The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Century Globalization Project

Abstract

This article analyses French assimilation policy towards the four communes of the colony of Senegal, placing it in a new conceptual framework of ‘globalization’ and ‘post‐colonial studies’. Between the end of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth century, the four cities of Saint‐Louis, Gorée, Rufisque and Dakar were granted municipal status, while their inhabitants acquired French citizenship. However, the acquisition of these political privileges went together with a refusal on the part of these ‘citizens’ to submit themselves to the French code civil. Their resistance manifested itself in particular in the forging of an urban culture that differed from both the metropolitan model and the Senegambian models of the independent kingdoms on the colony's fringes or the societies integrated as protectorates. This article argues that, at the very heart of this colonial project and despite its marked assimilationist and jacobin overtones, a strong project of cultural and political hybridization developed. The inhabitants of the quatre communes forged their own civilité which enabled them to participate in a global colonial culture on the basis of local idioms.