John Sullivan The French Conquest of Northwest Ivory Coast The Attempt of the Rulers of Kabadugu to Control the Situation The conquest of northwest Ivory Coast by the French in the iSgos is ordinarily seen as footnote to the confrontation between the French military and their principal antagonist in West Africa the great Malinké empire builder Samori Ture Such an assessment is perhaps adequate from the point of view of conflicting macro-imperialisms but it ignores the very complex developments which occurred in the Odienne region of northwest Ivory Coast as the local rulers tried to fend for themselves in the swirling events of the struggle between these two titans In fact Moriba Ture the local ruler protected the interests of Kabadugu so well that its frontiers became the border with Guinea and Mali for the whole northwestern corner of Ivory Coast Yet this story which in the light of the above might be seen as of purely local interest takes on much greater meaning since many of the insights provided by and Isaacman 1977 about resistance in Southern and Eastern Africa find an echo in this West African kingdom The era of colonial conquest clearly is of importance in modern African history The traumatic events of the colonial takeover set the stage for the events which are unfolding around us in many ways the most obvious being the sacrosanct colonially-imposed borders Superficial analysis has focused either on the leader presented as craven collaborator or the heroic resistor seen as antecedents to nascent nationalist sentiment Much of that is political pettifoggery yet questions about the actions and activities of African leaders in that most crucial of eras remain valid and worthy of consideration Until recently academic inquiry into the problem even the seminal works of such writer as Ranger limited itself to this kind of approach Other scholars have followed the routes marked out by this pathfinder while some have lost themselves in the woods of political mythmaking But in their 1977 article the Isaacmans did fine job for Southern African history scholars and all Africanists interested in the problem of resistance In that article they summarized the arguments Cahiers tudes africaines -()0 -2 ä8 pp 121-138