The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa

Introduction

1 Introduction In1960,whenSenegalachievedindependencefromFrance,severaldescendants of mixed-race families who traced their roots to Saint Louis, the colonialcapital,assumedprominentrolesinthenewnation.Thefirstpresident , Léopold Sédar Senghor, appointed members of these families to ambassadorshipsinParis ,London,andtheVatican.Someservedasthefirstgeneration of lawyers, magistrates, journalists, and educators. André Guillabert becameminister offoreignaffairs andambassadorto France.Prosper Dodds became the first Senegalese bishop to preside over the Catholic diocese of SenegalandGambia.Othersservedamongthecountry’sfirsthigh-ranking military officers. Still others held elected office in the cities, towns, and the National Assembly. Although some left Senegal for France, others remained to play important roles in the new country.1 For those familiar with Senegal’s modern political history, the role of themétisinthepostcolonialnationcomesasnosurprise.Indeed,thepolitical history of Senegal’s nineteenth-century colonial towns is a history of the métis. Descendants of African women called signares and European merchants or soldiers who resided in the fortified coastal depots, the métis formed a self-conscious group in mid-eighteenth-century Senegal. Saint Louis, an island port located where the Senegal River meets the Atlantic, became the nexus of métis society, although the métis also trace their origins to Gorée Island on the Cap Vert Peninsula off the coast of Dakar. Shaped by the expansion of French colonial rule, they became the first mayors, city councilors, newspapermen, and local advisors to the colonial administration in the nineteenth century. An inward-looking group, the métis spoke French, attended Catholic schools,andadoptedthedress,tastes,andhabitsoftheFrenchbourgeoisie. The MÉtis of Senegal 2 At the same time, they spoke Wolof, maintained a network of kin and clients in the interior, understood the customs of the towns, and had an intimate familiarity with the region’s politics. In the early nineteenth century, métis men dominated the export trade in gum arabic from the Senegal River valley. By 1850, they had suffered financial setbacks because of the collapseofthepriceofgumforguinées(abluetradecloth)intherivertrade centers. The abolition of slavery in the towns, increasing competition by Muslim Saint Louis traders for control over the middleman niche of the colonial economy, and the introduction of peanut culture by Bordeaux merchants seeking to exploit cash crop production in the interior caused an economic crisis for the métis elite. As the primary French-educated population, they took advantage of the Third French Republic’s expansion of electoral institutions. In the late nineteenth century, the métis elite turned to urban politics to reassert their influence in colonial affairs. Between 1880 and 1920, they transformed the local assemblies into an arena of negotiation and contestation with colonial authorities. In the process, they articulated a vision of modern Senegal that differed from that espoused by metropolitan capitalists and the colonial administration. TheroleofthemétispopulationinSenegalesehistoryraisesintriguing questions about the nature of French colonialism, the formation of new urban societies on West Africa’s Atlantic coast, and the meaning of racial identityinSenegal.Whoarethemétis?Whatkindofsocietydidtheybuild in the nineteenth century, and how did they interpret colonial rule? As a group long affiliated with French culture and politics, the métis are often seen as synonymous with the colonial regime. In 1960, observers considered them culturally the same as the French. One writer went so far as to suggest that the métis so strongly identified with the French that their attitudes toward Africans reflected the same chauvinism and paternalism of French shopkeepers, professionals, and civil servants in the country.2 Senegalese writers also grappled with the problem of métis identity. Published in1957,AbdoulayeSadji’snovel Nini:MulâtresseduSénégal tellstheill-fated love story of a métis woman during the colonial period who is rejected in marriage by a European and who also rejects an African suitor. The novel suggests that the métis suffered from an internal conflict of not belonging fullytoeitheroneofthesesocieties,thusinhibitingtheirsurvival.3 The idea of métissage (interracial mixing sexually and socially) provoked class resentments and racial anxieties in both Senegalese and European societies Introduction 3 ofthetwentiethcentury.InSenegal’scolonialtowns,racialtensionstended to escalate during political campaigns. The image of the métis of Senegal is thus indicative of the two hundred yearsofFrenchcolonialrulethatproducedthornycontradictions,paradoxes, and tensions. Their history is not unlike that of similar groups who were caught between the worlds of the colonizer and the colonized. The métis of Senegal faced a similar “predicament of marginality” as free people of color faced in Brazil, New Orleans, Martinique, or Réunion.4 Although universal idealsofenlightenmentguidedFrance’sencounterwithAfrica,themétisalso experienced exclusion from the French...