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G. Wesley Johnson, Jr.
The emergence of Black politics in Senegal;
the struggle for power in the four communes, 1900-1920

Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press. 1971. x, 260 p. ill.

Chapter 1. — The Historical Background
The Colonial Political Situation

The unusual status of Senegal among French colonies was first called to the attention of the European public in 1901, when Pierre Mille, a well-known French journalist, published an article describing his visit to the colony's capital city, Saint-Louis. Mille was struck by the fact that black Africans living in the Four Communes, the principal towns of the colony, had long possessed the right to elect local officials. This practice was unknown in France's other tropical African colonies; indeed, it was unknown in the African colonies of any nation. After watching a local campaign, Mille concluded:

It does not seem as though this experiment has been entirely successful from a political point of view because, if the Colony of Senegal has managed to put its house in order and finds itself today in a fairly flourishing condition financially, it is largely due to the circumstance that the native voters are “clients” of an influential white gens and vote as they are told to vote…

France had made a mistake in granting suffrage to the natives. She did not withdraw her present, but took care not to repeat it elsewhere 1. Mille assumed that France's lapse in policy in Senegal was compensated for by the French commercial interests there, who would keep the native electorate in line. He also praised the Creoles, the Senegalese of mixed parentage who were the French merchants' allies in managing local politics. But his disdain for the black African voters who made up the bulk of the electorate was scarcely disguised, and this attitude was shared by most other visitors to Senegal during the next decade. The cultural ethnocentrism of the day inhibited these observers from seriously considering the idea that black Africans might aspire to office and become local political leaders. The earlier French policy of assimilation was now in disrepute; and to Mille and others, the rotten-borough politics of Senegal furnished proof that Africans could not be assimilated. However, these short-term visitors did not look beyond the facade of local politics; and because they ignored the cultural, social, and historical background of the Four Communes they overlooked the power struggle that was developing as the African majority awakened from a long period of French and Creole domination.

The Unity of Senegalese Geography

Many African states of today, such as Nigeria, Cameroun, and Ivory Coast, have suffered from a geographical diversity inherited from colonial times. But the boundaries of Senegal as drawn by France are roughly in accord with traditional frontiers separating its peoples and cultures from the Moors to the north, the Sudanic peoples to the east, and a variety of ethnic groups to the south. As a result, Senegal to date has not experienced the irredentism and tribal conflicts that have plagued most African nations, and she has a sense of unity few African countries possess.

The heartland of Senegal is a large plain spread between two major river systems, the Senegal on the north and the Gambia on the south 2.
A narrow Atlantic littoral lies on the west; and in the east the heartland merges into the Ferlo desert, a region of sparse vegetation and sand dunes.
Southeastern Senegal and the Casamance region, severed from the heartland by the Gambia, have been marginal to the mainstream of Senegalese history. The plains of Senegal are sandy and are typically covered with thornbushes and baobab trees; but during the rainy season luxuriant grasses appear. Both soil and climate are well suited to peanut culture, which has become the economic mainstay of the country 3.

Senegal is basically a savannah land, and there is little relief except for the low hills around the city of Thiès. Consequently, the inhabitants have always enjoyed easy communications. Whether for war, trade, or day-to-day visits, the dominant Wolof and Serere peoples of the heartland have maintained contact with their neighbors:

Only the Diola and other peoples in the Casamance have been isolated.
Most of Senegal (excepting Casamance and Cape Verde) has a hot, dry climate typical of the Sudanic belt. There is only one rainy season, from June to October, and the dry season lasts for the remainder of the year. The absence of tropical humidity during Europe's winter months gives parts of Senegal a climate much like that of the Mediterranean. The harmattan, a parching desert wind from the Sahara, heats the interior, whereas winds blowing south from the Canary Islands cool the Atlantic littoral and Cape Verde during the dry season. The weather consistently regulates the activity of Senegal's inhabitants. Crops are planted in May and June, and are watered by heavy rains from June to October. Harvesting begins in November, and by May the last of Senegal's peanuts have been sold and shipped on to European markets. From February through May, the dry weather is oppressively hot in the interior, and there is little work for the peasant. With the onset of the rains, the withered landscape of the central plains becomes a verdant parkland not unlike Western Europe in early summer. But the rains also bring an oppressive tropical humidity to the coastal cities. Ironically, the name given this humid summer period is hivernage, quite the opposite of the term's French connotation. Every hivernage the colony of Senegal was temporarily abandoned to the Africans, who helped manage businesses, filled vacant posts in the administration, and generally kept things running until the French returned from Europe 4.

In contrast to the heartland area, Casamance is moist and tropical: rains begin earlier and last longer, and much of the country is a tropical rain forest where raffia and rattan palms, mahogany, and teak grow in abundance. The bamboo thickets, mangrove swamps, and thick forests preclude much travel even during the dry season.
And ethnically speaking, the polyglot tribes of Casamance are quite distinct from the rest of Senegal's people. Not until the twentieth century was there much contact between the heartland and Casamance 5.

Two navigable rivers lie within the boundaries of Senegal.
The Gambia, in the south, is navigable in all seasons for 200 miles inland. But it has never been controlled by France for any significant length of time, and the navigable stretch of the river formed a British enclave in French Senegal throughout the colony's existence. Senegal's great highway to the interior for much of its history was the Senegal River, which rises in the mountainous Fouta-Djalon of Guinea and descends gently for 1,056 miles, reaching the Atlantic Ocean near the old colonial capital, Saint-Louis.
The Senegal, unlike the Gambia, is navigable only during certain seasons. From July to October the river runs rapidly, flooding its long valley with alluvial soils much as the Nile does, and large vessels can then mount as far as Kayes in modern Mali, 550 miles from the sea. But by April the river is so low that even small boats have difficulty reaching Podor, 110 miles upstream from Saint-Louis.
The Senegal's picturesque valley, known as the Fouta, is the traditional home of the Toucouleur peoples and was the seat of the great medieval state of Tekrour.
It also served as a route for the diffusion of Islam among West African Negroes. The river has always been an important means of communication between the interior Sudanic areas and the Atlantic littoral, since it cuts through the Sahara desert to the north and the Ferlo desert to the south. After the heartland, the fertile river valley is second in importance to Senegal's agriculture 6.

The Atlantic coastal strip (including Cape Verde), extending from Saint-Louis to the Gambia, is a flat country punctuated with sand dunes and shallow ponds. Palms, iron, wood, citrus trees, and European vegetables grow under careful cultivation. Owing to its sub-Canarian climate and gentle winds the area is hospitable to Europeans, which partially explains why the French lingered on the coast for centuries before moving inland. In pre-colonial days, Senegal's indigenous population was concentrated in the northern heartland and on the Senegal River. But during the past century continuous migrations of Africans toward the rich peanut-growing lands of the south have shifted the center of peasant population to a coastal area bounded by the cities of Thiès, Diourbel, and Kaolack 7. Much of this growth may be ascribed to the attractions of the nearby capital, Dakar, with its government work, port, and small industries.

The geography of Senegal thus provided a central region where both agriculture and grazing could be pursued in a stable subsistence economy. The Wolof, Toucouleur, and Serere peoples of the heartland were traditionally farmers.
The nomadic Fulɓe, though primarily concentrated in eastern Senegal, traveled around the Ferlo desert and grazed their herds in the river valleys and heartland plains. The heartland was free of the tsetse fly and the stock diseases it carries; hence the Sereres kept large herds of cattle in their villages, and donkeys, horses, and camels could also be raised. The presence of horses meant that many members of the warrior class in Senegal's traditional states were able to fight as cavalrymen, and their highly mobile bands were able to enforce central rule over wide areas. These conditions were analogous to those in other Sudanic areas where great traditional African states arose: Ghana, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornou.

Senegal's heartland was ideally suited for the development of a cohesive modern nation state. Only the British colonial enclave on the Gambia destroyed this unity: Senegal was deprived of another natural highway to the interior; and many Wolof peoples were separated from their original homeland to the north, although they maintained family, religious, and economic ties with Senegal. Otherwise, Senegal's physical and economic geography has favored the evolution of agrarian kingdoms among the major tribal groups that have dominated the country.

The Traditional States of Senegal

Four major ethnic groups in Senegal contributed to the urban population of the Four Communes: the Wolof and Lebou peoples were the most important, but the Serere and Toucouleur peoples were present in significant numbers. These four groups were related in language and social customs, and they have maintained close political and religious ties.
Each group at one time produced one or more nation-states in Senegal. These are worthy of closer examination, for they indicate the political capacity that rural Africans brought with them when they migrated to the Communes. Detailed information on Senegal's traditional states is only now being brought to light by specialists in oral tradition and ethnohistory, but the written record from Arabic and European travelers suggests that the Senegal area has been a center of organized political activity since at least A.D. 1000.

