French colonial Dakar: The morphogenesis of an African regional capital 9781784997427

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General editor: Andrew S. Thompson

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Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that ‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’. With well over a hundred titles now published, this remains the prime concern of the series. Cross-disciplinary work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the environment, language and literature, migration and patriotic societies, and much else. Moreover, the series has always wished to present comparative work on European and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the submission of books in these areas. The fascination with imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating, and this series will continue to lead the way in encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge, responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs of this ever-expanding area of scholarship.

French colonial Dakar

SE L ECT E D T I T L E S AVAI L ABLE I N T HE SER I ES WRITING IMPERIAL HISTORIES ed. Andrew S. Thompson

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MUSEUMS AND EMPIRE Natural history, human cultures and colonial identities John M. MacKenzie MISSIONARY FAMILIES Race, gender and generation on the spiritual frontier Emily J. Manktelow THE COLONISATION OF TIME Ritual, routine and resistance in the British Empire Giordano Nanni BRITISH CULTURE AND THE END OF EMPIRE ed. Stuart Ward SCIENCE, RACE RELATIONS AND RESISTANCE Britain, 1870–1914 Douglas A. Lorimer GENTEEL WOMEN Empire and domestic material culture, 1840−1910 Dianne Lawrence EUROPEAN EMPIRES AND THE PEOPLE Popular responses to imperialism in France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy ed. John M. MacKenzie SCIENCE AND SOCIETY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA ed. Saul Dubow

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French colonial Dakar T HE M OR PHOGEN E S I S O F AN AFR I CAN R EGI ONA L C A P I TA L Liora Bigon

MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © Liora Bigon 2016 The right of Liora Bigon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0 7190 9935 9 hardback First published 2016 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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C ONT E NT S

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List of figures—vi Foreword by Xavier Ricou—x Acknowledgements—xii List of abbreviations—xiii 1 Introduction: French colonial Dakar: the morphogenesis of an African regional capital

1

2 Planting the flag and military planning in imperial Dakar: asymmetries, uncertainties, illusions

20

3 Street naming, infectious diseases and planning in early colonial Dakar: segregationist insights

79

4 The quest for architectural style for French West Africa: invented traditions and ideologies in colonial Dakar

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5 Afterword: Dakar’s ‘old city’ and beyond

175

Appendix. Key events in colonial Dakar, 1850s–1930s—186 Bibliography—189 Index—209

[v]

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F IGUR E S

  1.1 Colonial West Africa (map drawn by the author).   1.2 Senegal, including the former Four Communes (map drawn by the author).   1.3 An old renovated façade of an eighteenth-century house of a European merchant/métis in Saint-Louis, Senegal (author’s photo).   2.1 Pre-colonial Senegal and the Wolof empire (map drawn by the author).   2.2 Pre-colonial Ndakaru, map drawn by Faidherbe in 1853 and titled ‘The village of Dakar’ (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal).   2.3 Drawing made by a French visitor to Ndakaru in 1839, entitled ‘Hut of the village chief in Dakar’ (redrawn by the author according to the original held at the Archives Nationales du Sénégal).   2.4 Engraving made by a French visitor to Dakar in 1862, entitled ‘View of the Mission of Dakar’ (private collection).   2.5 Dakar in 1876 showing the town’s demarcated empty lots (redrawn by the author according to the original at Cambridge University Library, Map Collection, Maps 723.01.3481).   2.6 Typical French fortresses in Senegal and French Sudan (Mali), the 1850s (composed by the author).   2.7 Residential house in Djenné, the 1960s, exemplifying the ‘Sudanese’ architectural style (courtesy of Marli Shamir).   2.8 Tata in Tiong (drawn by the author according to an engraving from the late nineteenth century, contained in Thierno Mouctar Ba, Architecture militaire traditionnelle et poliorcétique dans le Soudan occidental du XVIIe à la fin du XIXe siècle (Yaoundé: Editions Clé, 1985), p. 163).   2.9 Plan of Hann’s agronomic station, established in January 1870 by the French Corps of Engineers (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 2.10 The historical promenades in Gorée (baobab trees) and Saint-Louis (coconut trees) (photos by the author). [ vi ]

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List of Figures

2.11 Street scene on Dakar’s Plateau: historical postcard (private collection) and a recent photo (by the author). 2.12 Médine, showing the French fortress to the right of the indigenous settlement on the bank of the Upper Senegal River, 1864 (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 2.13 Late-nineteenth-century casern located in Dakar’s city centre (photo by the author). 2.14 Part of a plan showing the floors of the casern illustrated in Figure 2.13, drawn in 1901 (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 2.15 Drawing of the façade of one of the straw barracks erected in the military camp of N’dar Tout, Saint-Louis (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 2.16 Pinet-Laprade’s master plan for Dakar, 1862 (private collection). 2.17 Dakar’s major public works projects of the 1890s, centred on the waterworks, the railroad, and the military and commercial ports (private collection).   3.1 The three main quarters and street names in early colonial Dakar, in the 1910s (by the author).   3.2 Recent photo of rue du Docteur Roux, Dakar. Most of the colonial street names in the city centre were preserved following independence (photo by the author).   3.3 Plan of Dakar in 1915, lacking the newly established Médina quarter of 1914 (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal).   3.4 Lebu huts in Dakar in the 1910s. Fortier’s postcard (private collection).   3.5 House in Dakar’s Médina on the crossroads of streets 5 and 8. The address is handwritten on the wall by the occupant to promote his business (photo by the author).   3.6 Extracts based on Plan of Saint-Louis, 1884, showing the separation in the status of the built areas for the purpose of taxation and expropriation (map redrawn by the author according to the original at The National Archives, Kew, CO 700/West Africa 24).   3.7 The displacement of the Lebu quarters from Dakar’s city centre by the early twentieth century (map drawn by the author based on Assane Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine (Dakar: IFAN, 1970), p. 129). [ vii ]

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List of Figures

  3.8 The inauguration of the wide, tree-lined avenue Gambetta in Dakar, 1912, as part of the assainissement projects (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal).   3.9 One of the first residences of the newly established Médina, 1915. Notice the opening words of the Quranic sura al-Fatihah on the Gable (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 3.10 Part of a map showing the Médina’s orthogonal plan, 1916 (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal). 3.11 Intersection of streets in the Médina (photo by the author). 3.12 One of Lebu’s original households, still existing today, on Dakar’s Plateau (photo by the author). 3.13 The 1937 art deco monumental façade of Institut Pasteur, Dakar (photo by the author).   4.1 Plan of Kermel’s original structure, 1865 (courtesy of the Archives Nationales du Sénégal).   4.2 French postcard from the 1930s showing the neo-classical Municipal Theatre in Algiers, built for the French expatriates in 1853 on place de la République (author’s collection).   4.3 French postcard from 1928 showing Dakar’s Palais du Gouverneur Général, 1908 (author’s collection).   4.4 Senegal’s Presidential Palace in Dakar, today (photo by the author).   4.5 Dakar’s Chamber of Commerce (bulit 1910), today (photo by the author).   4.6 A present-day photo of Dakar’s Court of Justice in the 1910s, now Senegal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (photo by the author).   4.7 Dakar’s town hall (built 1914), today (photo by the author).   4.8 Monument Thérèse Nars on Dakar’s Plateau, today (photo by the author).   4.9 Monument to Van Vollenhoven in Dakar (erected 1921), today (photo by the author). 4.10 French postcard from the 1940s showing neo-Moorish colonial architecture in Algiers: the main post office, 1910 (author’s collection). 4.11 Postcard showing marché Kermel in Dakar in the 1910s (author’s collection).

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List of Figures

4.12 Marché Kermel today, with one of its three entrance portals (photo by the author). 4.13 Kermel’s ruins following the 1993 fire, Le Franc, 1994 (courtesy of California Newsreel, all rights reserved). 4.14 A 1930s postcard of marché Sandaga in Dakar (author’s collection). 4.15 Architectural detail of Bamako’s main market, built in the neo-Sudanese style, the 1920s (private collection). 4.16 Section of Gidan Makama Museum in Kano, Nigeria, today (photo by the author). 4.17 The façade of the Polyclinique of the Médina, Dakar (built 1932), today (photo by the author). 4.18 The old neo-Sudanese building of Dakar’s Maternité, Dantec Hospital in the 1930s (photo by the author). 4.19 Section of Malik Sy School, Dakar in the 1930s (photo by the author). 4.20 Dakar Cathedral (designed 1913, built 1936), today (photo by the author). 4.21 IFAN Museum, Dakar (built 1938), today (photo by the author). 4.22 Marché Sandaga (built 1934), today (photo by the author).   5.1 The present administrative division of Dakar Region (map drawn by the author).   5.2 Building made of temporary materials on the outskirts of Pikine (photo by the author).   5.3 Modernist architecture in Dakar, 1930s–1950s: the old international-style post office, Hotel La Croix du Sud, and Building Administratif of the Senegalese Government (photos by the author).   5.4 The cityscape of Dakar, as seen from the city centre inland. Notice the Great Mosque (1963) at the centre, and BCEAO to the right (photo by the author).   5.5 The ‘Third Millennium Gate’, Dakar, Corniche Ouest, 2000. Designed by Senegalese architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa (photo by the author).

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149 150 152 155 156 159 160 161 161 162 163 178 180

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FOR E WORD

At the western edge of the world

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‘My dear Diniz, I suggest we should call this new region Cap Manuel, in homage to our King.’ ‘But have you noticed how green this place is after the desert we have just passed? Let’s rather baptise it Cap Vert and let’s get onto the ground to raise a padrão and say a prayer.’

Was it because they discovered the peninsula of Cap Vert during the rainy season of 1444 that the first Portuguese navigators called it that, or was the vegetation entirely absorbed by the town that was built there? Almost certainly a bit of each, but today a great deal of imagination is required to think of all that green. It was my turn to discover it when I  set eyes on the town in the 1960s, just after the country had achieved independence. Dakar was white and smelt of groundnuts. It was still provincial but had proud ambitions to become the economic capital of West Africa, a status that it had pinched a bit earlier from the old town of Saint-Louis, which was moping in the north of the country. On the sea, brushed by the trade winds, it had large, untouched open spaces that gave it some breathing space; the planners planned, applying rules of hygiene and segregation, sometimes laying out districts too clearly; the architects needed to invent a new African style and designed audacious, avant-garde buildings that took the climate into account; the streets were regularly cleaned by the Sanitation Department using a seawater pump; traffic flowed, and street vendors had not yet invaded the public spaces. You will understand that this description compares rather positively with the Dakar of today. Of course, this development is quite normal for any older town that is gradually becoming more modern, though in truth, the metamorphosis of Dakar started much earlier. When it was founded by colonists in 1857, there already existed several Lebu fishing villages on the peninsula: Ndakaru, Ben (Mbegne), Hann, Yoff, Ngor etc. The villages were connected by paths and were protected by mud walls dating back to the period when the young Lebu ‘republic’ was resisting the invader from Cayor. The colonial town was established on this matrix, around the port that was its main engine of growth. Gradually the paths became roads and the villages grew, and ended up forming a single conurbation. [x]

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Foreword by Xavier Ricou

Designed in the colonial period for several tens of thousands of inhabitants at the most, the town today is home to almost three million. It is now uncontrollable, and has been handed over to the speculators; it has completely slipped out of the grasp of the planners, architects, local government, fiscal networks, and even its inhabitants. The rural exodus that took place in the 1970s following the major droughts in the Sahel created a large-scale influx of new, poverty-stricken populations. These had little experience of urban living, understood poorly its codes, were unaware of its history or heritage, and occupied every small free space, including those where construction was not permitted; this created challenging problems of energy, drinking water and sanitation, creating mountains of waste and irretrievably polluting the water table and the adjacent sea. They gradually built a new town without points of reference, constructing on an impoverished urban framework poor-quality individual houses. In the older, wealthier centre, all the older colonial buildings are living on borrowed time. Around the marché Kermel, the emblematic monument of the old centre, identically rebuilt in 1993 following a fire, the old businesses that had created the town’s prosperity have been demolished to make way for modern, impersonal high-rise buildings. Such is the fascinating history of the metamorphosis of Dakar that Liora describes in this book, in an extremely precise and well-documented manner. I have no doubt that it will become a reference work for those who think about and plan the city, who will learn from their predecessors to understand better the present and prepare for the future, and will perhaps try to give it back some of the green of the western edge of the world. Xavier Ricou Architect Gorée, Senegal

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ACK NOWL E DGEMEN TS

During the many years of conceptualising and carrying out this project, I have benefited from a network of institutions, forums, colleagues and others who provided me with intellectual and economic support, hospitality and friendly help. I would like to thank the Hebrew University for its support on several occasions during my ongoing research, in the form of two post-doctoral and other grants and fellowships. These contributed towards, inter alia, my several visits to Senegal and France, attendance at conferences and book purchases. Several intellectual training sessions were particularly inspiring, especially those of the European Forum, with its inherent openness to non-European cultures, and of the Truman Institute’s round table, a rich source for fertile communications. I also enjoyed, and continue to enjoy, the cross-departmental inspiration of both staff and students at the Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design and the Holon Institute of Technology  – these continue to reshape my thoughts over the years, aside from the institutional support given for my attendance at several international conferences in Prague (EAUH) and Lisbon (EAUH, IPHS). Some pan-European meetings that were enabled through my membership of the EU-COST Action, ‘European Architecture beyond Europe’, chaired by Mercedes Volait, were inspiring as well. A book research scholarship from the Israeli Science Foundation was also helpful in publishing parts of this book in Hebrew in 2014 with Bar-Ilan University Press; and I gratefully acknowledge the permission of the respective publishers of Planning Perspectives, Urban Studies Research and Urban History – where segments from articles of mine have appeared and are paraphrased here. I am indebted to the critical comments made by the peer-reviewers of Manchester University Press, and I was also lucky to benefit from the professional work and team effort of the staff there. In addition, I am grateful to the numerous people who were involved with the many different stages and aspects of this study: especially to Victor Azarya, Fatoumata Cisse Diarra, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Mark Crinson, Louis Dioh, Papa Momar Diop, Mamadou Diouf, Felix Driver, Myron Echenberg, Ruth Fine, Odile Goerg, Joanna Grabski, Bashir Hakim, Robert Home, Yossi Katz, Anthony King, Saliou Mbaye, Edina Meyer, Carl Nightingale, Ambe Njoh, Deborah Pellow, Labelle Prussin, Garth Myers, Francine Robinson, Eric Ross, Awa Seck, the late Marli and Meir Shamir, Noam Shoval, Alain Sinou, Allasane Thiam and Oren Yiftachel. [ xii ]

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AB B R E VIAT IO N S

ANOM

Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence

ANS

Archives Nationales du Sénégal

ANSD

Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Démographie

AOF

L’Afrique-Occidentale française (French West Africa)

BCEAO

Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest

DSL

Dakar–Saint-Louis railway line

IFAN

Institut Français d’Afrique Noire

NNA

Nigeria’s National Archives, Ibadan

OHLM

Office des Habitations à Loyer Modéré

SICAP

Société immobilière du Cap-Vert

TNA

The National Archives, Kew

UNDESA

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs

UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

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CHA P T E R  ON E

Introduction: French colonial Dakar: the morphogenesis of an African regional capital This book deals with the planning culture and architectural endeavours that shaped the model space of French colonial Dakar, a prominent city in West Africa. With a focus on the period from the establishment of the city in the mid-nineteenth century until the interwar years, our involvement with the design of Dakar as a regional capital reveals a multiplicity of ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ forces. These include a variety of urban politics, policies, practices and agencies, and complex negotiations on both the physical and conceptual levels. The study of the extra-European planning history of Europe has been a burgeoning field in scholarly literature, especially in the last few decades. There is a clear tendency within this literature, however, to focus on the more privileged colonies in the contemporary colonial order of preference, such as British India and the French colonies in North Africa. Colonial urban space in sub-Saharan Africa has thus been left relatively untreated. With a rich variety of historical material and visual evidence, the book incorporates both primary and secondary sources, collected from multilateral channels in Europe and Senegal. It includes an analysis of a variety of planning and architectural models, metropolitan-cum-indigenous. It is also one of the pioneers in attesting the connection between the French colonial doctrines of assimilation and association, and French colonial planning and architectural policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Borrowed from the life sciences, the term ‘morphogenesis’ in the title of the book is derived from the Greek morphê, shape, and genesis, creation, and usually means the generation of form in the context of developmental biology.1 This term is useful for the understanding of the rationale behind the organisation of this book and its perspective. First, it involves, in our colonial urban context, the tracing of the history of Dakar from its embryonic creation as a French city (and even much earlier), throughout its development in terms of spatial configuration [1]

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French colonial Dakar

and built form, until the interwar period. However, a monograph arranged in chronological sequence does not lead us to a linear or parochial analysis: a salient leitmotif in this work, for instance, is the issue of transnationality, which takes us from the site-relatedness of Dakar towards conceptual mobility, fluidity and heterogeneity. This approach addresses some imbalance indicated by recent critical scholarship in geography that ‘more analysis is needed on how – through what practices, where, when, and by whom – urban policies are produced in the global-relational context, are transferred and reproduced from place to place, and are negotiated politically in various locations.’2 In addition, our focus on contemporary Dakar does not come at the expense of other comparative work on colonial urban space in sub-Saharan Africa (and beyond), carried out so far by the author or by other scholars3 – rather it is inspired by and converses with it. Second, the term ‘morphogenesis’ is useful in our context as it also implies an understanding of Dakar’s urban forms as a process. The physical form, similarly to biological morphogens, is constantly generative, being dynamically constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed, activated, deactivated and negotiated upon amongst the various inter- and intra-players, be they autochthonous, expatriates or other mediating agencies. This relational process occurs in spite of the power imbalance that is inherent in the colonial situation, because, as this book clearly shows, Dakar was far from being ‘unambiguously expressive’ in terms of ‘a system of disciplinary power’, as Lyautey’s Rabat was, according to Timothy Mitchell.4 In sub-Saharan Africa (and beyond), European ‘colonialisms’ were mainly introduced by a series of hegemonic projects. But the transformative process of these projects ‘was necessarily incomplete, for it needed to preserve social and cultural differences to constitute and justify external rule, and it therefore left a realm of subaltern “autonomy” ’.5 A  ‘perfect system of control’, as shown by Jennifer Robinson, was not achieved even through the planning practices in South Africa, an extreme case of colonialism.6 And, as Garth Myers suggests, European modes of planning in eastern and southern Africa were often ‘undone by internal contradictions and by circumventions of the urban majority’.7 What this means, as the title of this work indicates, is that colonial Dakar, through its morphogenetic process, was both an African and a European city, indigenous and French imperial, ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ – including in-between variations and nuances. Our reflections are therefore engaged with two levels of geographies, including the interplay between them:  the colonial ‘top-down’ spatial politics and their opposed yet complementary autochthonous ‘bottom-up’ counterparts. The dialectical process of spatial design and conceptualisation [2]

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Introduction

thus engendered is also morphogenetic because of the multitude of fronts that were involved, networks and connections.8 This also means, in the words of the urbanist Bish Sanyal, taken from his edited collection entitled Comparative Planning Cultures, that ‘I am intuitively aware that “culture matters” ’.9 Therefore by embracing the term ‘morphogenesis’ in the context of urban planning and architecture, and by adapting a historical approach, the role of cultural processes in shaping the urban form are highlighted. This transforms the discussion of planning and architectural expressions in colonial Dakar into an almost ethnographic exercise.

