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

3. Religion, Marriage, and Material Culture

73 3 Q Religion, Marriage, and Material Culture On Saturday, 22 June 1889, at nine in the morning, Mayor Charles Molinet pronounced Hyacinthe Devès and Charlotte Crespin married at the town hall in Saint Louis. The marriage act read: Sir Jean Lazare Hyacinthe Devès, licensed in law, commercial agent, and General Councilor [author’s emphasis], age 29 years and a half and born in Saint Louis, Senegal on the 13th of November 1858, living here as the adult and legitimate son of Pierre Gaspard Devès, wholesale merchant and property -owner and Dame Madeleine Fatma (Tamba) Daba Daguissery, without profession both residing in Saint Louis presents and consents to the marriage of their son, of one part and demoiselle Charlotte Louise Crespin, without profession, age 25, born on the island of Matacong (Sierra Leone) on March 3, 1864 and residing in Saint Louis as the single adult and legitimate daughter of Jean Jacques Crespin, conseil commissionné, General Councilor and Dame Hannah Isaacs, without profession, presents and consents to the marriage of their daughter on the other part.1 The civil marriage between Hyacinthe Devès and Charlotte Crespin legitimized their union in the eyes of the French state. It confirmed their adherence to the legal and cultural expectations of French marriage, family, and religion. A closer reading suggests that families who opted for unions that conformed to French law and the teachings of the Church rather than marriage à la mode du pays understood the official act in other ways. Declaring one’s marriage in the civil registry strengthened claims to citizenship and conveyed respectability on the individuals and their families. Marriage, moreover, had a direct bearing on the field of electoral politics. The DevèsCrespin marriage occurred at a key moment in the formation of a political alliance between JeanJacquesCrespin and Gaspard Devès.Madeleine and Gaspard Devès made their mariage à la mode du pays official less than a The MÉtis of Senegal 74 month before the wedding of their son to Charlotte Crespin, perhaps in an efforttoasserttheinfluenceoftheirhouseholdbyconformingtoEuropean expectations.2 TheexpansionofFrenchruleinSenegaloperatedasmuchthroughthe private sphere of marriage and family as it did through military force. Church teachings and the establishment of civil law in the colonies served as a means of articulating notions of bourgeois respectability and republican womanhood. Colonial officials, missionaries, and members of the colonial judiciary considered the Church, the school, and the court system toolsforinstillingcolonialism’sculture.StrategiestosecureEuropeanrule, as Ann Stoler suggests, pushed away from “ambiguous racial genres and open domestic arrangements” while clarifying European standards.3 Missionaries and colonial officials attacked mariage à la mode du pays, promoted orthodoxy over syncretism, and elevated metropolitan notions of family, womanhood, and domestic consumption in order to rule through fixedcategoriesofraceandclass.Frenchauthorities,however,walkedafine line in imposing their cultural ideals. Seeking not to antagonize Muslims of the town and along the Senegal, they turned to grumets, signares, and the métis to instill the cultural aims of French rule. Scholarship on the culture of colonialism has advanced our understanding of how colonial hegemony operated through culture yet does not fully consider how people who lived in close proximity to colonial powers interpreted the discourse of colonialism to their advantage. Marriage and inheritance served as mechanisms for reproducing wealth and power among commercial elites in Saint Louis as they did for ruling elites in metropolitan France.4 Habits of dress and taste conveyed the image of respectable , middle-class households that enabled certain town residents to assumetheroleofpowerbrokerincolonialaffairs .Formen,honorcamefrom the public sphere of law, trade, and politics, whereas respectability for women derived from the private sphere of family and home. Being named as a “woman without profession” signified a woman’s middle-class status, separating her from women of the working class. For Christian habitants in Senegal, adhering to the teachings of the Church, conforming to French civil law, and adopting French tastes createdtheappropriateimageofmorallyupstandingtownresidents .ForMuslim habitants, marriage according to Islamic law officiated by the tamsir (judge) of the Muslim tribunal and recorded in its registry strengthened Religion, Marriage, and Material Culture 75 their status as pious and respectable.5 Muslim habitants rejected cultural assimilation yet claimed their status as French citizens, whereas métis habitantsarticulatedtheirclaimtocitizenshipbystrengtheningtheircultural ties to French authorities. For all town residents, adherence to religious orthodoxy played a key role in establishing group identity and shoring up their influence with colonial officials. Despitetheemergenceofaself-consciousmétispopulationattheendof the eighteenth century, transformations in métis identity and society took shapeoverthecourseofthenextcentury.Individualsandgroupswithinthe...