It is not my purpose to establish a direct link between traditional politics and the politics of the Communes. But the reader should be aware that each major ethnic group involved in communal politics had its own political traditions. Africans in the Communes were no strangers to organized politics, although they needed a certain degree of acculturation to understand the peculiarities of Western political institutions. (Indeed, to take a leading role in the political life of the Communes an African had to be partly assimilated to French culture.) It is doubtful that traditional politics provided an adequate training ground for urban politics: traditional political roles were ascribed, whereas those in the urban areas were achieved by personal merit. However, the concept of the political process as one form of a struggle for power was familiar to every African.

The Toucouleur states of the Fouta Toro

The middle valley of the Senegal River, the Fouta Toro, has been the home of the Toucouleur peoples for over a thousand years 8; and it formed the nucleus of Tekrour, one of the earliest recorded Negro states in all Africa.

This nation arose sometime before A .D. 1000, and in medieval times its renown was such that “Tekrour” was synonymous with the term “Sudan” in much of West Africa. The Toucouleur were the primary inhabitants of Tekrour, but the population may have included proto-Wolof and Serere peoples, as well as a few other ethnic minorities.
The Fouta Toro was well suited to agriculture and trade, and was not too far distant from salt mines to the north and gold mines to the southeast. It is not remarkable that the kingdom prospered for several centuries. Sometime after 1000 the king and court of Tekrour were peacefully converted to Islam by emissaries from Mauritania, and the kingdom at large soon followed. Tekrour's power waned after the twelfth century, and the state fell successively under the influence of the neighboring Mali and Djolof empires. In the sixteenth century, after a brief interlude of independence, Tekrour was conquered by the Denianke, an “animistic” Fulɓe dynasty, and an era of non-Muslim rule began.

[Erratum. — Ancient and pre-Islamic Fulɓe were neither animists nor fetishists. They were monotheists who believed in Geno, the Eternal Creator. Read Kumen and its glossary.
The most acknowledged Fulɓe Muslim scholars have established, in their Arabic and/or Ajami writings, the equivalence and interchangeability of the names Allah and Geno. Read, for instance, Tierno Muhammadu Samba Mombeya, Shayku Usuman ɓii Foduyee (Usman dan Fodio), Amadou Hampâté Bâ, etc. — Tierno S. Bah]

But the people remained loyal to Islam despite the pagan practices and harsh exactions of their new rulers; and in 1776 a group of Toucouleur marabouts led a successful rebellion. The Denianke rulers were deposed, and an elective theocracy called the Almayat was set up 9. Power was divided among members of the maraboutic party (toroɓɓe), who collectively ruled the different communities along the river valley. After this, Toucouleur independence was intimately associated with Islam. And at the same time, the Fouta Toro began to send forth increasing numbers of marabouts to preach the Koran throughout Senegal.
The most notable Toucouleur leader in the nineteenth century was Al Hajj Umar Tall, who made his pilgrimage to Mecca in the 1820's, joined the militant Tijaniyya brotherhood, and returned to act as that “sect's” Khalife in the western Sudan. Umar wanted to revive the ancient glory of Tekrour by creating an empire similar to the Hausa-Fulani state in northern Nigeria, which he had visited.

[Erratum. — Umar Tall studied Tijaniyya tarikh, first in Mauritania, then in Fuuta-Jalon with Shayku Abdul Naghil of Labe. Next he embarked on his decade-long pilgrimage and further studies in Egypt and Arabia. On his forth and return trips, he visited Masina and Sokoto. Finally, he built a campement initially at Jegunko, near Timbo, the capital-city of Fuuta-Jalon. However, he soon decided to establish permanently another settlement in the current town of Dingiray, Guinea. Undoubtedly, Tall drew lessons from the Islamic Fulɓe states that preceded him. And Fuuta-Jalon was key to the training of Umar Tall and his subsequent religious successes and military conquests. Read Robinson's The Holy War of Umar Tal: the Western Sudan in the mid-nineteenth century. — Tierno S. Bah]

Gathering a host of enthusiastic followers, he declared a jihad against both pagans and “lapsed” Muslims. He hoped to make the Fouta Toro his base of operations, but the Toucouleur marabouts had no intention of giving up their theocratic rule in that area. Although many young Toucouleurs joined Umar, the major leaders allied themselves with the French, and Umar's westward advance was stopped at Fort Medine on the Senegal in 1857. Umar and his legions turned east, conquered a vast area on the upper Niger, and founded a large theocratic state. The Fouta Toro remained independent for the moment. But it was isolated between Umar and the French, and Louis Faidherbe and his successors soon conceived the ambitious scheme of conquering the entire West African hinterland. French annexations proceeded slowly, but by 1891 the entire homeland of the Toucouleur peoples was under French rule.

The empire and states of the Wolof 10

The most numerous and important inhabitants of Senegal are the Wolofs, a proud, handsome people who have been the traditional masters of the northern and central heartland plain. Through war, trade, empire, and marriage, Wolof has become the lingua franca of Senegal, spoken by over one-third and understood by possibly two-thirds of all Senegalese. The Wolofs were the first Senegalese to meet Europeans; and they quickly became French auxiliaries, serving as traders, soldiers, sailors, and interpreters. Consequently, they were the earliest African dwellers in the French settlements.

The recorded history of the Wolof peoples does not extend as far back as that of the Toucouleurs. Some observers believe that the Wolofs once lived in Tekrour; others hold that they originated in Mauritania and later moved south. There is also evidence that the Wolofs may have descended from the Toucouleurs or Sereres (and may possibly be a mixture of both these ancient peoples). The modern Wolof historian Cheikh Anta Diop has speculated that the Wolofs originated on the Upper Nile, basing this hypothesis on certain similarities in language and culture 11.

Oral tradition simply states that the Djolof empire of the Wolof peoples was founded in the thirteenth or fourteenth century by Ndiadiane N'Diaye, who may possibly have been the son of a Toucouleur cleric. N'Diaye's reputation for bravery and supernatural powers led to his selection as the first Bourba of Djolof (i.e. Emperor of the Wolofs). Gaining control of Djolof and of Walo, the Wolof state near the mouth of the Senegal, he apparently united these with the Wolof states of Cayor and Baol to form the Djolof empire. Soon Tekrour and the southern Serere kingdoms of Sine and Saloum became subject to the Wolof state, which also controlled Fulɓe lands to the east and Malinke villages to the southeast. At the beginning of the fifteenth century, after the demise of the Mali empire, Djolof embraced all of modern Senegal's heartland, creating a precedent for the French to build on four centuries later. Wolof culture and language slowly spread to the vanquished peoples, especially in the upper classes, and diverse peoples on the periphery of Wolof culture were wholly or partially assimilated. This process has continued to the present, in part because the Djolof empire, though vanished, still lends its prestige to today's Wolofs.

At its height, Djolof was divided into provinces, each with a governor appointed by the Bourba. Provincial governors collected taxes for the empire from all classes and supported themselves by collecting tribute from the great regional chieftains; they also stood ready to furnish the Bourba with troops for his armies, and especially with the services of their mounted cavaliers (ceɓɓe, sing. ceɗɗo), an aristocratic class of professional warriors. It is not certain whether Islam penetrated the ceɗɗo class or the Djolof nobility. A thin veneer of Islam spread by Moorish or Toucouleur marabouts may have covered certain northern areas of the empire; but Djolof, unlike Tekrour, was basically an animistic state whose traditions were purely African in origin. Recently, a few Wolof genealogists have claimed that Ndiadiane N'Diaye was directly descended from Abu-Bakr Ibn Umar, the Almoravid conqueror of Ghana. However, this seems to be no more than an attempt to claim greater Islamic legitimacy 12.

The Djolof empire encountered a time of troubles after the midsixteenth century: various of its Wolof provinces (Cayor, Walo, and Baol) broke away to become separate kingdoms; and by the end of the sixteenth century it had also lost control of the non-Wolof lands to the south, including the rich kingdoms of Sine and Saloum. The original state of Djolof remained a strong kingdom, but it never regained its former imperial glory. However, it continued to be the center of Wolof culture, and as late as 1855 the Bourba still commanded more respect than any other traditional ruler in Senegal.

The title of sovereign gives to the Bourba, in relation to his former vassals, a moral superiority that still has a great influence. Not even fifty years ago, the princes of the separated provinces came running to the Bourba for advice on important political questions. It is still acknowledged today, without reservation, that if the kings of Sine, Saloum, Baol, Cayor, and Walo were gathered in the presence of the Bourba, only he would have the right to be seated on a higher throne than the rest 13.

The Serere states of Sine and Saloum

The southern provinces of the Djolof Empire were populated primarily by Sereres, who are possibly the most ancient ethnic group in Senegal 14. This people appears to have migrated from north of the Senegal sometime after A.D. 1000, presumably because of growing Berber pressure. Today, the Sereres are a sedentary people known for their strong attachment to land, crops, and cattle. More than most Senegalese, they can be regarded as peasants in the popular connotation of the term. They are prudent, thrifty, and suspicious of change: for example, they clung to mixed subsistence farming long after most farmers in Senegal had adopted peanut monoculture, and their economy was thus more resistant to fluctuations in the world market.

