Vocabularies of Spatiality in French Colonial Urbanism: Some Covert Rationales of Street Names in Colonial Dakar, West Africa and Saigon, Indochina

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (8) ◽  
pp. 1109-1127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambe J. Njoh ◽  
Esther P. Chie
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Political Power ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
French Military ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Colonial Urbanism

The study analyses toponymic practices in two colonial spaces on two continents. The colonial spaces, Dakar and Saigon, were capitals of the Federation of French West Africa and French Indochina, respectively. Toponymy is used as a tool to articulate socio-cultural and political power in both spaces; also, streets were christened after French military, politico-administrative and religious personalities. Two differences are noted. First, streets in colonial Saigon were named after French military heroes and clergymen, while streets in Dakar were named after French political luminaries. Second, post-colonial Saigon witnessed efforts to re-appropriate the city’s identity, but not so in Dakar.

Francophone Africa at fifty

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Francophone Africa ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan

2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the ‘Year of Africa’. All France’s colonies in sub-Saharan Africa gained their independence in that year. This book brings together leading scholars from across the globe to review ‘Francophone Africa at Fifty’. It examines continuities from the colonial to the post-colonial period and analyses the diverse and multi-faceted legacy of French colonial rule in sub-Saharan Africa. It also reviews the decolonization of French West Africa in comparative perspective and observes how independence is remembered and commemorated fifty years on.

scholarly journals The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Plants, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World

2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 432-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Monnais ◽  
Noémi Tousignant
Keyword(s):  
Medicinal Plant ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Public Health Care ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Plant Medicine ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Simple Equations ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractColonial pharmacists bio-prospected, acclimatized, chemically screened, and tinkered with plants and their parts, hoping to create products to supply colonial public health care, metropolitan industries, and imperial markets. This article's approach is to examine the trajectories of expertise of two French colonial pharmacists, Franck Guichard and Joseph Kerharo, to illuminate the history of modern medicinal plant research. Both men studied medicinal plants as part of their colonial duties, yet their interests in indigenous therapies exceeded and outlived colonial projects. We take this “overflow” as our point of departure to explore how science transformed medicinal plant values in French colonial and postcolonial contexts. Our focus is on the relationship between value and space—on the processes of conceptual and material (de-/re-)localization through which plant value is calculated, intensified, and distributed. We study and compare these processes in French Indochina and French West Africa where Guichard and Kerharo, respectively, engaged in them most intensively. We show that their engagements with matter, value, knowledge, and mobility defy easy categorizations of medicinal plant science as either extractive or neo-traditionalist. By eschewing simple equations of scientists' motivations with political projects and knowledge-production, we argue that approaching plant medicine through trajectories of expertise opens up grounds for finer analyses of how colonial power and projects, and their legacies, shaped scientific activity.

Urban Life in French West Africa (FWA)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Odile Goerg
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Saint Louis ◽  
Use Of Time ◽  
French Colonial

During colonial times, cities, whether ancient or modern, underwent enormous changes. Urban life can be seen as a story of continuity and change, of invention and adaptation. Multiple constraints were imposed by colonial rule (e.g., spatial framework and mobility regulations, sanitation policy, control of the use of time, and so on), but new opportunities also presented themselves, professionally or otherwise, for example, in terms of defining one’s identity. Older inhabitants, as well as newcomers flowing to the main cities, especially from the 1930s, formed the foundation for a new, urbanized society. To frame the study of “urban life” within the political context of “French West Africa” presupposes both that there is something specific to the cities in the eight colonies, which, eventually, constituted FWA (French West Africa) plus the Togo mandate, and that there is something common to all these western African cities under French colonial rule. None of this is really valid. There are as many similarities with urban life in British West Africa as there are differences between the cities. When discussing urban life within the French colonial cities, one can mention the disproportionate allocation of space and resources aimed at satisfying the needs of the colonizers, or the will to rule and control all aspects of urban life. What is common between more than one-thousand-year-old Tombouctou and Conakry, a little more than a century old? Between Saint-Louis du Sénégal, which served as a main entrepôt for international trade from the mid-17th century, and Lomé, with Bè villages in the hinterland, founded by local merchants in the 1880s to escape British customs taxes? But despite the shortcomings of this methodological framework, one can form a general idea of urban life in colonial cities, provided that it be nuanced and contextualized, always bearing in mind a broader comparative framework encompassing British and French policies elsewhere in the empires. Urban life can be understood as the ways city dwellers organize their everyday activities: work, social interactions, but also leisure activities or political involvement. All these aspects changed over time, as city dwellers asserted themselves and, gradually, obtained more legal rights.

