This article is part of the History of Chad series

Colonial Chad

Decolonization in Chad

The Tombalbaye Regime

Malloum's Military Government

Chadian Civil War

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 Kanem-Bornu, Baguirmi, and Ouaddai. After years of indecisive engagements, French forces finally defeated Rabih az-Zubayr at the battle of Kousséri in 1900. Fixed outer edges, hues based on World Flag Database. ... // Prehistory Human presence in Chad is very ancient, a humanoid skull found in Borkou is more than 3 million years old. ... From 1979 to 1982, Chad experienced unprecedented change and spiraling violence. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1887 (MDCCCLXXXVII) is a common year starting on Saturday (click on link for calendar). ... A satellite composite image of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia. ... Oubangui-Chari, or Ubangi-Shari, was a French territory in central Africa which later became the independent country of the Central African Republic on August 13, 1960. ... Map of the first (light blue) and second (dark blue — plain and hachured) French colonial empires. ... The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the Mauve Decade, because William Henry Perkins aniline dye allowed the widespread use of that colour in fashion, and also as the Gay Nineties, under the then-current usage of the word gay which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no... Slave transport in Africa, from a 19th century engraving The African slave trade dates back thousands of years and reportedly continues today in some isolated parts of Africa. ... Ghazw (plural ghazawāt) (Arabic: غزو) is an Arabic word meaning an armed incursion for the purposes of conquest, plunder, or the capture of slaves and is cognate with the terms ghāziya and maghāzÄ«. In pre-Islamic times it signified the plundering raids organized by nomadic Bedouin warriors against... The Kanem-Bornu Empire existed in Africa, established around 1200 and lasting, in a changed form, until the 1840s. ... The Baguirmi or Bagirmi Kingdom was an Islamic kingdom or sultanate that existed in the 16th and 17th centuries southeast of Lake Chad in what is now the country of Chad. ... The battle of Kousséri originates From French plans to occupy the Chari-Baguirmi region and so, in 1899–1900, three armed expeditions were organized, one proceeding north from Congo, one east from Niger and another south from Algeria. ... 1900 (MCM) was an exceptional common year starting on Monday. ...

Two fundamental themes dominated Chad's colonial experience with the French: an absence of policies designed to unify the territory and an exceptionally slow pace of modernization. In the French scale of priorities, the colony of Chad ranked near the bottom; it was less important than non-African territories, North Africa, West Africa, or even the other French possessions in Central Africa. The French came to perceive Chad primarily as a source of raw cotton and untrained labour to be used in the more productive colonies to the south. Within Chad there was neither the will nor the resources to do much more than maintain a semblance of law and order. In fact, even this basic function of governance was often neglected; throughout the colonial period, large areas of Chad were never governed effectively from N'Djamena (called Fort-Lamy prior to September 1973). In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state. ...  Northern Africa (UN subregion)  geographic, including above North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent. ...  Western Africa (UN subregion)  Maghreb West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. ... Cotton plant as imagined and drawn by John Mandeville in the 14th century Cotton is a soft fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant (Gossypium spp. ... Manual labor is a term used for physical work done with the hands, especially in an unskilled manual job such as fruit and vegetable picking, road building, or any other field where the work may be considered hard or arduous, which has as its objective the production of goods. ... Law and order is a political term, used most notably in the United States, to refer to crime and punishment as a political issue. ... NDjamena, «ehn JAHM uh nuh», population 721,000 (2005), is the capital of Chad. ... Look up September in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1973 calendar). ...

Chad was linked in 1905 with three French colonies to the south--Oubangui-Chari, Middle Congo (present-day Congo), and Gabon. But Chad did not receive separate colony status or a unified administrative policy until 1920. The four colonies were administered together as French Equatorial Africa under the direction of a governor general stationed in Brazzaville. The governor general had broad administrative control over the federation, including external and internal security, economic and financial affairs, and all communications with the French minister of the colonies. Lieutenant governors, also appointed by the French government, were expected to implement in each colony the orders of the governor general. The central administration in Brazzaville tightly controlled the lieutenant governors despite reformist efforts toward decentralisation between 1910 and 1946. Chad's lieutenant governor had greater autonomy because of the distance from Brazzaville and because of France's much greater interest in the other three colonies. As for the number of troops deployed in the country, there were three batallions for a total of about 3.000 soldiers. 1905 (MCMV) was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... First settled by Mbuti, Congo was later settled by Bantu groups that also occupied parts of present-day Angola, Gabon, and Democratic Republic of the Congo, forming the basis for ethnic affinities and rivalries among those states. ... 1920 (MCMXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events January January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ... French Equatorial Africa (Afrique Équatoriale Française, AEF) was the federation of French colonial possessions in Middle Africa, extending northwards from the Congo River to the Sahara Desert. ... Governor-General (or Governor General) is a term used both historically and currently to designate the appointed representative of a head of state or their government for a particular territory, historically in a colonial context, but no longer necessarily in that form. ... Image of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, taken by NASA. Brazzaville is the capital and largest city of the Republic of the Congo and is located on the Congo River. ... A federation (Latin: foedus, covenant) is a state comprised of a number of partially self-governing regions (often themselves referred to as states) united by a central (federal) government. ... A Lieutenant Governor is a government official who is the subordinate or deputy of a Governor or Governor-General. ... Decentralisation (American: decentralization) is any of various means of more widely distributing decision-making to bring it closer to the point of service or action. ... -1... 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...

