Urban Migration, Cash Cropping, and Calamity: The Spread of Islam among the Diola of Boulouf (Senegal), 1900–1940

Extract

Between 1900 and 1940 the establishment of French colonial administration and the introduction of cash crop agriculture led to far-reaching social and economic changes among the Diola of Boulouf, in southwestern Senegal. Also during this period, the Muslim religion began to attract converts in Boulouf. The growth of urban migration and trade, together with the sale of peanuts as a cash crop, brought a degree of financial autonomy to the young men who participated in these activities. Many of these individuals converted to Islam to achieve status not accessible to them in the traditional social structure.

During the 1930s a series of natural calamities afflicted Diola society. The cumulative effect of these disasters and of continuing social and economic change, was to promote a sense of loss of power over their world among the Diola. This led, in turn, to a great acceleration in the rate of religious conversion. By the beginning of World War II, a majority of the Diola of Boulouf had become Muslim.

The 220 thousand Diola are the largest ethnic group in the Lower Casamance region of southwestern Senegal. Sedentary rice farmers, they have a social organization comprising shallow patrilineages three or four generations deep. The 40 thousand people of Boulouf, the region north of the Casamance River, west of the administrative center of Bignona, and south of the Diouloulou marigot, are a subgroup with distinctive dialect and cultural traits. They inhabit twenty-one villages numbering from six hundred to six thousand persons; each community in turn contains two or more semi-autonomous wards. In southern Boulouf there is a sizeable Catholic population; northern Boulouf is, however, 95 percent Muslim. The Islamic area constitutes the subject of this study.