Hostname: page-component-6898cfcb55-kwdml Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-11T11:28:45.296Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘THE COLOR OF THE PUPILS’: SCHOOLING AND RACE IN SENEGAL'S CITIES, 1900–10*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2012

KELLY DUKE BRYANT
KELLY DUKE BRYANT*
Affiliation:
Rowan University
*
Author's email: duke-bryant@rowan.edu.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the politics of race and education in early twentieth-century urban Senegal, focusing on the exclusion of African students from certain schools and on the political controversy that grew out of a 1909 education reform. Based on letters from officials, politicians, and African residents, along with minutes from the General Council, it suggests that changes in urban society and colonial policy encouraged people to view access to schooling in terms of race. This article argues that in debating segregation and education quality, residents contributed to a discourse on race that reflected an increasing racial consciousness in the society at large.

Keywords

Senegalcolonialeducationraceracismurban

Information

Type
Race, Education, and the Politics of Nationalism
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , November 2011, pp. 299 - 319
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

In its session on 13 December 1909, the tensions that had been building over the issues of race and segregation in the schools of Saint-Louis and Dakar erupted in the General Council's meeting hall. Several recent decrees had substantially reformed education in Senegal's four Communes, creating three levels of schooling with separate curricula.Footnote 1 Entry into the so-called urban schools, the only ones to offer a metropolitan French academic program, now depended on French language capability, a requirement that had the effect of excluding most blacks and that prompted several black and métis (racially mixed) politicians to decry the reform as racially motivated. Indeed, amid changing colonial priorities and pressure from an increasing white population, the French administration hung uncomfortably in the balance between integration and segregation in schools. During the December 1909 regular session of the General Council, several politicians seized on this issue as part of a wider campaign for recognition of Africans' rights, and accused the administration of enacting racist policies. Leading the opposition to the government's education reform, métis councilman and Saint-Louis mayor Justin Devès argued that the recent school reform was unacceptable because it created division based ‘not on the ability, but on the color of the pupils’.Footnote 2

Devès's indignant comments and the larger debate to which they belonged raise questions about the meaning and the mobilization of race in Senegal's four Communes during the early twentieth century. Significantly, the education controversy that began in December 1909 and continued into 1910 followed several attempts to institute segregation in specific schools in the colony. These incidents and the public response to them helped define the relationship between race and access to schooling. The language used in correspondence from officials, teachers, parents, and one student, and in minutes from the General Council session, reveals that conceptions of race had begun to inform how residents framed criticism of education and how they addressed questions of who should or should not be included in the classroom. Given the context of increasing white settlement in Senegal's cities and an intensifying government assault on the citizenship rights that African residents had possessed for decades, debates about school segregation reflected the larger issue of inclusion in the political community. Schooling became a barometer of the increasing relevance of race in urban society in Senegal as officials, teachers, politicians, parents, and students weighed in on the linked questions of access to education for Africans and the type of education that was most appropriate for them.

Scholars have addressed the intersection between education, race, and politics in colonial Africa in various ways. Many studies portray schooling primarily as an instrument of colonial rule and focus on the development of institutions and education policies. By addressing topics like inferior academic quality and segregation, scholars demonstrate the racism inherent in colonial education.Footnote 3 Others, in a trend that has been particularly pronounced for the last couple of decades, focus on schools and related institutions as dynamic and contested places, and analyze how Africans used education in pursuit of their own goals.Footnote 4 In his study of the Boy Scout movement in British East and Southern Africa, for example, Timothy Parsons argues that Africans attempted to use scouting to obtain political rights, to criticize British racism, and as a mark of prestige.Footnote 5 Similarly, in her study of conflict and debates surrounding colonial schooling in Southern Rhodesia, Carol Summers addresses the divergence between the educational goals of missionaries and officials, and African demands for literary education in English that would allow them access to better opportunities.Footnote 6 My study fits into this latter trend, suggesting that by insisting on access to particular schools, Africans in colonial Senegal engaged with larger issues of racism and political inclusion.

The literature on colonial schooling in French West Africa has been particularly concerned with institutions, policies, and statistics, but scholars have relatively recently begun to explore a range of other issues, including African experiences with race.Footnote 7 For example, Owen White's study of miscegenation in French West Africa pays substantial attention to colonial education. White suggests that official debates about how best to educate métis children reflected the interconnectedness of colonial concerns about race, education, and citizenship in the early twentieth century. Throughout, he is most interested in colonial policies and debates, but a chapter on the formation of voluntary associations beginning in the 1930s traces the emergence of a métis racial identity.Footnote 8 Similarly, Gail Kelly uses school essays of African students in Dahomey and Upper Volta during the 1930s to explore the development of a new kind of racial identity. In their essays, she argues, ‘students consciously described themselves as Africans', but they also sought to distance themselves from traditional lifestyles. She finds that the racial stereotypes found in textbooks and taught in schools shaped concepts of race that emerged in student work.Footnote 9 Significantly, these studies suggest that schooling helped produce racial identity. They also raise the important question, which I attempt to address here, of African contributions to public discourses about race.

In seeking to understand how Africans engaged with race, this article draws on Jonathon Glassman's recent book on colonial Zanzibar and on Bruce Hall's study of race along the Niger Bend. Glassman investigates the processes by which concepts of race obtained their meanings. He stresses the importance of ‘discourse’ and dialogue in producing racial thought, and argues that even if Western ideas influenced the process, African intellectuals produced and revised concepts of race that reflected local realities and indigenous notions.Footnote 10 Similarly, Hall shows that indigenous racial categories predated French colonialism in the Sahel by several centuries at least, and that, despite the impact of colonial concepts, indigenous ones continued to form the basis for the ‘racial arguments’ constructed by local groups.Footnote 11 This article does not share Glassman's and Hall's focus on Africans' strategic manipulation of indigenous racial categories in order to compete with – and exclude – other groups. Nor does it have as its endpoint the devastating violence that racial thinking can sometimes produce, such as the Zanzibar revolution of 1964, or the Tuareg rebellions of 1963–4 and the early 1990s. Rather, it explores African responses to discriminatory school policies, and suggests that Africans mobilized racial language in an appeal to the French ethic of republicanism and equality. Despite these differences in approach, I find value in Glassman's model of race as discourse and in Hall's claim that racial language makes ‘an argument about the world’.Footnote 12 I rely on these concepts as I attempt to provide some insight into one historical moment in which Europeans, blacks, and métis wrestled with, discussed, and deployed ideas about race, and in the process, politicized them. Indeed, in debating segregation and education quality, I argue, residents contributed to discourse on race that reflected increasing racial consciousness in urban society at large.

This article addresses local racial discourses rather than offering an analysis of race or racism per se. I focus on discourse, language, and perception in an attempt to avoid reification, since ‘race’ in early twentieth century Senegal, as anywhere else, was a social and political construction. Even so, it is perhaps useful to touch on some of the more commonly used terms, recognizing, of course, that precise meanings varied. Terms like ‘black’ or ‘white’ were much more complex than skin color and other phenotypic representations, and typically invoked a range of cultural, linguistic, religious, and other characteristics. Urban residents, colonial officials, and educators seem to have used ‘whites (blancs)’ and ‘Europeans’ interchangeably to refer to people who had only European (usually French) ancestry, whether they were born in the metropole or in the colony. These people maintained a European lifestyle, spoke French at home, and were secular or Christian. ‘Métis’, or mixed race, people generally belonged to families that had been established in the Communes for generations, and that had at least one French, English, or occasionally Portuguese male ancestor. They spoke French but also Wolof, were Catholic or secular, and often identified with both France and Senegal. ‘Assimilés’, a category which sometimes included métis, mostly referred to Africans recognized as having assimilated French values, styles of dress, Catholic religion, and language. ‘Natives (indigènes)’ were Africans, predominantly Muslim, who spoke Wolof or other African languages more than French, and who, though open to outside cultural influence, did not adopt a French lifestyle. Finally, the term ‘blacks (noirs)’ most often referred to unassimilated Africans, but could also include assimilés.

