Who is he? Louis Edouard Bouët-Willaumez, of course.
In 2009, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his intention to found a new history museum in Paris. In recent weeks, he may have been cursing the memories of two of France’s lesser-known historical figures, Louis Edouard Bouët-Willaumez and Jules Ferry. Both men died over a century ago, but they are still causing Sarkozy trouble.
Bouët-Willaumez was a French naval hero who began the colonisation of what is now Côte d’Ivoire in the 1840s. Ferry was the prime minister who authorised an invasion of Tunisia in 1881. Although France renounced control over Tunisia in 1957 and Côte d’Ivoire in 1960, officials in Paris have always viewed them as important elements of the French sphere of influence in Africa. Now that sphere of influence seems to be falling apart – a strategic challenge for France that has been overshadowed by events in Egypt.
Read more about this challenge here.
