Caracterización de la variable de estudio

Perhaps part of the reason for the prominence of m i l i t a r y engineers in imperial expansion lies in the well- known elan and solidarity of graduates of the French Ecole

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Polytechnique. M u c h more of the answer lies in the

apparent challenge presented by the physical obstacles in

West Afr i c a that seemed so forbidding to intruders. It

was here w i t h i n this environment, that a c e r tain type of mentality, fusing complementary elements of the (ideal) characters of technologist and m i l i t a r y conqueror, could find a wide arena for expression in a w a y that would have seemed inappropriate in the prosaic atmosphere of m e t r o ­

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tion and engineering ventures, even in the name of

peaceful expansion, would take the form of assaults upon 32

a powerful, contrary, even hostile nature. This

struggle nee d not be grim but even exuberant. Certainly

a sense of joy is manifest in P i n e t - L a p r a d e ’s espousal of a coastal railroad in 1856, as he wrote,

w hat nature has done and would certainly never do,

the Genius of m a n has provided the means to accomplish. The m a r vels of our century, the application of steam and e lectricity to useful things are the most p o w e r ­ ful means that m an has ever m a n i p u l a t e d . . . Already our small steamships are considered in these parts, w i t h reason, as the most powerful means to enlarge our relations with the interior of Africa . . . is it not c e r t a i n that one day it will be desirable to unite

the important centers by other routes? Will this

o p e r a t i o n be accomplished by ordi n a r y roads with their slow, incessant traffic, or by the perfected means of railroads?

Re t r e n c h m e n t But these early dreams of soldiers and

builders wer e soon dashed, more by decisions made in the m e t r opole than by the actual physical difficulties e n c o u n ­

tered in the colony. Following Faidherbe's departure and

his successor P i n e t - L a p r a d e 's dea t h in 1869, the area of

Fr e n c h - h e l d territory was sharply reduced. French

garrisons were withdrawn from m a n y posts. Cayor was

abandoned, except for Diander w i t h its port of Rufisque

and the thin telegraph corridor from Cape Verde to Gandiole. The French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war

Certainly accelerated the French retreat. But for budgetary

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reasons, Fren c h authorities had alre a d y embarked before- 34 hand, in 1869, on a policy of retrenchment in Senegal. If financial austerity now became paramount, transp o r t a ­ tion and c o mmunication difficulties in Senegal certainly played a m a jor role in determining where retrenchment

would take place. Thus, it was easier to maint a i n a post

at far-off Medine on the Upper Senegal than in nearby Cayor, where even modest road-building efforts had failed and where m i l i t a r y rule could be enforced only with

periodic c a v alry s w e e p s . ^ The grav i t y of the problem is perhaps best expressed in an account of the later conquest by a French officer of the 1890's, who wrote,

One imagines that the native constituted the

greatest obstacle,the most fearsome peril. That's

not so! The Negroes, except in certain regions, were

neither warlike enough nor s u fficiently organized to

resist us. It was nature itself that in its tropical

zeal raised itself against the European . . .The Negro, the savage of the woods, the cannibal, the Mahdist armies were nothing; their arrows or their rifles didn't count; the insurmountable obstacle was always the transportation of an enormous, heavy

ordnance across a country without roads. 36

Railroads, of course, offered one solution of the military logistics problem; but, there were no funds for

that. Instead the French retreated back into a s c a t t e r ­

ing of trading and military posts dotting the coast and

the Senegal river. Still a paramount milit a r y power in

the region, the colony had become, in some senses, once 37

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The T ranssaharan As is well-known since the important

article by N e w bury and K a n y a - F o r s t n e r , it was an enthusiasm in the French metropole for a rail line across the Sahara that rekindled, in 1879, French colonial expansion in

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Senegal. Scorned in this century because it was so

ill-conceived at the time, the Transsa h a r a n project has not received the attention it deserves, for the c o n t e m ­ porary debates on this project, occuring as they do on the

eve of the "scramble for Africa," offer certain absorbing 39

insights into the nascent French colonial party.

Sparked itself by an enthusiastic public response to the engineer A. Duponchel's boo k Chemin de fer

t r a n s s a h a r a n , a serious study of the Transsaharan had been undertaken in 1879 under the auspices of the Ministry of Public W o r k s . T h e leading actor in this effort was Charles de Freycinet, the Minister of Public Works, who had been preparing since entering this post in 1878 an ambitious program for 4500 kms of n ew rail lines in

me t r o p o l i t a n France together with proposals for extension of the A l g e r i a n rail network. Wha t was m o r e natural than the study of a Transsaharan railroad as w e l l ? ^

Freycinet first formed a p r e l i m i n a r y study commission on the Transsaharan in Ma y 1879; and when this body issued a favorable report, he formed a full commission, seating parliam e n t a r y and ministerial representatives alongside explorers, railroad managers, geographic society members,

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and such "perso n a l i t i e s ” as Ferdinand de L e s s e p s . ^ The full c ommission was divided by Freycinet into four s u b ­ commissions, whose members were soon at loggerheads over

which route should be followed into the Sahara. Commission

meetings continued inconclusively into 1881, when the massacre of the Flatters expedition in the Sahara exposed

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