Human arrival in Ivory Coast (officially called Côte d'Ivoire) has been dated to the Upper Paleolithic period (15,000 to 10,000 BC), or at the minimum, the Neolithic period based on weapon and tool fragments, specifically polished shale axes and remnants of cooking and fishing.. The earliest known inhabitants of left traces scattered throughout the territory. Historians believe these people were all either displaced or absorbed by the ancestors of the present inhabitants. Peoples who arrived before the 16th century include the Ehotilé (Aboisso), Kotrowou (Fresco), Zéhiri (Grand Lahou), Ega, and Diès (Divo).
Prehistory Little is known about the original inhabitants of Côte d'Ivoire. Shell middens along the lagoons have been dated to as far back as 1500 BC. The first recorded history is in the chronicles of North African Muslims who conducted a caravan trade across the Sahara in salt, slaves, gold, and other items from early Roman times. The southern terminals of the trans-Saharan trade routes were located on the edge of the desert, and from there, supplemental trade extended as far south as the edge of the rainforest. The more important terminals—Djenné, Gao, and Timbuctu—grew into major commercial centers around which the great Sudanic empires developed. These empires dominated neighboring states by controlling the trade routes with powerful military forces.
Mande Expansion
By the 11th century, the rulers of the Ghana Empire had embraced Islam, and it had spread south into the northern areas of contemporary Ivory Coast. After the decline of Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire grew into a powerful Muslim state, reaching its peak in the early 14th century, but with territory in Ivory Coast limited to the northwest corner around Odienné.
The dense rainforest in the south created barriers to large-scale political organizations like those in the north. In the south, people lived in villages or village clusters whose contacts with the outside world came through long-distance traders. These were primarily the Wangara, Mande Muslims from the north. They founded the important Islamic centers of Kong and Bouna, as well of Begho, Bole (Boualé), Bondoukou and others on the forest fringe, becoming the ancestors of the Dyula people.
Kingdoms and Empires
Gyaman The kingdom of Gyaman was established around 1690 by Gyamanhene Tan Date. His people, the Abron, were fleeing the developing Ashanti Empire. Nevertheless, they fell under Asante domination in 1740. From their settlement south of Bondoukou, the Abron gradually extended their dominance of the Juula, recent emigrants from the market city of Begho. Bondoukou developed into a major center of commerce and Islam. The kingdom's Quranic scholars attracted students from all parts of West Africa.
Kong In the early 1700s, Seku Watara united the local Dyula in Kong and took power there. He and his allies took over towns and settlements throughout the region, mainly focusing on control of trade routes. They conquered north to Bobo-Dioulasso in 1737 and south to Boule. Seku's brother Famaga Watara launched a major military operation westwards in November 1739, taking Sofara on the Bani River. There he defeated an army sent by the Pashalik of Timbuktu to defend Djenne, but despite the victory were unable to cross the river and capture the city. Famagan then pushed further west and unsuccessfully attacked Segou, capital of the Bambara Empire.
Seku died around 1745, and the central authority of his successors faltered. Nevertheless, the Watara clan maintained firm control over crucial trade routes, and Kong was a center of trade for both gold and kola nuts. It also became notable for the large number of Islamic clerics and scholars in the city and for regular mosque construction throughout the Empire.
In the middle of the 18th century conflict broke out between Kong and the Ashanti Empire. Begho was destroyed in the conflict, with many Dyula refugees resettling in Kong. The result, however, was a stalemate, with Ashanti in control of Gyaaman but recognizing Kong's independence.
Baoule In the mid-18th century in east-central Ivory Coast, other Akan groups fleeing the Ashanti Empire established a Baoulé kingdom at Sakasso and two Agni kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi. Their oral traditions recall a migration led by Aura Poku, a niece of Osei Tutu. The Baoulé, like the Ashanti, elaborated a highly centralized political and administrative structure under three successive rulers, but it finally split into smaller chiefdoms. Despite the breakup of their kingdom, the Baoulé strongly resisted French subjugation. The descendants of the rulers of the Agni kingdoms tried to retain their separate identity long after Ivory Coast's independence; as late as 1969, the Sanwi of Krinjabo attempted to break away from Ivory Coast and form an independent kingdom. In the 18th century, Ivory Coast was invaded by two related Akan groups—the Agni, who occupied the southeast, and the Baoulés, who settled in the central section.
European Contact Because of its location between Europe and the imagined treasures of the Far East, Africa became a destination for the European explorers of the 15th century. The first Europeans to explore the West African coast were the Portuguese. Other European sea powers followed and established trade with many of the coastal peoples of West Africa. At first, trade included gold, ivory, and pepper but the establishment of American colonies in the 16th century spurred demand for slaves. This led to the kidnapping and enslaving of people from the West African coastal regions for transportation to North and South America (see African slave trade).Local rulers obtained goods and slaves from the inhabitants of the interior to fulfill treaties with the Europeans. By the end of the 15th century, trade with the Europeans had resulted in a strong European influence in Africa, permeating north from the West African coast.
