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Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177

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Journal of Historical Geography

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French military officers and the mapping of West Africa: the case of CaptainBrosselard-Faidherbe

Isabelle SurunUniversité Lille Nord de France, UDL 3, CNRS UMR 8529 IRHiS, F-59653 Villeneuve d’Ascq, France

Abstract

Through the study of projects conceived to shape colonial space, this article aims to reconsider the motives and means of French colonial expansion in WestAfrica in the 1880s and 1890s. The Plan Faidherbe, designed by the Governor of Senegal in the 1860s, outlined a plan for eastward development, includinga road and rail link between the Senegal and the Niger Rivers (and beyond, between Algeria and Sudan). The implementation of these routes of penetrationcalled for a number of military-led topographic missions. The study of these missions and of the maps that were produced at the time reveal how suchprojects and their implementation were mediated by both cartographic and field practices. The case of Captain Henry Brosselard (1855e93), GeneralFaidherbe’s son-in-law, is an interesting example because of the diversity of the missions he led and the extent of territory which he traversed and mapped.This case also shows how, in the course of a career, an officer could assume several different functions and come to conceive the process of building colonialterritory from different perspectives. This paper questions a common view of the military as having a purely strategic vision of space as a field of conquest,a view which reserves a more development-oriented outlook for civil administrators and the business community. Indeed, Brosselard’s varied careersomewhat blurs the conventional divide between civilians and soldiers, requiring us to reconsider accepted ways of categorising colonial actors.� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: French colonial expansion; French Sudan; Niger; Cartography; Colonial officers; Planning; Development

In the 1880s and 1890s, at a time of French expansion, West Africawas still in the process of being conquered and dominated, and itwas not yet considered a properly and well-defined territory.Rather, in the context of the ‘scramble for Africa’, West Africa waseffectively represented as an empty space yet to be developed. Inthe minds of the French field officers busy implementing large-scale strategic projects, it was a field of experimentation anda territory still in gestation. Some of these projects, in particular themeans of inland penetration through such means as the construc-tion of telegraph lines, roads, railways and fortified outposts, havealready been the subject of a number of studies.1 Historians havethus far paid only limited attention to the cartographic work

E-mail address: isabelle.surun@wanadoo.fr1 Kanya-Forstner has analysed the stages of French military conquest and the proc

Western Sudan: A Study in French Military Imperialism, Cambridge, 1969. The project of estudied by A. Bathily, La conquête française du Haut Fleuve (Sénégal), 1818e1887, Bulletet le contrôle de l’espace dans le Haut-SénégaleNiger, in: Le sol, la parole, l’écrit. Mélanexplored the question of railways as a means for colonisation: see M. Lakroum, Chemin dd’Etat, Université de Paris 7, 1987; H. d’Almeida-Topor, Ch. Chanson-Jabeur and M. Lakroen A. O. F. (1880e1940), L’avènement du chemin de fer et son rôle dans la mise en valeur1994; M. Maclane, Railways and ‘development imperialism’ in French West Africa befo

2 C. Jacob, La carte comme mediation, in: L’Empire des cartes: approche théorique de lapower, in: D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Eds), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on th227e312; J.B. Harley, Deconstructing the map, in: T. Barnes and J. Duncan (Eds), Writing W231e247.

0305-7488/$ e see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2011.02.024

accompanying this expansion. Yet maps are the graphic expressionsof such projects and the essential supports to their design. Asmediating devices operating between the space of the project andthe space of the terrain, they build and enable the intellectualappropriation of the areas covered and their effective trans-formation into planned spaces.2 A simultaneous analysis of thecartographic and discursive work of the officers involved in themovement of expansion and conquest of FrenchWest Africa allowsa reconsideration of the processes of territorial development in thecolonies.

This paper reconsiders the motives and means of French colonialexpansion in West Africa at the end of the nineteenth century.

ess by which decisions were taken: see A.S. Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of thexpansion towards Upper-Senegal and the construction of a line of forts have beenin de l’Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (1972) and by T.M. Bah, Les forts françaisges en hommage à Raymond Mauny, Vol. 2, Paris, 1981, 977e985. Many works havee fer et réseaux d’affaires en Afrique occidentale: le Dakar-Niger, 1883e1960, Doctoratum (Eds), Les Transports en Afrique, XIXeeXXe siècles, Paris, 1992; R. Khumbi, Le Raildes colonies françaises d’Afrique occidentale, Thèse de doctorat, Université Paris 4,re 1914, Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 18 (1991) 505e514.

cartographie à travers l’histoire, Paris, 1992, 41e54; J.B. Harley, Maps, knowledge ande Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments, Cambridge, 1988,orlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, London, 1992,

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Designed by the Governor of Senegal in the 1860s, the Plan Faidherbeoutlined a plan for eastward development, including a road and raillink between the Senegal and the Niger Rivers (and beyond, betweenAlgeria and Sudan). The first section of the paper examines themotives for and context of French expansion, notably in military andcommercial terms, and the conceptions of space they reflected. Theremainder of the paper focusses on the case of Captain Henry Bros-selard (1855e93), General Faidherbe’s son-in-law, who led a numberof missions and mapped a large expanse of terrain. This case alsoshows how, in the course of a career, an officer could assume severaldifferent functions. Indeed, Brosselard’s varied career somewhat blursthe conventional dividebetween civilians and soldiers, requiring us toreconsider accepted ways of categorising colonial actors.

Expansion in French West Africa: between military andcivilian rule

In the current literature on colonial expansion in West Africa, it iscommon to find a distinction between two forms of colonialculture, each represented by distinct kinds of actor and institution.On this interpretation, there were, on the one hand, the militaryauthorities, and on the other, a civil administration. The militarywere bent exclusively on the continuing expansion of France’soverseas possessions and on restoring the image of the FrenchArmy, somewhat tarnished by the defeat of 1870 and the loss ofAlsace-Lorraine. In contrast, the civil administration, backed bypoliticians and businessmen, formed a colonial lobby solely inter-ested in exploiting the resources these territories represented. It isusually assumed that the first group developed a strategic approachand had a broad view of the areas to conquer; and that the secondhad a purely utilitarian and economic conception of space, viewingterritory on the basis of its potential for intensive and rationaldevelopment. The two principal organisations that supported theParti Colonial in Parliament have been distinguished in this way.The Comité de l’Afrique française, founded in 1890, is thus said tohave supported the more political imperialism of the military;while the Union coloniale française, founded in 1893, was said to becloser to the liberal ideas of the economic and business elite.3

According to Alice Conklin, a significant shift took place in thecolonial policy of France in the 1890s, which resulted in an admin-istrative reorganization of the conquered territories. With thecreation in 1895 of the federation of Afrique occidentale Française(AOF), she argues, military authority was handed over to civilianauthority. This was headed by a Governor General who answereddirectly to the civilian authority of theMinistre des Colonies, himselffreed the year before from the control of the Ministère de la Marine.In the particular context of the Dreyfus affair, there was growingdistrust of the army which was increasingly considered as badlycontrolled. It is said that this helped discredit the policy of expan-sion in favor of a policy of ‘development’ advocated by the economicforces within the colonial lobby, the victory of which appearedobvious in 1902with the appointment of an engineer from the EcolePolytechnique Ernest Roume, the candidate of theUnion Coloniale, asGovernor General of AOF.4 In fact this process was already wellunderway by the early 1890s: ‘as early as 1892, it had become

3 S. Persell, French Colonial Lobby, 1889e1938, Stanford, 1983, 17, 20e22, 27, quoted bAfrica, 1895e1930, Stanford, 1997, 266 n5.

