Paper short abstract:

A microhistory of an imperial encounter that took place in Timbuktu in the 1850s, this papers reconstructs the efforts of a Saharan notable to consolidate his own economic and political regional authority, as well as to defend the Niger Bend and the Azawād, from the French militaristic expansion.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is a microhistory of an imperial encounter that took place in Timbuktu in the 1850s when a local intellectual, Aḥmad al-Bakkāy (d. 1864), received a German traveller named Heinrich Barth (d.1865). Despite being distant several miles from any British or French outposts in Africa, the Saharan city became at that crucial moment, a place “where empires meet.” Aḥmad al-Bakkāy was concerned about French conquest of the Algerian Sahara, which had reached by that time the oasis of Tuwāt. Barth, who was travelling on behalf of the British Government, was a promoter of British economic interests in Africa that irradiated from the powerful consulate in Tripoli. This presentation is however not a history of colonial expansion, nor does it endorse a teleology colonialism that anachronistically reduces the actors of this encounter between European and Africa actors into colonizers, collaborationists, and heroes of resistance. Through a detailed analysis of primary sources in Arabic, German, French and English, scattered in archives in Mali, France, Germany, and England, this presentation tells a history of African agency vis-à-vis growing influence of French and British empires in the Sahara. Its aim is to reconstruct the efforts of a Saharan notable (Aḥmad al-Bakkāy), who attempted with an unlikely European partisan (Barth) to consolidate his own economic and especially political regional authority, as well as to defend the territories over which he exercised his influence, namely the Niger Bend and the Azawād, from the French militaristic expansion.