French Conquest
European interest in Africa generally grew during the 19th century. By 1887, France, motivated by the search for wealth, had driven inland from its settlements on central Africa's west coast to claim the territory of Oubangui-Chari (present-day Central African Republic). It claimed this area as a zone of French influence, and within two years it occupied part of what is now southern Chad. In the early 1890s, French military expeditions sent to Chad encountered the forces of Rabih az-Zubayr, who had been conducting slave raids (razzias) in southern Chad throughout the 1890s and had sacked the settlements of Bornu, Baguirmi, and Ouaddai. After years of indecisive engagements, French forces finally defeated Rabih az-Zubayr at the battle of Kousséri in 1900.
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Famous quotes containing the words french and/or conquest:
“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Have I in conquest stretched mine arm so far
To be afeared to tell greybeards the truth?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)