A note on historiography The study of French colonial Dakar by combining area studies with planning and architectural history studies leads towards a more nuanced understanding of the European city beyond Europe. This understanding is important against the background of the state of research on and the historiography of the colonial city. Until not long ago, urban historians studied the colonial terrain as a passive receptor of exported ideas, flowing in a virtually unidirectional way from the global ‘centre’ of the North-West to the south-eastern ‘periphery’. As noted by several scholars, only recently, more than a generation after the decolonisation era, we have started to bind the (visual) histories of the former métropoles with those of their empires.10 This geo-cultural understanding is not sufficiently reflected in recent textbooks concerning urban planning in general. The prominent planning historian Kenneth Kolson, for example, confines his narratives of modern urban design exclusively to Western Europe and North America. Consequently, his only reference to colonial planning relates to the frontier plantations of the ‘New World.’11 Similarly, Peter Hall opens his book on the ‘intellectual history of urban planning’ by admitting this conceptual and geographical problem. That is, the supposed global history is actually ‘glaringly Anglo-Americocentric’.12 While in another comprehensive work on the history of urban Europe, edited by Jean-Louis Pinol, a comparative part is included concerning overseas developments – any conversation between indigenous urban traditions and their European counterparts is reduced to a minimum or nothing.13 Most astonishingly, in a Century Paper on the ‘new’ planning history published in 2011, only three bibliographical items  – out of 356 items in total! – dealt with sub-Saharan Africa.14 Two of the three items referred to South Africa, and all three are concerned with the British colonial heritage, reflecting the ‘anglophone’ viewpoint of the three authors of the Century Paper.15 A similar picture regarding the [3]

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French colonial Dakar

dominance of the North-West in the production of planning knowledge appears from Oren Yiftachel’s mapping of the ‘gatekeepers’ of theoretical knowledge. ‘Still’, he indicates, ‘it is conspicuous that in the first eight issues of the new Planning Theory journal (2002–04), only three of 47 articles were devoted to issues emerging from the South-East, while 40 articles dealt with various aspects of decision-making and communicative processes’.16 While there is an understanding that relatively little attention has been given to the history of European planning practices in the overseas, colonial territories, it is especially true regarding the African continent and sub-Saharan Africa in particular.17 In addition, within the literature on (post-) colonial urban spaces of sub-Saharan Africa, it can be argued that until recently, the anglophone research tradition has typically dealt with ‘history-in-the-city’  – that is, the history of social movements and popular struggles around community issues. A prominent tendency of its French counterpart, on the contrary, has typically been to deal with the ‘history-of-the-city’ itself.18 Exceptions to these general research trends do of course exist; yet projects like Africa’s Urban Past (2000), based on a London conference that was conducted by David Anderson and Richard Rathbone, are rather surprising.19 The latter project is broad and provides an overview of current research in political, economic and cultural urban history, but, as remarked by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘the authors overlook French-language publications despite the fact that this is one of the areas where French-speaking historians have done the most work’.20 However, it is especially during the last two or three decades that a bridge has indeed been built between the anglophone and the francophone approaches. A series of pioneering works that critically examined the history of colonial urban spaces, particularly that of the British and the French, have taken into account both the spatial and architectural urban form and its socio-political and cultural implications. While this literature has gradually been growing, it is still worth referring below to some of the book-length studies that deal critically with francophone North Africa and especially with francophone sub-Saharan Africa (mostly in French), though it may seem inappropriate to refer to them en bloc.21 Inspired by these works – interestingly, none of which deals exclusively with colonial Dakar – the author also benefited enormously from the older series of studies that exists in French, unprecedented in the English language even for the British territories themselves, as well pointed out by Coquery-Vidrovitch. Here, Dakar, as one of the Four Communes of Senegal and the capital city of the French West Africa Federation (see the following section, ‘Colonial Dakar’, p. 5), quite naturally received a wave of monographs in French.22 [4]

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Introduction

Rich as they are with their focus on the city’s physical environment, these monographs are mostly parochial in character, for the urban environment had normally regarded them, quite uncritically, as part of ‘colonisation’, to be understood à la française. That is, as noted by David Prochaska with Algeria in mind, French colonial historians have mainly studied the various stages of the development of French colonial settlements in the sense of mise en valeur, for example the construction of railroads, ports, buildings etc.23 In other words, in the colonial situation, heroic aspects of the urban morphogenesis were highlighted, and this preoccupation with the coloniser’s enterprise came at the expense of that of the colonised. Moreover, even in the more recent pioneering and critical works on colonial urban space that were listed above, transnational and multilateral aspects in the exchange of planning and architectural ideas are not normally highlighted. Rather, the more ‘traditional’ and unidirectional process of transfer of urban practices and ideas between an imperial, metropolitan power and its respective overseas territory is dominant. In this work, ‘transnational’ aspects have been advocated not because this word represents ‘a cottage industry of definitions quickly developed as the label became a must-wear’.24 Rather, we advocate this notion because both urban planning and colonialism are inherently transnational phenomena, and because, if we are permitted to empathise fully with the idiosyncrasies of Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, the editors of The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History from the Mid-19th Century to the Present Day, We are interested in links and flows, and want to track people, ideas, products, processes and patterns that operate over, across, through, beyond, above, under, or in-between polities and societies. Among the units that were thus crossed, consolidated or subverted in the modern age, first and foremost were the national ones, if only because our work addresses the moment, roughly from the middle of the 19th century until nowadays, when nations came to be seen and empowered as the main frames for the political, cultural, economic and social life of human beings.25

Colonial Dakar Dakar is examined here because, since its establishment in 1857 as a French colonial city, its spatiality and built form can be regarded as an exercise in the understanding of the dynamism inherent in the colonial power relations. More particularly, as the capital of the Afrique-Occidentale française (AOF) Federation from 1902,26 it was intended by the French to fulfil an international role rather than merely a local one, West African rather than Senegalese (Figure  1.1). [5]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 1.1  Colonial West Africa.

Regarded as a model space for West Africa in the French colonial imagination, some metropolitan urban forms and modes of planning could apparently be imported into Dakar. This process of importation, selective and manipulative as it was, as will be exemplified in the following, was backed on the ideological-cum-idealistic level by the colonial doctrine of assimilation. At least formally, ‘assimilation’ was aimed at turning the colonies into an integral part of the métropole, and their populations were to be considered equal as closely as possible to that of France. According to the sixth paragraph of the third constitution of 1795, the colonies were regarded as inseparable parts of the republic, and were subjected to the same laws. It also clarified the French colonial ideals and notions like France d’outre mer or la plus grande France.27 Thus, the white residential areas in colonial Dakar constituted model spaces within the larger space of Dakar as a whole. In fact, their spatial design was meant not only to impress the Africans, who, according to assimilationist views, were supposed to imitate European [6]

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Introduction

modes of habitation, but also to ‘pacify’ critics at home, especially those who denounced the colonial enterprise.28 Dakar is also interesting because it was prominent among cities in the francophone colonial world that were regarded as laboratories or ‘experimental terrains’ (champs d’expérience) in planning. That is, under the colonial conditions, especially until the interwar period, the colonial authorities were able to foster urban plans that might then never have been applicable at home. Yet, while these experimental modes of planning were particularly studied with relation to French urbanism in North Africa,29 it should be remembered that the colonial situation in West Africa was much less intense. The high level of colonial control in North Africa, particularly in Algeria, engendered a massive, long-term presence of colonialists as capitalist estate owners who gradually developed a separate national identity from their mother country. In West Africa, by comparison, no colony was proclaimed a ‘white settler colony’, mainly because of the tropical climate, and thus friction between the coloniser and the colonised was considerably reduced. This fact, together with the special legal status of the Four Communes of Senegal (les quatre communes) had much softened the colonial urban situation there. From 1887 on, Dakar was acknowledged as the fourth commune, following the three oldest French colonial coastal towns of Saint-Louis, Gorée and Rufisque, which had already gained this status under the Second Republic (Figure 1.2). Each commune was controlled by a council, which was elected by all its adult males, and a mayor, who was the chairman of the council.30 All the indigenous inhabitants, known as originaires, were considered French citizens and legally enjoyed the same civil and political rights as Frenchmen. Indeed, the literature on the Four Communes of Senegal is abundant and this subject is well researched, but it is important to note that while the originaires could technically benefit from all the rights of native French citizens, these rights were not automatic and there existed substantial legal and socio-cultural barriers. Most of the Africans native to these communes, mainly Muslims, retained their indigenous practices and were not able, or did not want, to pursue French higher education. They were therefore not granted a status of évolué, which prevented them from being granted full French citizenship.31 As indicated by Mamadou Diouf, these inhabitants consistently refused to submit themselves to the French Civil Code for religious reasons, but they managed to create an autonomous civic space for themselves. The creation and favouring of a double geography, Senegambian and colonial, were inspired by Islamic spirituality and, to a lesser extent, Catholicism. This situational geography of the originaires was achieved through their daily engagement with colonial policy and administration on the one hand, [7]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 1.2  Senegal, including the former Four Communes.

and with indigenous moral and social perceptions on the other.32 The distinction between residents of the communes and rural inhabitants, however, acquired its greatest political importance before and during the First World War. Subjects living in the rest of Senegal were subject to forced labour and military service, for instance, from which the citizens of the communes were exempt. Yet if Dakar benefited from some planning enterprises thanks to its privileged municipal and regional status, its indigenous population hardly did. The scarcity of resources that characterised the French (and British) colonial regime in West Africa, which was run on shoestring budgets, and was chronically underfunded and understaffed, necessitated a certain order of priorities. According to the latter, the first areas to be supplied with an appropriate infrastructure and urban amenities were those of the white residential quarters in the heart of the city centre and the Plateau. These areas overshadowed the ‘other’ parts of Dakar, which, in terms of both urban management and imagery, [8]

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Introduction

were not considered an integral part of the city. The fashioning of parts of Dakar almost exclusively after the image of the coloniser and for the benefit of the expatriate community was related to the centralistic tendency inherent in assimilation and the French republican tradition. These visual and morphological characteristics were absent in the British territories of West Africa, for example. In these the British laissez-faire policy in matters of planning could be noted, a consequence of their Indirect Rule approach.33 It is thus impossible to speak about colonial Dakar, similarly to many other contemporary colonial cities around the globe, without the issue of residential segregation. In the opening, poetic words of Carl Nightingale, of a chapter entitled ‘Segregation Mania’ in his monumental work on the global history of modern urban racial segregation from its imperial origins until postwar developments: Everything changed for the word ‘segregation’ just before the dawn of the twentieth century. Before then, the word had evolved glacially, from its ancient Latin roots – referring to shepherds’ practices of culling livestock from their flocks (gregis) – into a staid, nineteenth-century bourgeois professional’s synonym for ‘separation’. Scientists, for example, used it to describe the loosening of chemical bonds between one substance and another, and when hospital officials placed contagious patients in a special ward, they too spoke of ‘segregation’. Then, suddenly, in the late 1890s, segregation escaped from the laboratory (as it were) and transformed itself into an electric political rallying cry. You could hear it in cities almost everywhere.34

As in other modern colonial cities, segregation in Dakar was aimed at the assertion of white power and was mainly backed by (pseudo-) sanitary concerns. However, it was informal in Dakar, and as we shall see, the city’s first master plan (1862) and the creation of a separate quarter for the Africans (1914) were carried out by the colonial government. The colonial urban situation in West Africa did not necessitate a formal colour bar, based on racial distinctions, as was the case in South Africa. Residential segregation could be maintained through stringent sanitary or building material legislation that kept Africans with ‘primitive’ notions in this regard well away from Europeans. Residential segregation, however, was maintained and intensified by the French regime using additional means, both spatial and conceptual. The street naming system in French West Africa in general and in Dakar in particular, as we shall see, represented one of these conceptual barriers, which was consciously applied over colonial urban space. At the same time, informal segregationist moves supported by Dakar’s authorities within the white community also existed in Dakar. But [9]

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French colonial Dakar

in the absence of permanent white settlers, administrative fears with respect to the role played there by ‘petits blancs’ – particularly their ability to undermine the bourgeois foundations of empire – were never as considerable there as in North Africa. These segregationist moves were therefore relatively soft, differentiating mainly between the private sector (city centre or Dakar-ville) and the administration’s own functionaries (Plateau). But even concerning the indigenous population, it was not ‘apartheid’ per se, and not the one exemplified for instance in Lord Lugard’s Township Ordinance of 1917, enforcing a colour bar in the colonial urban sphere of British Nigeria. 35 The French colonial authorities always criticised their British counterparts on this issue, arguing, as with the establishment of Dakar’s African quarter of the Médina, that it was not a racial segregation between two kinds of people, but segregation between two kinds of residential forms.36 Yet, whatever the stated rationale, segregationist moves on a racial basis applied by a variety of European colonising nations were common in most of the colonial cities  – a legacy that also left a considerable imprint on their post-colonial urban environments.

Book time span and chapters In terms of time span, this book traces Dakar’s morphogenesis from its establishment in the mid-nineteenth century up to the interwar period, though references to adjacent periods – the pre-colonial and the post-1930s – are occasionally made. As the (urban) history of the French presence in Senegal in the pre-colonial period, including the politics in the Four Communes, has been the subject of many ‘classic’ monographs and papers, there is no need to expand on it again.37 However, two relevant points to our thesis should be stressed here; with both, in one form or another, the reader will be acquainted: the first is that Saint-Louis and Gorée, followed by Rufisque and Dakar, provide unique examples for an exceptionally long presence of European settlement in West Africa. Initiated by Portuguese and Dutch seamen and merchants (from the mid-fifteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, respectively), these fortified coastal settlements were not ‘cities’ nor established as such. Rather, these ‘comptoirs’ served as depots and trading posts, totally dependent for their existence on the extent and intensity of commercial exchanges, including the slave trade. Overtaken by the British and finally the French by the mid-eighteenth century, this commercial activity – replaced by legitimate trade within a century – was monopolised by the regime of the semi-official ‘compagnies’. Their island settlements were held by a tiny number of Europeans; a limited number of mulattos (métis); free Africans; and domestic slaves, mostly women.38 [ 10 ]

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Introduction

Figure 1.3  An old renovated façade of an eighteenth-century house of a European merchant/métis in Saint-Louis, Senegal. The upper floor was used for living quarters, enhanced with an internal colonnade and external terrace, while the ground floor served for storage and business negotiations.

The second point is that the period before the consolidation of the official colonial regime in the mid-nineteenth century was not rich in planning activity, was limited to the island settlements alone and was much a matter of laissez-faire. Europeans lived within and around the fort area, typically with their local spouse (signare) in habitations made of permanent materials, similarly to the métis; free Africans and domestic slaves lived in habitations made of temporary materials. As explained by the Senegalese archaeologist Ibrahima Thiaw, while this permanent architecture is identified with the upper classes and its materials were imported, the labour force was African (Figure 1.3). Thus, this architecture constitutes material evidence of the history of Afro-European interactions engendered by the Atlantic trade – striking visual testimony to the African slaves themselves who are absent from the archival records.39 However, there was no residential segregation in the pre-colonial period.40 Residential segregation on a racial basis as introduced by France and the other European powers was a product of the colonial period, during which race relations were rigidly directed by the colonising nations. [ 11 ]

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French colonial Dakar

This was the time when a variety of paternalistic approaches and racist and pseudo-scientific ideas penetrated into European metropolitan thought concerning the colonial endeavour. For instance, the critique of the association policy in France was nurtured, inter alia, by Darwin’s theory of the preservation of favoured races (1859) and that of the French aristocrat thinker Arthur Gobineau (1854). According to Gobineau’s The Inequality of Races, human races are unable to create a culture and to embrace it in the same manner. The only hope of lower-intelligence races is therefore to assimilate with more enlightened ones, yet this process is negative because it might damage the white race or even cause it to become extinct.41 One example among many:  the abundant scholarly literature that interrogates the close relation among racist theories, colonial doctrines and segregationist practices.42 In this respect mid-nineteenth-century Dakar was no different from any other contemporary colonial city around the world, though the particularities and uniqueness of segregationist planning in this city will be broadly discussed throughout this study. The period in focus is useful in understanding the formalistic rationales of a colonial city from its very formative stage – i.e. 1857 for Dakar, before it was a ‘city’ at all – until its very consolidation as an ‘imperial city’ both de facto and de jure, which finally occurred in Dakar by the 1930s. The interwar period could be regarded as an in-between era, an era that followed the ‘insecure’ stage of territorial occupation of the West African hinterland through the ‘pacification’ of indigenous societies; and during which the empire seemed relatively peaceful, with a burgeoning administration and general prosperity. Indeed, the Second World War constituted a turning point in European colonial policies in sub-Saharan Africa, not excluding France, in terms of administrative and economic conditions, and a political climate that foretold the decolonisation process. These affected colonial urban planning policies, particularly after 1945. In the early twentieth century, and especially after the First World War, European imperialism was at its apogee, with Britain and France amongst the most active international powers. The ‘heroic’ or ‘military’ phase of conquest of the vast African hinterland was, on the whole, over; and under pax colonia, aimed at the establishment of internal political and administrative frameworks, economic gains were promoted.43 Under these conditions, the physical environment, aside from other aspects, and particularly in colonial urban centres such as Dakar, underwent considerable change in the interwar period. This was in order to accommodate colonial exploitation, which was marked in colonial planning literature as one of ‘development’, ‘betterment’, ‘efficiency’ and the like, reflecting the apparent scientific and [ 12 ]

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Introduction

rational facets of the colonial enterprise. Yet colonial town planning was intended then for the benefit of the expatriates rather than of the colonised populations, and the urban ‘mentality’ of ‘imperial’ Dakar was occasionally, as we shall see, provincial at best. Only in the 1930s did Dakar benefit from an unprecedented number of three urbanistes en mission, while none were posted in neighbouring French Equatorial Africa. According to the historian Raymond Betts, the constant lack of skilful urbanists who actually lived in French West Africa, and the clear contrast between the exemplary case of Lyautey’s Rabat and the outcomes in Dakar in matters of urban planning, partially attest to the fact that the French did not lose their architectural genius, but restrained its geographical expressions.44 In addition, the Great Depression and the Second World War slowed down urban investment and development in the French colonies of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the idea of unity with France, which had been manifested in the French Union, was realised in 1946, and consequently economic and political conditions changed considerably. But even then, the plan directeur, conceived by H. L. Hoyez in 1938 and drawn up in 1945, was actually delayed until 1961, one year after Senegal’s independence.45 Between this study’s providing a background of relevant historiographies and regional context and laying out its main ideas (Chapter 1), and its epilogue (Chapter 5), the book is composed of three extensive chapters. The second chapter seeks to illuminate the embryonic local and regional contexts in the creation of Dakar. This is against the metropolitan, colonial and indigenous backgrounds in matters of planning and architectural cultures. Entitled ‘Planting the Flag and Military Planning in Imperial Dakar:  Asymmetries, Uncertainties, Illusions’, it deals with urban developments in the western Sudan in the second half of the nineteenth century, in the broader sense. It seeks to go beyond the discourse on colonial spatiality as an instrument for virtually complete domination, surveillance and control, and as a terrain for experimental planning under State-sanctioned violence. This chapter elaborates on the inherent ironies in the colonial planning projects, in terms of the grandiose urban visions as against the contemporary urban ‘deathly sleep’; the torpedoing of colonial urban endeavours by infectious diseases; and the awkwardly realised urban installations in neighbouring communes such as Saint-Louis and Bamako. In addition, quite unusually for research literature, vernacular traditions of settlement organisation and built form are provided side by side with colonial ones in correspondence, and occasionally compared. The third chapter is entitled ‘Street Naming, Infectious Diseases and Planning in Early Colonial Dakar:  Segregationist Insights’. It illustrates both the site-relatedness of residential segregation in [ 13 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Dakar by the beginning of the twentieth century, and comparatively its inter-colonial, transnational facets. This chapter also examines the symbolic and actual relationship between toponymic issues and sanitary considerations in Dakar’s urban planning, together with the process of dissemination of medical and planning ideas amongst the European colonising nations in Africa. The last issue is especially important in giving us a more nuanced understanding of how planning ideas and practices, such as residential segregation, were globally distributed. This is not only through the export of these ideas via bilateral channels (i.e. from the French métropole into the African brousse (bush)), but rather through a mediation upon multilateral and complex frontiers across nations, colonies and linguistic borders. Insights into the French architectural agenda as implemented in Dakar in the interwar period are the subject of the fourth chapter. It seems that drawing on Hobsbawm’s term ‘the invention of tradition’ is particularly useful for the analysis of the French colonial architectures in question, yet not without being aware of the historiography of this term and its problematic. Having been widely employed in historical and anthropological research regarding Africa, examples using ‘invented tradition’ from research in the arts and architecture of Africa are not abundant. These include almost exclusively references to French North Africa, particularly to the neo-Moorish buildings in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia (style arabisance). The contribution of this chapter therefore lies in continuing this line of thought by expanding on the reciprocal relations between colonial forms and ideologies, and in the transnational application of these relations: that is into the territories of sub-Saharan Africa as well.

