Deceit, Dakar, Diagne: French Assimiliationism and Senegal
France was—and is—a master of colonization. France’s conquest of Senegal began in 1659, yet, despite Senegalese independence three hundred years later in 1960, France has managed to keep Senegal, alongside other former possessions like Mali and Chad, within its large postcolonial sphere of influence.
Although the French used their military and technological advantage to conquer and subdue the Senegalese, they maintained their grip on them for centuries through cultural manipulation. Creating proximity to “Frenchness” as a status symbol, French colonies developed hierarchical societies that sought to culturally align themselves closer to the metropole. Although there are numerous instances of African efforts at relative economic and cultural freedom from French rule, they largely failed at due to such hierarchies.
Senegal’s Four Communes of Gorée, Rufisque, Saint-Louis, and Dakar were a major trade center for the overseas French economy. In 1879, after over 200 years of control in Senegal, the French Third Republic aimed to provide Senegalese with more voice by establishing the Senegalese General Council. The establishment of the Council catalyzed a massive political shift in Senegal, and, by 1914, Senegal had elected Blaise Diagne, a black man, to serve as the first native African in the French Chamber of Deputies in Paris. Though they may appear powerful examples of Senegalese agency and freedom during its colonial period, the Senegalese General Council and Blaise Diagne were of limited impact and only reinforced the assimilationist policies of the French Third Republic.
First, the Senegalese General Council helped further French assimilation efforts through its ineffective nature. The Senegalese General Council was undoubtedly more functional than some of its contemporaries in Lagos, Nigeria and Freetown, Sierra Leone since members could vote on matters concerning the colonial budget. Most projects approved by the councillors, however, were ultimately rejected by the Third Republic, deemed “an unnecessary financial burden for the colony.” As a result, the Council rarely enacted much change. By making the Council largely ineffective, the French provided a voice for Senegalese without providing them power, giving them the illusion of agency while maintaining—if not, strengthening—their grip on power. This strategy gained the French the support of native populations, who would serve as some of the most powerful agents of French colonialisme. As historian Hilary Jones recognizes, the Council was founded by the French with the goal of “cultivating allies within the urban community to facilitate colonial expansion.” Once the French achieved a legislative foothold in Senegal, they were quickly able to gain power throughout the colony and force more Senegalese to assimilate. Additionally, the Council’s poor performance served as an impetus for many French civilizing missions into Senegal, which strived to “cure” the Senegalese of their fabricated ineptitude.
Additionally, the Senegalese General Council upheld racial hierarchies and rewarded those who conformed to French culture by choosing to conduct all meetings in French, an unknown tongue for many Senegalese. All candidates had to be “at least twenty-five years of age, have lived in the colony for at least a year, and had to be able to read, write, and speak French.” The only way a Senegalese citizen could achieve political success and have their ideas heard was through learning French and thus entering the sphere of Francophone politics as an Assimilé. Education, though, was often expensive and in short supply, since France had decided to stop building high-level schools in Senegal. Most native Senegalese spoke local languages and those alone.
The Council conducting its meetings in French was the result of a deliberate choice by the Third Republic to create and maintain a divide among its subjects based on the level of their assimilation. Although the divide was determined by cultural proximity to Frenchness, it racially stratified Senegalese society. The cost of Frenchness is expensive, and many of the native Senegalese did not have the means to assimilate. At the time, among the few men in the colony who could afford access to French education were mixed-race citizens, known as metis. According to Jones, the metis were thought of as “logical individuals to serve as advisors, agents, board members, mayors, and members of the local assemblies because of their cultural proximity to France.” The native Senegalese were placed at a natural disadvantage because of their darker skin tone and lower average income, whereas metis were given special privileges and thought of as more capable individuals because many metis could afford to assimilate and looked more European than their African counterparts. The metis men became increasingly powerful in French Senegal since they were oftentimes richer and held the intellectual capital to which few native Senegalese had access.
A Signare, an esteemed class of metis tradeswomen in the Four Communes.
By the 1850’s, French officials decided to send many Senegalese students to French schools rather than build schools past a primary level in Senegal. The Council even paid for many scholarships to study in France, the majority of which went to metis men. Sending a certain racial group to higher education in mainland France exacerbated assimilation and increased racial inequity in Senegal by providing positions in the Senegalese General Council to strictly those who had the means to conform to French language and culture.
