that right rather than receiving it from the electors.[19] On 8 October 1871 he became a member of the departmental Council of Nord for the canton of Lille center.[19]

Between October 1871 and May 1872 Faidherbe undertook a scientific mission to Upper Egypt, where he studied the monuments and inscriptions. On the same trip he visited Jerusalem and Italy.[21] He ran for election to the senate in Nord as a republican on 30 January 1876 but was defeated.[19] Faidherbe was elected on 5 January 1879 to the senate for the département of Nord. He resigned his seat prior to the end of his term in 1888.

An enthusiastic geographer, historian, philologist and archaeologist, he wrote numerous works, including Collection des inscriptions numidiques (1870), La Campagne de l'armée du Nord (1871), Epigraphie phenicienne (1873), Essai sur la langue poul (1875), and Le Zénaga des tribus sénégalaises (1877), the last a study of the Berber language. He also wrote on the geography and history of Senegal and the Sahara.

He was elected a senator in 1879,[22] and, in spite of failing health, continued to the last a close student of his favorite subjects.

Faidherbe died on 29 September 1889, his body receiving a public funeral.[23]

Statues and monuments to his memory were erected at Lille, Bapaume, Saint-Quentin and Saint-Louis, Senegal. Numerous streets are named after him, and also the subway station in Paris (Faidherbe-Chaligny).

• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Faidherbe, Louis Léon César". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
• Barrows, Leland C. (1976). "Faidherbe and Senegal: a critical discussion". African Studies Review. 19 (1): 95–117. doi:10.2307/523854. JSTOR 523854.
• Coursier, Alain (1989). Faidherbe, 1818–1889: du Sénégal à l'Armée du Nord (in French). Paris: Tallandier. ISBN 978-2-235-01888-3.
• Kanya-Forstner, A.S. (1969). The Conquest of the Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-10372-5.
• Robert, Adolphe; Cougny, Gaston (1890). "Faidherbe (Louis-Léon-César)". Dictionnaire des Parlementaires français (1789–1889) (in French). Vol. 2: CAY-FES. Paris: Edgar Bourloton. pp. 590–592.
• Robert, Adolphe; Bourloton, Edgar; Cougny, Gaston (1891). "Levert (Charles Alphonse)". Dictionnaire des Parlementaires français (1789–1889) (in French). Vol. 3: LAV-PLA. Paris: Edgar Bourloton. pp. 147–148.
• Saint-Martin, Yves-Jean (1989). Le Sénégal sous le second Empire: Naissance d'un empire colonial (1850–1871) (in French). Paris: Karthala. ISBN 2-86537-201-4.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Louis Faidherbe.

• Barrows, Leland Conley (1974). "The merchants and General Faidherbe. Aspects of French expansion in Sénégal in the 1850s". Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer. 61 (223): 236–283. doi:10.3406/outre.1974.1757.
• Cohen, William B. (1971). Rulers of Empire: the French Colonial Service in Africa. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-081791951-1.
• Demaison, André (1932). Faidherbe (in French). Paris: Plon. OCLC 5752225.
• Gann, Lewis H.; Duignan, Peter (1978). African Proconsuls : European Governors in Africa. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-911190-1.
• Hardy, George (1947). Faidherbe (in French). Paris: Éditions de l'Encyclopédie de l'Empire franc̜ais. OCLC 5215519.
• Pondopoulo, Anna (1996). "La construction de l'altérité ethnique peule dans l'oeuvre de Faidherbe". Cahiers d'études africaines (in French). 36 (143): 421–441. doi:10.3406/cea.1996.1423.