Dosso Kingdom - French Colonialism

French Colonialism

French colonial forces first entered the area in the 1890s and found Dosso allied with local Fula communities and small states like Kebbi against other Djerma states, the Dendi, the Gourounsi (in modern Burkina Faso) the Hausa states to the east (in what is now southern Niger), and still struggling to retake the territory it held in 1865.

Zarmakoy Attikou (r.1897-1902) took the military help offered by the French forces based in Karimama (now Benin), but found that after the military conquest of his enemies in 1898, the French forces were stationed in Dosso, where they would stay for the next 60 years. Attikou had delegated the negotiations to his prince Awta, and this future Zarmakoy hitched his star to French power. Despite tensions, the French found one of their few allies in the region, and this alliance of necessity came to benefit Dosso as much as it hurt them. With French aid, Zarmakoy Awta (r.1902-13) retained all of what is the modern Dosso Department, and with his help, the French put down revolts led by a charismatic Marabout in the Dosso region in 1906. The Zarmakoy of Dosso was integrated into the French Colonial system through a type of Indirect Rule rare in its scale and continuity in French West Africa. In most places the French established rulers at village level (the Chef du Canton) who were promoted by the French over traditional rulers, and thus were entirely dependent upon the French. At Dosso, the French allowed the Zarmakoy to not only retain but expand his territory and to choose his own successors, keeping continuity with the pre-colonial state, and standing above his own Chefs du Canton at the local level. The French so depended upon the Zarmakoy of Dosso, that in 1923 they moved the capital of the then Military Territory of Niger from Zinder, the home of the powerful pre-colonial Sultanate of Damagaram to a village in Dosso territory which was to become Niamey.