Notes   1 For the definition of ‘morphogenesis’ (biology), see Encyclopaedia Britannica, digital edition, www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/392779/morphogenesis (accessed 11 July 2015). In the context of sub-Saharan Africa, the urbanist-consultant Christopher Winters used this term in the title of an article, but without further explanation, not even in passing: Christopher Winters, ‘Urban morphogenesis in francophone black Africa’, Geographical Review, 72:2 (1982), 139–54.   2 Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward, ‘Relationality/territoriality: Toward a conceptualization of cities in the world’, Geoforum, 41 (2010), 175–84 (p. 176).   3 Indeed, book-length comparative works on colonial urban space in sub-Saharan Africa are rather meagre, especially regarding two (or more) colonial powers, and therefore worthy to be mentioned in detail. By this author: Liora Bigon, A History of Urban Planning in Two West African Colonial Capitals: Residential Segregation in British Lagos and French Dakar (1850–1930) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); Liora Bigon and Yossi Katz (eds), Garden Cities and Colonial Planning: Transnationality and Urban Ideas in Africa and Palestine (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2014). By other authors: Luce Beeckmans, ‘Making the African city: Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Kinshasa, 1920–80’, Ph.D.  dissertation (Groningen University,

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Introduction 2012); Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn (eds), Capital Cities in Africa:  Power and Powerlessness (Cape Town:  HSRC Press, 2012); Odile Goerg, Pouvoir colonial, municipalités et espaces urbains: Conakry-Freetown des années 1880–1914 (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 1997); Garth Andrew Myers, African Cities:  Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London:  Zed Books, 2011); Ambe Njoh, Planning Power:  Social Control and Planning in Colonial Africa (London and New York: UCL Press, 2007).   4 Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 161, 177–9.   5 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 9. For similar reflections see Frederick Cooper, ‘The dialects of decolonization:  Nationalism and labor movements in postwar French Africa’, in Frederick Cooper and Ann L. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 406–35, esp. p. 407; Alain Sinou, ‘Saint-Louis du Sénégal au début du XIXe siècle: Du comptoir à la ville’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 115–16 (1989), 377–95; Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power and the Built Environment in Colonial Singapore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).   6 Jennifer Robinson, ‘A perfect system of control? State power and “native locations” in South Africa’, Environment and Planning, 8:2 (1990), 135–62. See also David Simon, ‘South African cities in the 1980s: The political economy of urban change’, African Urban Studies, 21 (1985), 81–94. As Simon notes, ‘this perverse exercise in social engineering never succeeded entirely’ (p. 82).   7 Garth Andrew Myers, Verandahs of Power: Colonialism and Space in Urban Africa (New  York:  Syracuse University Press, 2003), p.  161. For similar arguments see Garth Andrew Myers, ‘Colonial and postcolonial modernities in two African cities’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 37:2–3 (2003), 328–57.   8 The last two sentences are heavily inspired by Michel Ben Arrous, ‘La géographie par le bas: Introduction à une aventure collective’, in Michel Ben Arrous and Lazare Ki-Zerbo (eds), Etudes africaines de géographie par la bas (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2009), pp. 2–39 (p. 16).   9 Bishwapriya Sanyal, ‘Preface’, in Bishwapriya Sanyal (ed.), Comparative Planning Cultures (New  York and London:  Routledge, 2005), pp. xix–xxiv (p. xix). For similar statements see also Philip Booth, Michèle Breuillard, Charles Fraser and Didier Paris (eds), Spatial Planning Systems of Britain and France: A Comparative Analysis (London:  Routledge, 2007); Philip Harrison, Alison Todes and Vanessa Watson, Planning and Transformation:  Learning from the Post-Apartheid Experience (Abingdon:  Routledge, 2008); Vanessa Watson, Change and Continuity in Spatial Planning: Metropolitan Planning in Cape Town under Political Transition (London: Routledge, 2002). 10 Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government (New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2000); Felix Driver and David Gilbert (eds), Imperial Cities:  Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester and New  York:  Manchester University Press, 1999); Jane Jacobs, Edge of Empire:  Postcolonialism and the City (London and New  York:  Routledge, 1996); Anthony King, ‘Writing transitional planning histories’, in Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (eds), Urbanism:  Imported or Exported? (Chichester:  Wiley and Sons, 2003), pp.  1–14. See also Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New  York:  A.  Knopf, 1993), p.  15. For a recent European Union Action built on this understanding see www.architecturebeyond.eu (accessed 4 October 2014). 11 Kenneth Kolson, Big Plans: The Allure and Folly of Urban Design (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), esp. Chapter 5. 12 Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow:  An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), p. 6. Though there is a discussion of New Delhi as part of the ‘big plans’ tradition, the centrality of India in the British imperial consciousness was unprecedented, especially in comparison with sub-Saharan Africa.

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French colonial Dakar 13 This refers to the part entitled ‘La ville européenne outre-mer’, by Odile Goerg and Xavier Huetz de Lemps, in Jean-Luc Pinol (ed.), Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, 2 vols, Vol. II (Paris: Seuil, 2003), pp. 277–551. 14 Stephen Ward, Robert Freestone and Christopher Silver, ‘Century Paper. The “new” planning history:  Reflections, issues and directions’, Town Planning Review, 82:3 (2011), 231–61. 15 References in other European languages indicated in this paper, including a few items in French, did not include colonial situations, and publications on French urbanism are preoccupied with the métropole alone. In the body of the text, however, only a few lines are concerned with colonial situations. The three items regarding sub-Saharan Africa are:  Philip Harrison, ‘Reconstruction and planning in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer South African War:  The experience of the Colony of Natal’, Planning Perspectives, 17 (2002), 163–82; Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (London: Spon, 1997); Alan Mabin and Daniel Smit, ‘Reconstructing South Africa’s cities? The making of urban planning 1900–2000’, Planning Perspectives, 12 (1997), 193–223. 16 Oren Yiftachel, ‘Essay: Re-engaging planning theory? Towards “South-Eastern” perspectives’, Planning Theory, 5 (2006), 211–22 (p. 215). 17 As explicitly remarked, for instance, by (in chronological order): Janet Abu-Lughod, ‘Tale of two cities:  The origins of modern Cairo’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 7:4 (1965), 429–57 (p. 429); Alain Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal: Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar (Paris: Karthala, ORSTOM, 1993), p. 5; John Parker, Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann; Oxford: James Currey, 2000), p. xix; Odile Goerg, ‘Villes, circulations et expressions culturelles’, Afrique et histoire, 5 (2006), 9–14 (p.  9); Laurent Fourchard, ‘Les villes en Afrique: Histoire et sciences sociales’, Afrique et histoire, 5 (2006), 267–78 (p. 267); Njoh, Planning Power, introduction. 18 This latter distinction is based on Paul Maylam, ‘Explaining the apartheid city:  20  years of South African urban historiography’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 21:1 (1995), 19–38 (p.  20). See also Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘The process of urbanization in Africa (from its origins to the beginning of independence)’, African Studies Review, 34:1 (1991), 1–98 (p.  18). Some typical anglophone examples are:  Pauline H.  Baker, Urbanization and Political Change:  The Politics of Lagos 1917–67 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Frederick Cooper, From Slaves to Squatters:  Plantation Labor and Agriculture in Zanzibar and Coastal Kenya, 1890–1925 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980); Josef Gugler, Urbanisation and Social Change in West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Charles van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand, 1886–1914 (Johannesburg:  Ravan, 1982); Louise White, The Comfort of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). Some typical francophone examples are:  Odile Goerg, ‘Conakry:  Un modèle de ville coloniale française? Règlements fonciers et urbanisme, de 1885 aux années 1920’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 99:25 (1985), 309–35; Marc Le Pape, ‘De l’espace et des races à Abidjan entre 1903 et 1934’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 99 (1985), 295–307; Alain Sinou and Bachir Oloudé, Porto-Novo: Ville d’Afrique noire (Paris: ORSTOM, 1988). 19 David Anderson and Richard Rathbone (eds), Africa’s Urban Past (Oxford:  James Currey, 2000). 20 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, The History of African Cities South of the Sahara:  From the Origins to Colonization, trans. Mary Baker (Princeton:  Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), p.  x. Her characterisation is surprisingly actual. For instance, the ‘urban spaces’ in Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola (eds), African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (Rochester, NY:  University of Rochester Press, 2005) are mainly used as a background for social interactions. 21 In chronological order, this partial list mentions first the francophone dependencies in Africa, and then gives some key references to the British, globally: Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA and

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Introduction London: MIT Press, 1989); David Prochaska, Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design of French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Nezar AlSayyad (ed.), Forms of Dominance:  On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992); Maurice Culot and Jean-Marie Thiveaud (eds), Architecture française outre mer (Liège:  Pierre Mardaga, 1992); Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal; Jacques Soulillou (ed.), Rives coloniales:  Architecture de Saint-Louis à Douala (Paris:  ORSTOM; Marseille:  Parenthèses, 1993); Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg (eds), La Ville européenne outre mers:  Un modèle conquérant? (XVe–XXe siècles) (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 1996); Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations:  Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1997); Goerg, Pouvoir colonial; Patricia Morton, Hybrid Modernities:  Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000); Laurent Fourchard, De la ville coloniale à la cour africaine: Espaces, pouvoirs et sociétés à Ouagadougou et à Bobo-Dioulasso (Haute Volta) (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 2001); Institut National du Patrimoine, Architecture coloniale et patrimoine: L’expérience française (Paris: Somogy, 2005); Bernard Toulier, Johan Lagae and Marc Gemoets, Kinshasa: Architecture et paysage urbains (Paris: Somogy, 2010). For the British sphere see for instance: Anthony King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995 [1984]); Yeoh, Contesting Space; Home, Of Planting and Planning; Parker, Making the Town; Mark Crinson, Modern Architecture and the End of Empire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); and Myers, Verandahs of Power. 22 For instance: Jacques Charpy, ‘Comment et pourquoi est né Dakar’, France outre-mer, special issue: Dakar à cent ans, 330 (1957), 8–9; Jacques Charpy (ed.), La Fondation de Dakar (1845, 1857, 1869): Collection des documents (Paris: Larose, 1958); Philippe David, Paysages dakarois de l’époque coloniale (Dakar: ENDA, 1978); Jean Delcourt, Naissance et croissance de Dakar (Dakar: Clairafrique, 1983); Claude Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île du Cap Vert et des origines de Dakar (Paris:  Larose, 1914); Roger Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle’, Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 168–9 (1960), 387–426; ‘SEITC’, ‘Dakar à 100 ans!’, Tropiques, 394 (1957), 38–9. 23 Prochaska, Making Algeria French, p.  1. While the work of the Senegalese urban geographer Assane Seck could be partly considered among the wave of monographs indicated above in terms of ‘developmentalist’ orientation, it is also distinct in its slightly critical view. See Assane Seck, Dakar:  Métropole ouest- africaine (Dakar: IFAN, 1970); Seck, Dakar (Dakar: Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Dakar, 1960s); Seck, ‘Dakar, urban landscapes’, Planning, Housing Information, 78 (1974), 7–18. 24 Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Transnational’, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History from the Mid-19th Century to the Present Day (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2009), pp. 1047–55 (p. 1054). 25 Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Introduction: The professor and the madman’, in Iriye and Saunier, The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, pp. xvii–xx (p. xviii). 26 The AOF, that is the Federation of French West Africa, was created in 1895, alongside the neighbouring, later Federation of French Equatorial Africa (Afrique-Equatoriale française; AEF), to facilitate the centralist decision-making process in Paris. The AOF’s overall territory amounted to 4,633, 985 km2, and included eight colonies: Senegal, French Sudan (today’s Mali), French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey (today’s Benin), Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), Niger and Mauritania; Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–45, trans. Till Gottheiner (New  York:  PICA Press, 1971), p. 308. In 1902 Dakar was designated as the AOF’s capital, instead of its former capital of Saint-Louis. Until the late 1950s, Saint-Louis continued to serve as the capital of Senegal. 27 Scrutinising the doctrine of assimilation per se is beyond the scope of this book. For more on this French colonial policy, and its successor policy of association,

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French colonial Dakar see these key ‘classical’ sources:  Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal:  The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–20 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971); Martin Lewis, ‘One hundred million Frenchmen:  The assimilation theory in French colonial policy’, in Robert O.  Collins (ed.), Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, 1860–1960 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 165–78; Martin Lewis, ‘An assessment of assimilation’, in Collins, Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, pp. 188–91; Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). In addition, an analysis of both these colonial policies in the light of the planning and architecture in contemporary Dakar is embedded, where relevant, along with the chapters of this book. 28 The African ‘public’ in reality was racially segregated in the colonial cities through, inter alia, building codes and planning legislation (see Chapter  3). The metropolitan public, in the case of France, was mostly apathetic to the colonial project, and included left-wing opposition. Architecture thus served as an apparatus by the colonial State to justify the colonising mission. Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p.  300; Rabinow, French Modern, p.  284; Raymond Betts, Uncertain Dimensions: Western Overseas Empires in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. xiv. 29 For instance:  Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations, p.  71; Prochaska, Making Algeria French, p.  68; Rabinow, French Modern, pp.  288–91; Wright, The Politics of Design, pp. 1–2. 30 This culminated in the election of Blaise Diagne as the first black African deputy to the French Parliament in 1914, but in colonial Senegal African voters were subjected to manipulations of all sorts by the French commercial companies, and the representation of their delegates in the communes system was never ideal. In colonial Brazzaville, elevated to the status of commune in 1911, the situation was aggravated with the appointment of only Europeans for its four-member town council. Ambe Njoh, ‘Colonial philosophies, urban space, and racial segregation in British and French colonial Africa’, Journal of Black Studies, 38:4 (2008), 579–99 (p. 586). 31 For more on this question see Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal, pp. 79–92, 196–212. 32 Mamadou Diouf, ‘Islam, the “originaires”, and the making of public space in a colonial city:  Saint-Louis of Senegal’, in Mamadou Diouf (ed.), Tolerance, Democracy and Sufis in Senegal (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2013), pp.  180–204 (pp. 180–6). See also Mamadou Diouf, ‘The French colonial policy of assimilation and the civility of the originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A nineteenth-century globalization project’, Development and Change, 29:4 (1998), 671–96. 33 See, for more, Bigon, A History of Urban Planning; Njoh, Planning Power. 34 Carl Nightingale, Segregation:  A  Global History of Divided Cities (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), p. 159. He borrowed the phrase ‘segregation mania’ from Daniel Headrick, The Tentacles of Progress: Technology Transfer in the Age of Imperialism, 1850–1940 (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 164. 35 Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1922), pp. 148–9; Robert Home, ‘Town planning, segregation and indirect rule in colonial Nigeria’, Third World Planning Review, 5:2 (1983), 165–75. 36 Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS), P 190, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar, village de Médina, création de village, 1915–19, para. 5. 37 In chronological order: Raymond Mauny, Guide to Gorée (Dakar: Institute Français d’Afrique Noire, 1954); Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal aux XIXe siècle’; Michael Crowder, Senegal:  A  Study in French Assimilation Policy (London:  Oxford

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Introduction University Press, 1962); Camille Camara, Saint-Louis du Sénégal: Evolution d’une ville en milieu africain (Dakar:  IFAN, 1968); Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal, esp. introduction; Rita Cruise-O’Brien, White Society in Black Africa: The French in Senegal (London: Faber and Faber, 1972); Alain Sinou, ‘Les moments fondateurs de quelques villes coloniales’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 81–3 (1981), 375–88; Xavier Ricou, ‘Gorée d’hier à demain’, DPLG thesis (Unité Pédagogique d’Architecture, Paris, 1984); United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Gorée: Island of Memories (Paris: UNESCO, 1985); Sinou, ‘Saint-Louis du Sénégal’; Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal; Coquery-Vidrovitch, The History of African Cities (originally published in French as Histoire des villes d’Afrique noire:  Des origines à la colonisation (Paris:  Albin Michel, 1993)); Mamadou Diouf, ‘Assimilation coloniale et identités religieuses de la civilité des originaires des Quatre Communes (Sénégal)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 4:3 (2000), 565–87; Xavier Ricou, Trésors de l’iconographie du Sénégal colonial (Paris: Riveneuve, 2007); Ibrahima Thiaw (ed.), Espaces, culture matérielle et identités en Sénégambie (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2010); and Hilary Jones, The Métis of Senegal:  Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 38 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp.  12–15. For statistics of the Islands’ socio-ethnic composure in the pre-colonial period see Ibrahima Thiaw, ‘L’espace entre les mots et les choses:  Mémoire historique et culture matérielle à Gorée (Sénégal)’, in Thiaw, Espaces, culture matérielle et identités, pp. 17–38. 39 Thiaw, ‘L’espace entre les mots et les choses’, pp. 20, 26, 35. 40 Some local scholars were misled by the then voluntary spatial organisation, resulting from social status and class rather than race, but characterised as racially segregated:  Ndèye Sokhna Guèye, ‘Splendeurs et misères des signares:  Du rôle des femmes dans la traité transatlantique et l’esclavage à Gorée (XVIIe–XIXe siècles)’, in Ndèye Sokhna Guèye (ed.), Pratiques d’esclavage et d’asservissement des femmes en Afrique (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2013), pp. 21–39 (p. 25). 41 Joseph Arthur, comte de Gobineau, Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, in Gobineau:  Selected Political Writings, ed. Michael D.  Biddis (London:  Jonathan Cape, 1970), pp. 108–43. 42 Regarding (sub-Saharan) Africa see especially: Betts, Assimilation and Association; Njoh, ‘Colonial philosophies’; Ambe Njoh, ‘Europeans, modern urban planning and the acculturation of “racial others” ’, Planning Theory, 9:4 (2010), 369–78. 43 Betts, Uncertain Dimensions, p.  8; Henri Brunschwig, ‘The decolonization of French Black Africa’, in Prosser Gifford and Roger Louis (eds), The Transfer of Power in Africa, Decolonization, 1940–60 (New Haven:  Yale University Press, 1986), pp. 211–24. 44 Raymond Betts, ‘Imperial designs:  French colonial architecture and urban planning in sub-Saharan Africa’, in Wesley G.  Johnson (ed.), Double Impact:  France and Africa in the Age of Imperialism (Westport, CT:  Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 191–207. 45 Betts, ‘Imperial designs’, pp. 194, 205.

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C HAP T E R  TWO

Planting the flag and military planning in imperial Dakar: asymmetries, uncertainties, illusions Introduction While colonial urban planning should be conceived as an integral part of achieving the goals of the colonial enterprise in terms of culture, ideology, politics and economy, some recent key works in colonial urbanism have been preoccupied with the question of power. Considerable attention has been paid to the connections between colonial development, planning and built-up forms, and the ultimate goals of colonialism as they relate to profit, prestige, ideologies of governance, social control, political power and the world economy. These analytical tendencies are prominent, for instance, in case- and regional studies on the French side in North and sub-Saharan Africa, as against the more synoptic anglophone-oriented research on colonialism, urbanism and globalisation.1 This chapter aims at going beyond the discourse on colonial spatiality as an instrument for domination, and on colonies serving, subject to state-sanctioned violence, as laboratories for experiments in planning2  – a discourse that is important in itself. This is achieved both through returning to the mid-nineteenth century, conceptualised as an ‘insecure’ period of the very establishment of the French colonial control in sub-Saharan Africa; and through expanding on the ambiguous aspects of ‘asymmetries’, ‘uncertainties’ and ‘illusions’ that were rooted in the contemporary planning projects there. In the first chapter to his book Planning Power: Social Control and Planning in Colonial Africa, Ambe Njoh draws our attention to the careful selection of sites for forts and their design by the French military, particularly in French Senegal, as an ultimate expression of colonial authority and power. According to Njoh, these projects and their accompanied ‘massive public works projects such as the construction of roads, streets, bridges, sanitation and related facilities were necessary to broadcast the authority and power of the colonial state over the [ 20 ]

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colonial subjects’.3 With a focus on colonial Dakar, our chapter examines in detail some of the French planning and construction projects in Senegal and French Sudan, governed in this initial period by military logic and practices – but from an opposite viewpoint from that of Njoh. This period is especially interesting because it provides us with quite non-heroic insights as to the fragility of the colonial enterprise, its hesitant beginnings and its megalomaniac visions confronting an occasionally provincial urban atmosphere that was dazzling at its best. We shall elaborate on the moments of uncertainty in the establishment of colonial Dakar in terms of urban planning, architectural forms and colonial imagery. Showing some of the broader cultural context and inherent ironies, we shall discuss inter alia:  the initial colonial situation against the background of the first installations; the grandiose urban visions confronting the city’s contemporary ‘deathly sleep’; the torpedoing of urban-development projects by infectious diseases; and some quite awkwardly realised planning projects in neighbouring terrains, such as Saint-Louis and Bamako. The characterisation of French colonisation by the historian Raymond Betts has been a source of inspiration. According to Betts, notwithstanding the rhetoric, French imperialism manifested itself through a series of limited-scale operations involving a relatively small group of people. In general, Betts argues, the history of the French colonial empire is characterised by an asymmetry: modest beginnings yet great ends.4 While the modest colonial beginnings of the British counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa employed mostly economic or commercial strategies, the French depended largely on military means. As we shall see, this explains the heavy involvement of military engineers in the planning of the French colonial settlements in the territories under their control. Military engineers played hardly any role in town planning projects in the British colonies. As noted by Robert Home, in the British colonial sphere planning projects were normally executed by members of the colonial civil service such as surveyors and engineers, or by outside consultants for particular tasks, such as professional architects and town planners.5 Aside from the French military outposts, this chapter’s focus on the pre-1902 period of the creation of Dakar is unique, considering its urban historiography in both French and English. This is because most of the literature on colonial Dakar concentrates on the period between 1902 and 1960, in which Dakar served as the capital of the French West Africa (AOF) Federation. That is, on the more ‘powerful’ period in the history of this city. During this period the regional and international prominence of Dakar was as a chef lieu de colonisation in West Africa in terms of administration, ground and maritime transportation, commerce, [ 21 ]

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modernisation, and urban development plans. Another contribution of this chapter concerns its contextual relationship with regional and local indigenous conceptions of settlement organisation and architectural practices – a relationship that is certainly missing in most of the literature concerning the early history of colonial Dakar. A wealth of visual and textual material is incorporated in our examination. This includes primary and secondary sources, some of them to the best of our knowledge mentioned for the first time in research literature.