The educational future of ‘natives’ in particular was central to the debates about schooling in the Communes in the early twentieth century, and justifications for their exclusion were couched in language that implied profound discomfort with African culture. This was somewhat ironic since French officials and educators had for decades viewed Muslim attendance at colonial schools as a way to promote the civilizing mission and, accordingly, had worked to increase Muslim interest. Colonial schools competed with Qur'anic schools, which socialized children and prepared them to become moral and devout adults. Though students occasionally went on to become clerics, this religious education did not generally prepare them for specific professions, especially those in the colonial economy. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, more Muslim families began to recognize the potential advantages of French schooling and to send their children to these schools, though usually only after they had completed Qur'anic study.Footnote 13 By the early twentieth century, increasing Muslim attendance and the priorities of the growing European population had begun to raise new questions about the wisdom of racially mixed classrooms and the type of education that was most appropriate for Muslim Africans.

Despite the use of terms like ‘black’ and ‘white’ by participants in these early twentieth-century debates, the various sides were not defined by skin color exclusively, largely due to the cultural and political content of racial concepts. Muslim Africans and the métis politicians who were committed to republican ideals and/or who viewed Muslims as important constituents rallied against segregated schools. In contrast, many Europeans along with some métis and assimilés wanted to remove Muslim Africans from their classrooms to reduce the potential for cultural influence. Education of course played a civic role in the society, and there was a convergence between the desire to exclude ‘native’ children from schools and their parents from political participation. Indeed, in the early twentieth century, Muslim Africans, who, like others from the Communes had possessed citizenship rights for generations, faced an erosion of these rights as officials challenged their status and sought to remove hundreds from the voting rolls.Footnote 14 This assault on the political rights of Muslim Africans seems to have been motivated by many of the same concerns about racial and cultural difference that were behind calls for segregated schools. Debates about access to and exclusion from school thus mirrored larger issues, and these debates helped to politicize a language of race in Senegal.

SCHOOLING IN A CHANGING COLONIAL WORLD

The trend toward segregation and exclusion reflected transformations in colonial priorities and in the demography of Senegal's cities. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the French approach to colonial rule changed fundamentally, and this profoundly affected education policy. Prompted by increasing racism and recognition of the enormous diversity of peoples under French control, French ideology began to turn away from assimilation as the goal of the civilizing mission. Instead, officials were to respect the customs of individual peoples and to help Africans ‘evolve’ in ways appropriate to their cultures.Footnote 15 At the same time, the addition of vast new territories to France's African holdings and the expenses associated with this engendered a new focus on economic development.Footnote 16 This new colonial logic held that education should offer instruction that was ‘adapted’ to local needs and customs, that covered basic academics, and that emphasized vocational training.Footnote 17

These priorities informed Governor General Roume's November 1903 decree which organized, centralized, and expanded colonial education across French West Africa. At the base of Roume's three-tiered system of education were ‘village schools’ in which African teachers would offer two to three years of rudimentary instruction in as many villages and to as many African children as possible. Roume's reform also equipped administrative centers with a much smaller number of ‘regional schools’ available to select students, that were designed to build on the village school education and develop skills in agriculture and trades. The third level of Roume's hierarchy consisted of ‘urban schools’ that offered metropolitan curricula and mostly European teachers. Though he envisioned that they would cater especially to European and ‘assimilated’ children, urban schools also included large numbers of ‘natives’ who still represented the majority of city residents. Senegal was slow to implement this reform, and for the moment, the schools in the Communes retained their metropolitan character.Footnote 18

The politicization of race and access to schooling in the Communes reached new levels with the issuance of a decree on 8 October 1909 that seemed intended to exclude many Africans from urban schools. The reform left only six of the Communes' eleven schools with the ‘urban’ designation – the girls' school in each of the four Communes and a boys' school in both Saint-Louis (the École Blanchot) and Dakar (the École de la rue de Thiong) – and required children to pass a French language examination to gain entry. Most remaining schools became ‘regional schools’, offering vocational and rudimentary academic training. Only the urban schools could award the traditional certificate of primary elementary studies, while regional schools would grant a new certificate of primary professional studies, which emphasized the vocational nature of the curriculum.Footnote 19 These decrees represented the response of the lieutenant governor of Senegal to pressure from Governor General William Ponty, who wanted schools in the Communes to better reflect the spirit of the 1903 reform.Footnote 20

Although colonial economic and cultural imperatives were the ostensible motivation for both reforms, it seems more than coincidental that they went into effect during a period of growth in Senegal's European population and an accompanying trend toward residential segregation. Indeed, the medical discourse of the day encouraged doctors and others across the continent to promote hygiene, sanitation, and the creation of distinct residential areas for Africans and Europeans. Believing that it would protect the health of European residents and slow the spread of disease, colonial administrations pursued segregation in cities such as Dakar, Lagos, Cape Town, Accra, and Douala. Although segregation in Senegal and the rest of West Africa was never inscribed into law or made absolute, health and housing policies had the effect of pushing many Africans out of European areas.Footnote 21 A 1905 building law, for example, reiterated regulations that had been on the books in Dakar and Saint-Louis for years, prohibiting the use of wood or thatch materials in European areas of those cities and others, and this had the effect of excluding Africans from legal residence. Furthermore, several times in the first decade of the twentieth century, policies relocated African settlements in Dakar and elsewhere to make room for European quarters.Footnote 22 These efforts brought some results, though they were never as successful as administrators and planners hoped, and urban spaces remained somewhat fluid.

Health, sanitation, and contact between the races became more pressing issues in Senegal in the early twentieth century as the European population grew markedly and European residents prevailed on the administration to protect their interests. Arriving to fill new administrative positions necessitated by the establishment of French West Africa in 1895 or to take advantage of rising peanut production, the European community increased from around 125 in 1900 to at least 2,000 in 1909 in Dakar and from 150 in 1873 to around 400 by 1909 in Rufisque.Footnote 23 The demographics were beginning to shift as well, as women and children joined a formerly male population. In his 1909 book, Dr d'Anfreville de la Salle observed that, in recent years, white women had come to represent approximately one third of Saint-Louis's European population of 500, and that births had begun to surpass deaths among whites.Footnote 24 Demographic change produced different priorities. Europeans developed an interest in education in the colony, and went to educators and administrators with grave concerns about the implications of multiracial classrooms. They wanted their children to have access to quality education, on par with what was offered in France, and they worried that the presence of Africans – nonnative speakers of French – in the classroom would detract from this. More ominously, they worried about moral and physical contagion. Indeed, in 1905, a Dakar school director observed that the colony's numerous ‘white functionaries’ did not like the idea of sending their sons to ‘the same classrooms as native pupils who are generally dirty and not very agreeable as companions’.Footnote 25 Concerns such as these shaped the practice of education and contributed to a discourse about race in the colony.

