Octave Meynier was a French military officer, born on 22 February 1874 at Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche in France and died on 31 May 1961 at Algiers. He is remembered as one of two officers who took control of the Voulet-Chanoine Mission, which mutinied and rampaged through West Africa in 1899. He fought in the First World War and later launched a number of cross-Saharan motorised expeditions.
Octave Meynier's father was the Marine officer François Meynier . (Octave's brother Albert was the father of geographer André Meynier.)
Meynier graduated from the military academy of Saint-Cyr in 1895, and was immediately assigned to the French Sudan.
Four years later, in 1899, he was Lt-Col. Jean-François Klobb's adjutant in Klobb's mission to reach the Voulet-Chanoine Mission and replace the expedition's commanders, Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine. Voulet refused to cede command to Klobb, and on 14 July killed Klobb and wounded Meynier. Only a few days later a mutiny among the troops resulted in Voulet's and Chanoine's deaths, and Meynier joined Paul Joalland in command of the expedition. Under Meynier and Joalland the expedition completed its main goal, the union of French West African possessions. Meynier was later to write of the Voulet affair in A la recherche de Voulet. [1]
In 1913 Meynier was made military commander of the territory of the oasis of Ouargla, and in 1914 proposed[ to whom? ] to modernize Africa through the construction of roads.[ citation needed ]
During the battle of Verdun, he assumed command of the 1st Regiment of Algerian Tirailleurs, and was wounded on 5 April 1918 by a shell that took away his left arm.
After the war he returned to Africa as head of the military staff of the governor-general of Algeria, Maurice Viollette; from 1926 to 1934 he held the position of Director of the Territories (Saharan Algeria), and was given the opportunity to realize the web of routes covering the Sahara he had first thought of in 1914.
In 1930 he organised[ citation needed ] the Mediterranean–Niger car rally, using the roads he had just built.
He left the army in 1935, with the rank of Brigadier General.
Meynier, who saw in rallying an immediate way to improve relations between the Mediterranean and African peoples, organised in 1950 the first Trans-African car rally, the Algiers-Cape Town Rally. [2]
Much of the history of Algeria has taken place on the fertile coastal plain of North Africa, which is often called the Maghreb. North Africa served as a transit region for people moving towards Europe or the Middle East, thus, the region's inhabitants have been influenced by populations from other areas, including the Carthaginians, Romans, and Vandals. The region was conquered by the Muslims in the early 8th century AD, but broke off from the Umayyad Caliphate after the Berber Revolt of 740. During the Ottoman period, Algeria became an important state in the Mediterranean sea which led to many naval conflicts. The last significant events in the country's recent history have been the Algerian War and Algerian Civil War.
Operation Torch was an Allied invasion of French North Africa during the Second World War. Torch was a compromise operation that met the British objective of securing victory in North Africa while allowing American armed forces the opportunity to begin their fight against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy on a limited scale. It was the first mass involvement of US troops in the European–North African Theatre and saw the first big airborne assault carried out by the United States.
The Second Barbary War (1815) or the U.S.–Algerian War was fought between the United States and the North African Barbary Coast states of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers. The war ended when the United States Senate ratified Commodore Stephen Decatur's Algerian treaty on 5 December 1815. However, Dey Omar Agha of Algeria repudiated the US treaty, refused to accept the terms of peace that had been ratified by the Congress of Vienna, and threatened the lives of all Christian inhabitants of Algiers. William Shaler was the US commissioner in Algiers who had negotiated alongside Decatur, but he fled aboard British vessels during the 1816 bombardment of Algiers. He negotiated a new treaty in 1816 which was not ratified by the Senate until 11 February 1822, because of an oversight.
Émile Gentil was a French colonial administrator, naval officer, and military leader. He is best known for heading two military missions to conquer and consolidate territories north from modern Gabon to Chad.
Charles Sulpice Jules Chanoine was a French military officer who led the first French mission sent to Japan, between 1867 and 1868, and later served as Minister of War under the Third Republic.
Guy-Victor Duperré was a French naval officer and Admiral of France.
The battle of Kousséri originated in French plans to occupy the Chari-Baguirmi region. In 1899–1900, the French organized three armed columns, one proceeding north from Congo, one east from Niger and another south from Algeria. The objective was to link all French possessions in Western Africa, and this was achieved April 21, 1900 on the right bank of the Chari in what is now Chad opposite Kousséri, in what today is northern Cameroon.
The battle of Kouno was an inconclusive battle that took place between French troops and the Muslim army led by Rabih az-Zubayr, in the context of French colonial expansion in Africa, and more precisely in Chad.