4 Conklin, A Mission to Civilize (note 3), 33e35 and 41e42.5 Conklin, A Mission to Civilize (note 3), 266 n7, after C.M. Andrew, Théophile Delca

1898e1905, London, 1968. As Conklin explains, ‘the term exploitation here is used in theIn French, exploitation can best be translated as “development”.’

6 J. Frémeaux, L’Afrique à l’ombre des épées, 1830e1930, 2 Vols, Paris, 1993e1995.7 Conklin, A Mission to Civilize (note 3), 5.8 Frémeaux, L’Afrique à l’ombre des épées (note 6), Vol. 1, introduction.

commonplace to assert in colonial circles that, especially in WestAfrica, an era of exploitation should now replace the era of conquest.’5

There are several objections to this reading of events, which,although not unqualified, deserves to be rather more nuanced. Firstof all, the transfer of power was not as radical as this accountimplies. The well-orchestrated rivalry between the civilian andmilitary authorities in the early 1890s should not obscure the factthat the military continued to exercise substantial power on thefront-line of conquest, which continued to advance until after 1900in the region of Lake Chad. What is more, certain territories on bothsides of the Sahara remained under military rule even until the1930s, forming a coherent region that has been subject to in-depthstudy by Jacques Frémeaux.6 These objections, however, mainlyconcern the intensity of the process and its chronology.

A second,more epistemological objection, concerns the categoriesof actors mobilized in this account. To deconstruct the notions of‘civilizing mission’ and ‘development’, Conklin has analysed thediscourse and the orders of a ‘group of high-ranking Republicanadministrators’, the governor generals of AOF: ‘directly responsible tothe colonial minister in Paris, yet strategically located in what theFrench deemed their most barbaric territory of all e sub-SaharanAfricae the office of the governor general in Dakar provides an idealwindow onto the Third Republic’s mission civilisatrice and its conse-quences’.7 Conklin therefore focusses on the highest levels of thecolony’s civil administratione to the exclusion of all otherse and thishas the effect ofmaking the governor generals look as if theywere thesole proponents of the idea. For his part, Frémeaux proposed, as partof an inquiry into the doctrines and experiences of the army in thecolonies, to ‘take interest in the military territories so as to locatethere, in the leadership styles and relationships, particular forms ofgovernment revealing two distinct tonalities’ in the North and in theSouth of the Sahara. Frémeaux’s study of the doctrines underlyinglocal administrative practices highlighted a specific type: ‘this veryspecial category of officer-administrators’.8 Without seeking tooversimplify the arguments of these two authors, both havecontributed to the construction of a somewhatdualistic conception ofcolonial action as either the work of civilian administrators or ofmilitary personnel.

In this paper, I propose to reconsider this conception of an irre-ducible divide between civilian and military administration byexamining how colonial space was actually conceived in the processof mapping. An analysis of the discursive and cartographic materialsproduced by some officers involved in the conquest of AOF revealshow some of the military were able to take part in the many chal-lenges inherent to colonial expansion, and did indeed take intoaccount economic as well as strategic considerations, at a number ofdifferent scales.

Plans, maps and scales

Colonial projects were at their most spectacular when theyencompassed large areas. It was in this context that the strategicdimension of map making appeared at its most obvious. Indeed,lines were traced across the West African subcontinent, and evenacross the entire continent, with the objective of joining together

y A. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West

ssé and the Making of the Entente Cordiale: A Reappraisal of French Foreign Policy,French sense, which does not carry the pejorative connotations it does in English.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177 169

already conquered territories. Here were the broad outlines of theproject commonly referred to by historians as the Plan Faidherbe.

Formulated as early as the Second Empire, the idea ofa connection between the colonies of Senegal and Algeria, thanks toa concerted movement through the Sahara and Sudan towardsTimbuktu, was increasingly deemed necessary.9 The proposal wasactively supported by the governors of Senegal, such as Brière deL’Isle, who believed in the drive towards the Niger and swore by‘the go ahead motto of the Americans’.10 This was also the caseamongst the Senior Commanders of the Upper River, includingBorgnis-Desbordes, Boilève, Combes, Frey, Archinard and Gallieni,who were stationed upstream and saw themselves as the worthysuccessors of Faidherbe’s project in the period 1880e93.11 By thattime, Faidherbe himself had been made a life-long Senator of theRepublic and his advice was frequently requested by the Ministèrede la Marine et des Colonies: he followed the progress of theseproposals closely, and worried much about the setbacks and delayscaused by parliamentary opposition and lack of funds. Between1881 and 1889, he even gave a series of lectures in his home town tothe Société de Géographie de Lille, pointing out, time after time, theoutlines of his plan and commenting on the stages of its imple-mentation.12 The maps he used to support his presentations clearlyshowed the magnitude of his grand plan, which has beensummarized by Kanya-Forstner in terms of a ‘SenegambianTriangle’ (Fig. 1).13

In order to connect the upper parts of the Senegal to theNiger,14 and to make this the major axis of further westwardspenetration, Faidherbe called for the building of a main road,telegraph lines and a railway track, defended by a line of fortifiedstrongholds, between Kayes and Bamako. The purpose of the planwas to allow two access routes to the Niger, one from the westthrough the SenegaleNiger major axis, and one from the souththrough the Southern Rivers, by securing for France possession ofthe coastline between Saint-Louis on the River Senegal and SierraLeone. The coastal side of the triangle raised the problems of theBritish presence in the Gambia and of the Portuguese in Guinea,issues which were finally settled only in the late 1880s througha series of bilateral agreements on borders, determining thecolonial enclaves. It was also during this period that the interest ofthe colonial authorities e and of the sous-secrétaire d’Etat auxColonies, Mr. Etienne in particular e shifted southwards. Indeed,slow progress in Sudan, combined with the new opportunities forbuilding links towards the south discovered by Louis-GustaveBinger, showed the third side of the triangle as perhaps the morelikely axis of penetration.