Thus, whether or not by design, the administrative impulse to separate students into distinct types of schools converged with rising concerns among Europeans about racial mixing in the classroom. Drawing on the pseudoscientific theory that Africans and Europeans differed radically in intellectual ability and outlook, and on the colonial commitment to helping Africans progress within their own cultures, officials could argue against the idea that the new system enshrined racial discrimination or undermined the values of French republicanism.Footnote 26 Yet given the increasing racial tensions in urban society, administrators failed to convince many métis and blacks that education practice and policy lacked racist intent. Indeed, in this climate in which race was beginning to correlate to access to school and ultimately to the political community, blacks and their métis allies took up the discourse of race, using it to criticize colonial education policy. This process of politicization of race vis-à-vis colonial schooling emerged clearly in several early twentieth century incidents of discrimination and culminated in the school segregation controversy of 1909–10.

RACE AND SCHOOL ACCESS IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Indeed, several years before the 8 October 1909 decree limited access to urban schools in the Communes, some black students experienced exclusion from school or class on the basis of race. As Boubacar Ly observes, several schools in the Communes practiced informal segregation prior to 1909, acting without a government decree but with the knowledge of high-ranking officials.Footnote 27 Though the archival evidence is limited in quantity, it clearly indicates that at least some of those affected interpreted their exclusion in terms of race. Furthermore, experiences with exclusion from school left Africans acutely aware of the potential utility of racial language as a political tool. These incidents, which we might consider precursors to the controversy surrounding the 1909 decree, were thus important historical moments in the development of racial thinking among urban residents.

The most egregious episode occurred in November 1904, when, just before the start of a new school year, the head of the Teaching Service, Frédéric Risson, approached the lieutenant governor of Senegal with the idea of allowing only ‘children with European lifestyles’ to attend the Ecole de la rue de Lanneau in Saint-Louis. With the lieutenant governor's tacit, though unofficial, support, Risson asked the director of this school to ‘advise young natives’ to go to the schools on Paul Holle or Carnot Streets instead.Footnote 28 When they showed up for the first day of school at rue de Lanneau on 8 November 1904, black students were turned away. A black municipal worker, Souleymane Sao, lodged a complaint, expressing incredulity that his young son, Abdoulaye, had been denied entry because, as the older brothers who had escorted him to school learned, ‘black children’ were not welcome. Abdoulaye's brothers had successfully completed their studies at this school, and Abdoulaye himself had already taken French classes there. Significantly, the elder Sao responded to this discrimination with a race-based critique of his own. He could not understand, he wrote, how ‘difference in color’ was relevant in education, ‘especially at a moment when our government is trying to develop French language instruction as much as possible’. Sao indicated that he valued this school precisely because of its multicultural character, since ‘contact with young people who already speak French will familiarize him [Abdoulaye] with that language and will allow him to speak it more correctly.’Footnote 29

An exchange between several officials suggests that numerous others complained about this decision. Indeed, the head of the Teaching Service observed that his policy had ‘provoked a certain emotion’ among those affected. Given the circumstances, he reversed course, deciding to wait for directions from the lieutenant governor. Ultimately, the lieutenant governor indicated that although he liked the idea of encouraging ‘native’ students to attend school elsewhere, the school would have to pursue such a change with more tact.Footnote 30 Word that the Ecole de la rue de Lanneau would remain open to all students evidently did not spread quickly, and nearly a week later, people were still writing letters of protest. On 14 November, for example, Hyacinthe Devès complained to the lieutenant governor that his two boys (gamins) had been unexpectedly turned away from school. These boys were likely Devès's wards, and their names – Hyppolite Pierre and Hyacinthe Niay – suggest that unlike Devès, they were black.Footnote 31 Devès, as I discuss at length below, was a métis politician who was committed to the political inclusion and education of blacks. Despite the minimal detail in Devès's letter, it seems likely that school personnel sent the boys away because of their race.

That Africans interpreted this incident as racial discrimination emerged clearly in an incisive criticism written by a student, Alkébé N'Diaye, also on 14 November 1904. He and his ‘black peers (camarades noirs)’ had been sent away from school, he protested. School personnel told them that they were ‘too numerous and that there were only three teachers; consequently, they could not teach all of us, so they sent us, distinctly, away, that is, by choosing all the blacks.’ Noting that he had nearly attained his school-leaving certificate, N'Diaye asked for help returning to the school, assuming that ‘the government did not make this school especially for little Europeans and mulattoes.’Footnote 32 In complaining about this removal of ‘all the blacks’ from his class and reminding the secretary general that the administration had not, as far as he knew, created a separate school for ‘little Europeans and mulattoes’, N'Diaye used politicized racial language. Though it is difficult to generalize based on the few extant letters from Africans that comment on this incident, the fact that a child perceived it through the lens of racial discrimination suggests that the concept had currency in the Communes. Moreover, it seems that officials took N'Diaye's letter seriously, and there is no evidence that they questioned its authorship. The official who received it passed it on to the lieutenant governor, who sent it to the head of the Teaching Service, and it became part of a chorus of complaints about race-based exclusion at this school.

Despite the fact that popular pressure led officials to reopen rue de Lanneau to ‘natives’ in 1904, fallout continued for some time. Around a year later, a school director responded to a request for more information from the Teaching Service about a recent incident in which a student was turned away from his unnamed school. The director explained that he had merely sent the child back to the school he had previously attended, the Ecole du Centre (another name for the Ecole de la rue de Lanneau). The boy, wrote the director, claimed ‘that he had been sent away from the third class of the school because he was black (noir). I invited him to return, telling him that no one has the right to send him away for this reason.’Footnote 33 In a comment that revealed his own deep prejudices, the director went on to say that he had thought little of the incident, knowing as he did the ‘habitual’ nature of ‘blacks’ lies’, but had mentioned it to a colleague who in turn told the official at the Teaching Service.Footnote 34 The school director's comments illustrate quite well the contradictions inherent in French attitudes about colonial education. After holding the official line that the French did not discriminate based on race, the director went on to demonstrate racial bias by assuming that the student was lying, and then to exclude the student from yet another school by sending him away. This exchange provides one more example of an African student in the Communes associating access to schooling with race.

The letters from Sao and N'Diaye and the reported speech of this unnamed student offer glimpses into how Africans encountered race in schools and how they participated in the development of ideas about race in the colony. Significantly, different actors chose different racial terminology, and this reveals some of the ambiguity in these categories as well as various perspectives of those involved. Risson chose terms that reflected cultural values, referring to the excluded group as ‘natives’ and to others as ‘children with European lifestyles’. The latter phrase allowed for the presence of métis and assimilés. Risson's use of this terminology perhaps represented an attempt to ward off accusations of racism by couching his segregationist intent in the language of cultural difference.Footnote 35 In contrast, skin color was precisely what both Sao and the young N'Diaye emphasized in their letters. Indeed, it is striking that both writers and the unnamed student used the term, ‘black (noir)’. Even if they were repeating the word used by school personnel, they deployed it as a marker of identity. Simultaneously, however, they rejected the notion that race should influence access to schooling, with Sao questioning the relevance of ‘color’ and N'Diaye doubting that a school had been reserved for European and métis children. This incident suggests that by the early twentieth century, at least some Africans explained exclusion from school in terms of race, yet they also seem to have challenged the legitimacy of this premise.