The official encounter ‘Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that today, 25 May 1857, I have taken possession in the name of France of the territory of Dakar, flying the French flag over the fortress that has just been built here, and I thereby release our commerce from the tolls that were imposed on it by our treaties with the previous chiefs of the land.’6 These were the opening words with which Léopold Prôtet, the commander in chief for Gorée and Dependencies, announced the official occupation of Dakar to the Goréean community and to his minister of the navy and the colonies, Admiral Hamelin. Hoping to expand formal French influence beyond the coastal mainland adjacent to the Island of Gorée, Prôtet carried out the occupation on a day during the feast of Ramadan, and the chiefs of the indigenous Islamic community were given the tricouleur French flag to plant over the roofs of their round straw huts.7 The words of Prôtet reflect three main issues that are characteristic of the process of the French gaining of control in West Africa. First, the military men felt a considerable degree of confidence and freedom of action in the field, so much so that in several cases, only after a territory had been taken over was a report delivered to the French Government. In our case, Admiral Hamelin expressed a strategic interest in the territory-to-be of Dakar about half a year before Prôtet’s declaration, and ordered the latter to occupy it in late January 1857. While Hamelin argued that no major edifice should be built in the region, Prôtet’s troops were already embarked there by mid-January of the same year, before receiving the decree. From his headquarters on Gorée Island facing the Cap Vert peninsula – the future location of the city of Dakar – Prôtet commenced the building of a fortress, which he regarded as an official French possession.8 The second issue referred to by Prôtet was that political and economic negotiations or agreements had previously been entered into between Europeans and local African agents. In our case, these mainly concerned economic obligations on the part of the European merchants to the indigenous rulers, such as tolls in return for some protection [ 22 ]

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and the right  – for instance, to operate chambers of commerce. The agreements with the indigenous chiefs predated the actual takeover of the peninsula: a series of treaties from 1679 to 1830 sought to achieve creeping French suzerainty and to pave the way for the official occupation. Most of the treaties were established between the chartered maritime company ‘Compagnie du Sénégal’ and the local Lebu rulers. Their content was influenced by the obvious strategic and economic interests of the colonial chartered company. Granted a charter to operate in the overseas empire in the name of their governments, these commercial bodies also had the authority for occupation, administration, commerce and missionary activity. As a consequence, the treaties were inherently ambivalent towards African societies since their aim was legally to legitimise any future takeover by a European power, in return for some tolls and other payments to the indigenous rulers. In the case of the Lebu chiefs, as in many other cases in sub-Saharan Africa, the treaties and their implications were not interpreted appropriately by them and were not fully understood. Their complaints about land confiscations carried out by the colonial State continued throughout the colonial period, with some land-rights complexities bequeathed to post-colonial Senegal.9 The third issue implied by Prôtet is that the French occupation was not exercised over a local tabula rasa, as many colonialists would have probably wanted to believe. According to him, a territory or settlement called ‘Dakar’ already existed on Cap Vert, with an Islamic population that observed Ramadan and lived in straw huts. We shall focus on this local pre-colonial context, providing some historical background on the Lebu population and its settlement structure at the eve of the mid-nineteenth-century colonial occupation. This will contribute to a broader understanding of the nature of the encounter between Africans and Europeans, in terms of both actual and conceptual space. The changing perspectives and aspects related to this encounter over the period will be highlighted, as this process did not concern the French (planning) culture or its local counterpart. It rather concerned the dynamic relationships between both (planning) cultures that arose from this encounter – to which was added a gradual introduction of other intermediate groups and agencies as an outcome of the colonial situation. The size of the Lebu population, the original ethnic group that had settled on the Cap Vert peninsula, was estimated in the early nineteenth century at around 10,000 people. They were concentrated in a settlement that was referred to by them as ‘Ndakaru’ and included eleven villages. Each of these villages, located on the southern part of the sandy peninsula, included several hundred inhabitants organised by patriarchal households. The round-hut complexes, made of straw, [ 23 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 2.1  Pre-colonial Senegal and the Wolof empire. Until the nineteenth century the latter included the four states of Jolof, Cayor, Walo and Baol, and the ‘Wolofisation’ of Sine and Saloum.

were arranged around a central square, dotted with one or several large trees. This open space served for communal activities such as social gatherings or recreation, and in many cases it included a small mosque, made of temporary materials.10 Lebu oral traditions that are reputed to go back to the sixteenth century link the geographic origins of this group to Fuuta Tooro (Fouta Toro), a valley north of the middle stretch of the Senegal River. By 1700 they had moved south towards the Wolof (Oulouf) areas of Jolof and Cayor (Kajoor), and towards the Serer (Sérère) regions of Sine (Siin) and Saloum (Saalum). Both these ethnic groups influenced the language of the Lebu and their practices. With the establishment of some fishing and agricultural communities on Cap Vert at the edge of Cayor, several nomadic tribes from the Malinké (Mandingue) were expelled from this area by the Lebu (Figure 2.1). Two types of communities were created in the region under the influence of Islamic civilisation, which penetrated from the North into sub-Saharan Africa from the ninth century. The first type was a theocracy backed by military force, such as the Wolof; and the second was a more egalitarian society, based on Islamic principles with a variety of [ 24 ]

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political institutions, as characterised by the Serer and the Lebu themselves. Subjected to the Damel (Wolof ruler) of Cayor by the end of the eighteenth century, several Lebu leaders started a struggle for independence from the Wolof that lasted two decades. Their revolt was headed by Dial Diop, who defeated the Damel in 1812. This was one of the reasons why the treaties signed between the Europeans and the Damel, as the supposed official ruler, were not recognised by the Lebu. While Diop was proclaimed the Lebu leader, political rule was administered de facto by several chiefs, kadis and household heads. In contrast to the pre-colonial Wolof kingdom  – governed by monarchs supported by a class of slave-warriors – it is possible to understand why contemporary French travellers to Cap Vert referred to this place in their memoirs as ‘the Lebu Republic’.11 Figure 2.2 shows a map on which each of the eleven Lebu villages of ‘Ndakaru’ is indicated. The map was drawn in 1853 by Louis Léon César Faidherbe, one of the most renowned governors of colonial Senegal. On account of the military expeditions he organised against the regional Islamic forces, Faidherbe is considered the person who set up French West Africa, both politically and administratively. The map, prepared with prospects for future occupation of the peninsula in mind, is valuable for identification of every Lebu village by name and exact location. This identification is important, since after the French occupation, most of these Lebu villages were transferred, sometimes several times, further inland (see Chapter 3). This was in order to enable the expansion of colonial Dakar – an urban space that was preliminary perceived as a European space, designated to serve the European interests. The names of the eleven Lebu villages, however, were clearly marked by Faidherbe (their current transcription is given in parentheses): Sainba Dionni (Soumbédioune), Alonga, Kamen, Thédem (Thérigne), M’botte (Mbot), N’grave (Ngaraf), Kaye, Kaye Toute, Sintia (Sandaga), M’bur (M’bor) and Tanne (Thann). Several of these names, such as Kaye and M’bor, are still in use in present-day Dakar, though they do not necessarily refer to their original locations, because of the aforementioned transfers. The village of Thann, for instance, shown on the lower part of Faidherbe’s map, was mentioned as the residence of the paramount chief (i.e. the sëriñ) of ‘Ndakaru’ (Figure 2.3). This is the location of rue de Tann in the heart of modern Dakar. Returning to the military viewpoint of French colonialism as reflected in the words of Prôtet, the establishment of the fortress overlooking the peninsula was accompanied by a few more installations. As early as 10 January 1857 Prôtet bought the house of Jaubert, a groundnut merchant from nearby Gorée, and turned it into a fortified post. Jaubert had built this house on Cap Vert the previous year, encouraged [ 25 ]

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Figure 2.2  Pre-colonial Ndakaru, map drawn by Faidherbe in 1853 and titled ‘The village of Dakar’. The eleven Lebu villages of Cap Vert are demarcated, together with the first French buildings such as the Catholic Mission and the house of Jaubert.

by the political circumstances in which commercial impetus in groundnut production in the Senegambia region was encouraged by the colonial endeavour. The growth of the groundnut trade was closely related to the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade during the nineteenth century. The European merchants of Gorée  – the island served as a departure point for slaves on the way to America – were obliged to find [ 26 ]

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Figure 2.3  Drawing made by a French visitor to Ndakaru in 1839, entitled ‘Hut of the village chief in Dakar’.

an alternative source of income. On account of the tropical climate and soil conditions in the area, which were favourable for groundnut production, groundnuts became a prominent export supported by the colonial Government.12 Yet up to the mid-nineteenth century, and in spite of the overcrowding on Gorée, previous plans of the French military administration for expanding to the off-shore peninsula were postponed. Thus apart from a Catholic Mission that was established there about a decade before Prôtet’s occupation, Jaubert’s house was the only European built-up complex on Cap Vert. The Catholic Mission, comprising a little chapel, an artisan workshop and a school (these do not survive today), was built by three missionaries sent by the Pères du Saint-Esprit to Gorée Island. After building a similar complex in Gorée, they settled on the peninsula in 1848 as protégés of one of the Lebu chiefs in return for an annual tribute (Figure 2.4).13 With the establishment of the naval port of the West African Division in Gorée in 1845, the French administration showed an interest in the shore opposite, and recommended the establishment of a new city [ 27 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 2.4  Engraving made by a French visitor to Dakar in 1862, entitled ‘View of the Mission of Dakar’.

close to the parent Lebu settlement of ‘Ndakaru’. The plan was yet to be realised for a variety of reasons: the Engineering Corps was too short of means to construct a fortress, perceived as crucial for a defence over a newly acquired territory; Gorée’s residents were concerned about promoting another settlement in their proximity, fearful of economic competition and an unfavourable allocation of funds on the part of the colonial administration; and, with the abolition of the slave trade, the French administration itself was concerned about possible massive immigration of former slaves into the future city of Dakar. Unlike the situation on the Island of Gorée, surveillance over the arrivals and departures of merchants to and from the mainland would have proved as challenging. Moreover, the tropical conditions, including heat, high humidity and frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases, had caused the failure of every white settlement policy on an agricultural or other permanent basis in the region.14 As a consequence and in direct opposition to the case of French Algeria for instance, Senegal was never defined as a ‘white settlement colony’ by the French colonial architects – a crucial fact in dictating the character of colonialism there. The contemporary common imagery of the unfamiliar mainland beyond the shore of Cap Vert as a ‘terre des fièvres et de la barbarie’ had also been decisive in hindering European settlement there. This imagery was not specific to this particular area but included the whole [ 28 ]

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of sub-Saharan Africa during the long eighteenth century and much of the nineteenth. In almost every geography book about Africa until the mid-eighteenth century as well as in travel literature it was acknowledged that beyond the narrow coastal strips, little was known about this continent to Europeans. Two opposed misconceptions were particularly prevalent: that the hinterland, where wild beasts roamed, was not settled by humans; and that it consisted of gold mines and was inhabited by cannibals. As most of sub-Saharan Africa was historically illiterate, it had been perceived as ahistorical in the then European mind, and this further contributed to such misconceptions taking root in the metropolitan conscience. The repeated outbreaks of epidemics, which claimed the lives of a high percentage of the Europeans on the Island of Gorée and in other places before the advent of tropical medicine in the late nineteenth century, only reinforced these popular images. A prominent view of West Africa as ‘the white man’s grave’ was generally accepted in Europe.15 Until the nineteenth century Europeans recognised that tropical Africa was not a healthy place, yet statistics about the number of deaths per thousand, for instance, were not generally available. Mortality rates of newly arrived Europeans were the highest in comparison to anywhere in the world: 50 per cent in the first year of arrival, and 25 per cent in the following year. The main killers were not intestinal infections or accidents, some of which are well covered in art history, in paintings such as Le Radeau de la Méduse by Théodore Géricault,16 but rather malaria and yellow fever. Upon the outbreak of a yellow fever epidemic in Saint-Louis and Gorée in 1830, mortality rates were 573 per 1,000, falling to 146 per 1,000 afterwards.17 The house of the groundnut merchant Jaubert, however, comprised a few small living and store rooms extending over an area of about 50 m2, enclosed by walls. It was located north of the Lebu village of M’bor, which is in the area of Dakar’s present ‘Place de l’Indépéndance’. The latter square, designed immediately after the formal occupation as ‘Place Prôtet’, constituted the heart of the colonial city. Erected on the top of a plateau and overlooking the nearby bay, the Lebu villages and the Catholic Mission, the house of Jaubert, repaired with Lebu assistance, served as a small outpost or a military stronghold. Conforming to French strategic and economic interests, the fortress aimed at serving as a base for the conquest of the hinterland, and for defending French interests against both local African powers and rival colonial ones. Indeed, the colonial project as conceived in France was considerably shaped by international imperial rivalries among the European métropoles within Europe and overseas, with primary competition from Britain. Indeed, on the eve of the Berlin Conference (December [ 29 ]

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French colonial Dakar

1884 to January 1885), which sought to regulate and legitimate the partition of the African continent between the European powers, the conquest of Senegal was almost completed by the French. The annexation of the Wolof kingdom in 1886 was to follow, at the same time that the British took hold of the southern Gambia River and environs. In spite of naming this section ‘The official encounter’, it would be narrow-minded to think that it concerns a first encounter among the various parties. The Wolof had conducted historical contacts for hundreds of years with North Africa through the Sahara desert; and along the coasts from the mid-fifteenth century, with European navigators such as the Portuguese, Dutch, British and French. These were the Portuguese navigators who for instance gave the peninsula its name ‘Cap Vert’ (the ‘Green Cape’) on landing there in 1445 right after the seasonal rains; and the name Gorée is a deviation of the original ‘Goede Reede’ (‘Good Wharf’), given by Dutch sailors.18 In addition, a more intimate acquaintance of the Lebu and Wolof with the French had already been initiated from the mid-seventeenth century in Senegal, with the settlement of French merchants in the coastal island towns of Gorée and Saint-Louis, and later in mainland Rufisque. Yet Prôtet’s seizure of the peninsula of Dakar-to-be marked the official occupation, followed by the establishment of colonial rule there. This stage represents a new era, the colonial era. The previous period terminated the relative reciprocity that had characterised Franco-Wolof–Lebu relations to date. With the raising of the tricolour flag over the straw huts of Cap Vert, the French merchants and the few missionaries could not be expected to demonstrate signs of subjection to the local chiefs, such as the payment of toll fees or protection money. Yet colonial control in West Africa was far from being complete because of the inherent weakness of the colonial State there, which was underfunded and understaffed.

Colonial beginnings Bearing in mind Betts’s words concerning the asymmetry of the French colonial empire – modest beginnings versus great ends – we shall turn at this point to examine the period during which the French colonial presence was established in the colony of Senegal and adjacent regions. The focus of our examination is the physical dimension during this initial period of gaining French control, not ignoring its relationship with the indigenous building traditions. Concerning the modest beginnings of Dakar, it is Emile Pinet-Laprade who is often mentioned in French colonial literature as the ‘founder’ of the city. This is due to his major role in the conceptualisation of Dakar as a significant urban point, [ 30 ]

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Figure 2.5  Dakar in 1876 showing the town’s demarcated empty lots.

considering the few rectangular stone structures that actually existed there at the time, surrounded by groups of thatched houses. However, because of this very wide gap between plan and implementation – a gap that had been left open for about three decades since 1862 – it is little wonder that his vision for the future colonial town was criticised by contemporary Goréens as ‘megalomaniac’.19 The embryonic state of Dakar during its first few decades and its unformed, somewhat ‘sleepy’, urban atmosphere are manifest in contemporary evidence. Maps of the city, for example, dating from the 1870s and the 1880s, show that plots had been marked in accordance with Pinet-Laprade’s plan, yet were still unoccupied (Figure 2.5).20 This was also reflected in the monthly reports of Colonel Canard, the commander of the district of Gorée from 1870 to 1880, to the governor of the colony based in Saint-Louis. Preoccupied with the word ‘calm’, Canard’s letters are exceptionally picturesque: ‘nothing but silence, a complete calmness, always too few European and mulatto residents, themselves not eager to engage in industry; there is not a cobbler here, nor a tailor, nor a toupee-maker’ (October 1875); ‘nothing but silence, everything is calm, too calm. The indigenous population tends to decline and the European population does not increase at all’ (April 1876); ‘Dakar is always very calm, it is also sad, few houses, few inhabitants, little commerce and no industry’ (January 1878); and the like.21 [ 31 ]

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French colonial Dakar

And, about fifteen years later, a visitor to Dakar remarked that the ambiguous term ‘a settlement’ might be better suited to Dakar, as it would be an exaggeration to call it ‘a city’.22 Yet it is sufficient to examine demographic growth to understand that since the twentieth century Dakar has escaped from such descriptions and from the primordial colonial appearance represented by Jaubert’s house. From about 9,000 residents in 1902, its population rose to 15,000 within a year, and reached about 23,000 in 1905.23 Two administrative decisions directly influenced these growth rates. The first related to the ‘Fashoda incident’ following which the French Government decided to turn Dakar into its main military port on the Atlantic and allocated funds to achieve this aim. The ‘Fashoda incident’ represents a climax in the extra-European political rivalry among the European powers in the age of imperialism. The appetite for gaining overseas territories led British troops in the summer of 1898 to move from Egypt southwards, and thereby to meet the French troops on their move from the west of the continent eastwards. The ‘encounter’ took place in the town of Fashoda in Sudan (in East Africa, and not in today’s Mali, which was then called ‘French Sudan’), a situation that almost caused an international crisis. The second administrative decision, on the part of the second governor-general of French West Africa, Ernst Roume, was the transfer of the AOF’s federal capital from Saint-Louis to Dakar in 1902.24 Considering some several key factors, such as the opening of the railway line from Dakar to Saint-Louis in 1885 (DSL), a pioneering project in West Africa at the time; the enormous building impetus following the city’s 1902 new administrative status; and the ongoing works on the deepwater port and the growing number of visiting sea craft – it is possible to say that Dakar finally entered its ‘imperial age’ as envisioned by Pinet-Laprade.25 Thereafter it was described as an ‘imperial city’ or ‘metropolitan city’, notions that carry a rhetorical value in the contemporary French conscience and imagery, and the city was gradually conceived as a chef lieu de colonisation in West Africa. It was also conceived as a point where administrative functions crossed with commercial and communication ones, and served as a centre of radiating influence on local, regional and international levels. In addition, until October 1924 and as a result of the First World War, the city had an international military airport and a submarine base. Its status was then declared to be the ‘Circonscription de Dakar’, somewhat equivalent to that of Washington, DC. The image of Washington, DC as a model for Dakar is interesting in this context because Marshal Hubert Lyautey, the first resident-general in Morocco from 1912 to 1925, labelled Rabat ‘my little Washington’. When transferring the capital from inland Fez [ 32 ]

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to coastal Rabat, the urban design and infrastructure introduced into the latter included all the latest modern innovations.26 In 1908, in a survey of what were then considered impressive data concerning Dakar’s military port, commercial port, sanitary installations and the system of transportation, one of the French civil servants summarised with pride ‘the importance of Dakar in our colonial empire’.27 A  similar ‘developmentalist’ tone continued for the next fifty years, until decolonisation. In a series of publications from 1957, for example, celebrating ‘one hundred years of Dakar’, a repetitive subject was the motif of the transformation of Dakar from ‘nothing’, that is, ‘a village of thatched huts that lazily spread its straw roofs along the beach of Hann!’, into ‘a modern metropolis that benefits from the most updated concepts in economy and demography’.28 Such descriptions were typically accompanied by images demonstrating the binary gap. ‘If Dakar would have stayed a mere tropical village as it was for such a long time in the past’, wrote another visitor in the 1940s, ‘it would not occupy any place in history’.29 But our aim here is not to magnify the early twentieth century’s building impetus in Dakar as a federal capital, but rather to return to the second half of the nineteenth century. This period was marked by military occupation of the hinterland from along the Senegal River and the base in the old settlement of Saint-Louis, because regions that were officially annexed to the empire were yet to be subject to it in practice. At this stage, like the experience in other French colonies, the establishment of the first outposts and urban installations in the colony of Senegal was featured in a considerably haphazard realisation and was handed over to the military administration. Consequently, the Engineering Corps (Corps du Génie) had a dominant role in issues of town planning. Its officers were qualified at the same metropolitan institutions, moved during their career among various colonies, and sought to apply similar guiding principles in the name of a virtually unified national territory. The plans drawn up by the Engineering Corps were closely influenced by each other, both within a colony and among colonies, such as the Antilles, Martinique or Guiana of the ‘first colonial empire’.30 The overseas territories constituted a kind of ‘laboratory’ where, unlike the métropole, a variety of architectural and other experiments could be executed with relative ease and freedom of action. Some of the projects of the Engineering Corps during the second half of the nineteenth century will be examined in the following, including settlement plans and actual edifices. Throughout, broader issues related to planning histories and cultures will be touched upon, essential for the understanding of the physical aspects of the colonial project in Dakar, Senegal and French Sudan. With a focus on the ‘fragility’ and [ 33 ]

