Extending France’s empire into the desert: Régnauld de Lannoy de Bissy’s feuille 17: Timbouktou

Abstract

Upon the 1830 landing on the shores of Algeria, France solidified control of coastal territories. Although the French had little initial desire to move into the vast desert interior of North Africa, the so-called scramble for Africa and the glorification of Britain’s Dr. Livingston after his death later in the century inspired many French politicians and scientists to reexamine their own engagement with the continent. As a result, in 1883, Richard de Régnauld de Lannoy de Bissy (Lannoy), working on behalf of the Service géographique de l’armée, published the first thirty-eight of his sixty-three-sheet Carte d’Afrique. Although much of the continent had been visited and documented by Europeans as late as the early 1880s, there remained many blank spaces on French maps. This paper will examine Lannoy’s feuille 17: Timbouktou, which presents one such relatively unknown sector of the Sahara Desert, to the French people. Lannoy documents important physical characteristics such as the flow of the Niger River, large sections of desert, and both present and past caravan routes. However, he also de-legitimizes indigenous claims to the area and presents it as open and ready to accept French control.