With the exception of the brief letter from Hyacinthe Devès protesting the expulsion of his wards, the archive is largely silent on the reactions of métis and assimilés to the short-lived effort to segregate the Ecole de la rue de Lanneau. But correspondence from a teacher in the Gorée girls' school, Ms. E. Degrave, in 1906, points to some of the cleavages that divided Senegalese on the issues of race and educational inclusion. Degrave's letter reveals that French parents were not the only ones to worry about negative influences at school. She had recently added ‘3 little assimilées and 4 little black girls’ to her class in an effort to evenly distribute the school's students. When ‘the families of the assimilées threatened to withdraw their children due to their contact with the bigger black girls’, she created a separate section for beginning students as a temporary solution. But wide ranges in age within a single class remained a problem.Footnote 36 Like French families, assimilés seem to have been concerned about the influences of unassimilated African children, especially older ones, on their own. Assimilés therefore did not necessarily identify with ‘natives’, but in at least some cases, pursued their own, separate interests.

Localized discrimination in education did not end with the Ecole de la rue de Lanneau, but reemerged in the Ecole de la rue de Thiong, an urban school in Dakar, a few years later. In the December 1909 General Council session, member Galandou Diouf read a letter from a Dakar voter, Dicaure N'Diaye, to this effect. N'Diaye complained that white children – beginners who could neither read nor write – were allowed to pass directly into the first or second levels, skipping over the ‘petite class, where their black peers begin’, and receiving extra attention from the director and his assistant. N'Diaye proposed two explanations for the situation:

either they do not have confidence in the expertise of the native instructor in charge of that class who is, however, one of our best teachers; or they do not find it appropriate for sons of European bigwigs to be in contact with their native teacher and their black fellow pupils.Footnote 37

Galandou Diouf blamed Risson, arguing that the head of the Teaching Service ‘tolerated and encouraged’ this sort of racial exclusion in schools. The issue, Diouf said, ‘boils down to a question of skin (d’épiderme)’.Footnote 38 This exchange is significant not only because both N'Diaye and Diouf criticized racial disparities at school, but also because it involved electoral politics. By contacting Diouf, N'Diaye deployed racial language in an explicitly political sphere, and by reading the letter aloud, Diouf further politicized the issue. This reflects the increasing importance of racial discourses in urban Senegal in the early twentieth century.

The desire for localized segregation was pervasive among Europeans and some assimilés, and it seems likely that Risson acted at least in part in response to their wishes. Teachers proposed creating a ‘special class’ as a way to increase the enrollment of white students, acting at the behest of European parents who worried about contamination in mixed classrooms.Footnote 39 As Europeans increasingly used racial rhetoric in the service of school segregation, those who would be most affected by these policies – people like Souleymane Sao, Alkébé N'Diaye, and Dicaure N'Diaye, who were black and likely Muslim – also deployed a language of race. They used these concepts to point out the hypocrisy of race-based exclusion and to accuse the French administration of racial discrimination. Indeed, the early twentieth-century correspondence and debates about school segregation reveal the increasing relevance of racial language to political discourse and, more particularly, suggest Africans' efforts to adopt, manipulate, and use these concepts for their own ends.

THE EDUCATION CONTROVERSY OF 1909–10

Thus, by the time the controversial education reform passed in October 1909, some Saint-Louis and Dakar families already had personal experience with segregated schooling, and some urban residents had begun to think about access to education in terms of race. Given these recent events, it is not surprising that several General Council members interpreted the October 1909 reform as instituting race-based exclusion in the schools of the Communes. In the General Council's December 1909 regular session, these councilors accused the administration of precisely this, and their words provide valuable clues as to how people mobilized race.Footnote 40 One of the most forceful critics of the reform was Justin Devès, who belonged to a powerful and extremely wealthy métis family. Justin Devès had entered politics only recently and, after losing a 1908 election, had worked to build support among Wolof fishermen in and around Saint-Louis. His efforts paid off in 1909, when he won a seat on the General Council and the position of Saint-Louis mayor. His brothers François and Hyacinthe, on the other hand, had served on the General Council for over a decade, and Hyacinthe had already petitioned the government about issues pertaining to race and schooling.Footnote 41 In 1909, Justin took the lead in condemning the recent changes to schooling in the Communes, broaching the subject of racial segregation during a discussion of proposals for the creation of a secondary school. The 1909 reform had left only the schools with the largest numbers of whites and assimilés classified as ‘urban’ schools, he remarked, a change that would negatively affect most blacks, who would have to attend inferior schools. Therefore, Devès argued, the policy created:

a distinction that is inadmissible because founded not on the ability, but on the color of the pupils (sur la couleur des élèves). From this point on, there will be a primary school curriculum and a certificate of study for whites (blancs), and another for blacks (noirs).Footnote 42

Justin Devès, Hyacinthe Devès, and Galandou Diouf protested in 1909 because the government had created obviously unequal schools and had eliminated meaningful choice for unassimilated blacks, who would mostly have to attend regional or village schools. Councilmen G. Crespin, Sabourault, and Cardeau vocally supported Justin Devès, and the votes of at least a few others helped pass his resolution against the reform. Justin Devès and his allies were particularly rankled by the vocational character of regional and village schools, which, Devès claimed, revealed the administration's ultimate aim of turning ‘all of the natives (indigènes) of our cities into workers, joiners, or blacksmiths’. Galandou Diouf concurred. Diouf, a Muslim from Rufisque, had recently achieved the first milestone in his noteworthy political career by winning a seat on the Council, and now he voiced his opposition to the requirement that black students attending regional schools learn a trade. ‘Leave the natives free to learn as they see fit’, he implored, ‘and just give them the means to educate themselves like the others.’Footnote 43 Critics also expressed fears that the ‘manual instruction’ offered in the regional schools would not prepare students for the secondary school that had just been proposed. To Justin Devès, the limited access to secondary schooling implied by the 1909 reform represented ‘division in the country and the establishment of it so very clearly on the question of race (de races)’. He pledged that he would not ‘vote for the creation of a secondary school from which the natives will be systematically excluded’.Footnote 44 Devès, Diouf, and others thus perceived this reform, which disproportionately affected black students, as a thinly veiled plan to institute racial segregation. Not only would access to urban schools decline for unassimilated blacks, but the regional and village schools that they would attend instead would offer – by decree – inferior educational programs.

Representing the colonial government in the General Council, the secretary general rejected the notion that the reform divided people by race. Instead, he emphasized the importance of language, explaining that those who spoke French in the home and who could manage the work of the grade appropriate for their age would be able to attend the urban schools, while those with lower language ability would attend the regional schools, where teachers would devote more attention to language instruction. Such a change was necessary to meet the population's demands that the urban school curriculum align more closely with metropolitan schools. He admitted, however, that the difference in curriculum would mean that few students from the regional schools would be eligible to attend the secondary school.Footnote 45 The explanation did not placate Justin Devès who, seconded by his brother Hyacinthe, reminded those present that in Senegal, most local children, even assimilés, learned French at school. For much of the population, this process started relatively late in life, since devout Muslims usually sent their children to Qur'anic school for several years before allowing them to begin at the French school.Footnote 46 Hyacinthe recalled that when he had arrived in France to attend school as a child, he ‘hardly spoke it [French]’. ‘If it is like this for people raised in the French way’, he argued, ‘then to begin with, do not ask the impossible of those who do not have the advantages of origin, of heredity, of milieu, of environment, of daily contact that the knowledge of a language requires.’Footnote 47 In pointing out the impracticalities and inconsistencies of the secretary general's comments, the Devès brothers emphasized the policy's racist underpinnings.

