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Empire of the Sahara (1903)

by Olivier Touzeau, 13 Apr 2001

Empire of the Sahara

See also:

Western Sahara

Empire of the Sahara

Reported by Fuligni’s book [ful97], p. 124-131:

Jacques Lebaudy was the son of Jules Lebaudy, a French magnate of the sugar industry who was involved in the Union generale crash in 1882 and was therefore rather rich. For long he dreamt of conquest, and put up in 1902 a Company for Nitrates of Cape Juby, and had the idea of creating a trans-Saharan railway, although the French government didn’t listen to him.

In 1903, he decided to go there, and, after a stop at Madeira and in the Canaries, reached the Saharan coast on 25th May with 8 sailors, at 28°40′N, in a spot named Bay of Justice. They met there two Saharan men with whom they had a rather good contact. Two days later, Jacques Lebaudy told his sailors (who just thought «He’s gone mad») that he should now be called "Sire" and that he was Jacques the 1st of the Empire of Sahara.

Back in the Canaries, Jacques Lebaudy had to face the defection of 10 of the 20 men he had enrolled for his second expedition. He was again in Bay of Justice on the 10th of June, and decided that his capital would be there and named it Troja; he left there 5 men as a provisional garrison. Reaching Bay of Liberty (27°20′N), he decided to place there Polis, the main commercial city of his new empire… There, on the 14th of June, he met with a Saharan tribe, who wanted to sell slaves to him; he refused.

In the Canaries, the Spanish authorities and the French consul, Mr Tallien de Cabarrus, did not appreciate the way Lebaudy trie