The lines of control from Brazzaville, feeble as they may have been, were still stronger than those from N'Djamena to its hinterland. In the huge Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Prefecture, the handful of French military administrators soon reached a tacit agreement with the inhabitants of the desert; as long as caravan trails remained relatively secure and minimal levels of law and order were met, the military administration (headquartered in Faya Largeau) usually left the people alone. In central Chad, French rule was only slightly more substantive. In Ouaddaï and Biltine prefectures, endemic resistance continued against the French and, in some cases, against any authority that attempted to suppress banditry and brigandage. The thinly staffed colonial administration provided only weak supervision over arid Kanem Prefecture and the sparsely populated areas of Guéra and Salamat prefectures. Old-fashioned razzias continued in the 1920s, and it was reported in 1923 that a group of Senegalese Muslims on their way to Mecca had been seized and sold into slavery. Unwilling to expend the resources required for effective administration, the French government responded with sporadic coercion and a growing reliance on indirect rule through the sultanates. Categories: Stub | Prefectures of Chad ... Chad is divided into 14 prefectures: Batha Biltine Borkou-Ennedi-Tibesti Chari-Baguirmi Guéra Kanem Lac Logone Occidental Logone Oriental Mayo-Kebbi Moyen-Chari Ouaddaï Salamat Tandjilé Categories: Chad | Lists of subnational entities | Prefectures of Chad ... Desert view in Saudi Arabia. ... Faya is a city in Chad, the capital of Bourkou-Ennedi-Tibesti prefecture. ... Ouaddaï is one of the 14 prefectures of Chad. ... Biltine is one of the 14 prefectures of Chad. ... Butch Cassidy, a famous Western American outlaw An outlaw, a person living the lifestyle of outlawry, meaning literally outside of the law. ... Kanem was one of the 14 prefectures of Chad. ... Guéra is one of the 14 prefectures of Chad. ... Salamat was one of the 14 prefectures of Chad. ... The 1920s were a decade sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... 1923 (MCMXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... Islam (Arabic: ; ( (help· info)), submission (to the will of God) is a monotheistic faith and the worlds second-largest religion. ... The Hajj (Arabic: ‎ translit: ) is the Pilgrimage to Mecca in Islam. ... Slavery is a condition in which one person, known as a slave, is under the control of another. ... Indirect rule is a type of European colonial policy as practiced in large parts of British India (see Princely states) and elsewhere in the British Empire (including Malaya), in which the traditional local power structure, or at least part of it, is incorporated into the colonial administrative structure. ... A sultan (Arabic: سلطان) is an Islamic title, with several historical meanings. ...

France managed to govern effectively only the south, but until 1946 administrative direction came from Bangui in Oubangui-Chari rather than N'Djamena. Unlike northern and central Chad, a French colonial system of direct civilian administration was set up among the Sara, a southern ethnic group, and their neighbors. Also, unlike the rest of Chad, a modest level of economic development occurred in the south because of the introduction in 1929 of largescale cotton production. Remittances and pensions to southerners who served in the French military also enhanced economic well-being. 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Bangui, the only commune or federal district in the Central African Republic serves as its capital and largest city. ... a Sara woman about 1900 The Sara are an ethnic group in Central Africa. ... 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... A pension is a steady income paid to a person (usually after retirement). ...

But even the advantages of more income, schools, and roads failed to win popular support for the French in the south. In addition to earlier grievances, such as forced porterage (which claimed thousands of lives) and village relocation, southern farmers resented the mandatory quotas for the production of cotton, which France purchased at artificially low prices. Government-protected chiefs further abused this situation. The chiefs were resented all the more because they were generally the artificial creations of the French in a region of previously stateless societies. This commonality of treatment and the colonial organizational framework began to create during this period a sense of Sara ethnicity among persons whose collective identities had previously been limited to small kinship groups. Farmer spreading grasshopper bait in his alfalfa field. ... A quota is a prescribed number or share of something. ... The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view. ... A stateless nation is generally defined as an ethnic group not represented by its own unique, coterminous state. ...

Although France had put forth considerable effort during the conquest of Chad, the ensuing administration of the territory was halfhearted. Officials in the French colonial service resisted assignments to Chad, so posts often went to novices or to out-of-favor officials. One historian of France's empire has concluded that it was almost impossible to be too demented or depraved to be considered unfit for duty in Chad. Still, major scandals occurred periodically, and many of the posts remained vacant. In 1928, for example, 42% of the Chadian subdivisions lacked official administrators. 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

An event occurred in 1935 that was to have far-reaching consequences throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In that year, the French colonial administration negotiated a border adjustment with Italy, Libya's colonial master. The adjustment would have relocated the Libyan-Chad boundary about 100 kilometers south across the Aozou Strip. Although the French legislature never ratified the agreement, the negotiations formed part of the basis of Libya's claim to the area decades later. 1935 (MCMXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... The 1980s decade refers to the years from 1980 to 1989, inclusive. ... The Aozou Strip (alternatively, Aouzou Strip) is a portion of northern Chad which lies along the border with Libya, extending south to a depth of about 100 kilometers into Chads Bourkou-Ennedi-Tibesti prefecture. ... The Palais Bourbon, front The French National Assembly (French: Assemblée nationale) is one of the two houses of the bicameral Parliament of France under the Fifth Republic. ...

References

• This article contains material from the Library of Congress Country Studies which, as a US government publication, is in the public domain.