[2] Those who acquire nationality at birth include: Naturalization can be granted to persons who have resided in the territory for a sufficient period of time to confirm they understand the customs and traditions of the society.
General provisions are that applicants have good character and conduct; have no criminal convictions; no serious physical or mental incapacity; and are invested in Gabon.
[16] In 1472 Portuguese sailor, Lopes Gonçalves sighted the Gabon Estuary and continued exploring southward from modern-day Libreville to the cape which bears his name, arriving in 1473 or 1474.
[17] Prior to the involvement of Europeans, the Pygmy- and Bantu-speaking people who had settled in the region did not share a language or develop a common political system.
[18] By 1700, the Kingdom of Orungu was operating near Cape Lopez and began to dominate the trade in beeswax, copal, dye materials, ebony, and ivory.
[23][22] The Mpongwe chiefs, who had been pushed to their north, in the Gabon Estuary during the previous century, were actively engaged as middlemen between trading networks.
[25] Vying for control of key trading outposts, the African kingdoms came into conflict with each other, forcing some of the clans to move inward from the coast to take refuge in more remote forested areas.
[23][27] In 1839, French admiral, Édouard Bouët-Willaumez, signed a commercial treaty with the headmen along the coast hoping to gain benefits of trade as well as agricultural land to be developed.
[27] In 1848, Bouët-Willaumez established the foundations of Libreville and the following year brought a group of slaves liberated from a Dutch ship to work as wage laborers on the nearby plantations.
[29] Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza was appointed commissioner general of France's possessions of French Congo and Gabon in 1886.
[30][31] De Brazza left the Congo in 1897, but his successors continued using corporate trade concessions to manage affairs in the French possessions licensing forty companies.
[38][39] Non-citizen nationals were governed by traditional laws concerning marriage and inheritance which placed the well-being of the community above individual rights.
[40] These laws prevented a wife from being treated as a slave, required her husband to support her, and entitled her kin to a bride price, to compensate them for the loss of her fertility to their kinship group and secure the legality of the union.
[44] Clarification in the 1897 decree included that bestowing nationality by birth in French territory only applied to children born in France, restoring descent requirements for the colonies.
Under its terms, native persons born in Equatorial Africa were nationals of France but not citizens and were subject to the Indigenous Code.
Only if the spouses were married under French law and the children registered in the Civil Registry could they acquire the status of the husband or father.
24 on 25 March 1915 that allowed subjects or protected persons who were non-citizen nationals and had established domicile in a French territory to acquire full citizenship, including the naturalization of their wives and minor children, by having received the cross of the Legion of Honor, having obtained a university degree, having rendered service to the nation, having attained the rank of an officer or received a medal from the French army, who had married a Frenchwoman and established a one-year residency; or who had resided for more than ten years in a colony other than their country of origin.
[56] It also allowed children born in France to native-born French women married to foreigners to acquire their nationality from their mothers.
[61] At the end of World War II, a statute issued on 7 March 1944 granted French citizenship to those who had performed services to the nation, such as serving as civil servants or receiving recognitions.
[65] It expressly applied to Algeria, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Réunion and was extended to the Overseas Territories in 1953, but in the case of the latter had distinctions for the rights of those who were naturalized.