Soon after their migration to Senegal, the Sereres founded the states of Sine and Saloum in the southern part of the heartland plain. The power of both kingdoms was eventually derived from the CeDDHo class, which kept the peace, collected taxes, and protected the peasants from foreign enemies. Although the Serere states were often subjugated by imperial powers like Mali or Djolof, they maintained a separate tradition. And the kings (Bours) of Sine-Saloum, like the Bourba of Djolof, were greatly respected by all Senegalese (indeed, the moral authority of these rulers survived the French conquest).

From their inception on, the animistic Serere states resisted Islam and its institutions. However, Sereres near the Atlantic coast fell under the influence of French Catholic missionaries during the nineteenth century and provided many of Senegal's native converts to Christianity. The villages of Joal and Portudal, long familiar with Portuguese traders and missionaries, acquired French missions. And N'Gazobil became famous as a Catholic school and religious printing house. Although the Christian Sereres numbered less than 10 per cent of the total Serere population, they soon became the dominant majority in Senegalese Catholicism and received favored educational opportunities. They were usually the only Sereres interested in moving to the growing urban centers, for most of this ethnic group remained peasants and clung to animist beliefs. By 1891, Sine and Saloum had become part of the French Protectorate.

The Lebou republic on Cape Verde

The fortunes of history allowed the Serere peasants to continue their traditional rural life. But the Lebou peasants of Cape Verde were forced to become the most urban of Senegalese peoples after Cape Verde attracted the most intensive French settlement in Black Africa, for they had no hinterland in which to seek refuge.
The traditions of the Lebous place their origin somewhere north of the Senegal River, but how long the Lebous have been a distinct people is a matter for speculation. Their language is a dialect of Wolof, their customs are a mixture of Wolof and Serere practices, and many of their family names are drawn from these two sources. It is fairly certain that they migrated southward to Lake Guier in the Djolof area sometime in the sixteenth century, eventually crossed into Cayor, and took possession of the sparsely settled Cape Verde peninsula after 1700. Expelling a few wandering Malinke tribes, the Lebous established their own village communities on all sides of the Cape and became subsistence farmers and fishermen 15.

At this time, the Lebous were still subjects of the ruler (Damel) of Cayor, who was anxious to retain his authority over thein. But in 1790 a small maraboutic party (most Lebous were still animists) began a struggle for independence that lasted almost two decades. The most prominent leader of the rebellion was Dial Diop, who led the Lebou troops against the ceɓɓe warriors of Cayor. And when the Damel acknowledged defeat in 1812, the marabouts proclaimed Diop the leader (Serigne) of the Lebou community and gave him full executive powers.
The new Lebou state was a departure from Senegalese tradition, and French writers often refer to it as "the Lebou Republic." Ultimate political authority resided in an assembly of chiefs composed of two colleges: the Diambour-i-N'Dakarou (Grand Assembly of Dakar) and the Diambour-i-Pintch (Assembly of Neighborhood Notables).
The chiefs chose a Serigne N'Dakarou (paramount chief and judge) from one of the aristocratic Lebou families. This officer was the court of last appeal for all disputes within the community; he was also considered the "educator" of the people and was supposed to have a maraboutic background. The chiefs also chose the Diaraf (a title previously given to the Damel's governor), who decided when crops should be planted, settled land disputes and inheritance questions, and kept the peace.
The third major official appointed was the N'Deye-dy-Rew (minister of the interior and foreign affairs), who was soon put in charge of maintaining contact with the French administration. The colleges were bound to consult this officer before acting on any matter. He became the porte-parole of the people, and was even empowered to summon the Serigne to an accounting if necessary; and he signed all treaties with foreign nations 16.

The heart of the Lebou community was the class of freemen, or diambours-patriarchs, clan leaders, and free yeomen. Since there was no monarchy or nobility, the diambours were the primary source of political and military power; and virtually all the local and national chiefs of the Lebou state as well as those who attended the colleges of the Assembly, were chosen from their ranks.
In the Senegalese context, this was truly a "republican" system; and it contrasted notably with the Wolof and Serere kingdoms, which were controlled by quasi-absolutist monarchs backed by an aristocratic warrior class of ceɓɓe 17.

This tradition of collective government gave the Lebous a strong sense of their own uniqueness and separateness; which served them well after the French annexed Cape Verde in 1857. A people with less group consciousness would have been absorbed or destroyed by the French; but the Lebous chose to stay in their homeland and employ passive resistance. As more Frenchmen, other Africans, and finally Lebanese arrived to crowd Dakar, the Lebous retreated,. complaining that their lands were being taken away unjustly. They refused to adjust to the realities of French conquest and urbanization unlike the Wolofs and Toucouleurs, who poured into Dakar and filled jobs the Lebous spurned.

The Structure of Traditional Senegalese Society

The traditional social structures of the major Senegalese peoples can be examined together, since they are rooted in a common past and have many similarities 18. There were basically four social strata, or status groups, each divided into several subgroups. A person's status was fixed at birth, and little mobility outside a given class was possible. Marriage to a member of another tribe or ethnic group was considered normal and even desirable as long as one married within one's class; marriage with a lower-class spouse was generally a social taboo. The four primary strata in this system were nobles, freemen, artisans, and slaves.

The nobility

The Senegalese aristocracy was generally composed of families who had connections with the ruling dynasty by birth, marriage, or tradition. The Serere countries were dominated by the Guelowar nobles, who were descended from Mandinka warriors. In the Wolof kingdoms, a noble clan called the Garmi furnished claimants to the royal families and officials for the crown. The great regional chiefs were also drawn from the nobility. Nobility was transmitted in the female line among the Sereres, in the male line among the Toucouleurs, and in both lines among the Wolofs. Each state had various subclasses of aristocracy. The Sereres had a special class of secondary nobles who derived their Guelowar ancestry from their fathers and thus could never attain royal rank. The Garmi alone were eligible for the various Wolof thrones in:

Below the Garmis were lesser ranks of nobility, such as Kagnes, Kangames, and Taras, who were usually given positions of authority as chiefs, bureaucrats, or tax collectors. In the Fouta Toro the large Toucouleur aristocracy even included some fishermen who had gained certain ritual privileges over the centuries.

An important subclass of the nobility in most traditional states was the warrior class of tiedos. These cavaliers appear to have originated as slave retainers owned by the crown; but over the centuries they had gradually risen in status, although they usually continued to take orders from their king. In peacetime the tiedos served as tax collectors and were exempted from taxes themselves; in addition, they customarily subsisted by random pillaging and confiscations from the peasant freeholders who made up the bulk of the population, though a strong ruler could limit their plundering. By the time of the French conquest, the tiedos were considered true aristocrats by many Senegalese. And the traditional sovereigns who attempted to keep the old feudal system intact under French pressure (most notably Lat-Dior of Cayor) built their resistance around quick raids by armies of ceɓɓe cavalry. Many ceɓɓe, too, were converted to Islam, often attaching themselves to marabout leaders rather than traditional kings; and under the French they formed an Islamic rural aristocracy with great influence.

Freemen

The highest subgroup in this class were the notables and large farmers, who were called diambour-boureye by the Sereres, guer by the Wolofs, and diambour by the Lebous. In Wolof and Serere country freemen had little political influence, although the Diarafs (local representatives of the Bour) were chosen from this class in Serere lands. In contrast, the diambours were the main body of electors and notables in the Lebou Republic.

Most freemen were badolos, or peasants, who comprised the bulk of Senegal's indigenous population. It has been debated in recent years whether rural Africans can really be classed with the peasants of Latin America, Europe, or China 19. The typical peasant in these areas is tied closely to the land, produces crops within a market system, and occupies a definite place in a long-established social system.
Senegalese rural cultivators do meet these criteria, although it is probable that some sedentary Negro peoples in other parts of Africa would not. In traditional society, the badolos suffered the lot of peasants everywhere: they were subject to heavy and usually arbitrary taxes; they had to furnish crops or cattle whenever the king or his ceɓɓe needed supplies for war; and they had few privileges. But they were nevertheless freemen, and were under no social restrictions or taboos 20.

Artisans

Below the freeman class was a small, specialized stratum of the social system. The artisans (called nyenyo in Wolof, Pulaar) lived quite apart from the nobility and the freemen, were forbidden to marry outside their group, which made them an endogamous caste. However, they profited from the upper classes' distaste for manual work and trades, monopolizing most nonagricultural and nonpastoral economic roles in traditional society. Like the other social strata, the artisans were divided into several groups, each associated with a given trade, and some trades were dominated by artisans from one particular ethnic group.

The most important subgroup in this caste was made up of the griots, or praise singers, whose ritual chants, music, and exhortations were an essential part of every public ceremony and festival. To the modern historian, the griots' most important function was their traditional task of memorizing and reciting the oral history and noble genealogies of Senegal.

The artisans adapted to the French conquest with great ease, since urbanization and the growing market economy demanded more and more skilled workers. Moreover, they had the training, motivation, and resources to compete in all areas of modem urban society, whereas the traditional upper classes, lacking these things, sought only political offices or administrative jobs (when they bothered to compete at all). Many artisans were able to pass the caste bar and become freemen in the polyglot urban centers. Others built up small fortunes and succeeded as entrepreneurs and merchants; in fact many present-day Senegalese businessmen can trace their ancestry to artisan forebearsa.

