French Congo and Gabon 1886-1905

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Book chapter

Title:	French Congo and Gabon 1886-1905
Author:	Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine
Book title:	The Cambridge History of Africa: vol. 6: From 1870 to 1905
Year:	1985
Pages:	298-315
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Gabon Congo (Republic of) France
Subject:	colonization
Abstract:	As soon as the 'discovery' phase was completed, the French state undertook the 'development' of the country in the form of the régime concessionnaire copied from the Leopoldian model, which soon resulted in the upsetting of the fragile pre-colonial balance. The heedlessness of the feeble administration was paralleled by the combined ill effects of ever more demanding and remote military operations, coupled with commercial activities of a dubious nature, the results of which were extremely destructive. In this new context the trading peoples proved the most difficult to integrate into a colonial economy. Whether passive or rebellious, they were rapidly pushed aside as the price paid for intensive yet fruitless exploitation, the worst excesses of which (taxes, military repression and porterage) were in fact brought to an end just as the close of the period under consideration, as a result of the Congo scandals of 1905. Bibliogr. essay p. 788, bibliogr. p. 850-852, notes.