Photography, Identity, and Migration

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Johann Le Guelte
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Racial Stereotypes ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Identification Practices

This article examines the politics of interwar colonial identification practices put into place by the French colonial state in order to curtail the mobility of colonial (im)migrants. I argue that photography was used as a tool of imperial control in both French West Africa (AOF) and metropolitan France, since colonial men’s inability to provide the required photographic portraits often prevented them from moving around the empire. In response, colonial subjects appropriated photography in alternative ways to subvert these administrative restrictions. Moreover, they took advantage of metropolitan racial stereotypes to contest Western identification practices.

The History of Guinea

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saliou Camara
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Mineral Resources ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Nation States ◽  
History Of ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Civilian Leadership

Like most of post-colonial African nation-states, Guinea is the product of Europe’s colonial partition of the continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. France followed up on the Berlin arrangements with military campaigns against West African rulers and treaties with other European colonial powers (Britain and Portugal) vying for territories in the region and the Republic of Liberia. However, the ancient communities whose descendants inhabit the Republic of Guinea were part and parcel of some of the greatest kingdoms and empires that marked West Africa’s history between the 6th and 19th centuries (Ghana, Mali, Songhay, Batè, Wassolon, and Futa-Jallon). Islam, which was introduced into the region through trans-Saharan trade, scholarship, and wars involving Muslim North Africa and Islamized elites of the Bilad as-Sudan, gained prominence and ultimately became the dominant religion in Guinea. The Atlantic Slave Trade spearheaded by the Portuguese, and the succeeding legitimate trade opened West Africa to colonial conquest and occupation in the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Under French occupation, Guinea underwent major political, cultural, social, and economic mutations brought about by events and processes such as its integration into the French West Africa Federation and its multifaceted participation in the World Wars, as well as in France’s colonial wars in Indochina and Algeria. In the process, a nationalist anti-colonial consciousness evolved and crystallized, leading to the country’s advent to independence in 1958. As the sole French colony to reject Charles de Gaulle’s Franco-African Community, its modern history is in many ways unique. Since independence, Guinea has gone through a pro-Soviet single-party regime, military rule, and a shaky transition to the current civilian leadership, whose record of democratic governance has been checkered at best. Economic development has also been largely elusive, despite the abundance of arable land and mineral resources. This notable uniqueness notwithstanding, the history of Guinea does epitomize in some respects that of the African continent.

The Presentation of Indigenous Society in the Schools of French West Africa and Indochina, 1918 to 1938

1984 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail P. Kelly
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Educational Policy ◽  
Educational System ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
The Past ◽  
Curriculum Guides ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Indigenous Society

The historiography of French colonial educational policy and practice has advanced considerably over the past decade. Not long ago W. Bryant Mum-ford's allegation, “Africans learn to be French,” was taken literally, and most scholars presumed that France, either out of cultural arrogance or blind reflex, brought metropolitan schooling in undiluted form to her colonies. We know better now. Recent studies of education in French West Africa and Indochina have suggested that colonial schools were not only adapted to the colonial context, but taught the students a great deal about their own societies. This article focuses on the knowledge that the two basic school levels, the elementary and primary, distributed about indigenous society in two French colonial federations—French West Africa and Indochina—in the period 1918–38 and speculates as to why the content and distribution of that knowledge took the forms they did. The discussion is based on analysis of texts in use in the primary schools, government curriculum guides, and student school notebooks. It begins with a brief survey of the structure of the educational system and curriculum of the schools as a whole, then proceeds to an analysis of the presentation of indigenous society in the schools.

scholarly journals Emmanuel Mounier and the Awakening of Black Africa

2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-222
Author(s):  
Michael Kelly
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The Awakening ◽  
Black Africa ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Presence Africaine