Slaves

The lowest rung on the social ladder was occupied by the slaves (diams). In medieval times, captured enemies who were able-bodied fighting men became slaves of the crown, and eventually ceɓɓe.
Many Senegalese societies continued to regard the ceɓɓe as royal bondsmen (at least in theory) until the French conquest. Other high-status slaves included those attached to the royal household or noble families as advisers, bodyguards, and domestics; in this setting, some slaves advanced in status and eventually became freemen. Below these privileged slaves were the many foreign captives who were employed as simple domestics in peasant households. Slaves born in the family (diamdoudou) enjoyed greater status and privileges than slaves bought or captured elsewhere (diamsayor).
African domestic slaves were usually considered members of the extended family; and, although they were at the bottom of the social hierarchy, they at least had a recognized place in society. When the French freed slaves in their colonies (1848), many simply stayed with their masters; and as late as 1900, most former slaves in Senegal probably retained some kind of obligatory tie to their old mastersb.

The social system so far described is a composite picture of traditional life; one must remember that each ethnic group had its own peculiarities and exceptions. (The Lebous, for example, had no royalty or nobility.) In general, the lower classes had a variety of obligations to those above them. But by the same token chiefs and nobles had definite responsibilities to the people — protection from foreign enemies, gifts and public feasts on festive occasions, and so on. Social standing did not necessarily determine one's economic status or one's influence in political affairs. Many artisans were richer and lived more comfortably than badolo peasants, impoverished nobles, or lazy ceɓɓe warriors; and the griot praise singers, though far down on the social scale, often became advisers to chiefs or kings.

The African extended family was the basic element in traditional social organization 21. The exact rights and duties in family living depended on whether the kinship structure of the tribe or people involved was matrilineal or patrilineal. The Sereres traced descent in the female line, and a young man looked for leadership to his mother's oldest brother. The Toucouleurs were patrilineally oriented, and the father's dominant role in the family was buttressed by Islamic law. The Wolofs traced descent in both ways, but tended to favor patrilineal institutions as Islam gained ascendancy. In most ethnic groups polygyny was sanctioned as normal and desirable for those who could afford to support more than one wife. For economic reasons, many Senegalese men were monogamous, especially since nonsupport was a real ground for divorce; and in practice only chiefs, headmen, and the wealthy took more than one wife.

Senegalese women nonetheless had a great deal of freedom: they could manage their own business without their husband's interference, keep their own herds, grow their own crops, and enter into contracts with third parties. Women, in fact, dominated the small trade of local markets. The first wife in a polygynous household was in charge of directing the other wives; but the rights of all wives were protected by traditional law, and any of them could resort to a local tribunal for divorce or alimony payments. Michel Adanson, a French visitor to Senegal in the 1750's, observed that Wolof women “have a great share of vivacity and a vast deal of freedom and ease, which renders them extremely agreeable.” 22

Islam and Traditional Society

African traditional society had evolved a comprehensive political and social structure long before the advent of Islam. Islam has influenced and changed some indigenous institutions in Senegal; but on the whole it is African culture that has modified and adapted Islamic practices 23. Orthodox Islamicists often complained that Africans did not really understand Islamic theology and law, that the Koran was rarely memorized correctly, and that African knowledge of Arabic was rudimentary. These critics failed to realize that Islam, as a late arrival in West African society, was perforce grafted onto the tenacious local culture.
In Senegal, the Toucouleurs took the lead in diffusing Islam to other Negro peoples; though Moorish marabouts also did a great deal of proselytizing. Much of the prestige of Tekrour stemmed from the fact it was the first Negro kingdom in West Africa to convert to Islam, and the Toucouleur marabouts cultivated this prestige to their advantage. There is evidence that certain northern Wolof peoples were converted in the fifteenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that the Islamization of Senegal began on a significant scale 24.

Several factors encouraged the Senegalese to turn to Islam: the renaissance of the Islamic party in Tekrour after 1776; the increasing activity of marabouts from Mauritania; and most important, the destruction of traditional forms of society by the French conquest.
The French experience in Algeria had bred a certain tolerance for Islam that was not accorded to animistic religions; and many French commanders openly encouraged the work of marabouts, who were free to move about and proselytize without restraint. The most significant conversions took place among the Wolofs, whose nobles and ceɓɓe flocked to Islam as a support against French intrusion, carrying with them the bulk of the population. The Lebous were slowly Islamized after 1812, and many of the pastoral Fulɓe were converted; but few Sereres abandoned their traditional animistic beliefs.

A distinguishing characteristic of Senegalese Islam has been the part played by the Islamic brotherhoods (tariqas). The Qadiriyya and the Tijaniyya were the major tariqas of the nineteenth century, the first strongest in the countryside and the second dominant in the villages and towns. Both brotherhoods were led by Toucouleurs or Moors. The Qadiriyya was the older sect, and was firmly established in Senegal by the eighteenth century. It emphasized tolerance, piety, and respect for all persons, and denounced such frivolities as dancing, buffoonery, and loudly said prayers 25.

The Tijaniyya was founded in Algeria in the 1780's and soon spread southward 26. In the 1850's Al Hajj Umar Tall began to preach Tijani concepts by the sword. His legions spread the Tijaniyya throughout the western Sudanic areas; and his sons and disciples accomplished the task in Senegal, where the ascetic and intellectual Qadiriyya doctrines had less popular appeal. The Tijanis offered a simple, understandable version of Islam, emphasizing prayers and religious duties and preaching a positive moral code. Above all, this brotherhood possessed a spiritual dynamism that attracted many Africans to Islam 27.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century Senegal developed a new tariqa, the Mouridiyya. This sect broke off from the Qadiriyya under the charismatic leadership of Amadou Bamba, a marabout of Toucouleur-Wolof origins who had followed Lat-Dior, Damel of Cayor, during the last struggles of the Senegalese aristocracy against the French 28. After Lat-Dior's death, Bamba retired to Diourbel in Baol, gathered a group of disciples, and soon became a quasi-deity in the eyes of his talibes, or followersc. In spite of persecution by the French, who feared that Bamba might be building a theocratic state within their protectorate, the new tariqa gained many converts among the rural Wolofs and the tiedos. The Mouridiyya teachings were simple, emotional, and highly personalized — closer to African mysticism than Oriental subtlety. Indeed, this was the most African of all the tariqas. The Mourides were as aggressive as the Tijanis, and soon became the wealthiest and most powerful brotherhood in Senegal 29.

What influences did Islamic teachings and practice have on traditional life in Senegal? Much depended on the people and the region involved, but in general, African culture was surprisingly persistent. Ritual was changed, and a few social mechanisms (e.g. inheritance customs) were profoundly altered. Islamic doctrine, however, was never taken too seriously for its own sake; the chief element in conversion and loyalty to a tariqa was the convert's personal devotion to his marabout, and to be on the safe side some Africans associated themselves with several marabouts at once 30. Senegal's social and juridical systems were little affected by Islam. Indeed, the greatest changes occurred in minor areas like dress and food. The long, flowing robes of North Africa became popular, and Moroccan sandals and a fez were also favored by some men. Pork disappeared from Muslim dishes, and French-introduced wines were forbidden (at least in theory). Given names tended to be Islamized, and infants were called Ibrahima, Ahmadou, Moustapha, and so on. But traditional family names such as N'Diaye, Diagne, and Diop stayed the same. Funerals were usually conducted according to Islamic laws 31.

French Contact and the Growth of the Communes

The Four Communes were built by the French and given French government, but they were inhabited principally by Africans. The history of the Communes spans 250 years; and throughout this period, the Communes nurtured the Africans' interest in local government, which eventually became an interest in the political process as a whole.
Senegal was first opened to European trade by the Portuguese in the mid-fifteenth century. France took an interest in the area during the next century, and by the 1650's her plans were fairly clear: mastery of trade on the Senegal river, control of the river mouth, and exclusion of other European merchants. Like the Portuguese before them, the French eventually hoped to penetrate the interior of West Africa and tap the reputed riches of the Sudan. In 1658, Finance Minister Colbert reorganized a Norman trading company that had been operating in Senegal for several decades; backers and directors from Paris took over the management, and preparations for the thrust inland were begun. This firm, the Compagnie du Cap Vert et du Senegal, was the first of six successive companies that monopolized French trade in Senegal for over a century.

The new company set up its first factory slightly upstream from the treacherous, shifting mouth of the Senegal. After negotiating with the local Wolof chief, the company's craftsmen built a small but substantial fort on a narrow island in the river. This initial post, called Saint-Louis du Senegal, was too small to house any of the company employees, who were obliged to live like the Africans in reed huts outside its walls 32. One Sieur de la Courbe, appointed director of the post in 1685, observed on arriving that the fort had had four towers added to it but was still very small. "If the blacks had been malicious they could easily have slaughtered the whites who lived outside the fort, for no watch was ever kept." 33 By this time a chapel, storehouses, and other permanent buildings had been constructed. De la Courbe was also alarmed by the fact that his employees openly kept Negro mistresses in their reed huts. The French, like the Portuguese before them, had quickly succumbed to the charms of the Wolof women, who were regarded as among the most glamorous in Africa. The mulatto class that resulted from these unions was of great importance in Senegal's later political history.