This General Council debate reflected two different approaches to education and understandings of race. Councilman Herbault, a Frenchman and the only member recorded in the minutes as speaking in favor of the administration, echoed the concerns of many Europeans and assimilés. Herbault worried that French-speaking children would fall behind, as teachers devoted class time to teaching basic French to novices, and he stressed the potential moral danger of classrooms based on skill level that grouped older black children with younger Europeans and assimilés. For these reasons, separate schools made the most sense to Herbault. Yet as he spoke, ‘several voices’ interrupted him to express disapproval of separate schools and of adapted curricula for blacks.Footnote 48 Justin Devès, on the other hand, acknowledged that it might be necessary to create age-based subdivisions within a particular grade to prevent vast age disparities in a classroom and the improprieties this could produce. But because mixed schools and classrooms promoted camaraderie and ‘solidarity’ between children of different races, he would not tolerate the idea of sending students to different schools.Footnote 49 Herbault and others who shared his views advocated segregation for moral, intellectual, and cultural reasons, and could thus argue that the 1909 reform was not racially motivated. Justin Devès and his allies, on the other hand, valued equal access regardless of skin color, language, religion, and background. For them, race seems to have encompassed all of these characteristics, and they used racial language to great effect.

Indeed, opponents' insistence that the 1909 reform involved the ‘question of race’ and their frequent references to race, color, and other related concepts are perhaps the most striking features of this debate in the General Council. Opponents of the reform used various words to express their perceptions of race, and it therefore does not seem that they had invested in a particular terminology at this time. Justin Devès, for example, incorporated almost every concept that could help drive home the point that the reform produced segregation – white, black, assimilé, European, native, color, race. On the other hand, in his smaller number of contributions to the debate, Galandou Diouf referred to unassimilated Africans as ‘natives’ and did not discuss other groups at all. Yet even if the terminology varied, this debate strongly suggests that race had become a useful framework for understanding access to schooling in the colony.

Ultimately, a majority of council members voted in favor of Justin Devès's resolution that the 1909 decree was illegal because it contradicted elements of the 1903 education reform, and that a single certification should mark the completion of any primary school.Footnote 50 Yet Lieutenant Governor Peuvergne rejected the demand to maintain an all-metropolitan curriculum or otherwise alter the reform.Footnote 51 His decision to hold the line led Justin Devès, in his capacity as mayor of Saint-Louis, to take matters into his own hands. In the municipal council of Saint-Louis, Devès gathered support to close the Ecole Blanchot, a Saint-Louis urban school for boys that Europeans in the colony had long preferred.Footnote 52 When Devès notified the lieutenant governor of this decision, claiming that the closure was intended to save money for the municipality, Peuvergne warned him that he did not have the authority to proceed. Devès moved forward anyway, and despite Peuvergne's opposition, the governor general allowed Devès to close the school, a feat that was accomplished by April 1910.Footnote 53

Devès's decision to target this school, and the controversy that ensued, stemmed from the fact that the Ecole Blanchot contained the largest number of European and ‘assimilated’ students. In 1907, for example, when eleven urban schools still functioned in the colony, 81 of the 197 students at the Ecole Blanchot were European or ‘assimilated’. The combined enrollment of the other two boys' schools in Saint-Louis totaled 529, all but 8 of whom were ‘natives’.Footnote 54 The distribution was similar in 1910, when, according to figures cited by the lieutenant governor, the student body at the Ecole Blanchot included 20 Europeans, 50 ‘métis’, and 85 ‘natives’.Footnote 55 Though the lieutenant governor provided these statistics as evidence that the school was not segregated, they also show that white and assimilated students remained concentrated in the Ecole Blanchot. The fact that Europeans and assimilés had placed their children within a few select schools like this one suggests that, much like their counterparts in Gorée, they were uncomfortable with the idea of mixed classes. Indeed, the makeup of the Ecole Blanchot reminds us that Senegalese people were not unified on the question of race. There is no question that the Devès brothers sided with ‘natives’ in this debate, but the archive is not forthcoming about the positions of ordinary métis and assimilés.

Significantly, Justin Devès himself did not act solely out of altruistic concern for issues of racial equality. In building his political career and his business success, Devès had styled himself as a defender of blacks in the Communes and in the protectorate, and as an antagonist to the colonial government. On more than one occasion, he and his brothers raised the ire of French officials who did not appreciate their meddling.Footnote 56 The school reform controversy of 1909–10 provided Devès with an opportunity to demonstrate his advocacy for the colony's black population while simultaneously asserting control over the colony's schools. In a letter that strongly criticized Devès and challenged his right to exercise such authority, the lieutenant governor maintained that the ‘native’ population did not grasp the significance of Devès's suppression of the Ecole Blanchot; the archive says little else about blacks' reactions. Nevertheless, Devès's overall strategy to win the support of this population worked, and their votes were crucial to his electoral successes. And when Devès died in 1916, black residents of Saint-Louis professed their appreciation for his work on their behalf by petitioning for the construction of a monument in his honor, to which they hoped to affix a plaque bearing the words, ‘The Grateful Native’.Footnote 57

The lieutenant governor, on the other hand, did not respond well to Devès's persistent challenges to his own authority, and the closure of the Ecole Blanchot represented an escalation of tensions between the two men. Peuvergne attempted to invalidate the closing and protested that by siding with Devès, the governor general had undermined Peuvergne's power. Ultimately, in response to rumors that Devès had misused his office, Peuvergne suspended him from his position in July 1910 and called for an official inquiry into his dealings as mayor. Following the inquiry which found that Devès had, among other offenses, inappropriately used his position to provide benefits to his allies, to curry favor with African chiefs in the protectorate, and to engage in improper financial dealings, the Ministry of the Colonies removed Devès from office in September 1910. Devès did not remain out of office for long, however, since in 1911 the Council of State in Paris annulled the 1909 municipal elections, necessitating new ones. This provided Devès with the opportunity to reenter municipal politics quickly, and he was reelected later that year and again in 1912. He served as mayor until his death in 1916.Footnote 58

The closure of the Ecole Blanchot produced a variety of anxieties among officials and other members of the European community. Lieutenant Governor Peuvergne reported that ‘many people’, presumably Europeans, were saying that by reshaping French schooling in Saint-Louis, Devès had achieved ‘“the humiliation of whites”’. Peuvergne himself blamed Devès for injecting race into debates about the reform and criticized his ‘different conception of democratic equality’ which entailed ‘lowering’ the level of schooling to correspond to African abilities.Footnote 59 In Saint-Louis, as elsewhere, European parents were uncomfortable with the fact that their children, as the lieutenant governor put it, sat next to ‘young children of natives noticeably older and possessing ideas about matters of modesty that differ greatly from those of Europeans’. Although Lieutenant Governor Peuvergne found their fears of ‘moral contagion’ overblown and thought that teacher supervision would keep bad behavior in check, he was aware that problems could arise. He notified the governor general that some French parents were considering setting up their own, racially exclusive, private school.Footnote 60

Given these fears of contamination, administrators searched for a compromise and, by the end of 1910, had decided to provide all three curricula – village, regional, and urban – within the same schools. This meant, in practice, that Europeans, assimilés, and perhaps a few ‘natives’ received metropolitan style education in a second class.Footnote 61 Despite the compromise, issues of race and access to school continued to fester, and they reemerged in the wake of a 30 January 1913 decree which reestablished the division into village, regional, and urban schools. At least one official recognized that article 16 of the reform, which read in part: ‘Urban schools admit only European or assimilated children’, would be difficult to enforce and would ‘provoke vehement protest on the part of the elected municipal bodies and the native population’.Footnote 62 Protest ensued, with the Saint-Louis municipal council supporting Mayor Justin Devès's complaint that the 1913 decree was ‘unconstitutional’ in making ‘racial distinctions’ and his position that ‘schools must be open to all children, regardless, and must classify them according to their level of instruction.’Footnote 63 The government issued a correction, making clear that urban schools were for all children, and that, as before, they would offer all three programs. The metropolitan curriculum would only be available in special ‘classes reserved for European or assimilated children and for the best native pupils’.Footnote 64