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non-heroic aspects inherent in these colonial planning issues, we shall expand inter alia on: the turning point in the spatial policy following official colonisation; the influence of the training of the military engineers on the design and materialisation of their projects in the colonial context; the ideological differences between the Engineering Corps and other bodies that were then involved in the planning of the colonial urban space, and professional antagonisms; the sometimes questionable considerations and ambiguous physical results of the Corps’s plans; and the reasons for the dominance of military considerations in the contemporary urban shape of Dakar. Civil planning projects will be mentioned as well, even if implemented under the then military administration. In spite of our focus on Dakar, other sites within Senegal and its environs will occasionally be mentioned, as spatial developments in this city did not take place in a physical or perceptual terra nullius. With regard to historiography, the historian Pierre Pinon has given considerable attention to military aspects of the plans of the series of old fortified settlements in a variety of French overseas territories until the early eighteenth century  – at the time of the first colonial empire  – and the urbanist and historian Alain Sinou has examined this subject concerning French West Africa in general and Saint-Louis in particular.31 In respect of the colony of Senegal, in the writings of several other scholars the cantonments in Dakar are mentioned apart from the first fortifications and the strategic advantages of Cap Vert, but only in passing. In English literature, an outstanding scholar who studied the colonial military space and its rationale through the perspective of cultural history in British New Delhi is Tony King. Another study by King examines the transnational connections behind the colonial urban form of the ‘bungalow’, but without highlighting the military context.32 As we shall see, the French Engineering Corps was acquainted with British innovations and was influenced by them, as the French military barracks was particularly inspired by the model of the colonial bungalow. The role of military officers who executed the official ground occupation of sub-Saharan Africa was different than the one of their predecessors in the pre-colonial period. Their mission was no longer the defence of the few French commercial establishments along the Senegalese coastline such as Gorée and Saint-Louis, but rather to try to gain effective control over an expanding area from Senegal in the west of the continent to Djibouti in the east. British competition in this imperial era drove them to proceed as fast as possible, and by all possible means. Thus the occupation was translated into a series of military expeditions from the base in Saint-Louis on the mouth of the Senegal River, through the establishment of military posts for housing [ 34 ]

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garrisons. These posts, such as Podor, Bakel, Kayes, Médine and Kita, were erected along the penetration routes into the continent, particularly along rivers, such as the Senegal (Figure 2.1). The growing physical dimensions of the occupied territory were too vast to enable an equal allocation of resources by the colonial regime, resources that were already meagre in sub-Saharan Africa. The main efforts in this regard were therefore concentrated in areas of potential economic gain, as well as in the urban coastal enclaves in which agricultural products were accumulated for overseas export. The old French settlements of Gorée, Saint-Louis and Rufisque, and the newly established colonial settlement of Dakar, served this end. But prior to the nineteenth century, only a few steps were taken by the colonial authorities to lay out the urban space in sub-Saharan Africa. This period, before the ‘effective colonisation’ following the official conquest, was not rich in urban planning projects. Its time span, from the sixteenth century till about the 1820s, is usually defined as the ‘trading’ or ‘Atlantic’ period. The European settlements that were situated mostly on islands along the coasts of West Africa were yet to be regarded as ‘cities’. They were referred to rather as ‘fortified habitations’, with the commercial activity as their raison d’être.33 Around these ‘fortified habitations’ a growing number of African dwellers had concentrated, normally in the form of villages that supplied services such as porterage, domestic work, food and even translations. The trade in gold and other products, and later the slave trade, attracted Portuguese merchants, to be followed by Dutch, Swiss, Danish, British and French merchants. In order to protect themselves from attacks by the indigenous polities, rival European maritime forces or pirates, the fortified posts had similar formal features. Sites that were distinguished by natural defensive qualities were preferred, especially islands. In addition, the shape of the built-up complex was usually square or rectangular, consisting of thick walls made of stone or mud-bricks. Bastions supplemented the corners of the edifice’s thick walls in order to protect them, and were crowned with cannon. Inside were usually found stores, a kitchen, granaries, a chapel and a jail for captured slaves. With the abolition of the slave trade during the nineteenth century, the commercial activity was managed through European charter companies that represented their nations. The number of Europeans had, however, been meagre in each fortified settlement, with only a seasonal presence, especially during the dryer and more pleasant months of the year.34 From around the 1820s, several French officials were asked to regulate the layout in these settlements, including that of the African habitations, and to introduce some town planning. However, during this [ 35 ]

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French colonial Dakar

time there was a tendency among administrative officers to exercise their control almost exclusively over the public spaces. They were yet to interfere in the private residential spaces – in fact, such interference might have proved ineffective, since they were unable to enforce it on the ground. The possibility of meeting opposition from the rich families that controlled the local economy was high, though the number of merchants was relatively small. Aside from the European merchants, the families of the métis, after more than 200  years of French presence, constituted the local elite. In Senegal, the term métis refers to a person who historically has a mixed origin, usually an African mother and a European forefather, although, as the presence of this forefather could be traced back to several decades earlier, or even further, the skin colour of the métis might not necessarily be lighter than that of the indigenous population. However, more than a matter of skin colour or actual numbers in relation to the overall population, it was a matter of orientation: the métis constituted, and still constitute, a group with high self-consciousness in terms of culture, society and politics.35 Contemporary examples of urban spatial legislation clearly tried to create a more ‘urban’  – then a synonym for ‘civilised’  – impression in these settlements. An ordinance that was issued in Saint-Louis in 1822 prohibited keeping horned animals in the public parts of the settlement, that is, in the island’s streets. These wandering domestic animals were obliged to be put in special pens in the northern part of the settlement. A few years later another ordinance was issued, prohibiting the building of edifices of more than one floor on streets along which the houses were not aligned in a row.36 By referring to permanent residences – Europeans and métis could build a second floor because they had the economic means to use stone for building  – the administration’s efforts were focused on regulating the street line. The colonial administration here disregarded the African built-up tapestry, which was usually made of temporary building materials, and which could be endangered by being transferred or demolished – at least de jure – because it did not meet building standards. In practice, such measures did not necessarily mean that the colonial administration had a direct effect on the local modes of life. In the early nineteenth century, the planning of these settlements was not a first priority, and it was not particularly motivated by long-term considerations. The European merchants and the governors – the latter were sometimes chosen from amongst the merchants themselves – only intended to settle in the colony for a few years, and therefore preferred immediate actions to maximise their gains. Only from the mid-nineteenth century, the colonial period per se, were more influential planning projects implemented. Several historians have even [ 36 ]

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indicated that the colony of Senegal was ‘reborn’ during this period.37 In fact it was Louis Faidherbe who promoted the first long-term planning projects in the colony. From a colonialist viewpoint, Faidherbe is considered the most renowned and influential governor of colonial Senegal. Serving in the colony from 1854 to 1861, and again from 1863 to 1865, he played a key role in the establishment of the French West Africa Federation in terms of both conquest and administration. He was the first to appoint French officers in control of certain geographic areas, assisted by appointed local chiefs, and to divide the colony into three districts: Saint-Louis, or the Lower Senegal; Gorée, including all the French territorial holdings southwards to Sierra Leone; and Bakel, or the Upper Senegal. These districts were further sub-divided into administrative areas put under French control.38 Against the background of his own participation in the military occupation of the Algerian hinterland, Faidherbe had been initially sent to Senegal as the head of the Engineering Corps. In this role he drew the previously mentioned plan of Dakar in the late 1850s, seen in Figure 2.2. Assisted by the long-standing presence and commercial influence of the French merchants, he hoped to establish a French hegemony along the Senegal and Niger rivers. His main motive was the creation of French commercial exclusivity, freed from British economic competition or the paying of tribute to the regional African polities. He assumed that this end could be achieved using similar means to those employed during the conquest of Algeria, namely by setting up a series of fortified outposts along the rivers, connected by telegraph lines and mobile back-up forces. Faidherbe and with Lyautey, the previously mentioned first resident-general in Morocco, and General Joseph Gallieni, are often referred to in the literature as the ‘colonial triumvirate’.39 This is because they are considered the architects of the new colonial empire in a period when, on the one hand, Paris was replete with disputes about the colonial project itself, and on the other hand, French public opinion was passive at best on the colonial issue. Consequently, these three leaders gained considerable freedom of action on the ground and could act free of metropolitan surveillance. For this reason – and in spite of the fact that he introduced some liberal innovations into the colony, such as limited educational opportunities for the indigenous populations – Faidherbe is conceived as ‘an authoritarian agent of an authoritarian regime’. Other historians highlight the uniqueness of Faidherbe in comparison to other French officials, in his putting aside the French love for abstract principles and complicated bureaucracy. Instead of these, it is argued, Faidherbe followed a practical and simple programme, with a degree of sensitivity to the local social and environmental needs.40 [ 37 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Faidherbe, however, advocated the policy of ‘pacification’, that is, the use of physical force when more peaceful methods of negotiation did not yield the desired outcomes. For the execution of the ‘pacifying’ military expeditions, he organised the tirailleurs sénégalais – an army of Africans under French command, recruited voluntarily or compulsorily. This army was considered better able to cope with tropical diseases and the climate. Against the background of the frequent outbreaks of infectious diseases that risked the expatriate presence in West Africa and the whole colonial endeavour there, an initial decision that proved decisive for the future of the colony of Senegal was taken during Faidherbe’s rule:  Paris did not intend this colony for a white settlement. This decision stood in contrast to the status of Algeria for instance, which was even proclaimed as ‘France d’outre mer.’ Nonetheless, Faidherbe’s ‘pacification’ activity concerned almost every indigenous force along the Senegal River and down the coast, including the Toucouleur empire headed by one of the most challenging rivals, Al Hajj Omar Tal.41 Faidherbe’s policy towards Islam in West Africa was not ambiguous or neutral, but a carefully planned one that distinguished among the various Islamic brotherhoods and their leaders, and was designed to serve French colonial interests. Several among the Islamic leaders were regarded by the French as ‘fanatics’ who were committed to jihad and the creation of an Islamic polity, and therefore hostile to the European presence. In order to cope with the ‘fanatics’, and aside from the ‘pacification’ policy, Faidherbe managed to form an allied and cooperative Francophile Islamic community. He therefore succeeded in establishing French control along the coast and further inland along the Senegal River. The settlements of Saint-Louis, Gorée, Rufisque and Dakar were labelled the ‘Four Communes’, and were subjected to direct French control. Upon their original native residents was bestowed a privileged legal status in the spirit of ‘assimilation’. As originaires, these residents were given political rights that were virtually the same as those of French citizens, while the rest of the population of French West Africa were considered as sujets. The latter were subjected to a much more discriminative ‘indigenous’ legal system.42 The destruction of the centres of resistance following the ‘pacification’ policy solved the problem of manpower shortage for the administration. The labour force that had been previously governed by the local states and chieftaincies of the hinterland was now channelled towards the coastal colonial urban enclaves – indicating the new orientation of economic activity. The African labour force had grown further until the late nineteenth century, owing to the abolition of the slave trade. From the colonial headquarters in the Senegalese coastal [ 38 ]

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towns, Africans, in part former slaves, were recruited for the establishment of the colonial fortified posts. Sometimes they were assisted by subjects from other parts of the empire, recruited in Morocco or Indo-China, but the ethnic heterogeneity of such a labour force often generated violent confrontations and disorders. From an examination of the maps, sketches, ground plans and other blueprints that have been preserved from the mid-nineteenth century, it is hard to define a sole model that inspired the military posts in the region of Senegal and its environs.43 The military engineers who designed these posts were given a high degree of freedom of action in situ, provided that several security functions were taken into account. For example, sites with relatively easy access were normally chosen, along natural or man-made main transportation routes such as rivers or railways. Local topography played an important role, as higher sites, apart from their obvious strategic advantages, were considered healthier  – in a region where, more than any material threat, malaria and yellow fever constituted the main dangers for the troops. The ground plan of a military outpost or fortress could be in the form of a square, rectangle or star, usually surrounded by ditches (Figure 2.6). Because of technical difficulties in transporting permanent building materials from the coast to the hinterland, and because of the need to save the costs of importing them from Europe, the Corps tried to maximise the use of local building materials. The implementation of stone for building was therefore rare, as was the availability of skilled stonecutters. Especially in the hinterland, the Engineering Corps had to employ indigenous building techniques of sun-dried mud-brick production; some of these techniques were already in use in the Algerian hinterland. In fact, only rarely were the mud-bricks baked in a special oven. The fortress of Saint-Louis which was established on the site of the present police headquarters was wholly made of sun-dried mud-brick. It is possible to point to certain similar features between the contemporary colonial military architecture in the region of Senegal and western Sudan, and the indigenous architecture there. As far as we are aware, such a comparison has not so far been made in the relevant literature. The use of mud-bricks as a building material by French military engineers, its advantages and disadvantages, evokes some similarity with the local fortified complexes and some of the monumental mosques. The latter were essentially built from the same materials, employing techniques that had been used for at least several hundred years. In both cases a very large building is involved, well defined by thick walls and surrounded by ditches. There is abundant literature about the vernacular mud building of the western Sudan, and about the historic towns of Timbuktu [ 39 ]

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Figure 2.6  Typical French fortresses in Senegal and French Sudan (Mali), the 1850s.

and Djenné, which are considered its archetypal models. This building style, often labelled as style sudanese, has certain formal features such as:  a base that gradually becomes narrower towards the upper part of the building; blind columns with rocket-shaped heads; a few small openings; and projecting wood beams that are decorative but over which the builders also climb after the short wet season in order to renew the mud patina. While the research literature has traced this architecture from the present time back to the spread of Islam in the medieval period, it is preoccupied almost exclusively with residential buildings and mosques. A reason for this might be that a great portion of these fortified complexes were destroyed by the pax colonial almost without trace, and that the rest were in a ruinous state. The study of the tata, the historical, fortified mud-brick complexes of the Sudan, can teach us about the extent of indigenous spatial control under political and military command in the pre-colonial and early colonial periods. There are for example reminders of tatas of the Toucouleur conquerors under Hajj Omar in a few settlements in the region, while other tatas were totally ruined following Omar’s retreat in the face of [ 40 ]

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Figure 2.7  Residential house in Djenné, the 1960s, exemplifying the ‘Sudanese’ architectural style.

the French military expeditions of the late nineteenth century. In the French Sudan, where French military posts such as Ségou, Kita and Kayes were erected, the indigenous fortified complexes were ruined as well (Figures 2.7, 2.8).44 Even if the architectural style sudanese is rooted in the past several centuries and apparent all over the Sahelian Sudan region, in the country of Senegal there are only a few examples of it, most especially in the northern region of Fouta Toro. These examples of monumental mud mosques with thick semi-fortress walls are considered to be relatively late. Local tradition assigns their building to the mid-nineteenth century, with the return of Hajj Omar from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Other traditions assign them to the Toucouleur warriors during their withdrawal to Fouta Toro at the end of the same century, following the destruction of Omar’s empire by the French.45 It is possible that these traditions are not contradictory, but complementary. However, in the [ 41 ]

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Figure 2.8  Tata in Tiong.

Senegalese coastal strip of Cayor, one of the four districts of the Wolof pre-colonial kingdom, the plain ground, consisting of dunes of moving sands, made tata building impossible. Indigenous mud fortresses are also absent from the accounts of European travellers who visited at that time in Cayor, the area of which Cap Vert is a part, and the location of future Dakar. This point is particularly ironic, as in the interwar period, colonial Dakar was the location preferred by the French for the realisation of their ‘Neo-Sudanese’ architectural style. The later invented style had been inspired by the forms of the tata and the style sudanese (see Chapter 4). But if there were certain similarities between French military outposts in western Sudan and the vernacular military architecture, the colonisers were the last to admit it. Contemporary colonial vocabulary with regard to the establishment of the initial infrastructure is indeed rich in examples. One of the examples might seem today to be awkwardly modest, but is brought here exactly for this reason. It relates to the laying out of the first master plan for Saint-Louis by Faidherbe early in the 1860s. In order to ameliorate the transportation routes into the settlement and save the passage fees paid to the Wolof boat owners, Faidherbe introduced two new bridges to connect the island with the mainland. The width of the bridge to be extended [ 42 ]

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over the wider part of the river, 600 metres wide at that point, presented a technical problem. From the various solutions proposed, Faidherbe chose to lay iron sheets on forty-two small boats next to each other, thereby creating a floating bridge. This bridge was flexible so it could be occasionally ‘opened’ to enable the passage of large vessels on the river. Constituting a turning point by breaking the ‘isolation’ of Saint-Louis and minimising the European dependency on African crossing services, the floating bridge represented the success of the new engineering technologies and the greatness of Faidherbe. In a ceremonial speech at the inauguration of the bridge in July 1865, the role of the colonising power in the mission civilisatrice was stressed, while the Africans were described as ‘half savages’. Their ‘barbaric chiefs’, it was argued, objected to the plan by trying to obtain material gain from a state of socio-economic disorder, blocking the arrival of civilisation to the colony. But over such situations, General Faidherbe was always triumphant.46

The project of Senegal: metropolitan training The first grandiose urban construction operation in the colony of Senegal was the establishment of the city of Dakar. Dakar was intended as the site of the colony’s future maritime deep-water port on account of the natural physical advantages of the Cap Vert peninsula. The port of the nearby island of Gorée, for instance, was relatively shallow and narrow, and big vessels were obliged to use the services of African boat owners. The site of Dakar was initially disqualified by the colonial administration for reasons of insalubrity and the apparently too close proximity to the Lebu villages, but Faidherbe had managed to redirect the attention of Paris to the peninsula. From his viewpoint, a considerable amount of useful data on Cap Vert could be also obtained from the detailed descriptions of European navigators who had passed by through the ages, while the sandy dunes provided easy access. The strategic importance of Dakar finally led to the official occupation of the peninsula, described at the beginning of this chapter. Even if the main interest then focused on fortifying the peninsula, it was understood that a deep-water port would be essential for the navy. Faidherbe, who wrote in June 1856 that Dakar could never serve as the port of Senegal, changed his opinion within a few years. In November 1859 he was appointed to check out the suitability of Dakar’s port. As the head of a committee that investigated the local topography, he decided to build a 10-metre-wide wide quay, a simple platform and a weapons depot at the anchorage. The main reason behind the committee’s establishment was the administration’s wish to calm down [ 43 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Gorée’s residents, who resented plans to establish a competitive maritime port. The works started within three years after receipt of approval from the minister of the navy and the colonies, and would preoccupy the administration for several decades to follow. A  quay was built along 300 metres and included a section for coal loading. During a period of a decade of work on the military port, it was decided to found a commercial port as well, in the remaining free space adjacent on the south side of the military one. It seems that these works were only interrupted by the absence of qualified staff in this part of the colonised world, and the periodic outbreaks of infectious diseases. In 1900, for instance, there was a two-year delay in the construction of the military port, as many of the European workers died of yellow fever.47 In July 1864, however, Faidherbe finally wrote that Dakar must serve as a centre for coal supply for the French navy, the ground troops, and for commercial and other vessels on their way to Brazil. According to him, the port would be useful in times of peace, and in times of war it would be the only defendable point thanks to the well-developed system of fortifications on the peninsula, a source of jealousy for other European nations.48 Trained to implement such projects with a priority for economic considerations, the Engineering Corps soon found good soil for brick making. The first edifices near the port of Dakar, including two batteries, were built in 1866 by the Corps in preparation for the first anchoring of an imperial ship on its way to Brazil. The French military needed to protect Cap Vert more from other imperial forces in an age of rivalries than from confronting the Lebu or Wolof at the margins of provincial Cayor. This led the Corps to control the three ‘tongues’ that defined Cap Vert; Dakar would emerge within the area framed by them. The establishment of Dakar was not therefore conceived as an isolated project, but rather as a way for founding a continuous network of communication and transportation routes within the colony and the territories beyond. With the aim of providing a unified framework for the network of older French settlements and inland outposts, the colony was yet to constitute an effectively governed homogeneous unit. Thus the first activities in the colonial order of preferences were: setting up telegraph lines among the various settlements and outposts, work on the military port, and connecting Dakar to Saint-Louis by a railway. The railway, which became known as the DSL (Dakar–Saint Louis line), was inaugurated in 1885 and constituted an unprecedented engineering project in contemporary West Africa. At its opening it predated similar projects in the British West Africa colonies, though in almost all the literature the British railway in the region is considered the pioneer.49 In a decade, its line had been extended by more than 1,000 miles [ 44 ]

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inland to connect Dakar with Bamako, with the primary aim of facilitating the collection, concentration and export of groundnuts  – the main cash crop in the region. Yet the profitability of the railway project was not obvious, as Cayor’s coastal belt was sparsely populated, a fact that impacted on the availability of manpower. The colonial administration not only depended on local labour, but occasionally even hoped for passive cooperation on the part of the Africans, because Wolof raids on the railway and intentional damage constituted a considerable threat.50 In terms of colonial images, the railway had a symbolic value similar to that of the Saint-Louis Bridge. It proudly justified the whole colonial endeavour, and western civilisation had been identified with the railway itself. The building operations of the second half of the nineteenth century in Senegal should be perceived as part of the colonial attempts to establish effective control over the newly acquired territories. While Faidherbe’s planning included the future city of Dakar and its accompanying civil infrastructure, his considerations were military and he mainly promoted building for military needs. Even if his expertise had been more pronounced in matters of organisation and administration than in military strategy, the military regime he advanced in Senegal was directly embedded in the nature of the planning. For a better understanding of the cultural and historical context of Faidherbe’s planning education, we will expand below on aspects of the work of French military engineers in the overseas colonies during the nineteenth century. Aside from the Engineering Corps, these include:  professional antagonisms with other players and agencies that were involved in the design of the French colonial urban space, ideological confrontations among these agencies, the heavy bureaucracies that cast a shadow over the implementation of the plans and the chronic shortage of economic resources in sub-Saharan Africa. All these reveal a complex reality, showing that Pinet-Laprade’s 1862 master plan for Dakar did not appear out of nothing, but was rather a product of the layout designs and constructional models used then by French military engineers. Faidherbe himself was a graduate of prestigious engineering schools. He was educated at the Ecole d’Application du Génie, and before at the Ecole Polytechnique. The Polytechnic School, established in 1794, was an institute of higher education through which a great portion of France’s scientific elite had passed during the nineteenth century. The school aimed at becoming, in the words of one of its teachers in 1802, ‘a kind of nursery, providing the necessary intellectual nourishment for those destined for greatness as engineers’.51 In the Polytechnic, military engineers attended a three-year education programme, with a focus on mathematics, physics and [ 45 ]