Nonetheless, for such projects to become reality, a substantialnumber of enquiries in the field by officer-surveyors and militaryengineers and extensive mapping were required. The possibleroutes for a road or a railway had to be discussed at a more regionallevel. Gallieni’s first mission in Sudan (1879e81) and the topo-graphic survey led by Major Derrien to explore French Sudan and

9 L.L.C. Faidherbe, L’Avenir du Sahara et du Soudan, Paris, 1863.10 J.-S. Gallieni, Voyage au Soudan français (Haut-Niger et pays de Ségou), 1879e1881, Pa11 Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan (note 1), 43e44.12 L. Faidherbe, Le Soudan Français: chemin de fer de Médine au Niger, Lille, 1881; L. Faid1883; L. Faidherbe, Le Soudan Français: chemin de fer de Médine au Niger, Troisième partieLille, 1886; Capitaine H. Brosselard, Le Soudan Français: pénétration au Niger, Cinquième p13 Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan (note 1), 43e44, 52, 101, 152, 15514 As the colony of Niger didn’t exist at this time, ‘the Niger’ always refers to the River.these two rivers and was situated in the new colony of French Sudan, which correspon15 Gallieni, Voyage au Soudan français (note 10). Upper-Senegal (1880e1 campaign), ma16 Lieutenant-Colonel Borgnis-Desbordes, Pénétration au Soudan, Revue maritime etNational Archives, 1 D 58, quoted by Martine Cuttier, Portrait du colonialisme triomphan17 Martine Cuttier, Portrait du colonialisme triomphant (note 16), 193e196.

study the route of a railway linking the Senegal to the Niger(1880e1) are just two examples of such endeavors.15 The carto-graphic material produced by these missions sometimes includedvery accurate topographic detail, and sometimes opened furthervistas on selected sites, through enlargements placed in themargins of the map. This was the case in Gallieni’s Voyage auSoudan français, which was accompanied by maps of varying scale.There were general 1:7 000 000 maps, reconnaissance itinerariesdrawn by Captain Piétri and Captain Vallière at a scale of 1:800 000but also field surveys at 1:120 000 and 1:40 000. The larger scalewas used to describe a river fork or crossing, or the floor of a valleywhere a road was intended, or a hilltop suitable for the building ofa fort. It is at this scale, which revealed the irregularities of theterrain, that the choices made at the time can be better understood.Borgnis-Desbordes, Commander of the Upper River, analyzing thework reported by Gallieni, criticized the latter’s propositions con-cerning the location of the forts of Fangalla and Kita. In both cases,he wrote that Gallieni obeyed the classic military doctrine, whichcalled for control of high places and the installation of strongholdsin dominant positions. Borgnis-Desbordes was more concernedwith logistical issues, such as easy access to water, which requiredforts to be located in the valleys.16 Martine Cuttier has analysed thisepisode as revealing two contrasting conceptions of space,reflecting two distinct military cultures: that of the marsouins(French marine infantry), like Gallieni, and that of the bigors(French marine artillery), like Borgnis-Desbordes. Cuttier hasremarked that these coincide with different military trainingschools, since the marsouins had been educated at the OfficerSchool of Saint-Cyr, while the bigors were graduates of the EcolePolytechnique.17 Saint-Cyr trained the military officers intended forthe infantry or cavalry and provided a more classical militaryeducation, while the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique provideda complete engineer training of high scientific level and allowedmilitary as well as civilian careers. When they chose to undertakea career in the army, engineers from the Ecole Polytechnique wereassigned to artillery or to military engineering.

However, far from locking these officers into immutableconceptions of colonial space and its administration, this distinc-tion between two different military cultures underwent constantredefinition, reflecting changes in institutional positions and socialnetworks. This was the case, for example, in the crisis that dividedthe colonial officers of the late 1880s when the Governmentreconsidered the priorities of France in West Africa. Gallieni, whohad been trained at Saint-Cyr, supported the redeploymenttowards the South advocated by Etienne: he spoke of ‘develop-ment’ and believed in a better return on investment. Meanwhile,Archinard, trained at the Ecole Polytechnique, was the leader of the‘Sudanese’ officers, who staunchly defended westward militaryexpansion. Blurring the strict boundary between the two cate-gories of actors, both of them claimed to have been inspired byFaidherbe.

ris, 1885, 1, a hommage to General Brière de L’Isle.

herbe, Le Soudan Français: chemin de fer de Médine au Niger, Deuxième partie, Lille,, Lille, 1885; L. Faidherbe, Le Soudan Français: pénétration au Niger, Quatrième partie,artie, Lille, 1887; Capitaine J. Ancelle, Le Soudan Français, Sixième partie, Lille, 1888..The ‘SenegaleNiger’ connection thus means a junction between the upper parts ofds to present Mali.p charted under the supervision of Commander Derrien, 6 sheets, 1:100 000, 1882.coloniale, 72 (1882) 156; Lettres de Borgnis-Desbordes à Brière de L’Isle, Senegalt. Louis Archinard, 1850e1932, Paris, 2006, 194e195.

Fig. 1. The ‘Senegambian Triangle’. Drawn on a map from L. Faidherbe, Le Soudan Français: chemin de fer de Médine au Niger, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille 4 (1885) 96.The proposed SenegaleNiger railroad, marked in red, is visible online. Source: Bibliothèque Universitaire Centrale, Université de Lille 3.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177170

The military officer as field observer: the case ofBrosselard-Faidherbe

Although the French military officers sent to Africa were given theopportunity to familiarize themselves with the methods of topo-graphical survey during their training years at Saint-Cyr or at theEcole Polytechnique or later at the Ecole de Guerre,18 theywere not allskilled cartographers. Indeed, some seem to have balked at the ideaof surveying. In their eagerness to show their bravery in battle,topography was considered as paperwork unworthy of their mili-tary valor, imposed upon them to keep them busy during the rainyseason.19 In a letter to his parents, the young Lieutenant CharlesMangin told of his mission ‘to survey the area of Kita, with a littlegeography and a few reports to write out’.20 He complained of thepoverty of his duties as a surveyor: ‘Maybe I will be allowed toreconnoitre an area that has been placed on the maps by intelli-gence, that’s all I can hope for. It’s thoroughly tiresome, don’t youthink? Before yesterday, I took the bearings of an as yet unchartedpath. Nothing important at all, really.’21 In fact, there was very littleleft to explore in an area already criss-crossed with charteditineraries.

