page_title: Louis Faidherbe
section_title: Economics
hierarchical_section_title: Louis Faidherbe / West Africa / Economics
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Saint Louis du Sénégal pont Faidherbe. Română: Podul Faidherbe din Saint-Louis, Senegal.
context_page_description: Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French general and colonial administrator. He created the Senegalese Tirailleurs when he was governor of Senegal.
context_section_description: Saint-Louis was placed under formal military control, and a telegraph and road link was set up to the other French colonies in Gorée Island and Rufisque. In 1857, the French seized the inland region between these two from the Lebu Republic, and rechristened their capital Ndakarou as the new colonial city of Dakar. Work was begun on the Dakar–Saint-Louis railway, as well as a rail line along the Senegal into the interior.
  Faidherbe's large-scale projects included the building of bridges and provisioning of fresh drinking water. But Saint-Louis' place as a door of French trade into an African interior began to wane with the expansion of direct colonial rule. Access to its port became increasingly awkward in the age of the steamship and the completion of the Dakar-Saint Louis railroad in 1885 meant that up-country trade effectively circumvented its port. Large French firms, many from the city of Bordeaux, took over the new commercial networks of the interior, marginalizing the Métis traders who had always been the middle men of upstream commerce.
  Faidherbe also placed under direct French control large scale seasonal groundnut cultivation near the fort systems, and then along the rail lines.  This created the navétanes system of seasonal labor migration, first in Cayor, then spreading along the rail lines to Baol and Sine-Saloum, and eventually along the Thies-Kayes railway. This would be a pattern spread throughout French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa well into the 20th century.
caption: Faidherbe Bridge in Saint-Louis
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