Technical superiority in the means of violence, in military equipment and organisation, made possible the gradual extension of French control over the hinterland of Senegal in the late nineteenth century (1852–1900). The motive drive behind this imperial expansion, a combination of simple economic greed (market outlets, resources) and a more diffuse yearning for national glory, lies beyond the concern of this study: but it may be noted that the opportunity went some way to contribute its own motive. The local French military officers, whose victories left their metropolitan superiors with ever-expanding (and not always entirely welcome) territorial responsibilities, had their own belligerent impulses – and the means to make such impulses effective. Those Africans who attempted armed resistance, in the Wolof zone (or elsewhere) succeeded only in demonstrating the brave futility of their stand.

General acknowledgment (by 1900) of these harsh military facts provided the secure basis for colonial peace, making possible first the acceptance of French government and then a general compliance with the conqueror's economic exactions. A dominant culture and mode of political and economic organisation were thus forcibly imposed upon an agglomeration of subordinated societies now contained within the arbitrarily drawn boundaries of the new colonial territory of Senegal. Questions of sociological legitimacy at first sight seem irrelevant to the survival of such a system.