page_title: French conquest of Senegal
section_title: First establishments
hierarchical_section_title: French conquest of Senegal / First establishments
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: ST Louis Senegal
context_page_description: The French conquest of Senegal started from 1659 with the establishment of Saint-Louis, Senegal, followed by the French capture of the island of Gorée from the Dutch in 1677, but would only become a full-scale campaign in the 19th century.
context_section_description: According to some historians, French merchants from the Normandy cities of Dieppe and Rouen traded with the Gambia and Senegal coasts, and with the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, between 1364 and 1413. Probably, as a result, an ivory-carving industry developed in Dieppe after 1364. These travels, however, were soon forgotten with the advent of the Hundred Years War in France.
  Various European powers, such as Portugal, the Netherlands, and England then competed for trade in the area of Senegal from the 15th century onward. The Portuguese first established a post on the island of Gorée in 1444, from where they organized a slave trade. The island was captured by the Dutch in 1588, where they established defensive forts and developed trade further.
  In 1659, France established the trading post of Saint-Louis, Senegal. The European powers continued contending for the island of Gorée, until in 1677, France led by Jean II d'Estrées during the Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678) ended up in possession of the island, which it would keep for the next 300 years. In 1758 the French settlement was captured by a British expedition as part of the Seven Years' War, but was later returned to France in 1783, following French victory in the American Revolutionary War.
  The states of the Wolof and Sereer, neighbouring the two colonial outposts, were particularly involved with the slave trade, having strong military organizations geared to supplying slaves to the Europeans. According to historians such as Professor François G. Richard and Professor Martin A. Klein, the Serer states such as Sine and Saloum were not heavily involved in the slave trade. François G. Richard posits that:
  The Kingdom of Sine remained a modest participant in the Atlantic system, secondary to the larger Wolof, Halpulaar [speakers of the Pulaar language i.e. the Fula and Toucouleur people] or Mandinka polities surrounding it on all sides... As practices of enslavement intensified among other ethnic groups during the 18th century, fueling a lucrative commerce in captives and the rise of internal slavery, the Siin may have been demoted to the rank of second player, in so far as the kingdom was never a major supplier of captives.
  — François G. Richard
  In his 1968 publication: Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1947-1914, Professor Martin A. Klein notes that, although slavery had existed in Wolof and Serer culture, as well that of their neighbors, the institution of slavery did not exist among the Serer Noon, Serer N'Diéghem, and the Jola people, "who had egalitarian social structures and simple political institutions." Klein also notes that: "In times of peace, the Kingdom of Siin more readily supplied grain, cattle and other basic necessities to the French." According to Professor Mamadou Diouf and Profssor Mara Leichtman (2009), the Serer Saafi were also purely egalitarian and rejected all forms of centralised government, the caste system, Islam and slavery.
  Conflicts erupted with the Muslims to the north, as when Marabout Nasr al Din attacked Mauritania and the Wolof across the border in 1673, but he was defeated through an alliance between local forces and the French.
caption: Saint-Louis in 1780
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