Assinie

Assinie
Beach Resort

The Beach at Assinie
Assinie

Ivory Coast

Coordinates: 5°08′06″N 3°17′24″W / 5.135°N 3.29°WCoordinates: 5°08′06″N 3°17′24″W / 5.135°N 3.29°W
Country Ivory Coast
Region Sud-Comoé
Department Grand-Bassam
Founded by Missionaries and French traders
Time zone GMT (UTC0)

Assinie is a resort town and commune in the Grand-Bassam department in the Sud-Comoé region of south-eastern Ivory Coast.

Geography

Assinie is located some 80 km east of Abidjan along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. Access to the commune is by road A100 going east from Abidjan then turning right to the B-107 road (Route Assinie) then Route Assinie-Mafia along the coast. The road ends at Assinie. Assinie is a long narrow commune along the coast on both sides of the outlet from the Lagune Aby.[1]

The Assinie area starts at the location of the Paul-Emile Durand cottage in the west bordered to the south by the ocean and accessible by the Assinie-Mafia road. Opposite the town of Assinie is a narrow peninsula (from 100m to 1000m wide) extending from the west and 15 km long which is occupied by luxury villas and huts. Access is by car, private boats, or canoes across the lagoon.

The mouth of the lagoon which marks the end of the Assinie-Mafia peninsula is called La Passe where the high-rise resort and the smoking of tchoukourou is very popular.

The area is a favourite destination for wealthy inhabitants of Abidjan for the weekend.

It was the location of the film Bronzed in 1978.

This resort is popular with the wealthier inhabitants of Abidjan and belongs to Selim Tristan Kone, a descendent the first family to have lived in this place in Ivory Coast.

History

The King of Assinie (by Élisée Reclus) 1890-1893
Castor: a government interpreter at Assinie in 1892

Assinie (formerly Issiny) was the first trading post on the Eburnean coast although no vestige of that time remains today. In 1637 five Capuchin missionaries, who came from Saint-Malo, settled there. Climate and sickness caused them to leave quickly and one died there.

The King of Assinie

In 1687, two years after the Code noir, missionaries and French traders settled at Assinie at the eastern end of the coast towards the Gold Coast but they left in 1705 after have built and occupied the Fort Saint-Louis from 1701 to 1704 as the slave trade compared to grain did not earn enough.[2] Among them were the Knight of Amon and Admiral Jean-Baptiste du Casse, director of the Compagnie du Sénégal who were interested in the gold traffic and were received at the court of King Zena. They took the young Prince Aniaba and his cousin Banga to France who were presented to the King of France Louis XIV and converted to Catholicism (Aniaba was baptized by Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux).

They become officers in the Régiment du Roi (Regiment of the King) before returning to Issiny in 1700. In 1704 Aniaba became the Counsellor of the King of Quita (now Togo) who called himself Hannibal.

Development

The first sustainable fort on the Coast after Fort Saint-Louis from 1701 to 1704 was Fort Joinville in Grand-Bassam which was built there in 1843 after the landing of ship's lieutenants Kerhallet and Fleuriot de Langle which lead to a treaty between France and the King of Krinjabo, Amon Ndoufou. At that time skirmishes with the English were frequent and prevented operations in the interior of the country. It is inside these forts that the first trading posts were established in the next few years.

An inspection of the fortified trading post at Assini in 1850 mentioned: "order and cleanliness reign within its walls", the existence of a bastion of masonry (four were originally planned), and the presence of small artillery equivalent to that at Grand-Bassam. "The trading post personnel consist of 40 people, including 5 Europeans, 20 soldiers, and 15 boatmen, coolies, and others and they are in a satisfactory state of health". The men "are in a better place to live [than at Grand-Bassam], where resources are greater because of more frequent intercourse with the natives and are removed from that product of fatigue for the body and sight an existence almost continually passed on moving bleached sand, roasted by a burning sun"[3] The Ivorian postal service began in this locality on 29 July 1843.

The French penetration of the region was counteracted by yellow fever epidemics (in 1857 of 50 Europeans in the three trading posts of Assinie, Grand-Bassam and Dabou, 32 died and 10 were repatriated) and British competition (Victor Régis, pioneer of French trade on this coast since 1843, had to close shop in the early 1860s).[4] However, the first Post Office opened on 17 August 1862.

Arthur Verdier was the first to really bring value to the Assinie region from 1870. The first coffee trees were planted in 1881 and at the same time the cultivation of cocoa started. Logging began in 1885.

The decline

Assinie was the third largest port in Ivory Coast in 1907 but it quickly lost all commercial and strategic importance in favour of Grand-Bassam, then Bingerville, and finally Port-Bouët/Abidjan. In 1942 a tidal wave carried away the "French Quarter" of Assini.

Education

The first official French school was created at Elima on 8 August 1887 with Teacher Fritz-Emile Jeand'heur from Algeria. He had 33 African students who became the first French language readers. The school ran for 3 years before being transferred to Assinie in 1890 by Marcel Treich-Laplène, the new Resident from France. On 1 March 1904 there were 896 students in Icory Coast out of an estimated 2 million+ inhabitants.

Languages

Related article: Languages of Ivory Coast.

Since independence the official language throughout Ivory Coast has been French. The Lingua franca, spoken and understood by most of the population, is Dyula but the vernacular of the region is Anyi. The French actually spoken in the region, as in Abidjan, is commonly called Ivorian Popular French or Moussa French[Note 1] which differs from standard French pronunciation and makes it almost unintelligible to a francophone who is not Ivorian. Another form of spoken French is nouchi, an Argot spoken especially by young people and which is also the language in which two satirical magazines are written: Gbich! and Y a Fohi. The Assinie region hosts many Ivorians from all over the country and all the vernacular languages of the country, about sixty, are practiced.

Sports

Sports competitions are held exclusively in the prefecture of the department as other localities have no dedicated infrastructure: Assinie has a football club, ASCI d'Assinie, which plays in the regional Championship division, equivalent to "4th division". As in most towns in the country, it is informally organized with football tournaments of 7 players which are very popular in Ivory Coast and called Maracanas.

Bibliography

External links

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ↑ While in Abidjan and in the north Moussa French is spoken, in the west of the country Dago French is spoken.

References

  1. ↑ Google Maps
  2. ↑ An Introduction to the History of West Africa, p. 69.
  3. ↑ Document from the National Archives of Ivory Coast, Dossier 1 EE 1 (10) (French)
  4. ↑ Colonial Architecture in Ivory Coast, Ceda - Les Publications du Ministère ivoirien des Affaires culturelles, 1985. (French)