This solution satisfied some of the critics' demands in that it did not create separate schools, and it also allowed children whose families wanted them to study with a European teacher to attend a special class intended for European and assimilated children. Urban schools admitted blacks, but they primarily offered these students basic, locally ‘adapted’ education and vocational training. As they had for years, government officials continued insisting that these policies had nothing to do with race. In his 1917 book on education in French West Africa, for example, Inspector of Schooling Georges Hardy, took care to explain that the separate classes within the urban schools did not result from ‘color prejudice’.Footnote 65 The fact that he had to defend the policy in this way, however, suggests that people still linked the problems with colonial schooling to race. The issue of separate and unequal schooling remained during the 1920s and beyond, as Africans criticized inferior ‘adapted’ curricula and demanded schooling equivalent to that received in France.Footnote 66 The association between race and type of education continued, as did the racist attitudes from which it stemmed and to which it contributed.

The link between racial discourses and issues of colonial schooling that I have explored here was not unique to Senegal, but was part of a wider trend that became particularly pronounced in the interwar period as the education provided to Africans and to Europeans diverged sharply in quality. In south-western Nigeria, for instance, Philip Zachernuk finds that educated elites engaged in debates about race and lobbied for an expansion of schooling for Africans amid increasing racism. In the interwar period, they called for a European-style, literary curriculum and criticized the vocational focus that the administration preferred, as part of an effort to gain equality and work against racism in the colony. At the same time, they lobbied for a general expansion of education for Africans. Furthermore, as European racism and commitment to indirect rule threatened to sideline them from positions of authority, educated elites demanded access to colonial employment.Footnote 67 Though Zachernuk is most interested in the interplay between ideas from the diaspora and Nigerian intellectual activity, he clearly demonstrates that educated elites took the lead in combating European racism and that appealing for more and better education was an important part of their platform. In both Nigeria and Senegal, therefore, Western-style schooling seems to have played an important role in the development of racial politics.

The question of the type of schooling most appropriate for Africans became politicized elsewhere as well. This issue emerged in the Southern Rhodesian community of Umchingwe, where, according to Carol Summers, elders approached officials in 1930 with a petition in favor of a local school for which they pledged to contribute financially. Despite the men's request that the school focus on academic subjects, the government approved plans for an industrial school and expected the community to provide labor for its construction. Facing a lack of workers to build the school and consistently low attendance once it opened, the government decided to end its operation. Summers suggests that this situation stemmed from generational conflict that limited fathers' ability to control their sons and from parents' waning enthusiasm for a school that no longer promised to provide the kind of economic and social advancement for which they had hoped. Africans viewed education as a way of coping with the racial politics of colonial society and as the basis for making ‘claims on mission patrons and the white-dominated state’, Summers observes. Thus, ‘demands for education were explicit attempts to negotiate not just economic issues, but also a place within Southern Rhodesia's increasingly segregated culture and society.’Footnote 68 Though the demography and social relations of Southern Rhodesia differed from colonial Senegal, Africans in both places seem to have associated colonial schooling with racial discourses.

As these comparisons indicate, Africans not infrequently connected debates about schooling to larger issues of racial discrimination and political exclusion. They viewed schooling as an opportunity for social mobility and the basis for claims to equality with whites; it was thus crucial that African schoolchildren benefit from a thoroughly European education. Africans in many places recognized that the provision of vocational schooling was a colonial tactic meant to separate African and European children and to relegate Africans to inferior education. As such, the politics of education quality and access often informed discourses of race.

CONCLUSION

This was certainly the case in Senegal where, even if they were not immediately successful in obtaining guarantees for equal access to schooling and metropolitan curricula, the participants in the debates discussed in this article had an important impact on concepts of race in the colony. As they protested against the shift toward segregation in education in the early twentieth century, these black and métis actors deployed a language of race and color. They did not seek to reclaim a specific word, as later generations of intellectuals would when they engaged with the concept of négritude. Instead, in their letters and speech, these early twentieth century actors helped shape a broad racial discourse that was significant more for its political utility than for its cultural content. These actors used racial language to criticize specific instances of exclusion as discriminatory, unequal, and unbefitting of France. Processes like this facilitated the dissemination within urban society of racial language and the criticisms of racial exclusion to which it was attached.

In this way, debates about access to colonial schooling figured into the larger campaign for recognition of citizenship rights among Africans in the Communes in the first decades of the twentieth century. French-style schooling prepared Africans for political participation and citizenship, especially when, in urban schools, they received the same civic education as their French peers. Attending urban schools also invited Africans to blur the lines between themselves and their rulers, boundaries that, as Ann Stoler notes, colonial governments tried very hard to maintain.Footnote 69 The argument for access to urban schools was thus inherently linked to claims of political rights and citizenship. Furthermore, it seems likely that the education controversy of 1909–10 helped prepare the way for the election of 1914, through which Blaise Diagne became Senegal's first black representative to the French National Assembly. The 1909 General Council session gave the newly elected and still not widely known Galandou Diouf the opportunity to begin to establish his credentials as an advocate for African rights, which he would later parlay into his roles as a founding member of the Young Senegalese party, a supporter of Blaise Diagne, and eventually, a deputy in his own right. The issues of importance to the African electorate in 1914 were familiar too: recognition of citizenship, racial inclusion, and equality, and education.Footnote 70

These concerns continued to drive politics in Senegal and in French West Africa several decades later when, as France sought to rebuild its empire after the Second World War, African political leaders worked for recognition of colonial subjects as citizens of the French empire. They succeeded in 1946 and then, as Frederick Cooper has shown, they used this new citizenship as the basis for additional claims – for equal rights vis-à-vis the French and for the reform of colonial labor laws.Footnote 71 This political activity of the 1940s and 1950s may be read as an effort to transcend racism and segregation, as Africans sought the equality and belonging they believed citizenship guaranteed. Thus, it would seem that debates about segregation in schools in the early twentieth century and the racialization of political discourse that accompanied them resonated long after the controversies themselves died down. Indeed, given the immense civic, political, and economic significance of schooling in the Communes, debates about the role of ‘the color of the pupils’ in the colony's schools made an important and lasting contribution to the politics of race and segregation in the society at large.

Footnotes

*

This research was generously funded by Rowan University, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program, the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship. I am grateful to Sara Berry and Pier Larson for taking the time to read and comment on many drafts of this article and to this journal's anonymous readers and editors for their useful suggestions.

Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid

* This research was generously funded by Rowan University, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad program, the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and a TIAA-CREF Ruth Simms Hamilton Research Fellowship. I am grateful to Sara Berry and Pier Larson for taking the time to read and comment on many drafts of this article and to this journal's anonymous readers and editors for their useful suggestions.

References

1 Sénégal et Dépendances, Conseil Général: Session Ordinaire de décembre 1909 (Saint-Louis, 1909), 204–5Google Scholar.

2 Ibid. 204–16, 223–34.

3 Moumouni, A., Education in Africa (New York, 1968), 37–47Google Scholar; Buchert, L., Education in the Development of Tanzania, 1919–90 (London, 1994), 15–31Google Scholar; P. Gifford and T. C. Weiskel, ‘African education in a colonial context: French and British styles’, in Prosser Gifford and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule (New Haven, 1971), 663–711; Hlatshwayo, S. A., Education and Independence: Education in South Africa, 1658–1988 (Westport, 2000)Google Scholar; Ssekamwa, J. C. and Lugumba, S. M. E., A History of Education in East Africa (1973; 2nd edn, Kampala, 2001)Google Scholar.