18 The Ecole de Guerre provided special training to high-ranking officers.19 A. Lorofi, La vie quotidienne des officiers de l’infanterie de marine pendant la conquête20 C. Mangin, Letter to his father, Kayes, 1 January 1890, in: Lettres du Soudan, Paris, 1921 C. Mangin, Letter to his parents, Koukoudiana (Massif de Kita), 13 or 14 February 1822 F. Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire, Oxford, 2001; I. Sur(2007) 57e74. Michael Heffernan comes to the same conclusion in his commentary of aBrosselard published in L’Illustration, September 6, 1890: ‘This single page indicates howassociation between exploration, military “heroics”, and imperial expansion’. See M. Heffeand French newspapers, 1875e1925, in: J. Ackerman (Ed.), The Imperial Map, Chicago, 2

Captain Henry Brosselard, however, was pleased to be portrayedin the attire of the field cartographer (Fig. 2). Holding a pencil in hisright hand, sitting on a collapsible chair in his finest uniform,wearing the medal of the Légion d’Honneur that he had been awar-ded in 1882 and a cap on his head, Brosselard sits in front of a tableladenwith an unfinished map, compasses and a notebook (perhapshis travel diary), a trunk and a satchel full of documents at his feet.His colonial helmet and kit bag hang from a tent pole suggesting theproximity of the field he was apparently in the process of charting.

During the initial period of scientific exploration, the figure of thefield explorer and the office-bound geographer had remaineddistinct. Brosselard’s portrait, however, drew on both these icono-graphic registers familiar to the readers of tales of exploration, thuscontributing to the emergence of a new figure: that of the officer-topographer. The officer-topographer inheritedboth the adventuroustraits of the explorer and the scientific rigor of the academic geog-rapher. It also found its placewithin the genre of themilitary portrait,which was blooming in the popular illustrated press between 1890and 1914. The figure of the officer of marine troops in African terri-tory, portrayed by Brosselard, also extended the culture of explora-tion to military culture.22 While he was indeed posing for this

de la colonie du Soudan français (1890e1900), Paris, 2008, 27e28.30, 58.90, in: Lettres du Soudan, Paris, 1930, 61.un, Les figures de l’explorateur dans la presse du XIXe siècle, Le Temps des Médias 8montage of maps and images celebrating the exploration of the Casamance River bythree different forms of media representation could be juxtaposed to reinforce thernan, The cartography of the Fourth Estate: mapping the new imperialism in British009, 273e274.

Fig. 2. The French Military Officer as Cartographer: Portrait of Captain Brosselard-Faidherbe. Engraving by Adrien Marie, frontispiece in H. Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamanceet Mellacorée. Pénétration au Soudan (Paris, 1892). Source: Bibliothèque de Recherches Africaines, Université de Paris 1.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177 171

portrait, Brosselard was a cartographer of recognized expertise, whohad accumulatedmuch valuable experience throughout his career.23

In the footsteps of Faidherbe

Henry Brosselard was born in 1855, the son of a university professor.From 1875 to 1877, he studied at St. Cyr’s military college. FromFebruary to June 1880, he was sent to Algeria as a lieutenant in thefirst mission of Lieutenant-Colonel Flatters. Responsible for chartingthe route of a projected Trans-Saharan railway, he collaborated intracing of a 1:200 000 scale map. In 1880e1, he helped prepare theconstruction of a railway line linking the River Senegal to the RiverNiger while on a topographical exploration mission in French Sudanunder the orders of Major Derrien. Following this, Brosselard was

23 The obituary written in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille described himAfrica’. The author was saddenened by ‘the too short career of this intrepid officer and leaGéographie de Lille (1892e3) 211e212. See also the entry on Brosselard in the Dictionna

commissioned to the staff of the expeditionary force sent to crush aninsurrection in Algeria, in the region of Oran (1881e3) and to draw,with theCaptaindeLaCroixdeCastries, the 1:400 000and1:200 000scale maps of South Oran. He was promoted lieutenant in 1882 andwas called to first join the staff of General Campenon, the Minister ofWar, then that of Admiral Aube, the Minister of the Navy. He thusspent several years in offices in Paris before returning to West Africawhere, in 1886, heading an Inquiry Committee, he participated in theexpedition commanded by Colonel Frey against the insurrection ofMahmadou Lamine. Crossing the region of Futa Toroe also known asthe Senegalese Futa e on his way back from this mission and incharge of a small troop of soldiers, Brosselard drew up a 1:400 000map of the area. Promoted to captain, hewas then charged with twoimportantmissions, which also led to significant cartographic works.

as a ‘distinguished writer, skillful explorer and cartographer of several regions ofrned geographer’ who e in 1893 e had died at the age of 38. Bulletin de la Société deire de Biographie Française, 6 (1954) 432e433.

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In 1887, hewas appointed asGovernment Commissioner to representFrance in the bi-national Border Committee officially determining thedivide between Portuguese Guinea and French surrounding posses-sions. He also formally took possession of the Ziguinchor outpost inCasamance, following the Franco-Portuguese agreement of 1886.Finally, in 1891, he led a mission charting the route of a railway trackconnecting the Upper Niger River to the Atlantic from the mouth ofthe River Mellacoree along the border between French Guinea andSierra Leone, a mission which led him to prepare a 1:50 000 scalemap of the area.24

Brosselard’s record of service confirms the extent of the territorycovered by the young captain during his short career. It also showsethrough the lens of just one particular life e the diversity of ordersissued by all the departments involved in French expansion in Africato the officers of the various army corps: the Army of Africa, whichanswered to the Minister of War, for everything related to Algeriaand the Saharan expansion from the north; and the Marines, whoreported to the Minister of the Navy for all operations concerningWest Africa. Three of the missions in which Brosselard took partwere intended to study possible routes for the construction of pro-jected railway lines: the Trans-Sahara, the SenegaleNiger and theGuineaeNiger. This he spoke of as he summed up his career in 1891:

24 Bul25 Cap26 Bro27 Bro28 Cap

I have, in the course of my eventful colonial life, had the tripleadvantage of studying the three projected lines of penetra-tion for reaching the Niger. In 1879e80, I was in the Saharawith Lieutenant-Colonel Flatters, in 1880e81, in Sudan withthe Derrien mission and Lieutenant-Colonel Desbordes, andfinally, in 1890e91, I was in charge of the study of a means ofpenetration from Mellacoree to the Niger.25

Brosselard thus clearly saw his activity as a cartographer as anextension of the Plan Faidherbe; namely, as part of the strategicaims developed in terms of ‘lines of penetration’ and materializedby a set of railway links across the north-western subcontinent ofAfrica. Brosselard was obviously not the only officer to consider thisspace in the same light as Faidherbe had before him, but theinfluence of the latter took, in this case, a more particular signifi-cance and near filial resonance. For in 1883 Brosselard had marriedMathilde the daughter of General Faidherbe, and had taken thename of Brosselard-Faidherbe, in tribute to his father-in-law uponthe latter’s death in 1889. During Faidherbe’s lifetime, Brosselardhad also been closely associatedwith his father-in-law’s work. Afterfour lectures on Sudan to the Société de Géographie de Lille,Faidherbe, too old for the presentation, left the fifth one to his son-in-law, whom he recommended to Paul Crépy, the society’spresident, in these terms:

Since the readers of the Bulletin of the Société de Géographie deLille are good enough to find interest in the affairs of Senegal,I wish to inform them, as in previous years, of continuingdevelopments. However, as time is now of the essence, andI cannot do this myself, I leave it to my son-in-law, CaptainBrosselard, who e as you know e is fully competent in allmatters concerning Africa, which he has already penetratedfrom several sides, and onwhich he has published a consider-able amount of work.26

Another indication of Brosselard’s inclusion within the socialnetwork woven by his father-in-law is his presence in 1885 as

letin de la Société de Géographie de Lille (1891e2) 64, with reference to the reporitaine Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée. Pénétration au Soudan, Parsselard, Le Soudan Français (note 12), 5.sselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 16e17.itaine H. Brosselard, La Guinée portugaise et les possessions françaises voisines, Lil

a member of staff of the Minister of the Navy, who was no otherthan Admiral Aube-Faidherbe’s brother-in-law.

