The Seven Years’ War in West Africa

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Pernille Røge

Published:

2024

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

Abstract The Seven Years’ War in West Africa was a minor sideshow in a globe-spanning military conflict. Only French and British forces fought in Africa, confining their armed battle to the French-ruled island of Saint-Louis at the mouth of the Senegal River and Gorée Island, both of which the British occupied in 1758–1759. This chapter explores the immediate and long-term impacts of this conflict on the French and British colonial empires and African and Eurafrican communities in Senegambia. It discusses British ambitions to capture the European trade in gum arabic and to destroy France’s transatlantic slave trade. It also examines French and British aspirations to turn African land into new sites of cash crop production. The chapter contends that although Africa rarely gains attention in studies of the history of the Seven Years’ War, it was the pivot around which the battle for the future of European empires turned.

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