page_title: Ludovic de Polignac
section_title: Ghadames treaty
hierarchical_section_title: Ludovic de Polignac / Ghadames treaty
caption_attribution_description: English: Hippolyte Mircher (1820-1878) soldier and topgrapher
context_page_description: Charles Ludovic Marie de Polignac was a French soldier and explorer who spent much of his career in French Algeria. He is known for negotiating a treaty with the Tuareg people in 1862. He dreamed of creating a huge French empire in north and central Africa with the support of the Tuaregs and Arabs, and came to believe that the Jews and Anglo-Saxons were conspiring against France.
context_section_description: Polignac helped to negotiate the Ghadames treaty of 1862. Ghadames is a mainly Berber town in northwest Libya near the borders with Algeria and Tunisia. It was independent until 1830 when it became a dependency of Tunisia and then of the Turkish empire. The Europeans noted its commercial importance. The governor of Algeria, Marshal Aimable Pélissier, decided to send a mission to Ghadames to make an official treaty with the Kel Ajjer Tuaregs. The political aspects were entrusted to Commander Hippolyte Mircher as chief and Captain de Polignac, both of whom were familiar with Algerian Moslems. They were accompanied by the mining engineer Vatonne, the army doctor Hoffman and the military interpreter Isma'yl Bou Derba.
  The mission left Tripoli in October 1862 and travelled south to the oasis of Ghadames. There they met with Tuareg chiefs of the ruling Araghen tribe, and quickly agreed on a convention that supported friendly intercourse between the two nations, protection to the Tuareg in Algeria and to the French in Tuareg country, and trade between the Tuaregs and Algeria. The treaty was signed on 29 November 1862. After leaving Ghadames the mission travelled northwest past the Ghardaya well and through the Wadi Souf to the town of Biskra in Algeria. Vatonne and Polignac surveyed the route of the expedition.
  The report by Mircher and Polignac on the mission to the Tuaregs was published in 1863. Based on the agreement with the Tuaregs the metropolitan French chambers of commerce gave support to the traders in Algiers to arrange a caravan to the Sudan, although it does not seem to have ever departed. After revolts in 1864 the projected trade between the Tuaregs and Algeria failed to develop. However, the mission had gained detailed information on the trade between Tripoli and the Sudan. Mircher gave a detailed report on this trade from Tripoli via Ghadames to Timbuktu and the Hausa states.
caption: Hippolyte Mircher, leader of the mission to Ghadames
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