During his career, Brosselardwas on several occasions to intersectwith the lines of Faidherbe’s project and was asked to deploy hisenergy in all those places that Faidherbe had pinpointed as crucialfor the interests of French expansion in Africa. His participation inthe topographic survey mission led by Derrien gave him theopportunity of studying, in the field, themeans of effectively creatinga railway link between Kayes and Bamako, which was the center-piece of Faidherbe’s master plan. Again, whenmapping the Futa Toroand the River Casamance, Brosselard stood on the fringes of thecolony of Senegal such as Faidherbe saw it. His map of the Fouta Toropresented, in its margins, very detailed hydrographic sketches of allthe difficult passages of the river, extending and specifying themapping done in the 1850s and 1860s under the orders of Faidherbe.The attention paid to navigation on the River Senegal shows thatbeyond local interest for the development of the colony, thewaterway held a strategic function as Faidherbe’s main axis ofpenetration, which it indeed was at the dawn of the 1880s. The needto control navigation on the River Senegal had become even moreimperative now that it had become the sole means of transportingthe material and men needed to build the railway and the onlypossible supply route of the troops stationed upstream. Brosselard,however, apparently dissatisfiedwith the purely descriptive functionof maps, drew on his map of the area, next to the existing telegraphline, the route of a road yet to be built betweenMatam and Bakel anda stretch of canal between two arms of the river, which he believedwould be useful for future irrigation and the agricultural develop-ment of a large island. Like Faidherbe, though in a more modest way,Brosselard used maps to support the future organization of space,making them prospective instruments too. Writing of his experiencein Casamance, he was proud to take possession of Ziguinchor, whichhe saw as a new showpiece to match his father-in-law’s Senegal:

t publisis, 1891,

le, 1889

On May 18, 1888, I came to take possession of this littlePortuguese town that had been returned to France onagreement with Portugal. [.] At the western end stood theflagstaff on which floated only a few days before the Portu-guese colours. [.] The occupation of Zighinchor by Francesettled the issue of the possession of the River Casamance,which de facto became a French river.27

What is more, Brosselard added an epistemological dimensionto this political act. Indeed, his text drew a new divide within localgeographical space, almost erasing the political boundaries of theBritish and Portuguese enclaves. It revived an older nomenclaturewhich extended the lands of ‘Senegal and its dependencies’ to the‘Southern Rivers’ by suggesting a new name that made the newlyannexed River Casamance, and also the Gambia, a geographical ifnot a political dependency of Senegal:

The River Casamance is one of a group, which includes theSaloum, the Gambia and the Casamance. In contrast to thegroup of French rivers situated between Guinea and SierraLeone which are, strictly speaking, the Southern Rivers ofSenegal, one might call the first group in the north of Guinea,the Northern Rivers of Senegal.28

During his mission to determine the border, Brosselard was ledto consider the problems caused by the new partition to some of

hed in the Journal Officiel.83.

, 60 [emphasis in original].

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177 173

the indigenous populations, whose territories had been splitbetween two European sovereignties, or transferred from one toanother, in contravention of earlier agreements. He thus proposedto reconsider the territories of the chiefdoms, by mobilisinghistorical and ethnographic knowledge that identified ‘types’, andrelied on the ethnographic fieldwork carried out by Faidherbeconcerning the peoples of Senegal.29

Finally, the last two missions conducted by Brosselard strength-ened the two less obvious sides of the ‘Senegambian Triangle’: theSenegaleSouthern Rivers and the Southern RiverseSudan axes. Inthe report of the bi-national Border Committee, Brosselard dwelt atlength on the disastrous state inwhich he claimed to have found thebusiness establishments in the Portuguese territory, blaming thisdecline to a policy of excessive customs duties, which he claimed hadfrightened awaybusiness contractors. Everythinghewrote presentedthe Portuguese enclave as a ripe fruit, ready to fall. He explicitlysuggested that the Portuguese government should rid itself of thisburden that was too heavy for its budget, despite the constitutionalcharter of the Portuguese Kingdom prohibiting the alienation of anypart of its territory. He also entertained the hope that the Frenchpossessions would in the near future form a contiguous string ofterritories, from the River Senegal to the River Mellacoree, thoughthis was far from obvious at the time.30 Such reasoning assumed thattheGambianenclavewould eventually disappear. In fact, therewas atthe time the project of a Franco-British agreement concerning thesale of Ivory Coast in exchange for Gambia, which had receivedthe support of figures such as Etienne, Gallieni and Faidherbe.31 TheFrench ministries and embassies entertained this idea because theGambian enclave had long been a thorn in the side of French colo-nists. It represented a potential means for the British to advance intowestern Sudan and thwart France’s aims of creating a junctionbetween the Rivers of the South and Sudan and of ensuringa protectorate over the Futa Jallon. However, by the time of Brosse-lard’s last mission, the stakes had changed and Louis-GustaveBinger’s exploration mission of 1888 between Niger and the hinter-lands of Ivory Coast revealed the promise of a possible junctionbetween Sudan and the Ivory Coast, convincing Etienne, Gallieni andeven Faidherbe to drop any idea of an exchange. The Franco-BritishAgreement of 1889, which finally set the borders between SierraLeone and French Guinea, bore witness to the new orientation ofFrench interests further South.32 It guaranteed future French accessfrom the River Niger to the River Mellacoree between the moun-tainous region of Fouta Jallon and the northern border of SierraLeone.33 It was thus precisely in this intermediate space that Bros-selard was to seek, in 1891, a possible route for a railway track.34

In the report he issued at the end of this mission, the parallelbetween his work and that of Faidherbe becomes all the moreobvious.35 Just as Faidherbe had done when he had proposed

29 Léon Faidherbe, Populations noires des bassins du Sénégal et du Haut-Niger, Bulleti30 Brosselard, La Guinée portugaise et les possessions françaises voisines (note 28), 55e531 Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan (note 1), 155.32 Frémeaux, L’Afrique à l’ombre des épées (note 6), Vol. 1, 54.33 Kanya-Forstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan (note 1), 156.34 Brosselard himself underlined the importance of this agreement, which evacuatedactive commercial relations’, thus defining the framework of France’s action in the areafavourable borders have been convened between France and Great Britain; and, though twe can now operate’ (Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 81).35 As Faidherbe before him, Brosselard was not satisfied with the report given to thconferences to the geographical societies of Paris and Lille and aimed at a larger public bythe Librairie Illustrée and Journal des Voyages.36 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 91e99.37 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 89, 99e104.38 Excerpt from the Brosselard-Faidherbe report published in the Journal Officiel, and r39 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 85.40 Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille (note 24).