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chemistry. At the same time, they took courses in architecture and design. Aside from the Polytechnic, another entry channel to the colonial service was through the Ecole Coloniale, though the latter trained the civil sector, both public and private. Relocated from Indo-China to Paris in 1889 and despite the introduction of competitive entry examinations and certain other improvements to try to make it more prestigious, the Ecole Coloniale never gained the same honour in France as the Polytechnic.52 However, some of the basic premises of the Polytechnic’s graduates meshed well with French imperial ideology, such as a belief that scientific rationalism might lead to political order and peace in both metropolitan France and its overseas domains; and also the belief that technology, economics and even political systems could be exported root and branch without a significant interruption to colonised cultures. During the imperial period, France sought to integrate foreign territories into its domain and established the doctrine of ‘assimilation’. In practice, this ‘integration’ was highly selective and concentrated mainly in the economic reorientation of the colonies to the service of French interests through the introduction of limited western technology. In theory, the problems of the policy of assimilation have attracted considerable attention in recent studies.53 However, this policy existed almost exclusively at the conceptual level. What was problematic with assimilation, as the historian Martin Lewis has asserted, was not only the fact that it was illogical, unrealistic and impossible, but also that a serious effort to implement this policy had never taken place.54 Educated in western rationalistic traditions, Faidherbe tended to replicate in Senegal the technical modes of planning that were conceived in the West. Because, at least in principle, the colonies underwent ‘assimilation’ as French territories, it was virtually inconceivable to imagine in Senegal any other project than the export of planning ideas. In practice, and in the light of the meagre resources distributed from Paris, Faidherbe understood that planning in the colonies would involve unique methods, such as the application of military designs in civil spaces. The need to find practical solutions at the local level yielded some creativity on his part, accompanied by the passing of favourable legislation for his agenda, far from Paris’s direct surveillance.55 The definite aim of the military administration in the colonies, however, had been to perpetuate the French presence in the political, economic and cultural senses. During the French invasion of Saigon in 1859, for example, Napoleon III was at the peak of his imperial prestige. The French army broke into the city, which was burnt to the ground. Plans for a new city were immediately drawn up, inspired by [ 46 ]

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the Haussmann-style wide boulevards that criss-crossed Paris at that time. The various newly built structures in Saigon gained symbolic meaning in French culture: a cafe, an opera house and a post office. This operation might not be surprising when compared to contemporary Paris, which was governed, in terms of planning, by Georges Eugène Haussmann, appointed chief urbanist by Louis Napoleon. During Haussmann’s eighteen years in office, Paris’s morphology underwent some of the most substantial changes between the Revolution and the Second World War. Conceptualising the city as a technical object that demanded amelioration and regularisation, in the Foucauldian sense, his planned boulevards and transportation routes were the straightest, widest and longest ever. While these routes, lined with green trees and street lighting, enabled easier movement of people and vehicles, the change was applied at the expense of its historic tapestry.56 Similarly, the French military occupation of Algiers in 1830 was characterised by the destruction of parts of the city’s old layout, particularly in its lower, coastal area. With the establishment of a military camp there, several mosques were turned into cathedrals, stores and hospitals. The wide new boulevards broke into the medieval casbah and created the marina area as part of the modern French city, and here too, this area was provided with cafes, an opera house, a post office and a cathedral.57 Yet, in terms of planning, French Senegal was far from being ‘unambiguously expressive’ or reflecting ‘a system of disciplinary power’, as was Lyautey’s Rabat, according to Timothy Mitchell.58 In sub-Saharan Africa, both British and French colonialisms were mainly introduced through a series of hegemonic projects. But the transformative nature of these projects ‘was necessarily incomplete, for it needed to preserve social and cultural difference to constitute and justify external rule, and it therefore left a realm of subaltern “autonomy” ’.59 The case of French colonial urbanism in Algeria, however, is important here not only because of the centrality of this colony in the French colonial consciousness and its designation for white settlement. Faidherbe himself served in Algeria as a military officer during the initial occupation, and similarly to other military and civil officials, he learnt from his experiences there and applied them later in West Africa. On the Algerian frontier in the second half of the nineteenth century, there was a clear preference for the establishment of a network of military outposts and settlements connected by roads and telegraphs. However, Algeria, more than Senegal, served as a laboratory for ambitious spatial-physical experiments on the part of these engineers, sometimes in a megalomaniac, Saint-Simonian spirit: for instance, the idea to create an island by connecting the saltwater lakes in Algeria and southern Tunisia to the Mediterranean, or to lay a trans-Saharan railway from Algiers to Dakar.60 [ 47 ]

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While during the long nineteenth century the planning projects in the French colonies were handed over to Polytechnic-qualified military engineers, in many cases after the initial projects were implemented, they were handed over to civil engineers, graduates of the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Roads College). The civil engineers gradually gained a monopoly over urban and regional planning. Mainly interested in the application of existing models, they were employed by the Government and were much more expensive. On the ground, the distinction between the roles of the military and the civil engineers was sometimes ambiguous, and professional tensions existed. Not only was this over pursuing projects that were considered challenging, such as the erection of the water and drainage systems in Dakar, but it was also ideological. The Bridges and Roads engineers tended to accuse the Engineering Corps of narrow-mindedness and simplistic thinking. Excelling in practical and economic thinking, the Engineering Corps for their part criticised their colleagues’ plans for being feasible only as blueprints, and irrelevant to local environmental conditions. The common denominator between them, according to Malverti and Picard, was high usage of numbers and statistics, though these were not perceived in the same way.61 Another rivalry existed in the French colonies among both the Engineering Corps and the Bridges and Roads civil engineers, and the civil architects who were graduates of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. These latter usually never visited the cities in question but were responsible for the design of government buildings, the plans of which were based on the aesthetic principles of Antiquity. The plans therefore embodied an interest in architectural history and theory at the expense of an interest in the functional qualities of the edifices. The Beaux-Arts architects saw themselves as gifted specialists, who bestowed artistic shapes on the urban morphology. Such a self-image put them in a direct conflict with their engineering colleagues. The professional antagonism between engineers and architects had been prevalent in Europe since the nineteenth century, particularly with the introduction, following the Industrial Revolution, of new building materials such as metal and reinforced concrete. While the engineer based himself directly on technical innovations as essential signs of progress and did not hesitate to employ new building materials, the architect tended to historicism and to a more abstract scientific analysis.62 In the newly conquered territory of Senegal, the Engineering Corps was appointed for the erection of the military outposts, caserns and barracks, and was also responsible for the design of the parcels of land and their shapes. The Bridges and Roads civil engineers were appointed, at least in theory, to the management of civil town planning. In practice, [ 48 ]

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the latter did not have sufficient economic resources, and often, on account of a lack of staff, military engineers filled the vacancies left by their colleagues from Bridges and Roads. Apart from the continual shortage of qualified professionals in colonial sub-Saharan Africa, the construction of projects was occasionally hindered by outbreaks of tropical diseases such as yellow fever, bubonic plague and cholera. In the Four Communes of Senegal, for example, a dozen serious outbreaks of yellow fever were recorded in the years between 1830 and 1900. According to the report of the French doctor Jojot, close to half the European population there were infected in these cases; during such times the settlements’ economy was paralysed, as were military and civil services.63 From the mid-nineteenth century until 1876, the governor of Senegal defined the annual planning programme for the Engineering Corps, but in that year the new Saint-Louis-based governor, Brière de l’Isle, introduced a planning reform. Under this reform, the role of the Bridges and Roads civil engineers was extended, which immediately created a simplification of the previously complicated process of approvals. However, the Ministry of the Navy and the Colonies tended to cut the budget for planning further and build up projects on an annual basis. Because the Bridges and Roads engineers depended on the budget of the colony of Senegal and not on the central, bureaucratic policy of Paris (unlike the Engineering Corps), the meaning of de l’Isle’s reform was that the projects of the Bridges and Roads no longer had to pass through Paris for approval. The previous centralist procedures only exemplify the problems faced by the Senegalese settlements, situated miles away from the ultimate place of decision making. Many months and often years were needed to raise the appropriate funds and confirmation for construction. During this time, the situation on site sometimes changed, and plans became irrelevant and had to be abandoned. Some expatriates thus even ignored the formal procedures and acted independently.64 Another reform had been implemented towards the end of the nineteenth century, when, after the period of conquest, defensive operations were no longer a first priority in colonial Senegal. The planning tasks of the Engineering Corps were further reduced, and the Bridges and Roads turned into the Public Works Department (Service des Travaux Publics), to deal now with most of the planning projects. The establishment of the Federation of French West Africa in 1895 again engendered a reorganisation in the decision-making processes, though not more efficiently. The new civil governors of each colony of the federation had lost most of the independence their predecessors such as Gallieni and Faidherbe had enjoyed, and worked under the surveillance [ 49 ]

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of the Federation’s governor general, subject to Paris. The Public Works Department of each colony was organised along the same lines and was thus subject to the Public Works Department of the Government General.

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Planning imprints Before untangling the web of French bureaucracy and reducing the tasks of the Engineering Corps, we shall devote some time to the characteristics and guiding principles of the Corps’s plans during the long nineteenth century. Most of the settlement plans of the military engineers in the French overseas territories reflected common concepts and physical features, and a very practical approach to urban planning. Taking into account, to varying extents, regional environmental conditions, their plans consisted of several repetitive, formal characteristics, such as: an orthogonal layout, the incorporation of trees, a spatial hierarchy of infrastructural elements, and consideration for contemporary sanitary arrangements. These formal characteristics were also reflected in the orthogonal master plan drawn up for Dakar in the mid-century. Interestingly, some formal features of the French military outposts correspond with the morphology of historical Islamic settlement in the Sudan (including the tata), and particularly with that of the Wolof in the Senegambia region. One of the most prominent characteristics in the planning of the French military outposts was an orthogonal network of streets, arranged in a logical manner. The intersection of the two main roads comprised a main public square. The importance of the settlement was usually measured according to the number of squares in the overall plan: a frontier settlement was provided with a single square, and a town with at least three squares. Rooted in the belief in absolute determinism, a legacy of the eighteenth century, the orthogonal layout was also an almost ‘traditional’ feature in the education of the military engineers. Developed in France since the seventeenth century, the orientation of the engineering profession was dictated by several contemporary publications on settlement fortifications that underwent a process of ‘canonisation’. In their theoretical and practical inspiration, these publications were based on the orthogonal designs advocated in the writings of Italian engineers of the sixteenth century, published in France. They included ideas about the ideal Renaissance city, featured in the planning of a central square and gridiron street system. The orthogonal plan of Roman military headquarters and the Roman city, including the two dominant axes by which it was traversed, the cardo and decamanus, served as a model for the Renaissance period and also [ 50 ]

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for eighteenth-century neo-classicism.65 Indeed, in the neo-classicist planning tradition there was a preference for settlement plans based on a cross shape – a preference that was embraced by both the Engineering Corps and the architects of the Beaux-Arts. The orthogonal designs of the Engineering Corps therefore had old historical roots. These designs had been used since the original French colonial empire – that is to say in territories that were captured 100 and even 200 years before the late-nineteenth-century European scramble for Africa. Grid plans for old urban settlements such as Fort de France in Martinique (1681), Kourou in Guyana (1763) and Saint-Louis in Senegal (1659) long preceded Dakar’s orthogonal plan of 1862, of the second colonial empire period. In fact, the gridiron morphology constituted a transnational form, used in most of the colonial settlements of Spain, Portugal, Great Britain and the Netherlands, from the sixteenth until at least the eighteenth century, in Europe, America and Australia. While the raison d’être and functions of these settlements were diverse, the military aspect always existed. Because considerations of defence were a first priority, cases of administrative centres only, without a military presence, were quite rare. These colonial urban outposts, situated near the coast whenever possible, were usually composed of fortifications, a chapel and a main road leading to an administrative structure, such as the governor’s house. French military engineers were well acquainted with urban plans of rival imperial powers and vice versa – which can explain the high morphological resemblance among the contemporary European settlements overseas. In post-colonial literature, however, the orthogonal plans of colonial settlements have been criticised, interpreted as an enforcement of the western technical, legal, moral, and rationalistic orders on the subject populations, and as a very tangible manifestation of colonial imagery. The grid model, for instance, signifies the physical penetration of the imperial power into an apparently virgin land; the transformation of the pre-colonial ‘ambiguous’, ‘chaotic’ and unknown space into ‘clear lines’ of cartographic certitude; and the domestication of a ‘savage’ environment.66 In addition, Foucauldian interpretative aspects of surveillance immediately come to mind, as grid plans were also a means of government security. For example, one of the aims of the grid plan of the Médina, an African quarter in Dakar that was established by the colonial authorities in 1914, was to facilitate the recapture of African deserters from forced labour and military service. As recalled by the Director of Public Works of French West Africa, a single armoured car placed at an intersection there could control the entire length of two streets.67 Edward Said’s definition of ‘imperialism’ can fit our context perfectly. According to Said, imperialism is ‘an act of geographic [ 51 ]

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violence by which virtually every place on earth is measured, mapped, exploited and then finally brought under control’.68 Another important visual characteristic in the settlement projects of the Engineering Corps was the tree-lined main road. In the initial colonial period, this does not refer to the primary decorative role of vegetation in public gardens, nor to the influence of European planning concepts such as the ‘garden city’69 – these elements would indeed be important within a few decades, following the ‘bourgeoning’ of the colonial city. Certain essential qualities were assigned to trees at this stage, most of them functional rather than decorative, such as the prevention of ground erosion and provision of shade, and reflecting road hierarchy, as trees were not normally planted along secondary routes. On the Cap Vert peninsula an agronomic station was completed by the Engineering Corps in January 1870 (Figure 2.9). Its planning consisted of a few squares and orthogonal tree-lined paths, serving as a framework for parcel allocation. The design of the agronomic station constituted a model design that entered the Atlas of Military Edifices (Atlas de bâtiments militaires) – an official catalogue of models, out of which plans were chosen by the engineers according to their needs. The station known as ‘Hann’ after a nearby Lebu village bearing this name would be turned in due course into Dakar’s botanical gardens. Its original purpose was the provision of trees for the main routes of colonial Dakar and around the peninsula. Implemented by the Public Works Department and the Sanitary Department, planting was closely related to the discourse on the assainissement (sanitising) of the colonial city. It was also related to the measures against infectious diseases, which overshadowed the reputation of Dakar and other colonial sub-Saharan African cities. Documents dealing with the question of which species of trees should be preferred for the Hann station recommend both vernacular and imported species of acacia, ficus, platanus and flame trees. Trees, according to the urbanist Alain Sinou – especially the platanus or chestnut which recalled cities in France – were considered a symbol of civilisation. By their planting, the colonisers marked their will to change the cityscape and the environment, especially if the latter was arid (Figures 2.10, 2.11).70 Large trees, those that were not religiously sacred but rather served as symbolic socio-political institutions, played a key role in the configuration of the historic royal capitals in the Senegambia region. One or several large trees stood at the heart of the central square near the ruler’s palace, where main political events were celebrated, such as the coronation, management of legal affairs and court activity. This is evident inter alia from thirteenth-century oral traditions and several written records, for example that of Ibn Battuta, the Tangier-born traveller [ 52 ]

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Figure 2.9  Plan of Hann’s agronomic station, established in January 1870 by the French Corps of Engineers.

and religious scholar who visited the kingdom of Mali in the fourteenth century. According to these records, the royal cities in this region and their successive polities were organised around this palace-central square complex, with a large tree or several trees in the middle of the square. With the spread of Islam in West Africa, the mosque took over the central place of the tree, or, as is apparent today in many Sufi settlements and especially among those of the Mouride Way in Senegal, the mosque is situated in the central square next to a large tree or several large baobab or kapok trees.71 Indeed, it is impossible to compare the role of the large tree in this context, which symbolises the centre of the universe (axis mundi), with the role of the tree-lined roads designed by the Engineering Corps. Yet some common formal features among the historic royal capitals of the region and the Corps’s settlements can be pointed out, including their shared orthogonal configuration. [ 53 ]

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Figure 2.10  The historical promenades in Gorée (baobab trees) and Saint-Louis (coconut trees). Lined with trees planted in the 1860s, these promenades represent the initial official planning of the Islands’ public spaces.

Figure 2.11  Street scene on Dakar’s Plateau: historical postcard and a recent photo. The trunk’s white paint points to the domestication of a ‘savage’ environment.

[ 54 ]

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Figure 2.12  Médine, showing the French fortress to the right of the indigenous settlement on the bank of the Upper Senegal River, 1864.

The complex of palace and central square with a tree in the middle stood at the heart of the medieval Senegambian royal capital. The city itself was organised as a grid system of streets, including routes that went out to nearby settlements. This spatial configuration had also already been embraced by autonomous Muslim communities in the time of the medieval empire of Mali (1230–1600), and from there, according to cartographic and topographical evidence, it was inherited by the modern Sufi settlements. As demonstrated by the geographer Eric Ross, the orthogonal organisation that is identified today with the Mouride Way in Senegal has medieval roots originating in the vernacular building traditions.72 This formal organisation is not a product of the influence of the Engineering Corps during the colonial occupation, as might have been presumed, nor was it produced under Beaux-Arts influence and that of Haussmann’s Paris. These influences were rather related to the planning of colonial Dakar. A map of Médine on the Upper Senegal River drawn by the Engineering Corps in 1864, ten years after the establishment of a French fortified post there, is outstanding testimony to the formal organisation of the French military outpost on the one hand, and that of the local settlement on the other (Figure 2.12).73 The French fortress was established alongside the indigenous settlement of Médine following the ‘pacification’. It was conceptualised as part of a series of military posts along the river, from where the hinterland had been conquered by Faidherbe. In the right part of the plan the French fortress is shown [ 55 ]

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with its typical characteristics, such as the polygonal form, projecting bastions and a few pavilions attached to its immediate north. To the east of the French fortress two enclosures with round thatched huts can be noted, designated for the African troops and for services for the foreign presence. A gridiron street system – or any streets at all – were yet to be created, but a main diagonal straight route from the fortress ended in a square, implying on an initial road hierarchy. South of the fortress a garden is seen, which was probably a fruit-and-vegetable garden to serve the military men, and not just for decoration. It was orthogonally arranged, as, for example, the trees north of the fortress, quite an accomplishment in such a dry area. On the left of Figure  2.12 what had been labelled as ‘the village of Médine’ can be noted. It is likely that, because of the presence of the tata, i.e., the fortified mud complex, and the strategic position of the settlement on this part of the Senegal River, it was not a ‘village’ but rather a more prominent settlement. In the eyes of the French colonisers, however, every African settlement with an urban or rural orientation was referred to as a ‘village’. This misconception could be probably assigned to the temporary building materials and to the important role of agriculture in both African rural and urban settlements. But what is unique in this ‘tata de Sambala’ of Médine is the visual documentation itself. This period of the collapse of the last systems of local governance in the hinterland following the French military penetration signifies the last stages of African resistance represented by the tata – though the Sudanese building style was still preserved in many places in the form of private residences, granaries, mosques and other edifices. In the colonialist spirit, official French forces were not normally interested in ethnographic or other documentation of local cultures for themselves, including the tata; indeed, the temporary building materials and their destruction made such documentation a difficult task. In Médine it seems that several key elements in the configuration of the local settlement were clearly documented, which was rare and almost unintentional, because the Corps was more interested in mapping the ground than in the vernacular architecture. Among these are included:  the large green tree at the middle of the tata’s round space; the road system leading towards neighbouring indigenous settlements situated north of Médine; the orthogonal organisation of the African huts to the east of the tata; and the square free of buildings to the immediate north of the tata with a large tree in its centre, thereby creating the heart of the local town. Aside from the orthogonal layout and the tree-lined roads, other formal features typical of the designs of the Engineering Corps were a [ 56 ]

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hierarchy of urban infrastructure and services, and the regulation of the urban landscape in accordance with prevalent sanitary conceptions. As not all the settlements were considered equal in importance and the same was true of particular areas within each settlement, a hierarchy had been introduced through street width, the number of squares and their size, and the use of planted areas. In less prominent settlements, structures that were considered basic for the expatriate population, such as a chapel, town hall, school and court house were erected. Depending upon the importance of the settlement, more elements could be added, such as a theatre, hospital, market and police station. The Corps also took into account the landscape topography, the direction of air circulation and several hygienic principles. In addition, the openings of the buildings were designed, wherever possible, with a landscape view; and wide promenades were created along the Atlantic coast to obtain maximum sea breezes. The historical sources of the variety of these planning models and their development process could be traced back and analysed. However, what is sometimes ambiguous or almost unexplainable, as we shall see below, is the internal logic behind the implementation of these models in Africa. The attitude of present-day urbanists regarding the nineteenth-century plans of the French Engineering Corps is therefore ambivalent and oscillates from one extreme to another. The perception of architects Xavier Malverti and Aleth Picard, who examined contemporary Algerian cases, goes against that of the urban historian Alain Sinou, who examined settlements in Upper Senegal and French Sudan in the same period. In trying to correct the general impression left by the Corps’s plans, Malverti and Picard stated that the seemingly banal plans of these anonymous military engineers have never attracted the attention of urban historians, who deemed them too quantitative and simplistic. However, since these officers had not only designed the projects, but were also responsible for their management in situ during the first years, they refused to apply plans that simply ‘looked good’, and preferred simple, orthogonal plans, which were more practical and economic. The outcome, according to Malverti and Picard, was an astonishing efficiency, particularly as compared with the works of the Bridges and Roads engineers. As Malverti and Picard observed, on account of the professional qualifications of the Corps engineers and their acquaintance with the field, they tended not to reinvent forms, nor to choose revolutionary models or new techniques. Rather, they were capable of analysing the situation of each site, assessing its actual requirements, and thinking of managing it for a relatively long period.74 [ 57 ]

