French Lieutenant Louis Gustave Binger begins a…

French Lieutenant Louis Gustave Binger begins a two-year journey in 1887 that will traverse parts of Ivory Coast's interior.

By the end of the journey, he will have concluded four treaties establishing French protectorates in Ivory Coast.

Also in 1887, Verdier's agent, Marcel Treich-Laplène, negotiates five additional agreements that extend French influence from the headwaters of the Niger River Basin through Ivory Coast.

The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the subsequent annexation by Germany of the French province of Alsace Lorraine had caused the French government to abandon its colonial ambitions and withdraw its military garrisons from its French West African trading posts, leaving them in the care of resident merchants.

The trading post at Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast had been left in the care of a shipper from Marseille, Arthur Verdier, who in 1878 had been named Resident of the Establishment of Ivory Coast.

In 1886, to support its claims of effective occupation, France had again assumed direct control of its West African coastal trading posts and had embarked on an accelerated program of exploration in the interior.