a railway junction between Upper-Senegal and Niger Rivers, Bros-selard backed up his project with precise figures. Showing a genuineunderstanding of business practices inWest Africa, he calculated theamount of cotton, peanuts, coffee, cola nuts and other commoditiesalready produced in the Niger basin and already transiting south-bound through native channels, in order to determine the tonnage tobe transported on the proposed railway track. He also calculated theprofit that a private company building and operating the line couldexpect, by determining the necessary initial infrastructure invest-ments, the rate of progress of construction and the potential profitsaccording to ongoing transportation fees.36 He even drewon hismapthe ‘demarcation line of the commercial area’ onwhich the influenceof the new railway would be felt, provided that there were indeedbusinesses and a fleet of boats established on the River Niger’(Fig. 3).37

To these different forms of expertise that bore the mark ofempirical investigation and data collection, Brosselard added thatof the field cartographer, which enabled him to argue that hisproject suited the nature of the terrain, giving it a legitimacy thatwould have been lacking in a purely prospective study:

n de la S8.

Britain’s: ‘Over the divid

e Minispublish

epublish

The mission has brought back a rich geographical harvest.The country traversed being so far unknown or incorrectlycharted, topographical studies were performedwith rigorousmethod all along the expedition. We have thus reporteda 1:50 000 scale map, representing no less than 20 000 km2,revealing in the most complete manner our present knowl-edge of the land and of the countries that lie between theAtlantic Ocean and Upper Niger.38

Similarly, in the popular book based on his work (entitledCasamance et Mellacorée), Brosselard published a plate reproducingan outline of the route, showing the extent of his topographicskills.39 Such markers of his scientific abilities and the credit he wasgiven for having published a report in the Journal Officiel allowedhim to convincingly defend his project:

We report with certainty that France has themonopoly on thepossible construction, in reasonable economic conditions, ofa railway line of 312 to 320 kilometers in length, connectingthe Niger and our possessions in Sudan to the Atlantic coast.This is the solution to the great economic problem of Sudan.40

By situating his project for a railway track within the broadercontextof thewholeWestAfrican subcontinent, the syntheticmaphepresented in his book took into account all the different possibleroutes to Sudan.Andby including thewholeNigerBasinunder Frenchinfluence within the ‘limit of the area of commercial influence’ of hisprojected railway, he effectively excluded the SenegaleNiger linefrom his scheme of territorial organization. His work also rehearsed

ociété de Géographie (maiejuin 1856).

claims on ‘the regions of Fouta Jallon with which Britain entertained veryhe last few years, thanks to the foresight of our leaders, the foundations ofe has not yet been made effective, we now clearly know within which limits

ter and published in the Journal Officiel. He spread his opinion by givinging small illustrated books. Casamance et Mellacoréewas thus distributed by

ed in the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille (note 24).

Fig. 3. Map of the Rivers of West Africa, also showing Brosselard’s projected route for a new railway between the Mellacourie River and Upper Niger, from H. Brosselard-Faidherbe,Casamance et Mellacorée. Pénétration au Soudan, 89. Source: Bibliothèque de Recherches Africaines, Université de Paris 1.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177174

the arguments which had led him to recommend dropping theSenegaleNiger project: the heavy investments required forthe constructionof bridges over theBafing and theBakhoyRivers; thelength of the river course between Saint-Louis du Senegal and Kayes,the first station of the proposed line; the inaccessibility of the RiverSenegal to ships over 2000 tons; the dangers presented by thepassage of rapids and the impact on freight costs of the extra insur-ance premiums; the concentration of activity on the river betweenJuly and September, the only season during which the River Senegalwas navigable; the lack of sufficient numbers of native porters fortransfers during these crucial three months; the need to store inKayes all the goods arrived at the Niger at other times of the year; thenecessarybuildingofhugewarehouses; the riskof rottingperishablesstored over thewintermonths; the finally excessive travel times.41 Inthe light of such a catalogue of obstacles, Brosselard had no difficultyat all inpresentinghis lineas far cheaper andquicker.He showed that,contrary to expectations before his survey mission, the River Nigerwasnavigable in its upper part and thenearest junctionpointwasnotvery far from the coast. The River Mellacoree therefore seemed theeasiest maritime outlet for the products of the Niger Basin.

Moreover, the construction of the SenegaleNiger railway linewas experiencing serious delays and was also attracting continuous

41 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 84e86.42 The construction of the 555 km KayeseBamako line, begun in 1881, only covered 4mark in 1887 and Bafoulabé in 1888. Only two years after the 1889 decision of building aconcerning the pursuit of the matter. Bamako was thus only reached in 1904. See Kanya-F172e173, 177, 250.43 I. Barry, Le Fuuta-Jaloo face à la colonisation. Conquête et mise en place de l’administraConakry au Niger (1890e1914), Revue française d’histoire d’Outre-Mer 55 (1968) 37e105

objection in the Chamber of Deputies, where it was increasinglyconsidered as a means for the military to obtain an increasedbudget. By the time Brosselard had finished his survey and writtenhis report, the construction of the line had been suspended andwasvirtually buried.42 The fact that Brosselard supported his ownproject rather than that initiated by Faidherbe could, of course, beregarded as a form of betrayal. Faidherbe, however, was alreadyaware of the necessary southward shift in the development ofFrench colonial space in West Africa; and Brosselard had no choicethan to take this shift into account and implement Under SecretaryEtienne’s development strategy.

In the event, the GuineaeNiger railway was finally built alonga different route, more in line with the new configuration of theterritory following the colonial occupation of Futa Jallon in 1896.43

However, despite the fate of Brosselard’s scheme, or perhapsbecause of it, his project remains a good indicator of theway Frenchmilitary officers conceived and mapped colonial space.

A conversion to colonial development?

From his survey missions in Casamance, Brosselard brought backthe necessary details to draw a map, of which he produced several

km in the first year: it was suspended between 1884 and 1886, reached the 94 kmline all the way to Niger, a parliamentary commission issued an unfavourable reportorstner, The Conquest of the Western Sudan (note 1), 106e110, 115e117, 142, 144e146,

tion en Guinée (1880e1920), Paris, 1997, 255e260; J. Manglotte, Le chemin de fer de.