Emmanuel Mounier, Director of the Catholic review Esprit, was a pioneering participant in criticising French colonial activities. The debates of the 1940s were strongly framed by France's ‘mission to civilise’ its colonies, which was supported by universal humanist aspirations but was also criticised as masking policies of exploitation and oppression. The resulting tensions are well demonstrated by Emmanuel Mounier's book L'Éveil de l'Afrique noire, published after a visit to several areas of French West Africa in the spring of 1947, at a crucial moment in France's relations with its colonies. This article focuses on the components published in Esprit, Combat, and Présence africaine, which outlined the positive roles that France could play in the region, but warned against the dangers if opportunities were missed, and recognised the particular difficulties confronting the rising African elites. A closer examination of the discursive strategies he deployed shows that Mounier's frame of reference remained within the paternalist paradigm of republican humanism, and that he saw France's role as a duty to guide the development of Africa. However, in the myths and metaphors he adopted, a more radical vision can be identified, which expressed an underlying anti-colonialism.

‘Saving French West Africa’: the French army, African soldiers and military propaganda during the 1950s1

2013 ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
Ruth Ginio
Keyword(s):  
West African ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
French Military ◽  
Strategic Reorganization ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

Continuities of military structures and of protagonists within these structures are a particularly important aspect of the process of transforming colonial domination into the uneven partnerships of the post-colonial period. Ruth Ginio discusses in this context the role of the so-called tirailleurs sénégalais (becoming soldats africains), West African (veteran) soldiers mobilized by the French for service during the Second World War and the wars in Indochina and Algeria. Ginio shows that the necessities of the anticolonial revolts and widespread discontent among African soldiers in the aftermath of the campaigns in Europe in 1944/45, led to a strategic reorganization of the treatment of these individuals. Notably, the author analyses the contribution of French propaganda in the context of psychological action. The French military employed audiovisual means, namely cinema, to influence the African soldiers. Another aspect of this complex relationship was the priority given to attempts at separating the African units from the local populations during the campaigns – a strategy that did not work out in all cases. By the end of the colonial period, the experience of these various methods had, as Ginio argues, qualitatively changed the attitudes of African veterans. The latter would retain a bond to the military officers of the former colonial power beyond the threshold of independence.

Investigating the Investigators

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Ruth Ginio
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Way

Three cases of re-opened murder investigations in French West Africa are at the heart of this article. My aim is to examine these cases as a lens into everyday colonial policing that was not directly linked to major anti-colonial protests. All three inquiries into low-ranking colonial officers and the way they conducted their investigations took place during the 1930s, in Mauritania, Senegal, and Dahomey. While their circumstances were different, the cases reflect the flawed and unprofessional character of colonial investigations. They also demonstrate that murder investigations—as well as criticism of them—were powered by two crucial French colonial notions: the maintenance of public order and the ideology of the civilizing mission.

Decolonization in French West Africa

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Chafer
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
French West Africa ◽  
Perceived Need ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Second World

Studies of French decolonization in West Africa have traditionally treated it as a planned and reasonably smooth process. It has therefore been portrayed as a successful decolonization that stands in stark contrast to the much more conflictual decolonization processes in Indochina (1947–1954) and Algeria (1954–1962), which were marked by prolonged wars. This approach has tended to give pride of place to the role of individuals—members of France’s governing elites and African political leaders—who are portrayed as having successfully managed the transition to independence. While the importance of such individuals cannot be denied, it is important to recognize that French decolonization in West Africa was a contingent process. Shaped by the particular nature of French colonial rule in the region, the new international context after 1945, events on the ground, and—on the French side—the perceived need to maintain empire at all costs in order to restore French grandeur after the humiliation of defeat and occupation in the Second World War, it was a process that involved a multiplicity of French and African actors who were not in control of the policy agenda but who were, on the contrary, operating in a highly constrained context and constantly being forced to react to rapidly unfolding events. De Gaulle finally decided to grant independence in 1959, and within a year all the territories of former French West Africa had gained their political independence. However, political independence did not mean French withdrawal and the end of French dominance. There were many continuities between the colonial and postcolonial periods, which have been analyzed in a burgeoning literature on French neocolonialism in sub-Saharan Africa. Decolonization should therefore be seen as a process that started well before French rule formally ended in 1960 and that is—arguably—still ongoing.

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