4 See, for example, West, M. O., ‘Ndabaningi Sithole, Garfield Todd and the Dadaya school strike of 1947’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 18 (1992), 297–316CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Summers, C., ‘“Subterranean evil” and “tumultuous riot” in Buganda: authority and alienation at King's College, Budo, 1942’, Journal of African History, 47 (2006), 93–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Parsons, T. H., Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa (Athens, OH, 2004), 5Google Scholar.

6 Summers, C., Colonial Lessons: Africans' Education in Southern Rhodesia, 1918–1940 (Portsmouth, 2002)Google Scholar, 1, 4, 12.

7 D. Bouche, ‘L'Enseignement dans les territoires français de l'afrique occidentale de 1817 à 1920’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris I, 1974); Seck, P. I., La Stratégie culturelle de la France en Afrique: l'enseignement colonial (1817–1960) (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar; Barthélémy, P., ‘La formation des Africaines à l’école normale d'institutrices de l'AOF de 1938 à 1958’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 169:170 (2003), 371–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ly, B., Les Instituteurs au Sénégal de 1903 à 1945 (Paris, 2009)Google Scholar.

8 White, O., Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895–1960 (Oxford, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 3. See also Conklin, A. L., A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, 1997), 130–9Google Scholar.

9 G. Kelly, ‘Learning to be marginal: schooling in interwar French West Africa’, in David H. Kelly (ed.), French Colonial Education: Essays on Vietnam and West Africa (New York, 2000), 196.

10 Glassman, J., War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington, 2011)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

11 Hall, B. S., A History of Race in Muslim West Africa, 1600–1960 (Cambridge, 2011), 16–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Ibid. 9.

13 Bouche, ‘L'Enseignement’, I, 279–320; R. T. Ware III, ‘Knowledge, faith, and power: a history of Qur'anic schooling in 20th century Senegal’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2004), 204–19.

14 Johnson, G. W. Jr., The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford, 1971), 38–46Google Scholar, 80–4; Biondi, J.-P., Saint-Louis du Sénégal: Mémoires d'un métissage (Paris, 1987), 100–1Google Scholar; D. Sarr and R. Roberts, ‘The jurisdiction of Muslim tribunals in colonial Senegal, 1857–1932’, in K. Mann and R. Roberts (eds.), Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, 1991), 131–8; Shereikis, R., ‘From law to custom: the shifting legal status of Muslim originaires in Kayes and Medine, 1903–13’, Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 267–8, 275–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coquery-Vidrovitch, C., ‘Nationalité et citoyenneté en Afrique Occidentale Français: originaires et citoyens dans le Sénégal colonial’, Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 288–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Deherme, G., L'Afrique Occidentale Française: action politique, action économique, action sociale (Paris, 1908), 21–2Google Scholar; Conklin, A Mission, 74–5, 87–90, 108–19.

16 For more on these policies, deemed the ‘mise en valeur’ of the colonies, see Conklin, A Mission, 41–3.

17 Hardy, G., Une conquête morale: l'enseignement en A.O. F. (Paris, 1917), 5–17Google Scholar; Suret-Canale, J., French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945 (New York, 1971), 341–3Google Scholar; Conklin, A Mission, chap. 2.

18 Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (ANS) 1G4, 24 Nov. 1903, Projet d'arrêté portant réorganisation à l'enseignement dans l'Afrique Occidentale Française; ANS J19, nd, Rapport de M. le Gouverneur Guy sur la situation de l'Enseignement au Sénégal en 1903; ANS 2G7/37, Sénégal: Service de l'Enseignement. Rapport Annuel, 1907; Lemé, R., L'Enseignement en Afrique Occidentale Française (Corbeil, 1906), 29–34Google Scholar, 44–6; Roux, E., Manuel à l'Usage des Administrateurs et du Personnel des Affaires Indigènes de la Colonie du Sénégal et des Colonies relevant du Gouvernement Général de l'Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris, 1911), 513, 519Google Scholar; Bouche, ‘L'Enseignement’, II, 498–501; Ly, Les Instituteurs, I, 206–7, 231–2.

19 Arrêté 1097, Journal Officiel du Sénégal, 14 Oct. 1909, 581–2Google Scholar; Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 194–5, 204; Roux, Manuel, 525–6; Bouche, ‘L'Enseignement’, II, 603.

20 ANS J19, 2 Mar. 1909, gouverneur général Ponty to lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal; ANS J19, Dakar 13 Sep. 1909, gouverneur général to lieutenant gouverneur, Sénégal.

21 See, for example, Ngalamulume, K., ‘Keeping the city totally clean: yellow fever and the politics of prevention in colonial Saint-Louis-du-Sénégal, 1850–1914’, Journal of African History, 45 (2004), 183–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘Residential segregation in African cities’, in T. Falola and S. J. Salm (eds.), Urbanization and African Cultures (Durham, 2005), 344–7; Schler, L., The Strangers of New Bell: Immigration, Public Space and Community in Colonial Douala, Cameroon, 1914–1960 (Pretoria, 2008)Google Scholar, chap. 2; Bigon, L., A History of Urban Planning in Two West African Colonial Capitals: Residential Segregation in British Lagos and French Dakar (1850–1930) (Lewiston, 2009)Google Scholar, part 2, chap. 3.

22 Echenberg, M., Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–1945 (Portsmouth, 2002), 27–30Google Scholar.

23 D'Anfreville de la Salle, Notre vieux SéNégal: son histoire, son état actuel, ce qu'il peut devenir (Paris, 1909), 58Google Scholar; O'Brien, R. Cruise, White Society in Black Africa: The French in Senegal (Evanston, 1972), 47Google Scholar, 54. Despite the incompleteness and likely inaccuracies that characterize these (and most) colonial population statistics, the general trend toward an increase in the European population is clear. In 1909, Rufisque had some 12,446 total residents and Dakar had 18,447. Cruise O'Brien determined that Dakar's European population was 2,500 in 1910. A government census completed in 1914 is generally consistent with the trends discussed here. ANS 22G29 Tableau récapitulatif de la population européenne, 1914; ANS 22G29, Tableau récapitulatif de la population des principales villes, 1914.

24 D'Anfreville, Notre, 37, 105. This proportion held in 1914, according to a census document. Of the 380 Europeans in Saint-Louis reported, 211 were men, 85 were women, and 84 were children under 15. ANS 22G29 Tableau récapitulatif de la population européenne, 1914.

25 ANS 1G3, Dakar, 22 Mar. 1905, M. Melou, Directeur de l’école de Dakar, to M. l'Inspecteur. Melou proposed solving this problem by creating a ‘special class’ for whites; Lieutenant Governor Camille Guy rejected this in a margin note.

26 Betts, R. F., Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York, 1961), 78Google Scholar.

27 Ly, Les instituteurs, VI, 463–4.

28 ANS 1G18, Saint-Louis, 9 Nov. 1904, Chef du Service de l'Enseignement to gouverneur. Emphasis in original.

29 ANS 1G18, Saint-Louis, 8 Nov. 1904, Souleymane Sao to Secrétaire Général du Gouvernement du Sénégal.

30 ANS 1G18, Saint-Louis, 9 Nov. 1904, Chef du Service de l'Enseignement to gouverneur and response.

31 ANS 1G3, Saint-Louis, 14 Nov. 1904, Hyacinthe Devès to gouverneur. Gamin does not necessarily imply a biological relationship. Orphans and children not recognized by their fathers often had two given names (such as Hyppolite Pierre) rather than a surname, and ‘Niay’ is a variation on a common Wolof and Sereer surname.

