[1][2] The first West African soldiers were enrolled in the French colonial army in 1820 and the company of the tirailleurs sénégalais was formed in 1857.

[4] It is important to keep in mind that while slavery was abolished in France and its colonies in 1848, that does not mean the situation changed totally overnight.

The language of the West African soldiers in the French colonial army has been mentioned in descriptive works from the 19th century onward.

[6] Maurice Delafosse wrote about Français Tirailleur in 1904,[7] describing it as a French equivalent to the more well-known English pidgins of the area.

Biondi[11] points out that one of the largest differences between slavery in West Africa and most parts of the New World colonized by France was the presence and importance of the "mixed" population and signares in particular, with signare being a term used for African or part-African women who were companions to the French men of the colony.

At the time of publication of La Force Noire, the most dominanant group was the Mande (Bambara, Mandinka, Dyula, Soninke and Susu), who were recruited after the Serer.

The last group to be noted by Mangin as the French military having recruited was the Hausa of Dahomey (now northern Benin).

Speakers of this pidgin have been depicted in the 1920 biographical work of Madame Lucie Cousturier [13] and in Ousmane Sembène's 1987 film Camp de Thiaroye.