Saint-Louis continued as the center of French operations in Senegal, although the initial French company was soon replaced by others. Trade pushed slowly inland; new forts were built; and gum arabic, hides, and gold from the interior began to reach the coast. The French worked under several handicaps during this period. Contact with France was often broken by European wars, and few Frenchmen cared to spend much time in Senegal in any case. There were never more than a few European troops available, and the powerful local rulers had things pretty much their own way. For example, in 1701 Andre Brüe, the new French Governor of the colony, was captured and held for ransom by the Damel of Cayor; his lieutenants at Saint-Louis had no recourse but payment.

Still, trade did expand, and more and more Africans grew accustomed to the presence of Frenchmen.

Gorée, a small, rocky island lying just off Cape Verde, was strategically located near the most westerly point of the African continent. For this reason, it was occupied by Portugal at an early date; but because the nearby Cape Verde Islands were Portugal's prime entrepots for trade and provisioning, Gorée never became more than a way station. Portugal merged with Spain in the sixteenth century, and the Dutch, capitalizing on the defeat of the Spanish Armada, seized Gorée in 1588 as an opening move in their ambitious scheme to replace the Portuguese as masters of the East Indian trade. Fortifications were built, and when the Dutch West India Company was founded in 1621 Gorée also became a thriving entrepot for the slave trade.

The Dutch, in turn, were weakened later in the century by their interminable wars with Louis XIV, and Admiral Jean d'Estrees seized Gorée for France in 1677. The Treaty of Nijmegen the next year officially confirmed France's possession of the island and also awarded her Joal, Rio Fresco (later to become Rufisque), and Portudal, three old Portuguese stations lying south of Cape Verde. In 1679, Germain Ducasse, an envoy of the Company, concluded treaties with the Damel of Cayor and the Bour of Sine for trading rights on the petite côte (the coast between Cape Verde and the Gambia)d. The Portuguese and Dutch were now effectively eliminated from the race, and only the English enclave on the Gambia challenged French supremacy on this portion of the upper Guinea coast.

Andre Brüe, who was appointed Governor of Senegal in 1697, brought activities at Gorée into concert with operations at SaintLouis. Strong garrisons were attached to the forts of both towns; provision was also made for doctors and priests in both posts. Craftsmen and workers (both French and African) poured in. One has only to examine the personnel lists set up by Brüe to see why the cost of operating the Senegalese establishments was so high that profits were not always assured 84. Brüe also managed to establish good relations with the British in Gambia, and a brisk trade soon began, the French exchanging their surplus of gum arabic for more slaves. Gorée became the center of this traffic, as Saint-Louis was the entrepot for trade on the Senegal River.

After Brüe left, French Senegal stagnated for several decades. Adanson, however, found Saint-Louis in 1749 a pleasing city, “the most handsome in Africa.” 85 Its population was over three thousand, and many permanent buildings had been added, although most dwellings were still reed huts. When a permanent structure was built, the model was typically French but well suited to the tropics: a two-story building with a shop or business on the ground floor, family apartments placed above to catch the breeze, and a courtyard where slaves and servants were quartered. Such houses were usually owned by French, Créoles, or wealthy African merchants. During this period a group of women called signares became important in Senegal's social and economic history. These were African or mulatto women who lived with Frenchmen à la mode du pays; some were married, others were not. A few signares were simply mistresses, but many of them became educated, entered commerce, and exerted a real influence in the colonye.

Saint-Louis fell under British domination in 1758 during the Seven Years' War, and the city was retained by Britain after peace was made. Like the French, the British were interested in controlling trade on the Senegal and Gambia rivers; and they held onto Saint-Louis for 21 years, leaving Gorée to the French. In 1779, during the American Revolution, France decided to recapture Saint-Louis, since the British fleet was apparently absent from African waters; and the Marquis de Vaudreuil led an expedition that won back the city at small cost. Later in the year, however, Gorée fell to the British, who were only compelled to return it by the Treaty of Versailles in 1783. A new era now dawned in Gorée and Saint-Louis for officials of the French Crown had taken command during the wars. The Senegal establishments were henceforth a royal colony, not simply an outpost of empire managed by a chartered company 36.

As the King's officials took over French Senegal, they found that the African inhabitants of Gorée and Saint-Louis were used to a privileged status and expected to be treated with deference. Paul Benis, an African who could neither read nor write, managed an enterprise in 1787 that reputedly equalled the King's company in volume of trade; and many mulattoes were prosperous and respected merchants 37. Moreover, during the years of company rule and English occupation Africans had been active in civic life. The French had found it useful to appoint a kind of local mayor to handle minor criminal and administrative problems. And in 1765 a free mulatto named Thevenot was apparently acting as both priest and mayor in Saint-Louis during the British occupation 38. By the 1780's, custom dictated that when the Governor tried capital offenses the mayor of Saint-Louis was to be included on a panel of advisers. "In civil cases, the Governor would sit with three assessors of the same color as the parties; in interracial cases, with assessors of both colors." 39 A convicted African was usually transported to the French Antilles; Frenchmen who had injured local Africans could be sent back to France.

Hargreaves believes that urban Africans were already well on the way to cultural assimilation in the eighteenth century, not only because the urban dwellers were accepting European values but also because they felt that this acceptance should bring them certain rights 40. The 1758 surrender agreement with the British provided that free Negroes and mulattoes would retain their liberty and property, and that they would not be persecuted because of their Catholic religion. In the next year, the Africans complained that this agreement was being violated; a petition was drawn up, signed by local notables and the Senegalese mayor, and sent to the British commander. In 1776 complaints and petitions were still being presented to the British, and by then they were written in English rather than French. After the French returned to Saint-Louis, a new spirit of independence was evident.

By the end of the Old Regime, assimilation in Gorée and Saint-Louis was an accomplished fact. Not only were Africans and mulattoes interested in civic rights, but their skills and enterprise were vital to French Senegal's economy; for it was mainly the urban Senegalese who went upriver to bargain for gum or hides. Increasingly, the French trusted these local agents to handle trade on a commission basis. In 1785, for example, only one Frenchman visited the interior. Some Africans had converted to Catholicism, though most were still Muslims or animists; but the entire mulatto community passed to the Church.

What was the status of the different non-European groups in French Senegal?
First of all, there were the mulatres (offspring of a European and an African) and metis (persons of mixed descent, i.e., French father and mulatto mother). Both these groups tended to accept European culture and Christianity; in this study I will refer to them collectively as Creoles, a term commonly used by the French.
Second, there were the Christian Africans, or gourmets, a small but important groupf. These were primarily full-blooded Africans, but occasionally a gourmet might be of remote mixed origin.
Third, there were the Muslim Negroes, who were primarily Wolofs or Toucouleurs; this was the group most involved in the river traffic. Any member of these three classes could be called a habitant or enfant du pays; and any could aspire to the title of notable, a term used down to the twentieth century to designate the outstanding merchants and most respected members of the community. It should be noted that the Creoles constantly struggled to rise above this categorization and sought equal status with Frenchmen in all respectsg.
Below these groups was the bulk of the African urban population (mostly slaves and domestics in the towns), who were usually animists. If an African fresh from the countryside were to stay in Saint-Louis or Gorée for many years, convert to Christianity or Islam, and become a tradesman or commercial agent, he could expect to become a habitant and scale the social ladder. But migration to the towns was not a simple matter of changing houses. A long process of acculturation to urban mores and values awaited the newcomer, who usually spent years living in African huts on the periphery of the town. Residence and a job in the town proper came only with assimilation and increased status.

The city of Saint-Louis grew steadily. A census taken in 1786 showed approximately 7,000 people living on the island: 660 Europeans, 2,400 free Negroes or Creoles, 3,000 slaves or bondsmen, and the balance unaccounted for 41. (Even today, censuses are difficult in Senegal, since there is a large floating population that varies from season to season.) The outstanding mayor of Saint-Louis during this period was Charles Cornier, a Creole whose influence was extremely important in Senegal during the French Revolution.
When news arrived in 1789 that the Estates-General would meet at Versailles for the first time since 1614, a group of Saint-Louis notables assembled to draw up a local cahier de doleance for forwarding to France. Under the leadership of Mayor Cornier and a French merchant, Dominique Lamiral, this committee drafted a petition demanding free trade and the abrogation of the restrictive pacte colonial. The new Governor, François Blanchet, traveled to France the next year in an effort to expedite matters. The first years of the Revolution were filled with new projects, and with dreams that were never fulfilled. Saint-Louis won its right to free trade, and slavery was abolished. Several decrees offered the rights of French citizenship to the people of France's overseas possessions; however, it is doubtful that many Creoles or assimilated Africans in Senegal understood the meaning of these rights and tried to become citoyens. Local rights continued to evolve while Senegal was virtually cut off from Paris by the later events of the Revolution, but these rights were largely unrecognized outside the colony. Cornier evidently tried to visit France during this period, but was stopped by certain French officials who claimed that the Old Regime's ban against men of color traveling in France was still in effect 42.

