The Bacalan district in Bordeaux keeps traces of its industrial past from the 19th century.
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Mickaël Bosredon / 20Minutes
The association recalls how the sugar and peanut industry, especially from Senegal, has allowed this district to become industrialized.
One of the great Bordeaux families, Maurel, notably made his business, Maurel et Prom, prosper thanks to this business.
The Senegal quay in Bacalan is also a trace of this colonial past, and recalls the role played by certain Bordeaux families in this country.
This is the sixth educational journey of Mémoires et Partages.
The association founded by Karfa Diallo, which aims to revive the colonial and slavery history of Bordeaux, has been offering a guided tour of the Bacalan district since this fall.
This starts precisely from the Brazza district on the right bank, and takes visitors to the left bank, around the Bassins à Flot.
In six steps, the association recalls how the sugar and peanut industry, especially from Senegal, has allowed this district to become industrialized, and Bordeaux to grow richer.
"Large companies have grown rich thanks to the peanut trade"
“We link two districts which are currently undergoing major change,” explains Karfa Diallo.
We start with the Brazza district, which bears the name of Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, father of Congo-Brazzaville, commissioner-general of the French government and explorer of Central Africa.
Brazza is the colonizer of Central Africa, but he also produced a report on the extremely harsh colonization methods that the French government wanted to apply.
Today, the Congolese of Brazzaville remain very attached to his work.
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After crossing the Garonne, the route continues in the Bassins à Flot, which retains the traces of the first major peanut mining industries.
“Groundnuts, imported to West Africa by Europeans, and of which Senegal was the bridgehead, allowed the development of large companies like Lesieur, whose silos from the old Bordeaux factory are still visible.
The Bordeaux company Maurel et Prom, which was born in Gorée in Senegal, has also grown rich thanks to the peanut trade, ”says Karfa Diallo.
"The workers were no longer slaves but remained exploited"
The Bordeaux historian Hubert Bonin recalls that it was "the Marseillais then the Bordelais who imported peanuts into Africa in the 1830s, to manufacture peanut oil, notably with the company Maurel et Prom, of the Maurel family, which belonged to the Protestant bourgeoisie of Bordeaux.
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This period marks the end of slavery, which was definitively abolished in France in 1848. “The workers who produced groundnuts inside Senegal at that time were no longer slaves, but they remained exploited,” emphasizes Hubert Bonin.
We are then in the middle of the imperialist colonial system.
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It is from there that Bacalan will start to develop.
“It started around 1850, and it exploded from 1880, once the new port was installed to accommodate transatlantic ships,” continues Hubert Bonin.
“Until then, sugar activities and small oil mills were located in SMEs around Sainte-Croix and the quai de Paludate.
At the turn of the 19th century, these activities passed into the hands of large-scale industry, and three large oil mills were built: the large Bordeaux oil mill on the right bank and two others, Maurel and Prom and the new oil mill, in Bacalan.
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When "Bordeaux sucked Europe"
In continuity, the district sees the birth around the two floating basins "of large ultramodern warehouses, used to pile up products to be exported, or tropical products such as bananas, because the trade of the West Indies and Africa intersected at Bacalan at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th.
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Next to the former Lesieur factory, there is still the Quai du Sénégal, "which is a kind of recognition that Bordeaux has attributed to this country, since the Bordelais have had a very important colonizing action there", continues Karfa Diallo.
“The first four 'modern' cities in Senegal were founded by the Bordeaux clan: Dakar, Saint-Louis, Rufisque and Gorée.
Gorée, it was slavery, trafficking, and there remain in this island families resulting from this meeting between the Bordelais and the Senegalese, since the colonists who went to Africa could have a mistress on the spot, and often children are born from these meetings.
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The visit finally takes us to the old sugar refinery, located rue Achard, closed in 1984. “It marks the importance of Bordeaux in this trade, insists Karfa Diallo.
From the 18th century, when the sugar industry is still located in Sainte-Croix, it was said that Bordeaux was sweetening Europe.
Many great Bordeaux families got richer or lived off sugar, which came from the slave trade.
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"Tell the story under what conditions these products were harvested"
Karfa Diallo insists on the meaning he wants to give to these guided tours.
“What is important is to tell where the products came from, under what conditions they were harvested, in the name of what suffering.
It must be said, so that the citizens are more vigilant, awake, and that they look at their city differently.
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With the Black Lives Matter movement which has put these questions back in the spotlight, he asks: "What do we do with this history of racism which is inscribed on the walls of our cities?
"We are not activists, and we are not in favor of debunking statues, he insists, but these symbols must be contextualized.
"Historian Hubert Bonin for his part welcomes the work carried out by Mémoire et Partages, which" fills a gap in the great maritime history in Bordeaux.
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The next visits will be Friday September 25 at 6 p.m., Wednesday September 30 at 6 p.m., Saturday October 17 at 3 p.m., Friday October 30 at 5 p.m., Saturday November 21 at 3 p.m. They will be limited to ten people due to health constraints.
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