Language between powers, power between languages

Abstract

In a follow-up to his article on linguistic colonialism during the German occupation of Togo, in a recent volume of the Cahiers d'Études africaines, the author examines the evolution of language and schooling under the French mandate administration (1919-1945). This era, marked by the absence of a concrete government education policy, presents a particularly complex and ambiguous problematic for the historian. Three themes guide the narrative: the development of schooling under the mandate; the anglophilia of the southern Togolese population; and the destabilization of the main indigenous language, Ewe. The first section offers also a critical review of a recent work on the subject by Marie-France Lange. Central to the argument is the desire to provoke a discussion of the role of language in colonial education policy. But above ail, in order to further advance the issue of African agency in African history, the author evokes the concept of “engagement” to explain the indigenous participation in their social, and economic and political development.