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Ironically, Sinou has presented contrary evidence concerning Engineering Corps projects and their topographic considerations in his examination of the French military outposts along the Senegal River and up to Bamako. According to Sinou, the decision to establish a new outpost did not originate in coherent spatial planning ideas at all, but was rather inspired by reports of French visitors to a given area and their attached geographic, and sometimes imagined, accounts. The choice of Médine for the military headquarters in the late nineteenth century, for instance, was less connected with the local topography or the existence of the French fortress there, established several decades before. Rather it was connected with the symbolism of the site, where one of the most prominent events in French colonial history of the region took place: in 1857 the army of Hajj Omar besieged the French fortress for several months, but then surrendered and withdrew following the arrival of troops led by Faidherbe.75 Yet, until the completion of the work on the railway to Médine, it was only possible to reach the outpost by a canoe in the wet season, depending upon the water level. Since using the ground route to feed the army was unsafe because of native attacks, the military headquarters were moved to Kayes. This was in spite of its bad reputation for salubrity, and the fact that another military outpost had just been established in nearby Kita, close to the African settlement on the main route to the Niger River. Kita served as a refreshment point for the troops in their move towards the final destination  – the city of Bamako, the capital-to-be of French Sudan, and of today’s Mali. In this way, as noted by Sinou, troops were spread out between Médine, the residence of the garrison, the casern in Kayes and Kita – all of which testifies to the failure of the establishment of a military headquarters.76 Moreover, Bamako was among the places traversed by the British explorer Mungo Park in 1795, who contributed to the creation of the mythical image of the regions around the Niger River. In a few decades, the French explorer René Caillié, who visited the area but skipped Bamako, glorified the settlement in his writings, stating that its strategic location was essential for the empire. Following the descriptions of Caillié, considered a pioneer agent of the French nation and not a dreamer, adventurer or romanticist, Faidherbe led a military expedition that tried to reach Bamako. Encountering much hardship on the way, the expedition tried to reach the Upper Niger through the river itself, but imperial rivalry had already provided the British with control of the delta of the Niger from their headquarters in Nigeria. When Gallieni finally reached Bamako in 1880, its African residents made his expedition leave the place in fear. Accusing Park and Caillié, the only [ 58 ]

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ones who had mentioned Bamako so far, of lying,77 Gallieni was deeply upset by Bamako’s appearance:

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Abdaramane walked slowly. Finally he stopped, crying: ‘Bamako! Here is Bamako!’ Piétri was astounded. There was before him a long mud wall, similar to all those walls that serve the Bambara villages. It was a most ordinary tata . . . Piétri was totally disappointed. Like all of us, he had dreamt of a great city, vivid, rich, commercial, and he found before him the large village of Bélédougou.78

With the reorganisation of the Federation of French West Africa in 1902, there was a growing interest in Bamako. The ‘pacification’ of the region brought an expatriate presence and commercial activity. Because of the considerable heat, it was decided to transfer the military buildings to the plateau of Kati, a few kilometres away, and only to keep a small garrison in Bamako. In 1905, several permanent structures were built for the civil administration on Koulouba, a hill above Bamako’s plains. A  flow of Europeans and Africans gradually filled in the plains, reaching towards a third hill named Koulikoro. Close to a fourth hill named ‘Point G’ a hospital was built, to segregate the infected according to medical ideas at that time. However, as an urban centre, Bamako was far from creating a homogeneous unit and was divided into four areas, each of which grew according to its own internal logic.79 While each of these areas corresponded to the formal features of the Engineering Corps, an orthogonal street layout, a hierarchical arrangement and central squares, about eighty kilometres separated Kati from Koulikoro!

Military structures Beyond the varieties of settlement configurations described above, the military top brass in Paris was preoccupied with a visual unification of the French colonial world, so that in Hanoi or Dakar, the military officers moving from one post to another would encounter a similar landscape. In addition to the common morphological lines in the design of their settlements, the officers of the Engineering Corps were also responsible for the design of single-unit structures. For this mission, the structural models were usually chosen from the repertoire of the Atlas of Military Edifices. The climatic conditions of Senegal led them to choose models that were intended for tropical countries, but the general character of the buildings chosen remained fairly homogeneous, if not rather dull. In this section, the models implemented by the military for single edifices in Senegal will be examined, including their historical background, formal features and guiding principles. [ 59 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 2.13  Late-nineteenth-century casern located in Dakar’s city centre.

The military expeditions and accompanying policy of ‘pacification’ decreased the colonial need for physical defence. The series of fortifications on Cap Vert now seemed to the military administration to be exaggerated in scale for the housing of their troops. It was accordingly recommended that caserns be built to serve this function. The caserns in Dakar, several of which still stand today in the same place, were built during the 1870s and were concentrated to the west of the then first fortress on Place Prôtet, now Place de l’Indépendance in the city centre (Figure 2.13). They were similar to those built in the same period on the islands of Gorée and Saint-Louis, and were also reminiscent of caserns built in other French overseas territories. In the colony of Senegal many of the caserns were made of baked brick, but if they were built on a site that was deemed important, such as Dakar or Saint-Louis, funds were allocated for a stone building. The caserns stood mostly on two levels. While the rooms of the ground level were designated for functional services and were considered as less prestigious, the upper-floor rooms were intended for sleeping. Each floor was encircled by an outer arcade – an element for surveillance that facilitated control over the movement of the soldiers, particularly when attached to a row of rooms along and open towards the main façade. The outer arcade, which distinguished these caserns [ 60 ]

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Figure 2.14  Part of a plan showing the floors of the casern illustrated in Figure 2.13, drawn in 1901.

from their counterparts in metropolitan France, had several additional advantages in the tropics. The arcade protected the external walls of the building from direct exposure to the tropical sun, and offered better ventilation for the living rooms. Figure 2.14, which shows the floor plan of the same casern that was photographed in Dakar’s city centre (Figure  2.13), well exemplifies this. On the floor plan of the casern the existence of an arcade along the upper floor can be seen, including the symmetric positioning of the openings one against the other. The ground floor comprised showers, a dining room, a meeting room and a library, while the upper level comprised a variety of living rooms based on the military rank of the dweller.80 The visual origins of the caserns’ outer arcade introduced by the French Engineering Corps are presumed to have been inspired by the colonial ‘verandah’, a structural element borrowed earlier by British troops from the indigenous architecture in India and further developed. But while ‘the house with the verandah’ had turned by the late nineteenth century into a symbol of colonial architecture as a whole, the arcaded casern, a model for colonial military building, was increasingly [ 61 ]

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French colonial Dakar

proven to be ill-suited for military use. The caserns were appropriate for some prominent colonial cities such as Saint-Louis or Dakar, yet they could not be reproduced in the colony as a whole because of their high building costs. The military administration never had sufficient means to build caserns for housing all the colonial troops, and therefore other solutions were sought, such as renting civil structures where possible, or the use of more modest and portable solutions. In addition, the permanent building materials used for the caserns were not always well suited to the tropical climate and involved continuous and costly maintenance following each rainy season. The tropical rain was a main reason for the abolition of the use of flat roofing for military buildings from 1870, and for its replacement by a gable, shown in Figure 2.13. But even this practice was implemented rather slowly because of the high cost of the imported roofing tiles, mainly from Marseille. The need to import doors and windows from the métropole and the functional deficiency of the arcaded gallery as unused space, usually occupying around 20 per cent of the total building area, also caused the colonial regime to limit casern building to certain areas, residences and purposes. The extent of investment in housing the troops was defined by the administration in accordance with the troops’ function and the status of the individual. The colonial army was composed mostly of African forces who were not intended for western-style residences, but rather for as cheap accommodation as possible, allowing for certain hygienic conditions. Various excuses were used for the residential segregation on a racial basis between African and European soldiers, such as the allegedly low moral values and sanitary habits of the former. The African soldiers were sometimes located on the caserns’ ground floor, considered less healthy than the upper floor, which was reserved for Europeans. In many cases the camp of African soldiers was set up at a distance from the European one, while the Africans were put in sheds or tents. African soldiers who experienced health problems were immediately replaced, and no accurate statistics were kept of their mortality rate.81 The Engineering Corps, however, had to find cheaper solutions for West Africa instead of the caserns. Its officers were acquainted with the projects implemented in France and its colonies, and in British colonial territories. Not intending to invent new structural forms, they chose to apply in West Africa a military unit that had already been successfully replicated by the European colonial powers in other colonies, drawing particularly on the British experience in India, namely the barracks. The barracks constituted a portable structural unit that was easy to erect, relocate or dismantle. The wood, of which its frame was initially made, had been immediately replaced, again under the influence of [ 62 ]

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Figure 2.15  Drawing of the façade of one of the straw barracks erected in the military camp of N’dar Tout, Saint-Louis.

contemporary developments in Britain, by the more sustainable and easily transported metal. In the British colonies in West Africa, and soon in their French counterparts, the barracks’ frame was purchased by the colonial administration from metal factories at home, and was exported in the form of separate parts that were put together on the ground with relative ease.82 Beyond the metal frame, building materials for roofing and walls were normally based on local supply, and could include a mixture of mud, branches or straw. Being an improved version of the tent, barracks had a rectangular form, and usually consisted of one room for a single use according to needs, such as a living room, medical clinic, armoury, kitchen or toilets. In spite of the contemporary image of the colonial army as an island of ‘civility’ within a ‘barbaric’ zone, because of the use of local building materials, some barracks in certain military outposts in the western Sudan actually resembled the African straw huts. This resemblance included structural disadvantages as well, such as vulnerability to hazards following the rainy season and to termites. The first British colonial prison in Lagos, for instance, which was built in the early 1870s, consisted of some mud buildings divided into cells and surrounded by mud walls, facilitating the escape of prisoners.83 The drawing in Figure 2.15 shows a simple straw barracks erected in 1883 in the French military camp of N’dar Tout in Saint-Louis.84 This is ironic, as the colonialist attitude towards African straw huts was one of contempt and disrespect, to say the least. [ 63 ]

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French colonial Dakar

With the increasing use of the barracks model in western Sudan from the 1860s, its many advantages, apart from financial ones, were appreciated. A  military camp was extended over a wide space, and high buildings, with the concomitant problem of recruiting qualified workers to build them, were not necessary. The spatial expansion of the camp also suited the ideas of the sanitary officers, who encouraged the separation of building units in order to ensure air circulation between them. The structural incorporation of a colonnade into the barracks, thereby creating a verandah, meant obtaining more comfort and air ventilation than in the old-style caserns, which were usually overpopulated. In general, this new form of arrangement of the French military camp was also related to the segregation of the troops from the colonised populations – the British colonial military camp was normally located on higher ground – and to a racial segregation within the troops, as mentioned earlier. The British cantonment in India in fact enforced the idea of complete segregation from indigenous society. As a cultural sphere that was planted within a foreign environment, the cantonment embodied an application of colonial planning models and cultural practices that were instrumental in the conservation and perpetuation of racial/ethnic segregation. According to the historian Tony King, the principle of establishing a military camp where possible on a higher ground had already been formulated and practised by the British in India in 1863. Beyond security considerations, the higher position was related sanitary reforms. It had been noticed that the mortality rate of British soldiers serving in higher places was considerably reduced, long before the identification of the mosquito with malaria, and the development of germ theory.85 In Dakar, a military camp made of barracks was established in the area of Ouakam because of its relative higher position. The barracks were aligned in rows with their openings one in front of the other so as to assist air circulation. Where a higher location was not available, as was the case with the camp in Saint-Louis, soldiers were transferred from the populated island to the opposite shore. This segregation took place particularly during each rainy season, when infectious diseases tended to break out. In India, similarly to Senegal and many other colonised places, the indigenous population had been viewed by the colonisers as a contagious factor from whom a distance should be kept, and was even sometimes identified with the disease itself.86

A master plan for Dakar In contrast to the temporary character of some of the planning and construction projects of the Engineering Corps in the colony of Senegal [ 64 ]

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and western Sudan in the early colonial period, the first master plan of Dakar drawn by the Corps presented a careful vision of future development. However, as we shall see, this development was far from being even or obvious, especially during the first three decades of the city’s existence. The official orthogonal plan was made in 1862 by Emile Pinet-Laprade, who, like Faidherbe, was a graduate of the Polytechnic School. Succeeding Faidherbe in the mission of administrating the colony of Senegal, Pinet-Laprade was appointed its governor for a few months in 1863, and again from 1865 to 1869. Reaching Saint-Louis in the 1850s, he was first appointed as the commander-in-chief of Gorée, and later as the head of the Bridges and Roads. Before his 1863 appointment as governor, Pinet-Laprade served as the head of the Engineering Corps as well – and it was at this point of his career that the Dakar plan was conceived.87 Dakar’s master plan, which gave the city centre the shape by which it is still recognised today, resembles in many respects other settlement plans made in that period by the Corps. It was also followed by a street naming system that has undergone relatively minor changes until today. A gridiron network of streets is noticeable in the plan, by which two main axes of the city were organised:  a north–south axis and an east–west axis (Figure  2.16). The contemporary sanitary concerns for tropical climates meant taking into account the direction of sea breezes – these were considered a countermeasure against fevers, which determined the street orientation. Accordingly, Pinet-Laprade offered to house the troops on higher ground in Cap Vert, and to build there the aforementioned old-style caserns. He intended the European merchants to be located in the eastern part of the peninsula near the developing port, where goods were unloaded and transatlantic vessels were equipped. The parcels of land in the master plan were allocated for specific functions:  the fortifications at the edges and the middle of the plan provided a physical framework for the development of the future city. An eighty-metre strip where building was prohibited had been reserved along the coastline, and consequently a few groups of Lebu huts had to be evacuated immediately. The process of moving the Lebu huts and villages from their original place over the peninsula  – some villages were transferred even two or three times  – had been initiated with the master plan and was repeated for decades to come. However, as will be shown in Chapter 3, this process was never completed owing to a variety of challenges in the local, regional and international arenas. A careful look at Pinet-Laprade’s plan, however, clearly shows the drawing of the orthogonal lines right over the lines of the Lebu villages, as in the case of M’bor village. Yet his gridiron design was not [ 65 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 2.16  Pinet-Laprade’s master plan for Dakar, 1862 (showing the squares of marché Kermel [1]‌and marché Sandaga [2]).

overwhelmingly rigid or obsessive, and conformed to the site’s topography, such as the ‘broken’ street layout east of Place Prôtet in accordance with the peninsula’s coastline tongue. Beyond the non-built-up coastal strip, more ground was reserved in the master plan for public buildings, squares and intersecting streets. This area has been called the ‘Plateau’  – a key term in French colonial urban planning (Chapter 3). The heart of the Plateau was arranged around a central square, which served also as a central transportation route. It was called ‘Place Prôtet’ by Pinet-Laprade, to commemorate the commander-in-chief of Gorée and Dependencies, with whose words this chapter opened. Place Prôtet then included a fortress, a Catholic chapel, the Mission and its gardens. Around it parcels were allocated for civil and military structures such as schools, a court of justice, a hospital, caserns, the headquarters of the Bridges and Roads unit, and those of the Engineering Corps. Two more squares had been planned as marketplaces, one situated to the east of Place Prôtet near the port, for marché Kermel; and the other to its west, for marché Sandaga. Both marketplaces are still thriving there under these names, even if their [ 66 ]

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Planting the flag and military planning

original buildings have been replaced.88 Place Prôtet in 1960 became ‘Place de l’Indépendance’, with laid-out gardens. In spite of the fact that the present-day Dakaroise conglomeration is polycentric, this square still constitutes the undisputed focus of the city in terms of administration, business and transportation. In the orthogonal design embodied in the master plan it is possible to say that Pinet-Laprade only introduced the old classic principles of Vitruvius, the Roman architect and engineer whose writings serve as a main source for a practical, theoretical and aesthetic understanding of Roman architecture and town planning. The orthogonal spatial organisation described by Vitruvius became a key planning principle in the Renaissance period, and in the modern colonial period it signified the reproduction of a European rationalistic organisation beyond Europe. From the contemporary perspective of the Lebu residents of Cap Vert, the gridiron layout was very new. While they could meet with similar configuration in some of the Wolof or other Islamic settlements in western Sudan, they did not copy these patterns in Ndakaru. Evidence also suggests that their settlement pattern, and especially the main road system, were intentionally zigzagged in order to confuse evil spirits, a pre-Islamic element that penetrated into the regional Islamic traditions.89 Moreover, the title to land and some other western-originated ideas such as land privatisation and commercialisation were then totally foreign. Land allocation in pre-colonial Ndakaru, until the eve of the enforcement of Dakar’s master plan, was carried out by the chief of each village under the supervision of the paramount chief (sëriñ). The latter’s headquarters were in the village of Tann, the area of the present ‘Tann Street’ in the city centre near the Kermel marketplace. While a spatial hierarchy was a prominent feature in the organisation of the Lebu settlement  – the sëriñ’s compound, for instance, was adjacent to the central square, free of buildings except the mosque  – the lots were never marked with stakes. No private land ownership had been acknowledged, only communal ownership by the extended family, as approved by the chief. The orthogonal street organisation introduced into Cap Vert was considered an innovation:  according to a contemporary account, the Lebu did not refer to the main road that traversed Place Prôtet by its European name, but rather it constituted a landmark simply called ‘la grand’rue.’90 But a difference between the objective Pinet-Laprade’s master plan intended to serve and the reality on the ground was great for a considerable time. In the light of contemporary historical circumstances, criticism of the plan on the part of the European and métis merchants of Gorée and Saint-Louis as a ‘megalomaniac vision’ can be understood. [ 67 ]

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French colonial Dakar

In other words, it was Pinet-Laprade who supported the military occupation of Cap Vert by Prôtet at the late 1850s and promoted the development of a deep-water port there. While Faidherbe organised military expeditions to the hinterland up the Senegal River, Pinet-Laprade planned for the establishment of a key outpost on the peninsula to concentrate French commerce in West Africa as a whole. He expected Dakar to become the capital of the French colonial empire south of the Sahara, ignoring the fact that officially France was yet to occupy the peninsula at all. Upon the military conquest of the peninsula by Prôtet, the residents of Gorée hastened to purchase land on off-shore Ndakaru in order to construct warehouses there, testimony to their actual presence. To the resentment of the French administration, land speculation became a phenomenon, worsened by the Lebu habit of reselling the same lots to the various European and métis merchants. Facing this situation, the administration enacted a decree to deport each African who resold titled land, and an obligation to mark each sold parcel with a fence.91 Continued throughout the colonial and into the post-colonial period, the land ownership problem, similarly to other formerly colonised countries, has been a complex issue in Dakar. In this early period of colonisation, the Lebu seemed not completely to understand the meaning and consequences of European land contracts and ownership bills, nor the full implications of acts such as signatures on documents. With the growth of the city and the immense increase in land prices in this area there was considerable dissatisfaction, and they claimed they were cheated by the administration and had received inappropriate sums of compensation, if at all. The proclamation of the colonial administration, for instance, following occasional land confiscations, that a written petition could be submitted within a few weeks was probably useless because of the short time limit and the fact that many of the Lebu were then illiterate. Among further problems that arose was the sub-division of the low sum of compensation among too many family members who owned land communally. As in many other formerly colonised countries, one of the central issues of historical disputes was what was ambiguously defined by the colonial administration as ‘unoccupied land’ (terres vacantes et sans maître). This land category, according to colonial laws, could be annexed even by compulsory agreements with the indigenous side, which actually meant confiscation. The French (like other European colonial powers) tended to consider any virtually uninhabited and uncultivated land as ‘unoccupied land’, though the Lebu (like other colonised societies) did not share this view. For them many terrains, even if they appeared deserted at first glance, played various roles and functions.92 [ 68 ]

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Planting the flag and military planning

Aiming at the eradication of land speculation and at what was perceived as the danger of spontaneous expansion of the settlement, Pinet-Laprade had already drawn up an initial master plan for Dakar in the late 1850s. This initial plan bore much resemblance to the official 1862 plan. With the intent of controlling the European settlement pattern in advance, he also sought to prevent the reproduction of disputes of the kind that arose in the old French settlements of Saint-Louis and Gorée. Before formal colonisation, these settlements had been governed by particular interests of the local residents, and the later colonial regime experienced difficulties when confronted with them in trying to enforce post-factum master plans. Against this background and in contrast to most of colonial cities, Dakar was provided with a detailed development plan even before the completion of the official colonial occupation! Pinet-Laprade’s master plan, however, was firmly criticised by the residents of Gorée and Saint-Louis, who were fearful that the development of Dakar would take place at the expense of their settlements. In addition, because of the relative spatial liberty enjoyed by them in these island towns, the administration’s legislative efforts for land regulation in the future city of Dakar seemed to them too rigid. As noted by the French historian Roger Pasquier, these residents preferred to immigrate to Rufisque, located nearer the internal part of the peninsula in comparison to Dakar. In Rufisque the access to land was easier, and it gained commercial momentum thanks to its important geographical role for groundnut caravans on their passage from the hinterland to the colonial port. Rufisque was a bit further from colonial surveillance, unlike Dakar, which seemed to be totally deserted at this stage by the merchants. In fact, excluding some military buildings and the Catholic Mission, for about three decades following Pinet-Laprade’s master plan, only demarcated empty lots could be noted in Dakar, a situation that is also well exemplified in contemporary maps (Figure 2.5; see also Figure 2.17).93 The competition between the newly emerging urban centres of Dakar and Rufisque caused the fading out of the old settlements of Gorée and Saint-Louis. These were established on relatively small islands, and had almost reached their capacity. Even if only thirty kilometres stood between Dakar and Rufisque, and both of them grew at the same period of time, their orientation was different. While Dakar constituted a creation of the colonial regime that sought to promise French control over what was considered a most important strategic point, Rufisque had been created almost voluntarily, as a private-sector response to the need for a victualling point on the caravan route. The European and métis merchants strongly protested the allocation of [ 69 ]

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newgenrtpdf

Figure 2.17  Dakar’s major public works projects of the 1890s, centred on the waterworks, the railroad, and the military and commercial ports.

