QUARTIER COLONIAL MATRALA

At the beginning of the 19th century, trade with the English enabled Jacqueville to achieve prosperity, mainly due to the palm oil trade, as the decline in whaling led to a large demand for oil in Europe. This prosperity was essentially concentrated in the hands of the notable alladian (lagoon Akan peoples of the Jacqueville region), whose wealthiest began to build European-style permanent houses, importing their furniture and materials from the Old Continent and entrusting the education of their children to the British. The arrival of the French, who banned all trade over which they had no control, combined with the departure of the English and the establishment of European trading houses, reduced the role of African traders to almost nothing and precipitated their loss. Now ruined and unable to maintain their large houses, they fell into disuse. Today, we can no longer really speak of them as remains, but rather as ruins for most of them unfortunately. At the beginning of the 1980s, only parts of the walls of a few of these houses remained. Among them, the Adje Boni house, the Yessoh house, the Gbeugre Nimba house - the best preserved of all -, the Bombro Akadjé house or the Bombro house. Some of them are nevertheless inhabited by locals and one of them has been rehabilitated into a maquis.