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

Conclusion

181 Conclusion The métis strongly claimed the same rights for Senegal as for the French people from the metropolis in the intellectual, moral, and political fields. In the General Council of Senegal, the métis families—Descemet, Guillabert, Carpot, Devès, and others—expressed themselves according to the framework of that time, i.e., a French one in favor of assimilation. This claim was not appreciated by the colonial administration. —Christian Valantin, vice president, Senegal National Assembly JustinDevèsdiedon22June1916.Twomonthslater,adelegationrepresenting allofthetown’sneighborhoods(Nord,Sud,GuetNdar,Ndar-Toute,andSor) presented a proposal to Saint Louis’s municipal council that called for establishingamonumenttohonorhim .Theycalledit“anactofrecognitionthatwe devote to the memory of our deceased mayor.” Devès’s deputy mayor, Pierre Chimère, concluded that no matter what one thought of Devès, “he was a mayorwhodidalotofgoodfortheindigènes.”Themunicipalassemblyagreed that the front of the monument should read, “The indigène acknowledges.” Thecouncilvotedunanimouslytoerectastatueandcreateapublicsquarefor Devès. The only other public squares in the town included one at the governor ’s palace in honor of Faidherbe and another facing the train station that honored the doctors who died caring for the ill during the yellow fever epidemic of 1878. The council meeting adjourned with the new mayor agreeing to present the ideato the administration and to begin collectingdonations.1 Today,nopublicsquareormonumentdedicatedtoJustinDevèsexists in Saint Louis. A street sign in Guet Ndar bears his name as a reminder of The MÉtis of Senegal 182 the coastal fishing village’s long-standing support for the Devès family and evoking the connection between the mayor and his mother’s family home. It is unclear why the memorial never materialized. Perhaps the town council failed to get financial backing, or French authorities, preoccupied with the war effort, simply ignored the request. By 1916, the administration had succeeded in discrediting the Devès family. Questionable business practices and scandals over Justin Devès’s administration of municipal government further erodedthe family’sposition among the wealthy and powerful in the urban community. These factors may explain the erasure of the Devès family from popular narratives of modern nationalism in Senegal. Michel-RolfTrouillotwritesthatconcreteevidenceofahistoricalmoment provides a “materiality of the socio-historical process” that sets the stage for the production of knowledge about the past. The absence of a monument or marker may account for silences regarding the role of the Devès in narratives of Senegalese nationalism. The history of the métis in Senegal has either been told in terms of the golden age of the gum trade or as a footnote in the emergence of modern nationalism. As a result, historians fail to understand the role of Senegal’s métis population in the broad sweep of political, economic, social, and cultural transformations that shaped nineteenth-century Senegal. My aim in writing this book is to provide a perspective on the formation of métis identity and society that takes into account the long durée. The métis emerged as a self-conscious group in the late eighteenth century, but the social and cultural transformations that occurred in the first half of the nineteenth century solidified their distinctive identity. The ability to trace one’sancestrytoasignareandaEuropeanmerchantorsoldierwhoarrived in the colony in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century distinguished the métis of Saint Louis and Gorée from people of mixed race who were the products of twentieth-century French West Africa. In writing this book, I deliberately placed Saint Louis at the center of the analysis. As the nexus of métis social and cultural life, a study of Saint Louis offers a new framework for understanding nineteenth-centuryurban life in West Africa. Histories of the Atlantic World often consider West Africa’s Atlantic towns as locations for departure for African people who entered New World societies. Colonial studies often view these locations as the center of European power without regard for the societies that lived in close proximity. The permanent inhabitants of Senegal’s coastal towns Conclusion 183 interacted with and responded to the geopolitical and cultural changes affectingtheAtlanticWorldandtheexpansionoftheFrenchEmpire .Senegal’s coastal residents made transatlantic crossings that brought them to Bordeaux ,Haiti,Réunion,andMartiniqueandthenbacktoSenegal.Similarly, Europeans and people of color came to Senegal at various times in the nineteenth century, bringing new ideas and establishing transatlantic networks .Intheeighteenthcentury,themétis,grumets,andsignaresembodied thecharacteristicsofcosmopolitaninhabitantsoftheAtlanticWorld.They had the linguistic dexterity, knowledge of mercantile commerce, and a worldlyoutlookthathelpedthemnavigategeopoliticalandculturalchange. Atthesametime,theywereintimatelyfamiliarwiththereligion,language, and practices of the people...