Education was profoundly political in colonial French West Africa (1895–1960), a federation that included the modern-day countries of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), Benin (formerly Dahomey), Côte d’Ivoire, and Niger. It shaped political discourse across the federation as officials, educators, missionaries, African families, and African students weighed in on the type of education they thought best. Dissatisfaction with education policies or with the quality of schools encouraged Africans to become politically active, and the practical skills they learned in school along with the status gained through school attendance prepared young people to agitate for colonial reform and ultimately for independence. Colonial officials engaged in a back and forth with the Catholic missionary orders that provided public schooling in much of the region, especially as they sought to balance early 20th-century metropolitan demands for secularization with the colonies’ need for reliable and inexpensive schools. In the second half of the 19th century, administrators attempted to undermine Qur’an schools through regulation and surveillance, hoping that this would result in increased attendance in French schools. In doing so, they competed directly with popular Islamic leaders and the interests of the Muslim community, which had the unintended effect of involving African Muslims in colonial politics in new ways. Officials also attempted to “adapt” colonial school curricula to the local realities of African communities, usually by decreasing academic content and focusing instead on vocational and agricultural training. Yet over several decades, they encountered significant resistance from urban educated elites and rural farmers alike, all of whom pushed in one way or another for schooling that would allow for social mobility and, ultimately, claims for equality with the French. Finally, education played a crucial role in formal politics in the region, preparing Africans for political candidacy and leadership, mobilizing the voting public, and helping to determine access to voting rights after African subjects became citizens in 1946. Education and politics were thus inextricably linked in colonial French West Africa.
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.
This article focuses on interracial families in early twentieth-century Senegal, exploring how relationships between French fathers and their racially mixed children simultaneously challenged and reflected colonial racism. Relying on applications for scholarships and related correspondence, it offers detailed case studies of two such families and a discussion of wider trends. The article argues that despite the duty and love that they felt toward their mixed-race children, French fathers continued to see themselves as colonists and to accept some of the ideas about race and power that this entailed.
A la fin du XIXe siècle, presque deux cents enfants du Sénégal ont reçu des bourses métropolitaines, qui les ont permis de suivre les cours dans un lycée ou un collège de France, de la Tunisie, ou de l’Algérie. Leurs parents ont dû choisir un correspondant qui habitait près de l’école. Le correspondant devait assurer le paiement des frais de l’école, subvenir aux besoins de l’élève, et surveiller des sorties occasionnelles. Cet article examine les relations entre les correspondants et les boursiers sénégalais, et les réseaux transatlantiques qu’elles ont produits. Il se concentre surtout sur l’histoire d’un boursier qui s’appelait Durand Armstrong, dont le père était en communication fréquent avec son correspondant. L’article prétend que les relations entre boursiers et correspondants ont compliqué les fractures sociales de la colonie. Ces élèves étaient donc des intermédiaires, qui, grâce à leurs réseaux, leur éducation, et leur mobilité, ont pu remettre en cause les catégories sociales coloniales.
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