French Guinea

Guinea, 1894–1958. Draft, not yet reviewed

French Guinea was a French colonial possession in West Africa. In 1895, French Guinea was made one of several dependent colonies and its Governor became one of several Lieutenant Governors who reported to a Governor-General in Dakar. It became independent from France in 1958 following its voters' rejection of Charles de Gaulle's Constitution of 1958. At the time French Guinea was the only colony to reject the new constitution.

Seat of power: Conakry

No rulers documented for this era yet.

Culture

• In 1953, workers across French Guinea went on a 71-day general strike to force the implementation of a new overseas labor code.
• In 1956, Touré was elected Guinea's deputy to the French National Assembly and mayor of Conakry, positions he used to criticize the French colonial regime.
• The electorate of Guinea rejected the new constitution overwhelmingly, and Guinea accordingly became an independent state on 2 October 1958. Guinea was the only African colony to vote for immediate independence rather than continued association with France.

Picture

Conakry became the capital of French Guinea in 1904, and prospered as an export port, particularly after a railway to Kankan opened up the interior of the country for the large-scale export of groundnut.

Image: Boubacar Bila Diao Balde, CC BY-SA 4.0, file

Sources

• French Guinea (Wikipedia)
• French Guinea (Wikidata)
• About the picture (Wikipedia)

Text adapted from the Wikipedia articles listed as sources, CC BY-SA 4.0.