The British recaptured Gorée in 1800, and minor skirmishes characterized the next few years of the Napoleonic wars in West Africa. Governor Blanchet died in 1807, exhausted by work and the climate; the power of the local government and mayors had increased during his benevolent rule and he was apparently beloved by his Senegalese charges. In 1809, an undefended Saint-Louis also fell to the British, who allowed the Creole mayor, Charles Parquet, to continue in charge of the local administration. The Senegalese Catholics remained loyal to their faith during the occupation despite the efforts of British governors to convert them to Protestantism 43. In fact, a general liking for French values and institutions was obvious among the urban Senegalese by this time, and the British found them strikingly loyal to their former rulers.

The Treaty of Paris ended the Napoleonic wars in 1814, and France's African possessions were returned; from this time on, her mastery of the Senegalese coast was uncontested.

French Expansion in the Nineteenth Century

During the years 1817-54, seventeen Governors served in Senegal, some holding the post for only a few months.44 Many were military commanders awaiting assignment elsewhere. Under this uncertain administration Senegal stagnated as a French dependency; but as in the past, the local Creole and African community continued to grow in economic importance and nurtured a healthy interest in local political affairs.
The first French schools were established in Saint-Louis in 1816, and local inhabitants now had the chance to acquire a rudimentary French education. The year 1840 was also an important one for the Communes, for the Ordinance of September 7 in that year reorganized the colony and laid down its fundamental administrative framework for the rest of the century. The Governor was given greater powers, making him less subject to Paris. An administrative council was created to advise him; and a colonial General Council was established, consisting of elected members from the local French and habitant population 45.

In 1845 Edouard Bouet-Willaumez became chief of naval operations for the French South Atlantic District and established his headquarters at Gorée. The island fortress now controlled all French posts and trading enclaves south of Senegal-Guinea, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Dahomey, and Gabon. Gorée had been given its own municipal council, the Conseil d'Arrondissement, at the time of the 1840 reorganization, when Saint-Louis received the General Councilh. The island now enjoyed its golden years as a naval base and trading emporium: official French expeditions southward and unofficial FrenchCreole trading missions kept the harbor bustling.

Saint-Louis continued as the capital of the Senegal River area and served as headquarters for the French Army in tropical Africa. In 1847 it received a visit from Victor Schoelcher, the editor of the famous Parisian abolitionist journal Le National. Schoelcher was shocked to find that so many inhabitants of Saint-Louis — masons, carpenters, porters, and daily workers — were either domestic slaves or indentured workers 46. His impressions of Senegal reinforced his determination to press for total abolition, which occurred after the revolution of the following year.

The Revolution of 1848 was a landmark for the French empire. The Second Republic sought to outdo its first namesake by giving all colonies deputies to the new Assembly in Paris. Senegal was included, and for the first time a general election was called in the colony; all inhabitants of Gorée or Saint-Louis could qualify to vote by proving a residence of five years or longer. The Republic's concrete actions in enforcing the new ban on slavery and giving representation to the colony far outweighed the republican sentiment of 1789 as an influence in Senegal. Although French Senegal had evolved its own municipal institutions and had been given a General Council and an advisory representative to the Ministry of Marine in 1840, the election of 1848 was the first time the general populace actively engaged in a political contesti.

To be sure, some Frenchmen were skeptical of this experiment in popular democracy on the African continent. Governor A. Baudin observed:

I don't share the view of those in France who think universal suffrage an admirable thing; here [in Senegal] I would go further and call it absurd and nonsensical. If it were possible to explain how the election for the colony's representative took place here, it would frighten even the most dedicated partisan of universal suffrage. The poor blacks were beset by the agents of all the candidates. Ballots printed in advance were handed out to some, torn up by others, redistributed, and recirculated perhaps fifty times in the days preceding the election. On election day, the battle was even more murderous; it got to the point where I would defy any black to know positively which candidate he voted for; and if such a business should take place often, all the paper manufacturers in Europe would not be able to meet Senegal's needs 47.

The Governor's views possibly reflected his disappointment at losing the campaign for deputy to the Creole mayor of Saint-Louis, Durand Valantin. But his statement was only the first of many made by Frenchmen who had small regard for Africans (however assimilated) as participants in European-style politics.

The republicanism of the Second Republic soon gave way to the Second Empire's aggressive dreams of glory and expansion. In 1850, Benoist d'Azy, vice-president of the National Assembly, presided over an interministerial commission that examined all French possessions and spheres of influence in Africa. These discussions evolved a new program for French activity in Senegal:

Specific instructions were given to stop the Moors from encroaching on the left bank of the Senegal, to establish French suzerainty all along the river, and to protect the rural population from raiding nomads. The merchants of Saint-Louis welcomed the new policies and enthusiastically supported Governor Auguste Protet's initial plan, to build a fort at Podor on the middle Senegal. The army engineer who directed the fort's construction, Louis Faidherbe, became the next Governor of Senegal and the most famous Frenchman in the colony's history.

Faidherbe was only 36 when he became Governor. Born in Lille and educated at the elite Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, he was austere and resourceful, with a keen sense of duty. He was also an accomplished scholar and linguist, and produced some of the earliest ethnographic studies of Senegal. During Faidherbe's tenure, French influence was extended up the Senegal, to the Cape Verde peninsula and much of the coast, and into the interior heartland plain. And he inaugurated the idea of enlarging French Senegal from a series of coastal enclaves (the Communes) to a large colony encompassing the traditional native states.

When Faidherbe took over the Communes, Senegal was in transition economically. Many merchants in Saint-Louis had believed that after the abolition of slavery Senegal's only commercial future lay in trading for gum arabic. But already there was a new product on the horizon: the peanut, introduced by the Portuguese several centuries earlier, was first produced commercially in Senegal during the 1840's; and by Faidherbe's time it was apparent that it could be profitably raised for commerce by traditional methods. French and Creoles could organize trade and shipping, depending on peanuts raised by African peasants rather than by European-managed plantations. In fact, in 1859 the Ministry of Marine issued a document, since obscured by colonial history, that was actually the charter of African agricultural protection for Senegal (and by extension, for much of what was to become French West Africa).
The Ministry held that Senegal could never become another Algeria because of its climate, rejected the notion of European colonization and settlement, and proclaimed that the land should be left to the Africans. The French were to encourage the Africans to produce suitable cash crops, and were themselves to monopolize trading and marketing, “the only activity that Europeans can carry on in such a climate.” 48

The pacte-colonial, a time-honored system of preferential trading between France and her colonies, expired officially with the advent of free trade in France under the Cobden Treaty of 1860; but in practice it had been dead since 1848.

In 1854 Faidherbe founded the Banque de Senegal at Saint-Louis to provide local credit and reduce the dependence of local merchants on French financiers. His regime supported the vigorous trading activity of the Creoles, as well as the establishment of some large Bordeaux and Marseille firms in Senegal.

But the cornerstone of Faidherbe's success in Senegal was his policy of linking the commercial interests of the Saint-Louis merchants with those of the Senegal River peoples 49. This inaugurated a cordial relationship that lasted for almost a century; and many Africans became trusted auxiliaries, developing a real loyalty to the French. It was primarily from the river area and the southern lands of Walo and Djolof that Africans migrated to Saint-Louis to enter the expanding urban economy.

The harmonious multiracial tradition in Saint-Louis continued as in the past. Faidherbe decided that the Muslim Africans should have access to the French schools, heretofore open only to Christianized Creoles. He organized 13 schools for Africans and staffed them with teachers from France; he then persuaded Catholic officials to open their courses to Muslims (who had been reluctant to attend Catholic schools, fearing pressures for conversion). Evening classes were started for those who worked in the day. However, Faidherbe preferred not to create a secondary school in the colony and continued the practice of sending bright students to France for advanced training.

He also gave high priority to the School for the Sons of Chiefs (founded 1855), which brought young Africans of the nobility from the interior to Saint-Louis. It not only educated potential chiefs and leaders in Western ideas but also trained them to serve as French auxiliaries in the future.

The city of Saint-Louis, in particular, owed much to Faidherbe. Buildings of wood were now replaced by solid brick and stucco edifices. A new bridge connected the island with Guet N'Dar, a growing suburb of Wolof fishermen located on the long sandbar that separates the river from the ocean. Faidherbe built roads, cleared the city of fire hazards, and improved the hospitals. Saint-Louis began to take on the air of a southern European city, though still surrounded by masses of thatched huts.
And in 1857, the Governor authorized a handsome new building to house a Muslim tribunal that would handle questions of marriage, death, and inheritance in accordance with Islamic practice.

