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6 w Slow Path toward Accommodation I The Time of Rapprochement Historians have long analyzed the colonial encounter through the prisms of collaboration and resistance. More recently, some scholars have questioned the heuristic validity of these concepts.1 They have highlighted the emotional load they carry as they inevitably recall the context of World War II Europe, with some Europeans cooperating with the Nazi regime and others resisting doggedly. Furthermore, looking at colonialism through the lenses of resistance and collaboration leads to conceptual reductionism and oversimplification of the complex field of interactions between colonizers and colonized. The term accommodation is now increasingly used to avoid the rigidity of an artificial binary opposition and to better express the nuances, ambiguities, and complexities in the relationships between European imperialists and their subjects. Accommodation offers the conceptual flexibility to map out the vast arrays of conflicting attitudes deployed by the colonized to adapt to the new rapport de force (power relations) imposed by colonial rule.2 However , accommodation should not be conceived as a one-way process by which the powerless strive to ingratiate themselves with the dominant power. Rather, it should be understood as an evolving dynamic of mutual adjustments, in which the dominator as well as the dominated struggle to minimize conflicts and identify areas of converging interests. The need for accommodation is rooted in the understanding that coercion cannot be an effective tool for administration and that minimal consent from the colonized is necessary for colonial rule to be successful. It originates in the aspirations of colonial administrators to attain their goals at “minimal cost by using available mechanisms of indigenous politics” and in the need for the subjugated facing an alien regime with overwhelming power to develop survival strategies.3 141 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. This understanding of accommodation is favored in some of the most recent scholarship on Islam under colonial domination in Africa.4 In a book published in 2000, David Robinson charted the crossing paths taken by four Muslim clerics and the Federation of French West Africa to negotiate relations of accommodation. Amadu Bamba was one of the clerics discussed.5 In his chapter on relations between the founder of the Muridiyya and the colonial authorities of Senegal, Robinson offered a thorough analysis of what he called the “longest, hardest, most complete, and most enduring” path of accommodation to French rule. In the pages that follow, I explore the converging French and Murid paths of accommodation by focusing on some of the transformations within and outside the Muridiyya that facilitated its adjustment to colonial domination. I argue that the rapprochement between the Murids and the French was an unplanned process. It unfolded gradually, following a twisted trail on which both sides applied and responded to pressure while remaining mindful of the compromises needed to achieve stable relationships. new orientations in french colonial policy In 1902, the year of Amadu Bamba’s return from exile in Gabon, Ernest Roume (1902–8), a Parisian bureaucrat like Chaudié, was appointed governor-general of the Federation of French West Africa. Roume was a civilian inspector at the Ministry of Colonies, which was created in 1894 and had inherited the prerogatives of the more militarily oriented Ministry of Navy, which had overseen the conquest and “pacification” of France’s overseas territories. The founding of this ministry heralded the intensification of colonial rule and subsequently a shift in political approach and administrative practices. Roume arrived in West Africa with an ambitious plan for economic and administrative reform.6 He was keen to develop a more competent administration capable of peaceful and firm control of the colonies. One of his tools for achieving this goal was better knowledge of the cultures, mores, and leadership of the indigenous people.7 This knowledge provided the basis for the policy of association , which, in Merlin’s view, he favored and which rendered the entente with the Muslims easier.8 This change in the conduct of colonial business led to a reevaluation of Muslim policy in Senegal. The task of creating a new policy fell on the shoulders of Robert Arnaud, a French Islamicist of Algerian origin who was appointed head of the new Muslim Affairs Service, founded by Roume in 1906. The governor-general also launched the short-lived Bulletin de la Sociét...

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