‘The political history of Senegal's nineteenth-century colonial towns,’ asserts Hilary Jones, ‘is a history of the métis’ (p. 1). As her valuable book makes clear, however, this racially mixed population – born from the encounter of European traders or soldiers and African women of social standing known as signares – is also essential to our understanding of Senegal's economic and social history. Jones's study focuses in particular on Saint-Louis, the town she calls the ‘nexus of métis society’ (p. 1). Here, at the mouth of the Senegal River, the métis experienced especially good fortune in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Their personal and familial connections among both European and African populations, coupled with their ability to access French merchant capital, allowed them to play a leading role in the thriving gum trade. Their wealth was plain to see in their houses, their retinues of household slaves, and the women's gold jewellery; in a literal sense, this was, as the métis priest the Abbé Boilat noted, a golden age. But by the late 1830s the gum trade was sputtering into crisis, pulling some prominent métis into bankruptcy. The 1848 law ending slavery in French territories removed a category of asset that had been central to both the economic and social capital of métis families. The development of peanut cultivation began to create a new centre of economic gravity well to the south of the Senegal River, while the plans of Louis Faidherbe, Senegal's governor for much of the 1850s and 1860s, appeared to favour merchants from Bordeaux and Muslim traders over the métis.

As Jones demonstrates, however, this was no general collapse of métis fortunes. Métis merchants continued to draw on their kin ties and client networks to the benefit of their businesses. For example, Louis Descemet's maternal connections in the upriver region of Fouta Toro helped him access a ready supply of cattle, which in turn enabled his trading company to win a contract to supply beef to the colonial administration. Jones's research in the papers of the Devès family provides her with especially compelling evidence of how some métis converted commercial success into social and political influence. Gaspard Devès, son of a merchant from Bordeaux and a Fulbe woman, acquired wealth by trading in grain and gum and by marrying the only daughter of a wealthy fellow trader. Devès continued to diversify his interests, establishing a presence in peanut-producing areas as well as exploring opportunities in goldfields to the east and fisheries in Mauritania; he also served as an administrator for the Bank of Senegal, a crucial source of credit for métis merchants. Devès’ sons attended a lycée and law school in Bordeaux, before returning to marry women from the métis community and reinforce their father's developing political coalition. These successes, as Jones shows, did not arise by currying favour with the French administration. On the contrary: the Devès family took advantage of electoral institutions such as the General Council of Senegal to stake out a distinct claim to represent Senegalese over metropolitan French interests in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The family's machinations may well have been self-serving. Jones argues, however, that in the likes of Gaspard Devès we are seeing the stirrings of a Senegalese national consciousness whose origins are more frequently traced through the rise of the (non-métis) African politician Blaise Diagne in the 1910s.

Some of this is likely to sound familiar to those who have read the work of scholars such as David Robinson and G. Wesley Johnson, yet newcomers may find Jones's book a gentler entrée than earlier histories of the period. Her book brings welcome new emphasis to family and gender dynamics, as viewed, for example, through the material life of métis households. The sources have not always allowed Jones to develop her arguments as fully in this area as she would doubtless have liked, but her use of marriage contracts and genealogies, as well as documents she located in Bordeaux, has helped her to advance existing scholarship.

Jones sometimes uses the key term ‘republican’ in ways that elide notable divisions among the French colonizers, and her treatment of the theme of religion, in particular, can helpfully be complemented by the recent work of Elizabeth A. Foster on missionaries in Senegal. The fact that métis do not appear to be included when Jones uses the term ‘African’ tends to underline the fact that they remain difficult to place within Africanist historiography. Nonetheless, without ever adopting a role as their historical advocate, Jones has made a persuasive case that they are integral to the Senegalese past.