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Senghor's Rise to Power 1948–1951. Early Roots of French Sub-Saharan Decolonisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

Stefan Kras
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Extract

The historiography of the decolonisation of the French overseas empire offers its students a highly mixed picture. While the atrocities committed during the independence wars in Indochina and Algeria belong to the black pages of contemporary French history, the decolonisation of the French sub-Saharan territories is presented in a much more positive light. In 1960, France ‘gracefully’ agreed to the independence of fourteen of its African territories, after which close relations with the regimes of nearly all those states were nurtured until at least the 1980s. This smooth transfer of power is all the more remarkable when one compares it to the much more problematic British and Portuguese decolonisations in black Africa. How did the French do it? Or should one say: how did the Africans in the French territories do it? In this paper, I will attempt to unveil some of the critical political processes that took place in Senegal at the end of the 1940s, because this period was crucial in the formulation of die relation between French policymakers and an upcoming African political elite. In many ways, die processes that took place in Senegal during this period would determine die course of French policy towards all of its African possessions. A study of this period seems therefore more than justified.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1999 , pp. 91 - 113
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1999

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References

Notes

1 Chad, Oubangui-Chari (present-day Central African Republic), Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon.

2 Jean Suret-Canale has aggressively condemned French colonialism throughout his scholarly career. Suret-Canale's theses have recently been reproduced by Mamdani, Mahmood, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton 1996) 55–56Google Scholar. The arguments are unconvincing, since the proposed evidence is largely circumstancial. More systematic research is needed before sweeping generalisations about abuse in the French African territories during the post-World War Two period can be made.

3 d'Almeida-Topor, Hélène, ‘L'histoire de l'Afrique occidentale enseignée aux enfants de France’ in: Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg, L'Afrique occidentale au temps des François: Colmisateurs et colonisés, c. 1860–1960 (Paris 1992) 49–56.Google Scholar

4 Valette, Jacques, La France et l'Afrique: L'Afrique sub-saharienne de 1914 a 1960 (Paris 1994).Google Scholar

5 Among the most explicit are Mortimer, Edward, France and the Africans 1944–1960: A Political History (London 1969)Google Scholar and McNamara, Francis Terry, France in Black Africa (Washington 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Mortimer, France and the Africans, 20.

7 Morgenthau, Ruth Schachter, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford 1964) appendices.Google Scholar

8 During the 1950s, the work of this assembly remained largely unnoticed. The press was mostly negative, since it was viewed as an escape hatch where politicians who lost other elections could be parachuted. This critique was not entirely ungrounded; some metropolitan delegates almost never attended the AUF meetings (see Foccart park: Entretiens avec Philippe Gaillard I (Paris 1995) 97). Historians of the post-war French empire have largely ignored this assembly as well. Still, the memoirs of Jacques Foccart and some recent scholarly work (e.g. Cooper, Frederic, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge 1996CrossRefGoogle Scholar)) suggest that the AUF was an important platform where many issues concerning the overseas territories were discussed in a constructive way. Most African and metropolitan delegates worked hard to produce workable propositions for the National Assembly. It definitely was a useful instrument in keeping French-African relations smooth.

9 For Fourth Republic politics, see Agulhon, Maurice, Nouschi, André and Schor, Ralph, La France de 1940 á nos jours (Paris 1995) 126–127.Google Scholar

10 Zolberg, Aristide R., One-Party Government in the Ivory Coast (Princeton 1970) 97.Google Scholar

11 Siriex, Paul-Henri, Houphouët-Boigny ou la sagesse africaine (Paris 1986) 24.Google Scholar

12 Mortimer, France and the Africans, 72.

13 Ibid., 92.

14 The history of the RDA as a pan-African movement largely remains to be written. The most valuable account is probably still Ruth Schachter Morgenthau's Political Parties.

15 Mortimer, France and the Africans, 129–130.

16 Under the short-lived administration of Bourgès-Manoury (1957) an unprecedented six Africans held ministerial seats.

17 Conklin, Alice, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West-Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford 1997) provides a few clues.Google Scholar

18 Mitterrand, François, Présence française et abandon (Paris 1957) 171–206Google Scholar.

19 The reconstruction of the organisational structure of the ministry is based on documents I consulted in the Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence. Most of the files I studied were the Fonds ministériels, Affaires Politiques, from now on to be referred to by the abbreviation CAOM FM Affpol.

20 Cohen, William B., Rulers of Empire: The French Colonial Service in Africa (Stanford 1971) 134–135.Google Scholar

21 William Cohen is the only historian who has shown a thorough interest in Robert Delavignette. Throughout his scholarly work, Cohen has consistently drawn a very positive picture of this important French official.