Fig. 4. Colonial ToponymyonBrosselard’sMap of Casamance, from Carte de la Casamance et de la région nord de la Guinée portugaise, Compagnie commerciale et agricole de la Casamance,1890, 1:200 000, sheet for Carabane. Source: Gallica website, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7759080s.r¼Brosselard-Faidherbe.langFR.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177 175

versions.44 The 1:400 000 map placed Casamance within a widerspace between the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, and seemeddestined mainly to present its location and borders. The 1:200 000version seems to have had very different objectives that went farbeyond the sole charting of borders. Indeed, the very title refers tothe sous-secrétaire d’Etat aux Colonies, Eugène Etienne, as thepersonwho commissioned the field study that led to the drawing ofthe map. However, the map itself was ‘published by the CompagnieCommerciale et Agricole de la Casamance’ (CCAC). This short-livedcompany e it was only in business between 1889 and 1894 e wasthe first French company to obtain, in 1890, a timber concession inthe colonial territory. The concession itself was similar to thosegiven to the British companies, such as the Royal Niger Company orthe South African Company, or to those of the Congo Free State.45

The map’s key, which contains a list of the local produce(oranges, palm, palm oil, and rubber), reveals a focus on theresources the company proposed to process. On the right bank ofthe river, Brosselard drew the boundaries of the ‘zone of colonisa-tion’ given by concession, although the activity of the company hadin no way developed that far. Moreover, the place-names indicatedthe prospective function Brosselard assigned yet again to hismapping activity: these were a series of names inspired by thesurnames of people associated with the company, such as Roth-ville, Crépy-ville, Cousin-ville, Warenhorst-ville and even a Brosse-lard-ville near Ziguinchor (Fig. 4). Thus Jules Roth, for example, wasborn in Alsace-Lorraine but had settled in the area fifteen yearsearlier.46 Warenhorst, a business school graduate, had been given

44 Map of Casamance, of British Gambia and of the Northern region of Portuguese Guinwith the collaboration of lieutenants Clerc and De Crousnilhon, 1:400 000, published in tof the Northern region of Portuguese Guinea, charted by Capitain Brosselard-Faidherbe,order of M. Etienne, Sous-Secrétaire d’Etat aux Colonies, 1:200 000, 2 sheets, available onlinark:/12148/btv1b7759080s.r¼Brosselard-Faidherbe.langFR.45 R. Pasquier, La Compagnie commerciale et agricole de la Casamance: Prélude au régim1982, 189e207.46 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 23.47 Pasquier, La Compagnie commerciale et agricole de la Casamance (note 45), 193e1948 Brosselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 23.49 Harley, Maps, knowledge and power (note 2).

the job of compiling an inventory of the agricultural resources ofthe region during the survey mission led by Brosselard in 1890. Hewas also the author of the photographs used for the engravingsillustrating Casamance and Mellacoree. Albert Cousin, a busi-nessman linked to the textile industry of northern France and toBelgian investors with stakes in the Congo Free State, was thelynchpin of the CCAC and had led negotiations for the timberconcession. Like Brosselard, he was one of its founding share-holders. As for Paul Crépy e the President of the Societé deGéographie de Lille and the representative of the Northern textileindustry e he became one of the members of the company’s boardof directors in 1891.47

Apart fromRoth-ville, which ismentioned in Brosselard’s work as‘a small colony’,48 noneof these place-names onhismapevermarkedany effective settlement. It seems that their sole purpose was tohonour thedirectors of the companyand to offer a graphic expressionof purely virtual colonial domination. It would be a commonplace tointerpret such a map, following the work of Harley and others, asa Eurocentric and imperial projection, in which blank surfaces arefilled with the names of alleged settlers rather than having anyindigenous meaning. It is sufficient however to note the rhetoricalnatureof allmapse alsounderscoredbyHarley49e andof the varietyof imperialism which used maps as a tool of anticipation fora settlement that actually never became effective. More interestingfor my purpose here is the fact that a military officer took part in thisprocess of placename-making, which seems quite unusual at thisstage. For many explorers e including military men e have paid

ea, charted by Capitain Brosselard-Faidherbe, following his 1888 and 1890 surveys,he Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille (note 23), 208; Map of Casamance andfollowing his 1888 and 1890 surveys and the maritime charts of this region, on thee on the Gallica website of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: http://gallica.bnf.fr/

e concessionnaire du Congo?, in: Etudes africaines offertes à Henri Brunschwig, Paris,

6.

Fig. 5. Ziguinchor: Present Situation and Future Plan, from H. Brosselard-Faidherbe, La Guinée portugaise et les possessions françaises voisines, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie deLille 11 (1889), 404 and 12 (1889), 18. Source: Bibliothèque de l’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177176

tribute to their country’s glory by baptising places with the names oftheir kings, queens or presidents; andmany have contributed to theirown posterity by using their own names as toponyms. But muchmore rare are examples, in the history of the conquest, of an armyofficer playing such a role on behalf of a commercial company.Indeed, Brosselard used his cartographical skills acquired at Saint-Cyrand in official military missions in order to produce a map designedfor a commercial purpose. Certainly, his map of Casamance and hisauthorship of Casamance et Mellacoree cannot be understood inde-pendently of his connections with the CCAC. Brosselard’s work waspublished at a time when the company was looking for new share-holders to expand its activities. It was clearly part of an advertisingcampaign extolling the economic potential of the region, the com-pany’s achievements and its future prospects.50

Just as prospective were the two maps of Ziguinchor drawn byBrosselard in 1889 at a scale of 1:5 000. These were named‘Ziguinchor, present situation’ and ‘Draft for the development ofZinguinchor’ (Fig. 5) and they demonstrate the precocity of Bros-selard’s desire to develop the region.51 The changes he proposedmostly concerned the wharf area: the native dwellings were erasedfrom themap and replaced by jetties and extended storage space tocater for the expected influx of goods. Brosselard also planned to

50 R. Pasquier has also pointed out the illustrated supplement of the Novembre 1891 issuCompagnie commerciale et agricole de la Casamance (note 45), 198). There was also a noSociété de Géographie de Lille, probably with the support of Paul Crépy, in his Bulletin (189in the company’s affairs. The following year, the Bulletin published several letters by E. B131e134, 234e239.51 Brosselard, La Guinée portugaise et les possessions françaises voisines (note 28), 28, 6

make use of the fallow fields designated as ‘state property’ in orderto connect the axis linking the area of shipping activity to the cityper se. Around the Silia fountain (or spring) and enclosing a largesquare were to stand a church and the buildings of the Catholicmission. The city was planned on an orthogonal pattern and wassupposed to continue into territory reclaimed from the forest anddescribed as ‘communal property’. The native village of Boucotewas still allowed to exist in the new plan, but it was completelyrearranged in a grid pattern around the spring. Only the configu-ration of the paddy fields was in fact respected, though they werenow given the appearance of clearly defined lots. The curvednetwork of roads and of lines was replaced by straight lines. Thenew spatial organization sought to be rationally organized andblatantly exposed its ‘civilizing mission’ through naïve marks suchas: boats and piers for trade, a small defensive building or ‘tower’for the army, a flagged outpost for the administration, and a crossmarking the spot for a Catholic church. In fact, only the magneticnorth axis of the map and the accuracy of the scale on the first mapare true to the language of topographical expertise. As for the rest,Brosselard did not bother with science: this publication was for thegeneral public and needed to be semantically simple in order tobest express the colonial project.

e of Le Temps and Warenhorst’s book, La Casamance, published in 1891 (Pasquier, Late concerning ‘Une compagnie française dans les Rivières du Sud’ published by the

1e2: 288e289). This clearly spoke of the activities of several members of the Societyonvalet, Correspondent for the company in the Southern Rivers (1892) 5e9, 77e83,

9.

