Sowing Seeds, Harvesting Political Expectations

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Abstract This article addresses two understudied concerns in Senegalese historiography: the peripheral region of eastern Senegal during the twentieth century and rural perceptions and manifestations of Senegalese citizenship. It argues that farmers in sparsely populated eastern Senegal engaged with the colonial state primarily as members of the Sociétés de Prévoyance and successive state agricultural institutions rather than indirectly as members of Sufi brotherhoods. Acting as “farmer-citizens” of the postwar state rather than “peasant-members” of the Sociétés, rural residents impelled institutional reforms and inspired African politicians’ rhetoric. Despite (or perhaps because of) the changes wrenched by French colonialism and World War II, farmers advocated for a social contract based in Senegambian moral economies of agrarian production. Given the longstanding importance of regional migrant labor, farmers’ work arrangements affected the colonial and postindependence economy and statecraft. Senegalese and Malian farmers’ understandings and expectations of political belonging influenced the legislation of citizenship in mid-twentieth-century Senegal. This article uses colonial and postindependence administrative reports, Senegalese dissertations, and oral histories from the Senegal-Mali borderlands to find an articulation of agrarian citizenship attentive to jus seminum and jus sudoris rights based in seed and sweat that were brought to bear on existing civic and legal conceptions of citizenship based in jus sanguinis, jus soli, and jus culturae rights.