Faidherbe was a gifted and perceptive amateur scholar — the type of administrative observer who later did so much to record African tradition in both the British and French possessions 50. He was genuinely interested in trying to understand the Africans and their civilization.
His motive was largely intellectual curiosity; but at the same time he was trying to formulate a real “native policy” for France. In fact, Faidherbe was very much a man of his time; he firmly believed in France's civilizing mission in Africa, and his policies reflected this assimilationst ideal. Speaking to an African audience in 1860, he praised the lot of the assimilés.

Look what is happening down the coast … Backward tribes, rescued from slavery by the English and profiting from the education provided by abolitionist societies … have now become merchants, wholesalers, and shopkeepers; others occupy high positions in colonial society, and men born into savagery in the Congo twenty years ago have now become colonial administrators or magistrates for the English.
Here in Senegal … young men from Christian families of Saint-Louis, after studying in the religious schools, go to France to finish their studies and return qualified to fill the most important positions in the colony. Now this road is open to all of you. To every child who shows himself capable in his studies, we are obliged to give the chance of a liberal career — without asking whether he is from Fouta, Bondou, Bambouk, or Saint-Louis. I exhort you to profit from these opportunities, so that we won't see the Wolofs, Fulɓe, Mandingoes, and Sarakalets — all superior Sudanic races — outdistanced by the “bushmen” of the lower coast 51.

French designs on the interior of Senegal, manifest since the 1820's, were now implemented by military conquest. Between Faidherbe's advent in 1854 and the end of the century, France vanquished all the African states of the interior, either placing them under direct rule or establishing protectorates. The physical boundaries of modern Senegal were largely sketched in by the time Faidherbe retired in 1865; his successors laboriously completed the job in the face of vigorous African resistance.

One of Faidherbe's most important acts was his decision to occupy the Cape Verde Peninsula. His contemporaries in the French administration were still preoccupied with the thought of conquering the lands of the Senegal River. But it was obvious by this time that the newer steam vessels could never pass the bar of the Senegal and reach Saint-Louis; moreover, the trade in gum, hides, and other commodities available on the Senegal was becoming less important. Cape Verde, by contrast, had a fine harbor opposite Gorée Island on the site of modern Dakar; and the economic importance of peanut culture in the lands near the Cape was increasing each year.
A small military post was set up at Dakar in 1857, and the rest of the peninsula was gradually acquired from its Lebou inhabitants. Because Cape Verde eventually became the economic and political center of West Africa, the Lebous were to feel the weight of French rule more than most Senegalese peoples.

The Lebous' reaction at the outset was mostly one of indifference and acquiescence, since they were allowed to retain their old right to tax trade passing through the Cape. Initially, the French possessed only the small territory at Dakar; but within several years Frenchmen spread throughout the Cape and down the immediate coast.

This inevitable expansion aroused the antagonism of the Lebous, who had supposed that their traditional, sedentary way of life would remain undisturbed. Moreover, the French government did not fully understand that the Lebous regarded themselves as their own sovereigns.

Captain J.B. Jaureguibery, who briefly replaced Faidherbe in 1862, decreed that the Lebous could not dispose of their lands without the consent of the neighboring Damel of Cayor, who was under nominal French protection. But the Lebous had fought for two decades before breaking free of the Damel in 1812. The outraged Lebou populace was finally appeased the next year by Faidberbe, who placed Cape Verde under the Napoleonic Code and decreed monetary compensation for Lebous obliged to move because of French occupation 52.
No mention was made of the Damel.

The new policy brought handsome payments to some Lebou families when the Messageries Maritimes, a large steamship company, and other French concerns decided to buy land for future installations. But a vicious pattern was set in operation: expropriated Lebous soon exhausted the cash they had received; and without their lands they had no means of earning more money, or even supporting themselves.

Within a few years the same Lebous would ask for additional funds, arguing that their lands had been taken away without adequate payment. To the European mind this was chicanery bordering on extortion. But from the African point of view, the growth of French towns took away the people's traditional livelihood in return for a token bribe. In effect, the Lebous gained nothing permanent from the exchange. A European in the same position might have used his compensation as investment capital; but traditional life on Cape Verde was based on farming and grazing, and land to support these activities was in short supply.

The Lebous were the only traditionally organized people in Senegal to be taken over so suddenly and completely by the French. Saint-Louis and Gorée had grown slowly, with small annual additions of migrants who were absorbed into urban life by an African majority long used to French laws and customs. But the Lebous were a traditional African society meeting westernization as a group, and they tended to resist every change that threatened their old way of life.

With the French moving in on them from the sea and the Damel of Cayor barring them from the interior, their only alternative was passive resistance; and they resisted with dignity and suffering.

The Urban Consolidation, 1857-1914

From Faidherbe on, as the interior conquest proceeded, the French consolidated their holdings in coastal Senegal, especially in the immediate area of the Communes. Senegal was considered a full-scale colony rather than a coastal enclave, and in 1882 a new administrative organization was adopted. All of the coastal regions from Saint-Louis to the Gambia were amalgamated to form the Territories of Direct Administration, whereas the bulk of the interior so far conquered was organized as a protectorate. This basic organization was modified in 1890 by an arrêté that limited direct administration to the Four Communes and their suburbs, together with the areas served by the new Saint-Louis-Dakar railway. The rest of Senegal came under the Protectorate. In the areas of direct administration most Africans eventually gained political rights, but in the Protectorate they remained sujets franfais and were subject to arbitrary justice at the hands of French administrators and military officers.

This administrative division reflected the social and economic changes taking place in Senegal. Modern commerce, small-scale industrialization, Western education, and urbanization were steadily expanding in the coastal areas.
In the Protectorate, a few changes were evident. Peanut growing and a cash-crop economy spread slowly through the land after the French conquest, and a few Western ideas were gradually diffused. But in general the rural Senegalese peasant lived much as his forebears had.
In the towns, meanwhile, a new urban class was growing, and many of its more alert members were aware of the privileges and priorities allowed them by the French administration. In fact, residents in the Communes were governed by laws that differed little from those in the metropole; and they could participate in local government under Western-style political institutions, which was not possible in the Protectorate.

The old Portuguese enclave of Rio Fresco, on the southern shore of the Cape Verde peninsula, was formally annexed by the French in 1859. It had already been known by the French name of Rufisque since the eighteenth century, and the Portuguese names of some Creole families were the only remaining sign of Portuguese influence. The enclave had been a Lebou preserve for some time, and when the French moved in, the situation was much like that in Dakar: the Lebous were well settled, and French encroachment was a threat to traditional life.

Rufisque soon became the commercial center of southern Senegal. Although not endowed with a good harbor, it was close to the inland areas that were now producing peanuts for market. Unlike Dakar, it was an established city; and it had space for warehouses, offices, and depots that could not be built on the small island of Gorée. After 1870 many Gorée merchants moved their offices to Rufisque. Moreover, the coming of the Third Republic marked a renewed interest in Senegal among the big commercial houses in France, and most of them also chose Rufisque as their base of operations 63. All this happened despite the announced intention of the central government to make Dakar the main port of Senegal, and it was not until the 1920's, that the economic balance of power shifted from Rufisque to Dakar. Dakar's port facilities were clearly superior by the turn of the century, but French business had too much invested to move overnight.

Most of Rufisque's new prosperity sprang from the great boom in cash-crop peanut farming that had begun in the mid-nineteenth century. Peanuts had been raised in Senegal for centuries, but only to supplement the staple crop of millet.H In the 1840's, however, a demand for peanut oil arose in Europe: it was needed in the manufacture of soap, since the expanding Industrial Revolution had cut urban dwellers off from the old supplies of wood ash and animal fats; and the French housewife also adopted it as her primary cooking oil. France could obtain peanuts from Senegal, and from India after the Suez Canal opened in 1869; and after the advent of railroads Senegal gradually became the more important. She soon became the classic example of a colony geared to monoculture and dominant trade with the mother country.
The rural Senegalese, especially the Wolofs, lured by the cash rewards of the market, gave up other crops and bought imported rice and millet for food.
Only the Toucouleurs of the river and the shrewd Serere peasants retained a balanced farming economy. Elsewhere, all across the sandy heartland plain, the light forest cover was burned off, peanuts were planted, and all the necessities of life were purchased with profits from the crops 55.

The commercial procedures used for the gum trade were shifted over to the peanut trade. A trading season was proclaimed by the Governor, and certain villages were chosen as collection points where Africans could bring the produce. The administration soon declared that peanuts could be exported free of all customs dutiesj, and Rufisque became the grand dépôt where peanuts were sorted and shipped to the oil-extraction plants in Europe. This commerce was not a one-way affair. Ships returned to Senegal laden with textiles, bicycles, pots and pans, canned foods, spirits, and hundreds of other products that could easily be sold to the newly affluent Africans.
Western Senegal soon developed a thriving credit economy, which spread as French influence and peanut farming reached the more remote inland regions. French businessmen flocked to Rufisque, turning it into a city of permanent buildings comparable to Saint-Louis. Dakar was left to the colonial government, which slowly improved the harbor. But the city grew more slowly than Rufisque, since few government officials cared to leave the cultivated cercles, military balls, and café society of Saint-Louis. Until the turn of the century, travelers commented on Dakar's miserable accommodations, shabby wooden buildings, and filthy streets. The port continued to grow; but most of Senegal's trade still passed through Rufisque, whereas Dakar became a way station for vessels plying the South Atlantic 56.