22 Joseph Roger de Benoist, personal communication, 30 April 1997.

23 Zolberg, One-Party Government, 85.

24 Cohen, Rulers of Empire, 172.

25 Rapport politique du premier trimestre 1950, du gouverneur du Sénégal au Haut Commissaire, CAOM 2G50/140 and 143.

26 See for example Schachter Morgenthau, Political Parties, 166–218; Chaffard, Georges, Les camels secrets de la décolonisation (Paris 1965) 29–60, 99–132Google Scholar; Thobie, Jacques, Meynier, Gilbert, Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine and Ageron, Charles-Robert, Histoire de la France coloniale 1914–1990 (Paris 1990) 389–393.Google Scholar

27 The classic study is Johnson, G. Wesley Jr., The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford 1971)Google Scholar.

28 Zuccarelli, François, La vie politique sénégalaise (1789–1940) (Paris 1987) 135.Google Scholar

29 Vaillant, Janet G., Black, French and African: A Life of Léopold Sedar Senghor (Harvard 1990) 222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 Zuccarelli, François, Un parti politique africain: l'union Progressiste Sénégalaise (Paris 1970) 35.Google Scholar

31 Milcent, Ernest and Sordet, Monique, Léopold Sedar Senghor el la naissance de l'Ajrique modeme (Paris 1969) 115.Google Scholar

32 Milcent, Senghor, 116–117.

33 Rapport sur le climat politique au Sènègal à l'occasion des élections au Conseil de la République du gouverneur Wiltord, destiné pour le Ministère de la France d'Outre-Mer, CAOM FM Affpol. 2143/2.

34 Traoré, Bakary, ‘L'évolution des partis politiques au Sénégal depuis 1946’ in: Bakary Traoré, Mamadou Lô and Jean-Louis Alibert, Forces politiques en Afrique noire (Paris 1966) 26.Google Scholar

35 Letter from Senghor to the Ministry of Overseas France, 30 March 1949, CAOM FM Affpol. 2143/4.

36 Letter from Senghor to the Ministry of Overseas France, 15 February 1949, CAOM FM Affpol. 2143/4.

37 Note sur la politique de M. Wiltord, gouverneur du Sénégal par M. Dia et M. Senghor, 11 August 1950, CAOM FM Affpol. 2177/7.

38 Milcent, Senghor, 124–125.

39 Letter from Senghor to Letourneau, 30 March 1949, CAOM FM Affpol 2143/4.

40 Rapport de Monsieur I'Inspecteur des Affaires Administratives du Sénégal Le Rolle, 14 May 1949, CAOM FM Affpol 2143/4.

41 Letter from Dia and Senghor to Mitterrand, 11 August 1950, CAOM FM Affpol. 2177/7.

42 Letter from Senghor to Coste-FIoret, June 1949, CAOM FM Affpol 2143/4.

43 Ibid.

44 Letter from Béchard to Coste-FIoret, 24 June 1949, CAOM FM Affpol. 2143/4.

45 Letter from Senghor to Letourneau, 20 January 1950, CAOM FM Affpol 2177/7.

46 Letters from Coste-FIoret to Béchard, 14 February 1949; 25 March 1949 and (probably) 2 April 1949, CAOM FM Affpol. 2143/4.

47 CAOM FM Affpol 2177/7.

48 Rapport politique annuel, subdivision Tivaouane 1950, CAOM 2G50/123: ‘Le retour de congé de M. Wiltord, suivi de son nouveau départ au bout de quelques semaines; le tout dans des conditions inhabituelles, fut un de ces évènements qui rendent facheusement manifeste l'ingérence actuelle des partis politiques dans l'administration.’

49 Circulaire du Haut-Commissaire à tous les gouverneurs, 10 January 1950, CAOM 20G103.

50 CAOM 20G105.

51 Letter from Colombani to Gueye, 8 June 1951, CAOM 20G107.

52 Letter from Abbas Gueye to Colombani, 6 June 1951, CAOM 20G107.

53 Parliamentary question by senator Rucart to minister Jacquinot CAOM FM AffpoL 2177/9.

54 CAOM FM Affpol 2177/9.

55 Joseph Roger de Benoist, personal communication 30 April 1997.

56 Quoted from Alain Peyrefitte, C'étail De Gaulle II (Paris 1997) in: Jeune Afrique No. 1928–1929 (16 December 1997 - 5 January 1998).