Lastly, the governmental structure of the Senegalese General Council reinforced French assimilation and acted as further justification for French civilizing missions through its system of justice. Sessions were long, and the Council itself was largely ineffective due to its bureaucratic style. Assimilation was the chief goal of the French justice system in its colonies. Jones observed that “instituting a regime of laws in the coastal towns was emblematic of a vision of French Empire that united metropole and colony.” As more Senegalese came under French rule of law, the French extended their sphere of assimilationist influence deeper into the continent, as Nigerian historian Oludare Idowu notes: “The councillors wanted the French system of justice to operate not only in the communes but also throughout Senegal, partly because they thought that only under such a system could their interests be effectively protected, and partly because, as convinced assimilationists, many of them believed that the light of French civilization could penetrate also into the Senegalese interior.”
The Council succeeded in its true goal: to provide France with justification for colonialism and new territory. Though the Senegalese General Council was initially founded to fairly represent the coastal communes of Senegal, it quickly became a symbol of the slippery slope of French colonialism. Once the French were able to create and grow a racial divide based on proximity to “Frenchness,” they were able to capitalize off of Senegalese efforts to assimilate.
By the early 1900’s in Senegal, internal dissent arose surrounding the Senegalese General Council. Citizens began to see it for what it was: an assimilationist machine, and not a solution to Senegalese independence. As Idowu writes: “The Senegalese did not at first take kindly to the policy of assimilation especially as it led to their economic ruin and to the establishment of French-mulatto political oligarchy which they found impossible to overthrow.” Instead of the ineffective Council, many turned to a seeming beacon of hope: Blaise Diagne. Diagne was elected to the French Chamber of Deputies in 1914, and famously promulgated the “Blaise Diagne Law,” which gave full French citizenship to citizens of the Four Communes. Although Diagne did extend citizenship rights to many of his countrymen, citizenship under the French Third Republic was more of a curse than a blessing. Due to his work, many Senegalese were thrust under the aforementioned “regime of laws” that had subjected them to repressive policies. Diagne, in reality, was one of the most important catalysts of French assimilation, aiding the Third Republic in directly extending their sphere of influence into Senegal.
Diagne worked to advance French assimilation by advocating for mass mobilization of Senegalese men at the outset of the First World War, and his calls to arms clearly worked. Though nearly all belligerents in the First World War relied on colonial manpower, African historian Carina Schmitt details how “no imperial power militarized colonial societies to the extent France did.” During the course of the First World War, it is estimated that roughly 135,000 Senegalese were deployed to the Western Front, and over 30,000 died. The Senegalese had seemingly reached the zenith of assimilation—they were actively fighting and dying in Europe to preserve the colonial empire that had oppressed them. The Senegalese troops, known by the French as Tirailleurs, were eventually able to achieve greater equality and agency than Diagne, though it came at the cost of their Senegalese heritage and the lives of thousands of their countrymen. After the war, the French granted the Tirailleurs access to better healthcare and a chance in the French workforce for their valiant fighting, but as African historian Myron Echenberg noted, the Tirailleurs had to “pay the blood tax”.
Additionally, Diagne furthered French assimilation efforts by bringing more Senegalese under French jurisdiction. The laws in French protectorates were often cruel towards inhabitants. Senegalese who did not have the means to render themselves an Assimilé were doomed to “practices such as summary justice and forced labour…” Diagne himself saw the power of assimilation. The more he conformed to French culture, the more political recognition he received, and, in turn, the more he was able to negatively impact his own country. Historian Wesley Johnson remarks: “[Diagne] even defended Colonial labor before the International Labor Organization in Geneva four years before his death in 1934. Diagne was a living picture of the assimilated man, who sought his roots and rationale in Africa but who preferred to work and play in Europe.” Diagne’s laws became the impetus for a “Legal framework for obtaining naturalization [that] provided obstacles to all but a handful of people in French West and Equatorial Africa who met the social and cultural conditions.”
When Diagne secured citizenship rights for those living in the Four Communes, the focus of commune politics moved from the General Council to Senegal’s seat in the Parisian legislature. Although the General Council was largely ineffective, it still allowed Senegalese to express their voice, even if their colonial overseers weren’t listening. By shifting political focus away from Senegal and directly into the Chamber of Deputies, Diagne had “worked to strengthen and perpetuate the protectorate regime.” The French government assumed near-complete control over Senegal, bombarding it with a slew of assimilationist laws.
In the French system of government, notoriety and change comes, for colonial subjects, at the cost of their alterité, or cultural “otherness.” Once the French were able to create metis allies in the General Council, they left the Senegalese mired in assimilationist quicksand—the more native Senegalese tried to seek liberation, the more they directly played into the hands of the French and bolstered their colonial system, with men like Diagne helping the Third Republic even when it may have appeared otherwise.
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