32 ANS 1G3, Saint-Louis, 14 Nov. 1904, Alkébé N'Diaye to Secrétaire Général. Emphasis in original.

33 ANS 1G3, 8 Nov. 1905, Inspecteur to M. Couraud. Emphasis in original.

34 Ibid.

35 This approach was by no means common to all European educators. Rather, some employed more obvious racial markers. See, for example, ANS 1G3, Dakar, 22 Mar. 1905, M. Melou, Directeur de l’école de Dakar, to M. l'Inspecteur; ANS 1G3, 27 Mar. 1905, Directrice Duhaumont to Directeur de l'Enseignement Primaire du Sénégal.

36 ANS 1G3, Gorée, 20 Mar. 1906, E. Mutterer, Commis des Affaires indigènes to Directeur de l'Enseignement; ANS 1G3, Gorée, 24 Mar. 1906, E. Degrave to Chef du Service de l'Enseignement.

37 Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 398–400; Ly, Les instituteurs, VI, 447. Both of these explanations seem likely. In a comparable case, a 1908 report indicated that the authority of a Dakar teacher, M. Niénat, suffered because he was ‘“assimilé.”’ Students, and especially the ‘Europeans’ among them, would have more respect for a ‘metropolitan schoolmaster’, his supervisor concluded. See ANS J28, Dakar, 7 Jul. 1908, Rapport sur le cours complémentaire, année scolaire 1907–1908.

38 Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 398–400.

39 See, for example, ANS 1G3, Dakar, 22 Mar. 1905, M. Melou, Directeur de l’école de Dakar, to M. l'Inspecteur; ANS J19, Saint-Louis, 10 May 1910.

40 The General Council had twenty members. In 1909, there were three black, at least eight métis, and at least seven white members. The two remaining members may have been métis or French.

41 Johnson, Emergence, 117–19. As noted above, Hyacinthe wrote a letter in 1904 protesting the exclusion of two children from a Saint-Louis school. He had also participated vocally in many discussions of education in previous General Council sessions. On this debate, see also Bouche, ‘L'Enseignement’, II, 604–5.

42 Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 204–5.

43 Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 213, 215, 229, 234; Johnson, Emergence, 118. The resolution required a majority to pass, and 16 members were present.

44 Sénégal et Dépendances, 1909, 206–7.

45 Ibid. 208, 211.

46 Ibid. 212.

47 Ibid. 212–13.

48 Ibid. 214–16.

49 Ibid. 215, 226.

50 Ibid. 234. See also ANS J19, Saint-Louis, 4 Mar. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal to gouverneur général.

51 ANS J19, Saint-Louis, 4 Mar. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal to gouverneur général.

52 Zuccarelli, F., La vie politique sénégalaise (1789–1940), I (Paris, 1987), 96Google Scholar; H. Jones, ‘Citizens and subjects: métis society, identity and the struggle over colonial politics in Saint Louis, Senegal, 1870–1920’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Michigan State University, 2003), 224.

53 ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 19 Feb. 1910, Calvayrac to chef du service de l'enseignement; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 23 Feb. 1910, Couraud: Rapport adressé a Monsieur le chef du service de l'enseignement; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 24 Feb. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to Maire de Saint-Louis; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 25 Feb. 1910, Devès to gouverneur; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 28 Feb. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to Maire; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 16 Apr. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to gouverneur général.

54 ANS 2G7/37, Sénégal: Service de l'Enseignement. Rapport Annuel, 1907.

55 ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 16 Apr. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to gouverneur général.

56 Johnson, Emergence, 116–21; Zuccarelli, La Vie, 89–96. For more on the Devès family, see: Manchuelle, F., ‘Métis et colons: la famille Devès et l’émergence politique des Africains au Sénégal, 1881–1897’, Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 96:24–4 (1984), 477–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 ANS 3G3/5, Thiès, 9 Jul. 1910, déposition de Amadou Sega; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 20 Jul. 1910, Demba Niagna, laptot in Saint-Louis to gouverneur-Sénégal; ANS 3G3/6, Extrait de la Délibération du Conseil Municipal, 26 Aug. 1916; Jones, ‘Citizens’, 198, 204–6. After a brief investigation into Devès's public life, the new administration rejected the monument proposal.

58 ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 30 May 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to gouverneur général; ANS 3G3/5, Saint-Louis, 4 Jun. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to gouverneur général; ANS 3G3/5, télégramme, Saint-Louis, 15 Jul. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur to gouverneur; ANS 3G3/5, télégramme, 22 Sep. 1910, Colonies Paris to gouverneur général; ANS 2G10/12, Saint-Louis, 18 May 1911, lieutenant gouverneur Sénégal to gouverneur général: Rapport sur la situation politique et administrative de la colonie du Sénégal pendant l'année 1910; ANS 2G11/6, Sénégal: Situation Politique, Territoires d'Administration Directe, 1911; ANS 3G3/6, Saint-Louis, 24 Jun. 1917, lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal to gouverneur général; Johnson, Emergence, 121; Zuccarelli, La Vie, 96; Jones, ‘Citizens’, 224–6.

59 ANS J19, Saint-Louis, 16 Apr. 1910, lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal to gouverneur général.

60 Ibid. See also ANS J19, Saint-Louis, 10 May 1910, lieutenant gouverneur du Sénégal to gouverneur général; d'Anfreville, Notre, 116–119. Right after the school closing, many European students began attending the Ecole Brière de l'Isle and some went to the Ecole Duval, both in Saint-Louis. ANS 2G10/12(4), Service de l'Enseignement, Rapport Annuel, 1910.

61 ANS 2G10/12(4), Service de l'Enseignement, Rapport Annuel, 1910.

62 ANS J13, 30 Jan. 1913, Arrêté réorganisant le service de l'enseignement au Sénégal; ANS J13, nd [1913], Note à M. le lieutenant gouverneur.

63 ANS J13, 27 May 1913, Extrait du Procès-Verbal du Conseil Municipal de Saint-Louis.

64 ANS J13, nd [1913], Errata [to the 30 Jan. 1913 arrêté]; Bouche, ‘Enseignement,’ II, 637–8.

65 Hardy, Une conquête, vii–xi, 69.

66 Gifford and Weiskel, ‘African’, 690–4.

67 Zachernuk, P. S., Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville, 2000), 56–61Google Scholar, chap. 4. See also Abernethy, D. B., The Political Dilemma of Popular Education: An African Case (Stanford, 1969), 72–3Google Scholar, 89–90.

68 Summers, Colonial, 59–69. In western Kenya during the 1930s, elders from Maragoli made similar demands for a school that would provide their sons with a literary education. See Mutongi, K., Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (Chicago, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 8.

69 Stoler, A. L., Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, 2002)Google Scholar, chaps. 1 and 5.

70 Johnson, Emergence, 118, 146–7, 165–70. The Blaise Diagne laws of 1915 and 1916 settled the question of citizenship for residents of the Communes, allowing them to serve in the regular French army and recognizing them as French citizens.

71 Cooper, F., Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge, 2002), 40–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, F., ‘Possibility and constraint: African independence in historical perspective’, Journal of African History, 49 (2008), 174–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.