Why did the French divide their former colonies into so many

>>3294604
That was probably part of it, but I think on a more practical matter they just had to make the provinces small enough to manage. All large polities have some sort of lower-level district management, even if they aren't explicitly federations.

>>3294604
Morocco and Tunisia were protectorates not colonies.

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>>3294644

You do know OP that Africa is the 2nd largest continent right? All that frog shit there is almost as large as Europe though WAY less populated at the time.

>>3294670
I don't see how that's relevant

The lines may seem rather arbitrary but they were probably drawn that way for business and administrative reasons.

>>3294650
Spot on.
Pricterates become full on colonies once the time us ripe like what happened in other parts of colonial africa

>>3295411
Those big divisions carried very small populations that were an issue for the powers (too small a worker base to exploit)

>french west africa
>other french africa (which is approximately just as west as french west africa)
why

>>3295441
Because it had a completely different legal status
Algeria was an integral part of France up until the 1960s
And as >>3294644 mentioned Morocco and Tunisia weren't really colonies either.

>>3295450
West Africa is a geographical zone and it simply doesn't include Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Same way that the Kamchatka is in Asia and way more eastern than any country in East Asia, but not part of East Asia.

It's kind of weird, all the countries there have he same currency even
OK actually 2 but they're pegged to each other

>>3294604
I can't unsee the chad meme on the chad republic.

>>3294604
Putting ethnic groups together in one country is asking for trouble.

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>>3297647
Because that's not what the French already did with the present borders???

>>3297653
Except they didn't have ethnic groups of vastly different religions and histories of enslavement mere decades before hand.

>>3294604
They were french attempts to unite some of those, but nignogs fucked it up.

>>3294650
A protectorate is a recognized nation with a head of state
That alone makes a pretty big difference compared to colonies