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

5. From Outpost to Empire

118 5 Q From Outpost to Empire In March 1887, the Mothers of Families sent a letter to the governor of Senegal followed by a second letter to Jean Jauréguiberry, the naval minister and former governor of the colony. The women wrote to inform the governor that “public peace and good order have been put at peril” by the only political newspaper in the colony, Le Réveil du Senegal. The women complained about the newspaper’s attack on key members of the political elite and expressed their concern that the newspaper, “guided uniquely by hatred, jealousy and lowly rancor,” took advantage of the lack of competition from any other newspaper. They continued: This sheet wrapping itself in the cloak of republicanism, crowds odiously on the feet of all the principles that made the glory of the Government of the Republic . . . it has dragged in the mud our best intentioned administrators, our judges and the most integral, you yourself, Mr. Governor, despite all your devotion to the colony, have not been saved. Today it is all the Senegalese families that it attacks and that it looks to dishonor by slander, scandal and lies. In the name of the protection that honest people have the right to expect from their government, in the name of grossly insulted and violated republican principles, we ask you to make the Minister of the Marine cognizant of the situation. We ask you to call upon his old memories of Senegal where his memory remains still popular in our colonies still under the regime of decree. We wish from the bottom of our heart that he would bring an energetic remedy to this intolerable situation.1 As upstanding wives, mothers, and widows, the women who authored these letters relied on their moral authority within the European community to demand action in the public sphere despite the fact that they could not vote or hold public office. This letter appeared at a critical moment in Senegal’s history when French forces embarked on the final phase of conquest in Sin and Saloum From Outpost to Empire 119 and among the Futanke of the middle Senegal. Electoral politics in the colonial towns reached a fever pitch as métis men gained influence in the local assemblies. The debate in electoral campaigns increasingly revealed conflictbetweenBordeauxmerchantsandtheirallies,ontheonehand,and those who subscribed to Senegalese interests, on the other. The history of colonial expansion and the rise of modern politics in Senegal are often told through the masculine lens of soldiers, commandants, businessmen, and political authorities. The story of colonial hegemony and the competition for power that it entaileddoesnot considerwomen’sparticipationinpublic life because evidence rarely exists in the official record. TheMothersofFamiliesenteredpublicdiscourseasmembersoftheeducated elite with close ties to French power. They called upon their personal relationshipswiththeministerofthenavyandarguedforgovernmentaction in ways appropriate for women of their class in the late nineteenth century. The Mothers of Families objected to freedom of the press when the newspapers maligned the reputations of the women’s husbands, fathers, and representatives of the state. They understood the strict division in nineteenthcentury politics between the private sphere where women operated and the publicsphereofgovernmentandpolitics.Althoughwomencouldnotvoteor holdpublicoffice,inFranceorSenegal,theactofwritinglettersandpetitioningcolonialofficialsonbehalfofmoralityanddecencyshowsthemechanism of civil society at work in Senegal’s colonial capital.2 The idea of civil society has gained popularity over the past several decades as a means of analyzing politics and the state in Africa today, yet the concept poses certain problems for understanding how democratic institutions functioned in the context of colonial rule.3 Rooted in a particular historyofwesterndemocracy ,Enlightenmentthinkerswhoembracedtheconcept in the eighteenth century saw Africa as the antithesis of civil society. In their view, civil society meant rational, civilized government rather than the irrational, prehistoric, and uncivilized state of “man in nature” that Africa represented. The revival of the idea in the twentieth century, however, has a great deal to do with understanding how moral communities and organic intellectuals reacted to the totalitarian pressures of communist rule and the growth of state capitalism in ways not unlike colonialism.4 More often when the term civil society is applied to Africa today, it is used to invoke the weakness of a bifurcated colonial state or the failure of the postcolonial state to modernize and provide sufficient socioeconomic The MÉtis of Senegal 120 development for its citizens.5 Some focus on its absence. Others see the emergence of civil societyincontemporaryAfricaasa means of combating elite self-interested state actors who practice what Jean...