French and Catholic? Senegal and Sierra Leone in the 1820s

The West African careers of Colonel Charles MacCarthy and Baron Jacques-François Roger are a useful lens through which to view the role of Catholicism in the creation of French African colonies. MacCarthy, a French-born Catholic governor of Sierra Leone from 1815 to 1824, and Roger, governor of Senegal from 1822-1827, both believed that Christianity was a necessary means to “moralize” and “civilize” their colonies. Both actively recruited and retained missionaries, using them to establish and operate schools, orphanages, and hospitals. In particular, both attempted to create model agricultural communities, organized as parishes under clerical control that would demonstrate the superiority of “Christian civilization.” Both supported an end to the slave trade and slavery itself as a means to the Christianization and pacification of Africans. Both believed that successfully creating a Christian civilization in West Africa would serve as an inspiration to European traditionalists hoping to hold back revolution. I believe that both governors were using a French and Catholic concept of what we might today call “nation-building.” Roger wrote, “Catholicism is the basis for all good and great social institutions.” MacCarthy has been described as creating a “neo-Christendom” in West Africa. A closer examination of the means and methods they used to attempt this transformation leads to greater understanding of what France hoped to make of its colonies—and of what Catholics believed was their necessary contribution to French civilization.