The construction of the railroad in 1885 improved the situation, and Dakar began to handle more of the trade in minor commodities; but Rufisque continued to monopolize the peanut trade for several decades. Eventually, though, the advantages of Dakar's port were acknowledged; and in 1902 the city became the capital of all French West Africa. A palace for the Governor-General was built overlooking the Atlantic, and a new railway station and hotel de ville were constructed. By the eve of World War I, Dakar had become a city of squares, parks, theaters, cafes, and streets lined with boutiques. And by the 1920's it was often called the “little Paris” of Africa. Business firms eventually found it advantageous to open Dakar offices, especially firms doing business in Africa for the first time. The city was also crowded by petits colons seeking a fortune, many of them former agents of the large Bordeaux and Marseille companies.

Syrians and Lebanese began to arrive toward the end of the century, and they became important in the Senegalese economy during World War I, when thousands of Frenchmen left for the trenches of northern France. These Levantines were to create a serious minority problem, for Africans resented their presence 57. An influx of Africans started too. The Lebous, for so long in the majority, found themselves surrounded by unfamiliar Africans; they attempted to keep to themselves, moved many of their villages away from Dakar, and tried to retain their unique ethnic identity.

Wolofs gained the upper hand; they were the great merchants of traditional Senegal, and it was natural they should flock to the new emporium on Cape Verde.

Behind the Wolofs came the Toucouleurs, not nearly as numerous but proud of their own Islamic culture and their centuries of contact with the trading cities of the Western Sudan. Like the Lebous, they clung to their own group, organizing into neighborhoods and seeking much the same employment as the Wolofs.

These were the major groups, but many other peoples were represented. The migrations were only beginning in 1900, and the Lebous were still a majority with the Wolofs close behind. But within two decades Dakar's African quarter became heterogeneous and cosmopolitan 58.
Dakar was not the only city to develop an African urban class. The dominant element in most towns was Wolof, owing to the prominence of Wolof culture and language in traditional Senegal; but it was a rare immigrant, Wolof or otherwise, who did not change in response to the urban milieu.
The growing urban class was legally separated from its rural cousins, and its members were exposed to social forces that transformed their attitudes, goals, and style of living. Yet the urbanized African was not quite the same as his Creole neighbors, who considered themselves Frenchmen and wholly adopted French customs, dress, and mentalité. On the contrary, he retained his African identity, carefully preserving the social usages of traditional society and wearing traditional dress with pride. And his perceptions and understanding were still African — foreign to the French and comprehended but not emulated by the Creoles.

By late in the nineteenth century, the pattern of urbanization in Senegal was established. Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar, and Rufisque were full communes — that is, municipalities whose citizens lived under the same laws and enjoyed the same privileges as communal residents in France itself. In these cities, known as the Four Communes, lived most of Senegal's French and Creole inhabitants; and in them most of the colony's local politics took place. Saint-Louis remained the largest of the Communes until the twentieth century, finally losing first place to Dakar (see Table 1).
Gorée declined after Cape Verde was settled, and was eventually amalgamated with the Commune of Dakar in 1929.
Rufisque grew quickly, losing ground only after Dakar was chosen as the capital of French West Africa.

The Four Communes, however, were not the only urban areas in Senegal. Toward the end of the century other towns and cities sprang up, marking the inland extension of French administration, peanut culture, and the market economy.
Thiès, 35 miles inland from Dakar, is a good example. It was founded in 1862 by Faidherbe to facilitate communications between Saint-Louis and Dakar and to serve as an advanced military post near the hostile state of Cayor. Its importance grew rapidly after 1885 because it lay on the new railway and also communicated with Wolof lands to the east and Serere lands to the south. Streets for the town were immediately laid out and lots were put up for sale; in 1886 the first Catholic missionaries arrived. Stone and stucco buildings soon replaced wooden ones, and Rufisque merchants opened branch offices for buying peanuts.

Table 1. — Growth of the Four Communes to 1921*
Commune 1865 1878 1910 1921
Saint-Louis 15,000 15,980 22,093 17,493
Gorée 3,000 3,243 1,306 917
Rufisque 300 1,173 12,457 11,106
Dakar 300 1,566 24,914 30,037

Source: Census reports, ARS, 27-G-237-108; Annuaire du Gouvernement-Général de l'A .O.F., 1922.
*Estimated figures.

In 1893, Thiès was put under the civilian government and joined the other direct administration areas. And in 1903, the beginning of the railway toward Kayes in the French Soudan made Thiès the major rail junction in Senegal 59.

Nonetheless, the Communes continued to dominate Senegalese politics, each of them acquiring its own distinctive character. Saint-Louis was the first Commune, and it continued to be the most individual. Indeed, one cannot completely understand the history of modern Senegal without understanding the arrogance and sense of apartness engendered by the old city on the banks of the Senegal. A great emigration of Saint-Louisians started at the turn of the century — most of them Africans with some business training or a rudimentary education who moved to the interior or to the new towns along the railway. The Saint-Louisian was the man who organized the peanut trade and served as a link with the peasant cultivator. He was the young schoolmaster who taught in the interior; he was the local agent for French or Creole firms; and he was the prime recruit for the colonial federation's offices in Dakar. Until the independence of Senegal in 1960, Saint-Louisians monopolized the most important positions open to Africans in the Senegalese economic and administrative structure. And Saint-Louis itself was the center of Islamic, Catholic, and lay education in Senegal-the city that attracted most of the young men who came in from the bush to train themselves for liberal careers.

The urban elite of Saint-Louis was a self-perpetuating elite that sought special advantages for its members, especially in government service. For example, when a particular administrative service needed a new worker, the many Saint-Louisians already employed would use their influence to get a family or clan member appointed. Many of the employees in one bureau were often related by blood or friendship. The same was true of workers in civilian enterprises 60. But Saint-Louis itself was dominated by the French-Creole oligarchy that controlled Senegalese politics. Africans were needed as auxiliaries, but were not recruited for management, which the oligarchy reserved for itself.

Indeed, the Creoles had moved closer to the French and away from the Africans as the century progressed. Africans were in the great majority; but in the world of nineteenth-century Senegal this mattered little, since everyone from French colonial officials in Paris to Creole traitants in the bush felt that Africans should be kept in their place. The Senegalese traditions of multiracial cities and non-segregation continued, but it became increasingly difficult for Africans to advance. Moreover, as the traditional history of interior Senegal gradually merged with the colonial history of the coastal enclaves, the Creoles were the logical ones to lead Africans into the world of Communal politics. But this process could only open the floodgates to African participation in politics, which would undoubtedly bring a Creole downfall. Instead, the Creoles chose to cling to the status quo and their privileged position in the towns.

Annotations
a. See Silla, “Persistence des castes dans la société wolof contemporaine,” for an informed recent study on questions of caste in Senegal.
b. Many slaves were eventually freed by their masters in traditional society; it was also the custom to give slaves their own lands, to which they could devote as much as one-third of their labor. Carrère and Holle, p. 54.
c. Bamba was considered heretical by some orthodox observers who thought the position of Muhammed as prophet or “messenger of God” was being undermined.
d. This treaty's existence is disputed by Abdoulaye Ly in La compagnie du Sénégal, pp. 144-46.
e. Apparently the institution of signares dated from Portuguese days and was quite common on the upper Guinea coast. Golberry, who traveled this coast in the 1780's, observed that anywhere between the Senegal River and Sierra Leone one found mulattoes and Negroes with Portuguese, French, or English names. Many signares contracted a type of limited marriage that was expected to last until the European returned home; it was agreed that any children would be called after the father. See Golberry, pp. 156-58.
f. The spelling gourmette is more common in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
g. See the discussion by Hargreaves, “Assimilation,” pp. 177-80. He divides free urban Senegalese into mulattoes, gourmets, and Muslim Negroes, all of whom he calls habitants. But he notes that at some times habitant may have meant a local European resident. I have chosen to group all persons of mixed origin together as Creoles—i.e., mulattoes, metis, and some highly assimilated gourmets.
h. Gorée was separated administratively from Saint-Louis in 1845 but still remained under the capital's jurisdiction. In 1854 Gorée was given autonomy, and the French naval commander took charge. Faidherbe, on becoming Governor of Senegal, was annoyed that Gorée had been detached and used his influence to have the city restored to Saint-Louis's jurisdiction.
i. A few Senegalese voted for the municipal councils in the confused decade of the 1790's, some voted in the plebiscite held by Napoleon in 1804, and a handful of notables elected representatives from a list fixed by the Governor in the 1840 General Council organization. But never before had the general populace voted, for most of them had been slaves before 1848.
j. For example, an 1848 decree removed the duty on peanuts exported from Cayor; and an arrêté of June 1852 prescribed that on the Senegal River navigation taxes would no longer be collected on peanuts.

Notes

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