I. Surun / Journal of Historical Geography 37 (2011) 167e177 177

As far as Brosselard was concerned, the convergence of themilitary and civilian versions of the colonial project was the resultof a genuine conversion of mindset. He described the process in thepages of Casamance et Mellacorée, his last book:

52 Bro53 The

Mine is not a story filledwith thrilling adventures. In fact, overthe twelve years I have travelled through Africa, sometimes inthe Sahara, sometimes in Sudan, sometimes even in the heartof the wildest regions and most impenetrable forests of thecoast, I have never had the opportunity of witnessing thescenes of horror too readily described by other travellers... Iwas eager then towalk in the footsteps of my heroic ancestorsbut neither the Tuareg (.) nor the Bedouin (.) nor the fever(.) nor the backwaters (.) nor the half-savage tribes (.) norSamory’s armies (.) were capable of filling a heart eager foradventure, with the food it so ardently needed. Therefore,under the pressure of my growing scepticism, my imaginationset my heart in search of different emotions, focusing it on thecontemplation of the beauties of African nature. The analyticalexamination of thismagnificent spectacle soon revealed tomethe charms I hadpreviously paidonly furtive attention to at thetime of my first strides as an Explorer. In the contemplation ofnature, my judgment opened itself wider to the ideas ofprogress...In the interval, I have undertaken many studies, on theSahara, on the course of the River Senegal andon the regions ofthe Southern Rivers; and I committed myself gradually to theconsideration of economic issues, for I amsure that these are inno way separate from the study of colonial questions. Theexperience I have acquired over these twelve years, at the costof severe fatigue and, unfortunately, to the detriment of myhealth, has greatly upset my ideas as an enthusiastic youngofficer. Putting aside all colonial chauvinism, I am thus contenttoday, when I speak of Africa, of producing only facts andfigures.52

From youthful dreams of adventure to a mature economic ratio-nale, Brosselard’s narrative represented a whole transitional genera-tion. Like others of his day, he had been nourished on tales ofexploration, and had believed his adolescent dreams of conquestcould be satisfied byembracing amilitary career. But in commonwithmany of his peers, he had also come to adopt the language of ‘devel-opment’ and of commercial progress in the service of colonialism.

Conclusion: mapping projects

This account of the itinerary of a young colonial officer e at firstclosely associatedwith the legacy of Faidherbe and then converted tothe values of colonial development e reflects the gap betweena project and its implementation. Most of Brosselard’s career wasdevoted to studying the possibilities offered by terrain, at a mediumand large scale (in the cartographic sense)53 of projects defined inbroader terms by his father-in-law,whichwere to become the officialpolicy of French penetration intoWest Africa. During hismissions, hewas required to negotiate, in the field, themeans of circumventing orovercoming topographic obstacles and to implement linear infra-structures that were to shape the landscape of colonial space. In sucha career, the map represented the means of intellectually graspingthis space as a pre-requisite for development at all of these scalesconcurrently. At a small scale, the map broadly highlighted thestrategic directions of expansion. At a medium scale, it helpedformulate hypotheses, by allowing the comparison of different

sselard-Faidherbe, Casamance et Mellacorée (note 25), 1e2, 83.word ‘scale’ here refers to the cartographic sense of the term, ‘small scale’ enco

possibilities. At a high level of definition the map became the meansof testing the possibilities of inscribing projects within specific areas.Mediating between an imagined space, a concrete specific space andits projected transformation, the map could e sequentially orsimultaneously e have a descriptive function and a prospectivefunction. It could present the results of technical operations under-taken in the field and use these to authenticate a match between theimage and its referent. It could equally transform a blank piece ofpaper into an area of experiment. All the projects concerning thecolonial development of space, whether they were finally accom-plished or not, gave birth to a series of cartographic productions thatcan only be understood by articulating these scales of vision.

The local or small scale was used to set the guidelines of thecolonial project and appears today to have been generated bya military culture of conquest and extensive expansion. But it alsoenabled economic development, since it included the constructionof transport infrastructure providing both military logistics and themeans for trade, implying a view of medium scale too. A colonialconquest by military officers, determined by an expansive view ofspace cannot be opposed to a culture of economic ‘development’defined by an intensive use of space, the two being closely inter-twined. It may however be suggested that Brosselard’s conversionto the economic development of colonial territory proceededlargely from the experience he had acquired while drawing themedium and large-scale maps he was ordered to produce for therealization of colonial infrastructure projects. His extensive expe-rience in cartographic practice, combined with his knowledge ofterritories already occupied by colonial trade e in Casamance andin the Southern Rivers areae and his networks of sociability wovenin the metropolis, may account for some of the distinctiveness ofhis cartographic work. Brosselard was to some degree not repre-sentative of the colonial officers of his generation, whose careersdepended more on their purely military activity. The contrast wasespecially marked with the members of ‘Archinard’s clique’, thoseknown as ‘the Sudanese’ who were on the routes to Timbuktu andChad. But Brosselard was by no means the only officer to be sent ontopographical rather than military missions or to publish his viewson French colonial policy in a format accessible to the generalpublic.

Finally, the contextual analysis of Brosselard’s map of the RiverCasamance presented in this paper shows how agents with differentcolonial backgrounds could associate in joint ventures and occa-sionally share the same vision of colonial space. Military officersinvolved in colonial expansion adopted simultaneously e orsuccessivelye different tactical, strategic or developmental postures,which were expressed at different scales, depending on the circum-stances. Brosselard’s case highlights the extent of porosity betweencultures of space and between types of projects in the building ofFrench colonial territory in Africa.

Acknowledgments

A former version of this paper was presented at the 14th interna-tional Conference of Historical Geographers, Kyoto, August 2009,thanks to support from the ANR program ‘Geo&Co’, directed byHélène Blais and Florence Deprest. Stephan Kraisowits translatedthe first draft. Thanks to the reviewers of the Journal of HistoricalGeography for their comments, and to Marc Berthon and AlondraTopete for help in editing the images. The author also warmlythanks Felix Driver for his helpful suggestions, for his work on thetranslation and on the figures at the final stages.

mpassing a large space and ‘large scale’ a small one.