In the seventies the French Republic took up once more the work of colonial expansion in West Africa, in which the Emperor Napoleon III. had taken great interest.  The Governor of Senegal, M. Faidherbe, pushed on expeditions from that colony to the head waters of the Niger in the years 1879-81.  There the French came into collision with a powerful slave-raiding chief, Samory, whom they worsted in a series of campaigns in the five years following.  Events therefore promised to fulfil the desires of Gambetta, who, during his brief term of office in 1881, initiated plans for the construction of a trans-Saharan railway (never completed) and the establishment of two powerful French companies on the Upper Niger.  French energy secured for the Republic the very lands which the great traveller Mungo Park first revealed to the gaze of civilised peoples.  It is worthy of note that in the year 1865 the House of Commons, when urged to promote British trade and influence on that mighty river, passed a resolution declaring that any extension of our rule in that quarter was inexpedient.  So rapid, however, was the progress of the French arms on the Niger, and in the country behind our Gold Coast settlements, that private individuals in London and Liverpool began to take action.  Already in 1878 the British firms trading with the Lower Niger had formed the United African Company, with the results noted above.  A British Protectorate was also established in the year 1884 over the coast districts around Lagos, “with the view of guarding their interests against the advance of the French and Germans[454].”

[Footnote 454:  For its progress see Colonial Reports, Niger Coast Protectorate, for 1898-99.  For the Franco-German agreement of December 24, 1885, delimiting their West African lands, see Banning, Le Partage politique de l’Afrique, pp. 22-26.  For the Anglo-French agreement of August 10, 1889, see Parl.  Papers, Africa, No. 3 (1890).]

Meanwhile the French were making rapid progress under the lead of Gallieni and Archinard.  In 1890 the latter conquered Segu-Sikoro, and a year later Bissandugu.  A far greater prize fell to the tricolour at the close of 1893.  Boiteux and Bonnier succeeded in leading a flotilla and a column to the mysterious city of Timbuctu; but a little later a French force sustained a serious check from the neighbouring tribes.  The affair only spurred on the Republic to still greater efforts, which led finally to the rout of Samory’s forces and his capture in the year 1898.  That redoubtable chief, who had defied France for fifteen years, was sent as a prisoner to Gaboon.

These campaigns and other more peaceful “missions” added to the French possessions a vast territory of some 800,000 square kilometres in the basin of the Niger.  Meanwhile disputes had occurred with the King of Dahomey, which led to the utter overthrow of his power by Colonel Dodds in a brilliant little campaign in 1892.  The crowned slave-raider was captured and sent to Martinique.