West African decolonization

I've come across a map showing the spread of Mandinka people in west Africa and couldn't help but ask myself, why didn't the french simply create a border encompassing that area when it's relatively culturally and linguistically homogeneous rather than splitting it into multiple unstable nations?

MandingoMap-1906_with_color.png
 
I don't know anything for a fact, but if I had to guess?

1. The French didn't really care to take the time to look at what would be best for the West African peoples. Just as most colonial governments didn't really do what was best or most optimal for the territories they colonized. They just left when it became obvious they'd have to.

2. They probably thought, to some extent, they'd be able to play these groups off against each other, post-colonialism. If you create a stable country of culturally and linguistically homogenous people, odds are they'll be more productive (in an economic sense, anyways). But if you create a bunch of unstable countries, without regard to (or perhaps because of) ethnic/cultural tensions and differences, you can exploit them longer.
 
There's also the fact that, as far as I remember, ethnicity is not super homogeneous in West Africa. So by putting this tribe in a unified territory, you might cut another
 
There were some proposals in the 1910s (I would have to look at them in Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa to say the details) to restructure West Africa via administrative reforms and territorial trades with British colonies to provide geographical borders more matching ethnicity and religion. Obviously nothing came of it. But as mentioned either Europeans didn't care, saw it as useful as divide and conquer, or those ethnic borders aren't hard and are hence not really an effective way to build a nation-state. Also the territories which composed French West Africa were just that, territorial administrative units which made up a colonial federation. It wasn't until quite late that the French ever saw them as nations and as having any significance beyond administrative measures. So there's not much reason to have them be built on ethnic lines when they're not intended for be nations, and by the time that might have been relevant (1950s), events had surpassed that reform.
 

Deleted member 97083

I've come across a map showing the spread of Mandinka people in west Africa and couldn't help but ask myself, why didn't the french simply create a border encompassing that area when it's relatively culturally and linguistically homogeneous rather than splitting it into multiple unstable nations?

MandingoMap-1906_with_color.png
That region isn't culturally and linguistically homogenous. That's the area of the Mandé language family, but there are a number of different languages within the family. I imagine unifying such an area would be like creating a "Romance Union" of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
 
That region isn't culturally and linguistically homogenous. That's the area of the Mandé language family, but there are a number of different languages within the family. I imagine unifying such an area would be like creating a "Romance Union" of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.
I see, but that's still far better at the starting point than throwing together France, Germany, and Russia and Turkey. Mande speakers should at least be able to understand each other kinda like german and dutch speakers.
 
I see, but that's still far better at the starting point than throwing together France, Germany, and Russia and Turkey. Mande speakers should at least be able to understand each other kinda like german and dutch speakers.
A Northern French has more in common with a German than a Portuguese.
As a French, I don't understand Spanish or Portuguese people. Italian is mostly ok, but even within Italy there are large ethnic and cultural divides

Also, and that's a larger point, France was formed because a bunch of guys put a frontier somewhere, said that it was where their land stopped and that everyone within the land should be homogenous. Nation States are not a natural feature but are built that way.
France in 1800 for example was way more diverse, with many more languages than France in 2000 which has been forcibly homogenised
 
The concept of creating an ethnically homogenous state wouldn't really make sense. OTL West African polities were all multi ethnic in the first place, look at the Mali, Songhai, Futa Jallon, Kaabu empires for example. A better question to ask is why would France create an artificially homogenous state in a region where that never has been the norm?
 
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