The Voulet–Chanoine Mission, also called Central African-Chad Mission, was a French military expedition sent out from Senegal in 1898 to conquer the Chad Basin and unify all French territories in West Africa. This expedition operated jointly with two other expeditions, the Foureau-Lamy and Gentil missions, which advanced from Algeria and Middle Congo respectively. The refusal of the expedition commander and his second-in-command to follow orders from France, their murder of a commanding officer and their subsequent deaths at the hands of their own soldiers cast a dark shadow over France's emerging colonial empire in Africa at the end of the 19th century. The expedition is remembered for its descent into depravity and extreme violence, actions which today would legally be considered war crimes.
Amédée-François Lamy was a French military officer. He was born at Mougins, in the French département of Alpes-Maritimes on 7 February 1858 and died in the battle of Kousséri on 22 April 1900.
The French Voulet-Chanoine Mission, led by the captains Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine, had been dispatched in 1898 to Africa by the French government with the mission to conquer the territories between the Niger River and Lake Chad and join in uniting French territories in West Africa. After leaving French Sudan in January 1899, they ruthlessly subjugated the native peoples, meeting little resistance.
Paul-Jules Joalland was a French officer, known mainly for completing the Voulet-Chanoine Mission.
Jean-François Arsène Klobb (1857–1899) was a French colonial officer. He was assassinated by order of Captain Paul Voulet.
The French conquest of Algeria took place between 1830 and 1903. In 1827, an argument between Hussein Dey, the ruler of the Regency of Algiers, and the French consul escalated into a blockade, following which the July Monarchy of France invaded and quickly seized Algiers in 1830, and seized other coastal communities. Amid internal political strife in France, decisions were repeatedly taken to retain control of the territory, and additional military forces were brought in over the following years to quell resistance in the interior of the country.
Sarraounia is a 1986 historical drama film written and directed by Med Hondo. It is based on a novel of the same name by Nigerien author Abdoulaye Mamani, who co-wrote the screenplay. The novel and film concern the real-life Battle of Lougou between Azna queen Sarraounia and the advancing French Colonial Forces of the Voulet-Chanoine Mission in 1899. Sarraounia was one of the few African tribal leaders that resisted the advances of French expansionists Paul Voulet and Julien Chanoine. The film won the first prize at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and was critically well received.
The invasion of Algiers was a massive and disastrous amphibious attempt in July 1775 by a combined Spanish and Tuscan force to capture the city of Algiers, the capital of The Deylik of Algeria. The amphibious assault was led by Spanish general Alexander O'Reilly and Tuscan admiral Sir John Acton, commanding a total of 20,000 men along with 74 warships of various sizes and 230 transport ships carrying the troops for the invasion. The defending Algerian forces were led by Baba Mohammed ben-Osman. The assault was ordered by the King of Spain, Charles III, who was attempting to demonstrate to the Barbary States the power of the revitalized Spanish military after the disastrous Spanish experience in the Seven Years' War. The assault was also meant to demonstrate that Spain would defend its North African exclaves against any Ottoman or Moroccan encroachment, and reduce the influence that the Barbary states held in the Mediterranean.
Georges Estienne was a French aviator, explorer and businessman. He mapped and commercially exploited the longest automobile route in the world, linking the Mediterranean to the Niger, Chad and Congo. His company ran a network of automobile transport lines across the Sahara, and later provided air service between many of the French colonies in Africa. The demand from tourists collapsed with the Algerian War (1954–62), and eventually Estienne's companies were taken over by the government of independent Algeria.
Paul Flatters was a French soldier who spent a long period as a military administrator in Algeria. He is known as leader of the Flatters expedition, an ill-fated attempt to explore the route of a proposed Trans-Saharan railway from Algeria to the Sudan. Almost all members of the expedition were massacred by hostile Tuaregs. The survivors resorted to eating grass and to cannibalism on the long retreat through the desert. After a brief outburst of public indignation the fiasco was forgotten.
Slavery is noted in the area later known as Algeria since antiquity. Algeria was a center of the Trans-Saharan slave trade route of enslaved Black Africans from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as a center of the slave trade of Barbary slave trade of Europeans captured by the barbary pirates.
The Algiers-Cape Town Rally was an automobile rally competition organised by Les Amis du Sahara et de l'Eurafrique with the assistance of various African Automobile Clubs including the Association sportif de l'automobile club d Algiers, under the post-war control of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, for cars and trucks.
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