Ivory Coast, like the rest of West Africa, was subject to these influences but the absence of sheltered harbors along its coastline prevented Europeans from establishing permanent trading posts. Thus, seaborne trade was irregular and played only a minor role in the penetration and eventual conquest of Ivory Coast by Europeans. The slave trade, in particular, had little effect on the peoples of Ivory Coast. A profitable trade in ivory existed in the 17th century and gave the area its name. However, the resulting decline in elephant population ended the ivory trade by the beginning of the 18th century.
The earliest recorded French voyage to West Africa was in 1483. The French established a mission in 1687 at Assinie, near the Gold Coast (now Ghana) border, and it became the first European outpost in that area. Although Assini's survival was precarious, the French did not establish themselves in Ivory Coast until the mid-19th century. By that time, the French had settlements around the mouth of the Senegal River and at other points along the coasts of Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. Meanwhile, the British had permanent outposts in the same areas and on the Gulf of Guinea, east of Ivory Coast.
In 1843–1844, the French admiral Bouët-Willaumez signed treaties with the kings of the Grand Bassam and Assini regions, placing these territories under a French protectorate. French explorers, missionaries, trading companies, and soldiers gradually extended the area under French control inland from the lagoon region.
Activity along the coast stimulated European interest in the interior, especially along Senegal and Niger rivers. French exploration of West Africa began in the mid-19th century but moved slowly and was based more on individual initiative than government policy. In the 1840s, the French concluded a series of treaties with local West African rulers, enabling the French to build fortified posts along the Gulf of Guinea to serve as permanent trading centers. The first posts in Ivory Coast were at Assinie and Grand-Bassam, which became the colony's first capital. The treaties gave the French sovereignty for trading privileges in exchange for fees or customs paid annually to the local rulers for the use of their land. This arrangement was not entirely satisfactory to the French because trade was limited and misunderstandings over treaty obligations often arose. Nevertheless, the French government maintained the treaties, hoping to expand trade. France also wanted to maintain a presence in the region to limit the growing influence of the British along the Gulf of Guinea coast.
The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the subsequent annexation of the French province of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany caused the French government to abandon its colonial ambitions and withdraw its military garrisons from its West African trading posts, leaving them in the care of resident merchants. The trading post at Grand-Bassam was left to Arthur Verdier, a shipper from Marseille who was named a resident minister when the Ivory Coast was established in 1878.
In 1885, France and Germany brought the European powers with interests in Africa together at the Berlin Conference. The conference helped rationalize what became known as the European scramble for Africa. Prince Otto von Bismarck also wanted a greater role in Africa for Germany, which he thought he could achieve in part by fostering competition between France and Britain. The agreement signed by all conference participants in 1885 stipulated that on the African coastline, only European annexations or spheres of influence that involved effective occupation by Europeans would be recognized. Another agreement in 1890 extended this rule to the interior of Africa and resulted in a rush for territory by France, Britain, Portugal, and Belgium.
The French Conquest
To support its claims of effective occupation, France again assumed direct control of its West African coastal trading posts and embarked on an accelerated program of exploration in the interior in 1886. In 1887, Lieutenant Louis Gustave Binger began a two-year journey across Ivory Coast's interior. By the end of his journey, Binger had secured four treaties that established French protectorates in Ivory Coast. Also in 1887, Verdier's agent, Marcel Treich-Laplène, negotiated five additional agreements that extended French influence from the headwaters of the Niger River Basin through Ivory Coast.
By the end of the 1880s, France had established effective control over the coastal regions of Ivory Coast and Britain recognized French sovereignty in the area in 1889. France named Treich-Laplène the titular governor of the territory in 1889. In 1893, Ivory Coast was made a French colony; agreements with Liberia in 1892 and with Britain in 1893 determined the eastern and western boundaries of the colony, but the northern boundary was not fixed until 1947 when the French government wanted to attach parts of Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso) and French Sudan (present-day Mali) to Ivory Coast for economic and administrative reasons.Throughout the process of partition, the Africans were little concerned with the occasional European who came wandering by. Many local rulers of small, isolated communities did not understand or, more often, were misled by the French about the significance of treaties that compromised their authority. However, other local leaders thought that the French could solve economic problems or become allies in the event of a dispute with belligerent neighbors. In the end, the loss of sovereignty by the local rulers was often the result of their inability to counter French deception and military force, rather than a result of support for French encroachment.
French colonial era