French Equatorial Africa

French Equatorial Africa was a federation of four French colonies in central Africa: Gabon, Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari and Chad. It existed from 1910 to 1958, with its capital at Brazzaville, on the Congo river opposite Kinshasa. Its colonies became the independent states of Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic and Chad.

French influence began on the coast of Gabon, where France built a base at Libreville, founded in 1849 for freed slaves. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Italian-born French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza travelled up the Ogooué river and reached the Congo, signing a treaty with Makoko, king of the Tio, in 1880, which gave France a claim to the north bank of the Congo river. Brazzaville was named after him. French expeditions pushed north to Lake Chad, where in 1900 they defeated and killed the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr at Kousséri. The federation was formally created in 1910.

To develop the vast territory cheaply, France granted about 70 percent of the land to some forty private concession companies from 1899, giving them monopolies over rubber, ivory and other products. The companies forced people to collect rubber, using hostage-taking, beatings and killings, similar to the abuses in Leopold's Congo next door. A scandal in 1905, when officials were found to have committed atrocities, led to an inquiry led by Brazza, whose report was suppressed. The population declined sharply from violence, famine and sleeping sickness.

From 1921 to 1934, France built the Congo-Ocean railway, linking Brazzaville to the port of Pointe-Noire, about 500 kilometres, through difficult terrain. It was built with forced labour recruited from across the federation, and between about 15,000 and 23,000 workers died. The writer André Gide described the abuses of the concession companies and forced labour in his book Travels in the Congo in 1927, and Albert Londres reported on the railway, causing outrage in France.

Africans resisted colonial rule in various ways. The Kongo-Wara rebellion, or War of the Hoe Handle, from 1928 to 1931 in Ubangi-Shari, was led by Karnou, a prophet who told his followers that the hoe handle would protect them from bullets. André Matsoua founded a movement for the rights of Congolese, and was imprisoned; his followers believed he would return after his death in 1942.

In August 1940, after France's defeat, Félix Éboué, the governor of Chad, born in French Guiana and the first Black governor of a French colony, declared for General de Gaulle's Free French. Middle Congo, Ubangi-Shari and Cameroon soon followed, and Free French forces took Gabon after brief fighting. Brazzaville became the capital of Free France until 1943, and Éboué became governor-general. Free French forces under General Leclerc launched raids from Chad into Italian Libya, taking Kufra in 1941. In January 1944 de Gaulle held the Brazzaville Conference on the future of French Africa, which promised reforms but rejected independence.

After the war, forced labour and the indigénat code were abolished, and Africans gained representation in the French parliament. Barthélemy Boganda of Ubangi-Shari, Léon M'ba of Gabon and others led political movements. Boganda hoped to keep central Africa united, but in 1958 the four colonies voted to become autonomous republics within the French Community, and the federation was dissolved. They became independent in August 1960. Boganda died in a plane crash in 1959.

Our maps show French Equatorial Africa from 1914 to 1938. Its largest outline, about 2.5 million square kilometres on the 1920 map, is half in today's Chad, with the rest in the Central African Republic, Congo and Gabon. On the 1945 map the basemap shows its parts separately.