More successful Toucouleur Empire?

Found that particular mentioned in one of ye not so olde threads.

The Toucouleur Empire is more successful during the 1850's then in OTL (such as taking Timbuktu and defeating the French) and later, modernizes its army and society under a great leader who fends off European conquerors. Afterwards the Toucouleur Empire is recognized as an African power by the Europeans.

They went right into conflict with the French when they started creating their western African Empire. So, is a Toucouleur Empire with enough staying power until the modern day possible?
 
You need much less European interest in Africa to make it a reality.

Maybe, funnily enough, better European knowledge of what Africa is like might serve to discourage colonisation of the interior. If there is a consensus established between European explorers that the African interior is a) sparsely populated by hostile natives, b) has little or nothing of value to exploit and c) is jam packed with vile diseases, you'll have much more reluctance on the part of the European powers to get involved directly in African affairs.

Alternatively, if you delay European medical advances for a couple of decades which made Europeans more resilient against tropical diseases, you could buy breathing space for African states who may purchase comparatively modern weapons which make a European takeover much, much more difficult.

If such a dis-interested mindset among European powers comes about, you then have a scenario where direct contrrol of Africa remains confined to the temparate zones of the north and south, and a few coastal enclaves. Less European involvement in the interior means the great powers establishing and using native buffer states to fight proxy wars with western weapons, but not the expenses entailed by directly goverened colonies. You might still have a carving up of Africa, but it would be based on indirectly governed spheres of influence rather than de facto European control.

In such a situation, it might not be incomprehensible that Tukulor develops more positive relations with France. Tukulor, as a French client state, could then do quite well against her pagan neighbours, armed as she would be with French rifles and Islamic zeal.
 
Um, well, uh... I'll admit it would be an awful long shot but it's possible. But looking back it would probably have been easier with a POD earlier then the 1850's.
 
Well, it's always going to be temporary. At some point, European powers are going to start stretching their tentacles inland from the coast, and the first one to do so will spur on all the others (as happened in real life with Leopold's Congo Free State). But if you can put it off until the early 1900s, you've given the more powerful inland African states a good few decades to operate and work with European powers, assimilating some of their technology - possibly enough to fight off a European attack.

If Tukulor can survive (and profit) from proximity to the French, there is no reason why other African nations couldn't do the same. You'd be looking at a very different post-colonial map of Africa if this were the case.
 
It's unlikely, but possible. The French were incredibly opposed to any Islamic empires - they had a positive psychosis about this.

But if the Tukolor and Samori could have avoided fighting each other and made common cause, they could at the least have maintained themselves much longer.
 
I think you have to go farther back. Have the West Africans be seen as a more equal participant to the European and Islamic Empires in the middle ages. Then you'd have at least some European states who have a history and psychology of interacting with African states the same as any other instead of a relatively blank canvass to impose inferiority or superiority on. If you can leverage that, you can probably slow things down on enough for the Africans to succeed.

I say the west Africans because they seem to be closer to the maritime Europeans and because a version of this is what I did am/doing in my own TL so I'm familiar with the process there and it focuses on the emergence of a powerful Christian Takrur state around 1100.
 
I think you have to go farther back. Have the West Africans be seen as a more equal participant to the European and Islamic Empires in the middle ages. Then you'd have at least some European states who have a history and psychology of interacting with African states the same as any other instead of a relatively blank canvass to impose inferiority or superiority on. If you can leverage that, you can probably slow things down on enough for the Africans to succeed.

I say the west Africans because they seem to be closer to the maritime Europeans and because a version of this is what I did am/doing in my own TL so I'm familiar with the process there. That and does involve the emergence of a powerful Christian Takrur state around 1100.

The Portuguese treated the African states the same as any other. Of course they were out for profit and to convert them but, they also exchanged ambassadors and supported local rulers.

If you think about the French only ruled west africa from 1895-1960 while the Malian Empire ruled nearly the same territory the 1230s-1600s. The actual conquest of French West Africa was much briefer and based on a few battles and the submission of local elites.
 

Glen

Moderator
Found that particular mentioned in one of ye not so olde threads.



They went right into conflict with the French when they started creating their western African Empire. So, is a Toucouleur Empire with enough staying power until the modern day possible?

All things are possible in life (except Operation Sealion). In order to have this work, though, you basically need to have the Toucouleur Empire pull a Meiji and a Siam combo (modernize to stand up to the Europeans and successfully play them off against each other to maintain independence through the colonial period). Do that, and there's no reason why they couldn't survive as a nation into the modern age.
 
The Portuguese treated the African states the same as any other. Of course they were out for profit and to convert them but, they also exchanged ambassadors and supported local rulers.

If you think about the French only ruled west africa from 1895-1960 while the Malian Empire ruled nearly the same territory the 1230s-1600s. The actual conquest of French West Africa was much briefer and based on a few battles and the submission of local elites.
Well I'm also thinking of how to reduce the misery and negative consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Which I think plays an important part in the eventual colonization/subjugation of at least that part of Africa.
 
Glen said:
All things are possible in life (except Operation Sealion). In order to have this work, though, you basically need to have the Toucouleur Empire pull a Meiji and a Siam combo (modernize to stand up to the Europeans and successfully play them off against each other to maintain independence through the colonial period). Do that, and there's no reason why they couldn't survive as a nation into the modern age.

Pretty much.

To be honest, though, I'm not sure if Tukulor can manage this. 'Meiji-ing' requires a level of technological know-how, open-mindedness, infrastructure and homogeneity that West African empires simply didn't have.

I think the best we can hope for is that by 1900, the Tukulor Empire has a comparatively modern army with artillery, logistical know how and a centralised command structure. A big stick to ward off curious Europeans, in other words.

Beyond that, any modernisation that takes place is going to be very, very slow. The prospect of trans-Sahel railroads aside, I don't think you're going to get the sort of modernisation that Japan was able to undertake, though Siam might *possibly* be comparable.

What would be fascinating is the impact of such a scenario on modern maps. Africa would consist of a few dozen essentially Westernised coastal enclave republics, with large, rambling inland empires ruled by a bewildering variety of emirs, sultans, kings and despots who can only hold down subject populations by force of arms.
 
I'm not sure you'd even need to pull a Meji, just pull an Abyssinia for long enough.

So, let's sum the points up and see what we can make of this. I'll be forced to rely on the Wikipedia for an unhealthy degree, because I really don't know anything about the period. :(

- POD 1857: By a stroke of luck, Medina Fort falls to Umar Tall's forces, a French relief force arrives too late <and is beaten back? retakes the fort with high losses?>
- With more breathing room, the Empire goes after its OTL annexations: Kaarta, Segou, and Massina
- Preempting moves against Timbuktu, Balobo's rebellion grinds down
- Umar Tall dies in 1867, his nephew Ahmadu Tall succeeds him
- Weakened by the rebellion and forced to fight the reencroaching French, Ahmadu is forced to make concessions to local leaders; among them, Samori Ture rises to prominence
- While socially conservative, <other leaders> institute military reforms
- ???
- By 1901 we have Cináed's Africa
 
I'm not sure you'd even need to pull a Meji, just pull an Abyssinia for long enough.

So, let's sum the points up and see what we can make of this. I'll be forced to rely on the Wikipedia for an unhealthy degree, because I really don't know anything about the period. :(

- POD 1857: By a stroke of luck, Medina Fort falls to Umar Tall's forces, a French relief force arrives too late <and is beaten back? retakes the fort with high losses?>
- With more breathing room, the Empire goes after its OTL annexations: Kaarta, Segou, and Massina
- Preempting moves against Timbuktu, Balobo's rebellion grinds down
- Umar Tall dies in 1867, his nephew Ahmadu Tall succeeds him
- Weakened by the rebellion and forced to fight the reencroaching French, Ahmadu is forced to make concessions to local leaders; among them, Samori Ture rises to prominence
- While socially conservative, <other leaders> institute military reforms
- ???
- By 1901 we have Cináed's Africa

The French empire was built largely by military adventurers often operating against the orders of Paris. Because of that, they are more vulnerable to defeats than powers that are operating according to policy.

For example, the Ottomans calculated that if they got the Tuaregs to destroy the Flatters mission, French public support for Saharan adventures would evaporate, and that is what in fact happened.

If the Tukolors inflict serious reverses on the French, they may prompt the French government to put a lid on the West African administration to avoid further undermining of French prestige.

So the Tukolors don't have to pull a Meiji, and probably not even a Menelik. But they'll still have at some point to come to accommodation with France, because there is no other power to help them. France will always be waiting for an opportunity to increase its control, which is not good news, because it means the Tukolors will have to avoid making any mistakes until WWII, if there even is one.
 
I suspect that if you time a half-baked French adventure at a dark time for France's international relations, perhaps in the immediate aftermath of Tonkin, you could have some poor tactical and strategic decisions result in a complete defeat of a French colonial force which would have an effect more like that of Adowa than Isandlwana. That still only gives you breathing space until the *inter-war years, and the fact that the Tukulor Empire managed to self-destruct on its own means you're going to need to butterfly some strong leadership after Umar Tall's death. To be honest (and I might be plugging a little too hard here** ;)), I think a more viable and interesting candidate for a Sub-Saharan state would be the Timbo Amalmate, which had a better-defended core territory in the highlands of Guinea, control over the gold mines there, and an interesting Sufi theology amongst its clerics to boot. If you could stave the French off for a while, and eventually get some Europeans to think of Sufis as being "different" from other Islamic states, you could get quite the interesting state...

*Assuming WW1 and WW2 don't get butterflied.

**As in, is currently in place as a butterfly effect in an ever-researched, never-posted time line.
 
I suspect that if you time a half-baked French adventure at a dark time for France's international relations, perhaps in the immediate aftermath of Tonkin, you could have some poor tactical and strategic decisions result in a complete defeat of a French colonial force which would have an effect more like that of Adowa than Isandlwana. That still only gives you breathing space until the *inter-war years, and the fact that the Tukulor Empire managed to self-destruct on its own means you're going to need to butterfly some strong leadership after Umar Tall's death. To be honest (and I might be plugging a little too hard here** ;)), I think a more viable and interesting candidate for a Sub-Saharan state would be the Timbo Amalmate, which had a better-defended core territory in the highlands of Guinea, control over the gold mines there, and an interesting Sufi theology amongst its clerics to boot. If you could stave the French off for a while, and eventually get some Europeans to think of Sufis as being "different" from other Islamic states, you could get quite the interesting state...

*Assuming WW1 and WW2 don't get butterflied.

**As in, is currently in place as a butterfly effect in an ever-researched, never-posted time line.

I think Samori might even be better. That guy was seriously bad-ass.
 
I think Samori might even be better. That guy was seriously bad-ass.

Samori's the guy who secured those mines from Timbo, I think. Of course, with an 1852 POD to work from, he could always come under Sufi influence once he got to that point. The Sufi imams of Timbo are what really drew me to the concept of the first place, since a Sufi state in West Africa would be a Good Thing (TM).
 
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