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Planting the flag and military planning

funds by the colonial administration for the mise-en-valeur of Dakar alone, and against the taxes from which their old settlements did not seem to benefit. In 1891, for instance, the total population in Dakar was 8,737 (including the African majority), and thus only slightly larger than Rufisque, which had 8,000.94 The composition of the European population in both urban centres further explains the contemporary dichotomy in their character: almost exclusively merchants in Rufisque, and civil and military administrative officers in Dakar. To borrow the image of Pasquier, while Rufisque was thriving in an almost cheeky manner, ‘Dakar, a governmental creation, was nothing but a dead city, a chessboard yet to be occupied.’95 This almost static situation explains the reports of Colonel Canard quoted earlier in this chapter about the ‘calmness’ of this city, namely the feeling of boredom and dreariness. This situation did not match the vision of Pinet-Laprade, who died from cholera in 1869, and who had imagined the elimination of Rufisque and the reorientation of agricultural production to Dakar. This vision was realised only with the inauguration of the DSL railway in 1885 and the works on a deep-water port (Figure 2.17), and finally with the turning of Dakar into the federal capital of French West Africa in 1902, with all the accompanying planning and construction projects. The morphological design of Dakar and its accompanying construction projects made by the French colonial administration at the beginning of the twentieth century were directly influenced by the models advanced by the Engineering Corps. The urban planning and architectural principles developed by the Corps were gradually implemented by the administration in the urban civil sphere. Directly or indirectly, with more positive implications for the colonial sector and more negative ones for the colonised, the implementation of these principles affected the whole of the colonial urban population. Among these planning principles advanced by the military and by the colonial situation we can mention: an orthogonal layout of the settlement, with internal hierarchy of morphological and infrastructure elements and tree-lined streets; the use of the verandah, or outer arcade, in the caserns and the barracks, thereby establishing a model for the colonial house – that is, the ‘bungalow compound complex’ or ‘maison coloniale’; the influence of sanitary preoccupations on the organisation of the built-up sphere; the idea of isolation and segregation from the autochthonous populations; and land confiscations and displacements. All these planning and structural features symbolised an urban territory in the eyes of the European colonisers: a ‘civilised’ space. In contrast to the prevalent analytical tendency to connect colonial planning and architecture with issues of power and control, though [ 71 ]

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French colonial Dakar

without ignoring these issues, embedded in our discussion are unheroic colonial fashions and forms of planning. This is through an examination of planning projects and their cultural historical contexts in early colonial Dakar and other regional settlements in Senegal and French Sudan. A  common thread among these cities and other settlements, such as Saint-Louis, Bamako, and the posts along the main rivers, was that their planning was influenced by a military rationale or that they were established by the military engineers during the second half of the nineteenth century. However, beyond this and the more expected connection in scholarly literature between the ultimate goals of colonialism and the physical dimensions of colonisation, our analysis has shown a recurrent leitmotif of the fragility of the colonial project in this early stage. This fragility is illustrated through our elaboration of a series of episodes in the configuration and structuring of the first colonial installations there, exposing their associated internal contradictions and ironies. It is important to acknowledge therefore that apart from the more expected viewpoint of colonial urban environment as an ultimate reflection of the political, economic, ideological and cultural ends of colonialism, aspects of asymmetries, uncertainties and illusions were inevitably woven into colonial planning cultures. The early urban landscape of Dakar, however, as framed within the logic and the preferences of the regional projects of the Engineering Corps, was far from satisfying the urban residents. For Dakar’s colonised population, the newly emerged urban forms and their attached symbolism did not only represent imported western concepts. They were also accompanied by certain privileges in terms of services and amenities that were channelled almost exclusively towards one urban sector, the expatriates. As we shall see in Chapter  3, this situation essentially led to a conceptual, cultural, ethnic and political confrontation. On the other hand, military urban principles contributed towards the creation of a unified and rather monotonous landscape, especially in Dakar  – a landscape that was much criticised by the expatriates. This criticism was prominent in bringing the colonial administration to develop the architectural forms of the residential models at the beginning of the twentieth century. With the recurrent word ‘beautification’ (embellissement) in the administrative discourse about the residences of its civil service in the city, it definitely tried to enrich the monotonous formal style of the Corps.96 Other military-originated designs and practices that were developed by the civil administration affected Dakar’s African sector, such as the residential segregation on a racial basis. However, in this regard the case of Dakar explicitly exemplifies how the colonial space embodied dynamic grounds for negotiation and confrontation. Residential [ 72 ]

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segregation, as we shall see, could not simply be enforced by those who held official power over the colonised ‘other’ side of the users of everyday space. From an examination of the more ‘fragile’ aspects that were rooted in military planning endeavours throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, we shall turn now to examine the ‘fragility’ embedded in the civil administration’s project for the planning of residential segregation in early-twentieth-century Dakar. This project was accompanied inter alia by sanitary and pseudo-sanitary concerns; by a conceptual defamiliarisation of the ‘Other’ through a certain toponymic urban vocabulary; and by contemporary inter-colonial and transnational agreement regarding the implementation of segregationist planning in the colonies.

Notes   1 See, for instance:  Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat:  Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); David Prochaska, Making Algeria French:  Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990); Ambe Njoh, Planning Power:  Social Control and Planning in Colonial Africa (London, New York: UCL Press, 2007); Anthony King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London and Boston, MA: Routledge, 1976); Anthony King, Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World-Economy (London: Routledge, 1990). See also Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn (eds), Capital Cities in Africa:  Power and Powerlessness (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012). While in the last source aspects of ‘powerlessness’ in urban management are assigned to the post-colonial states, aspects of ‘power’ are clearly assigned to the colonial ones.   2 For the colonies as experimental terrains (champs d’expérience) see Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA and London:  MIT Press, 1989); Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London:  University of Chicago Press, 1991). For an inevitable Foucauldian flavour see Stephen Legg, ‘Beyond the European province: Foucault and postcolonialism’, in Jeremy W. Crampton and Stuart Elden (eds), Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 265–89.   3 Njoh, Planning Power, p. 10.   4 Raymond Betts, France and Decolonisation, 1900–60 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991), pp. 1–2.   5 Robert Home, ‘Town planning and garden cities in the British colonial empire 1910–40’, Planning Perspectives, 5 (1990), 23–37 (p.  23). See also Njoh, Planning Power, p. 54.   6 Léopold Prôtet, cited in Jacques Charpy, ‘Comment et pourquoi est né Dakar’, France outre-mer, special issue: Dakar à cent ans, 330 (1957), 8–9 (p. 8, my translation). At the time of this publication, Charpy served as the Head of the Archives of the AOF in Dakar.   7 Charpy, ‘Comment et pourquoi’, p. 8.   8 Assane Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine (Dakar: IFAN, 1970), p. 287.   9 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, pp. 273–7. For a colonial historical survey on land-rights complexities see ANS, 4 P 22, Etude du conseiller général Robert Delmas membre du grand conseil concernant l’aménagement de la presqu’île du Cap Vert, 15 April 1948.

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French colonial Dakar 10 David Gamble, The Wolof of Senegambia:  Together with Notes on the Lebu and the Sereer (London:  International African Institute, 1957), pp.  93–5; Jean Gallais, Dans la grande banlieue de Dakar: Les villages Lébous de la presqu’île du Cap Vert (Dakar: Institut des Hautes Etudes, 1954), pp. 5–6. 11 Gamble, The Wolof of Senegambia, pp. 93–5. Before the French Revolution the usage in the notion ‘republic’ in the French language was flexible and referred to a wide variety of political organisations that were not ‘monarchies’. See also Mamadou Diouf, Le Kajoor au XIXe siècle: Pouvoir ceddo et conquête colonial (Paris: Karthala, 1990). 12 Roger Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal aux XIXe siècle’, Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 168–9 (1960), 387–426 (pp. 400–5). 13 Charpy, ‘Comment et pourquoi’, p. 8; Jean Delcourt, ‘Les anciennes églises de Dakar’, Horizons africains, 274 (1974), 18–21 (p. 19). 14 Boubacar Barry, Le Royaume du Waalo: Le Sénégal avant la conquête (Paris: Karthala, 1985), pp. 223–35; Alain Sinou, ‘La Sénégal’, in Jacques Soulillou (ed.), Rives coloniales: Architectures de Saint-Louis à Douala (Paris: ORSTOM, 1993), pp. 31–62 (p. 51). The German imperial authorities in Cameroon had the opposite experience by initiating, from an early stage, successful agricultural activity in the country’s exceedingly fertile soil; see Ambe Njoh, ‘Indigenous peoples and ancestral lands: Implications of the Bakweri Case in Cameroon’, in Robert Home (ed.), Essays in African Land Law (Pretoria: Pretoria University Press, 2011), pp. 69–90 (p. 76). 15 Roxann Wheeler, ‘Limited visions of Africa: Geographies of savagery and civility in early eighteenth-century narratives’, in James Duncan and D. Gregory (eds), Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 14–48; Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 16 Apart from becoming an icon of French Romanticism, this work, The Raft of the Medusa (1818, held at the Louvre in Paris), depicts a tragedy in which the ship Medusa sank in 1816, opposite the Saint-Louis coast. Out of the 147 persons she was carrying, the fifteen who had been saved experienced hunger, cannibalism and madness, which led to an international scandal. These were French settlers who, supported by their Government, were sent to Saint-Louis for agricultural colonisation. Such experiments would fail in later years as well. 17 Statistical data from:  Philip Curtin, Disease and Empire:  The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 1–4. 18 UNESCO, Gorée: Island of Memories (Paris: UNESCO, 1985), p. 19. 19 As ironically indicated by Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle’, p. 401. 20 See, for example, map of Dakar, 1876 (scale not given), Cambridge University Library, Map Collection, Maps 723.01.3481. 21 For Canard’s reports from July 1873 to May 1881 see ANS, G 309 13, Gouvernement du Sénégal, arrondissement de Gorée, correspondance, 1870s–1880s (my translation). See also Claude Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île du Cap Vert et des origines de Dakar (Paris: Larose, 1914), pp. 157–62. 22 Marcel Monnier, France noire: Côte d’Ivoire et Soudan (Paris: Plon, 1894), p. 23. 23 ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar, 1919–1920, rapport sur l’hygiène à Dakar de 1899 à 1920, p. 413. 24 Saint-Louis, however, operated as the capital of the colony of Senegal until its independence in 1960. After independence, it was succeeded by Dakar as Senegal’s capital city. 25 As to the decisive role of Roume as the inaugurator of the building impetus in early twentieth-century Dakar see Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–45, trans. Till Gottheiner (New  York:  PICA Press, 1971), p.  308; Conklin, A Mission to Civilize. 26 Raymond Betts, ‘Dakar:  Ville impériale’, in Robert Ross and G.  J. Telkamp (eds), Colonial Cities:  Essays on Urbanism in a Colonial Context (Dordrecht:  Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), pp. 193–206; Wright, The Politics of Design, p. 94. For an outstanding source on Lyautey’s Rabat see Rabinow, French Modern.

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Planting the flag and military planning 27 S. Ficatier, ‘Les transformations de la ville de Dakar’, A travers le monde, 44 (1908), 346–8 (p. 348). 28 ‘SEITC’, ‘Dakar à 100 ans!’, Tropiques, 394 (1957), 38–9 (p. 38, my translation). 29 Emil Lengyel, Dakar:  Outpost of Two Hemispheres (New  York:  Garden City, 1943), p. 15. 30 ‘The first colonial empire’ means the overseas French territories that were gained until the Napoleonic era (i.e. late nineteenth century). Among these territories were Canada; the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon; the islands Guadeloupe, Martinique and the French West Indies (Antilles); and French Guiana. In spite of the French navy’s relatively early invasion of Algeria in 1830, it is considered the first territory under the ‘second colonial empire’. The latter included, besides Tunisia from 1881, all the French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa, and its life was contemporaneous with that of the Third Republic. 31 Pierre Pinon, ‘Raisons et formes de villes: Approche comparée des fondations coloniales française au début du XVIIIe siècle’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg (eds), La Ville européenne outre-mers: Un modèle conquérant? (XVe–XXe siècles) (Paris:  L’Harmattan, 1996), pp.  27–56; Alain Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal:  Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar (Paris:  Karthala, ORSTOM, 1993), Chapter 12. 32 Respectively:  King, Colonial Urban Development, Chapter  4; Anthony King, The Bungalow:  The Production of a Global Culture (New  York and Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1995 [1984]). 33 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, The History of African Cities South of the Sahara:  From the Origins to Colonization, trans. Mary Baker (Princeton:  Markus Wiener Publishers, 2005), Chapter 5. 34 See A. W. Lawrence, Fortified Trade Posts: The English in West Africa, 1645–1822 (London: Cape, 1969), which expands, in passing, on just a few French posts. 35 This group recently initiated an internet site that operates from Senegal, presenting their genealogy and internal family connections, historical background, and iconographic documentation, including a blog. See http://senegalmetis.com/Senegalmetis/ Accueil.html (accessed 4 October 2014). 36 For the contemporary urban legislation in Saint-Louis see ANS, 3 G 3, 1–2, Commune de Saint-Louis, 1820s–1920s. 37 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 168. 38 Barnett Singer, ‘A new model imperialist in French West Africa’, The Historian, 56 (1993), 69–86. See also Mamadou Diouf, ‘Islam, the “originaires”, and the making of public space in a colonial city: Saint-Louis of Senegal’, in Mamadou Diouf (ed.), Tolerance, Democracy and Sufis in Senegal (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 180–204 (pp. 186–90). 39 Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), Chapter 6. Gallieni (1849–1916) was a high-rank administrator with a military background, appointed governor of French Sudan in 1886, later governor of Indo-China and Madagascar. He was involved in the establishment of many military posts and urban settlements based on orthogonal lines, in accordance with the Engineering Corps’s guiding principles. 40 For Faidherbe’s authoritarianism see Michael Crowder, Senegal: A Study in French Assimilation Policy (London:  Oxford University Press, 1962), p.  12. For a positive view see Raymond Betts, ‘Association in French colonial theory’, in Robert O. Collins (ed.), Problems of History of Colonial Africa (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 178–88 (p. 181). 41 For more on Franco-Islamic relations in the western Sudan and the Omarian challenge see David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation:  Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), pp. 143–61. 42 For more on the Four Communes and the ‘association’ see Chapter 1 of this book. Discussion of the urban implications of ‘association’ is also embedded within the book’s chapters.

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French colonial Dakar 43 The next two paragraphs are based on our synoptic view of an extremely rich collection of visual records on the military fortified posts in Senegal and French Sudan. These records are held by the ANS and also by the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM), amongst them: XL Mémoires 197, 64 (Plan du poste de Bakel, 1864); 66 (Poste du Thiès, 1864); 71 (Forte de Niomré, 1865; Génie, sous direction générale). For an unprecedented source on the forts before the effective colonisation (including the first mud fortress in Saint-Louis), see Lawrence, Fortified Trade Posts. 44 Prominent sources on the formalistic meaning and symbolism of Sudanese architecture are, still, the works of the art historian Labelle Prussin, especially Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). These concern mainly mosques and private residences. The originality of Ba’s publication is therefore undisputed: Thierno Mouctar Ba, Architecture militaire traditionnelle et poliorcétique dans le Soudan occidental du XVIIe à la fin du XIXe siècle (Yaoundé: Editions Clé, 1985). 45 Jean Boulègue, ‘Mosquées de style soudanais au Fuuta Tooro (Sénégal)’, Notes africaines, 136 (1972), 117–19 (p. 119). 46 Moniteur du Sénégal et dépendances: Journal officiel (4 July 1865). In 1907, the celebrated ‘Faidherbe Bridge’ replaced this preliminary bridge in Saint-Louis. 47 ANOM, FM SG, SEN/XII, 119, Création d’un point d’appui de la flotte à Dakar, 12 October 1900. In his letter to the minister of the colonies, one of the work inspectors complained that 49 per cent of his ninety-three European workers had became ill, and the rate was still growing. 48 For detailed accounts and sketches on the development of Dakar’s port through the ages see Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine. For Faidherbe’s correspondence on this issue see the same source, pp. 310–13. 49 For the British colonial transport infrastructure in West Africa see Njoh, Planning Power, pp. 48–53. 50 Paul E.  Pheffer, ‘African influence in French colonial railroads in Senegal’, in Wesley Johnson (ed.), Double Impact: France and Africa in the Age of Imperialism (London: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 31–49. 51 Cited in Werner Szambien, ‘Durand and the continuity of tradition’, in Robin Middleton (ed.), The Beaux-Arts and Nineteenth Century French Architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), pp. 19–33 (p. 19). 52 William B.  Cohen, Rulers of Empire:  The French Colonial Service in Africa (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1971), pp. 43, 51. 53 For almost arbitrary examples see Conklin, A Mission to Civilize; Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State:  Negritude and Colonial Humanism between Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 54 Martin Lewis, ‘An assessment of assimilation’, in Collins, Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, pp. 188–91 (p. 188). See also Betts, Assimilation and Association. It is beyond the scope of this book, however, to discuss the complexities of the French assimilative doctrine itself. 55 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 201. 56 For an analysis of the French colonial urban planning and architecture in Indo-China, Morocco and Madagascar see Wright, The Politics of Design. For a critique on the Haussmann-style planning policies see Rabinow, French Modern, pp. 76–7. 57 Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations:  Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), Chapters 1–3. 58 Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 161, 177–9. 59 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 9. For similar reflections see Frederick Cooper, ‘The dialectics of decolonization: Nationalism and labor movements in postwar French Africa’, in Frederick Cooper and Anne L. Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 406–35 (pp. 407, 409).

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Planting the flag and military planning 60 Wright, The Politics of Design and Rabinow, French Modern developed the idea of French North Africa serving as field of colonial experiments in planning. For the never-realised transsaharienne line see Claude Faure, ‘La mise en valeur ferroviaire de l’AOF (1880–1939)’, Ph.D. dissertation (Université de Paris, 1969). 61 Xavier Malverti and Aleth Picard, ‘Algeria:  Military genius and civic design (1830–70)’, Planning Perspectives, 6 (1991), 207–36 (p. 212). 62 For more on this antagonism in France and its colonies see Rabinow, French Modern, p. 228; Wright, The Politics of Design, p. 220. 63 Charles Jojot, Dakar: Essai de géographie médicale et d’ethnologie (Montdidier: n.p., 1907), pp. 28–30. 64 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp. 88–9, 175–9. As to the centralist structure of French West Africa see Suret-Canale, French Colonialism, Chapter 2. 65 Malverti and Picard, ‘Algeria: military genius’, p. 211; Pinon, ‘Raisons et formes de villes’, pp. 45–8. 66 For instance: Jane Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 21–2, 158; Njoh, Planning Power, p. 123. See also Jill Grant, ‘The dark side of the grid: Power and urban design’, Planning Perspectives, 16:3 (2001), 219–41. 67 As noted (with no further reference) in Jacques Bugnicourt, ‘Dakar without bounds’, in Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Reading the Contemporary African City (Singapore: Concept Media, 1982), pp. 27–42 (p. 30). 68 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 271. 69 Liora Bigon and Yossi Katz (eds), Garden Cities and Colonial Planning: Transnationality and Urban Ideas in Africa and Palestine (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2014). 70 For the trees in the Corps’s designs see Malverti and Picard, ‘Algeria:  Military genius’, p.  217. For Hann’s agronomic station see ANS, 4 P 1461, Jardins publics de Dakar et Gorée: Construction. Au dedans: Jardin des compagnies disciplinaires à Hann, 1870 (Génie, direction du Sénégal, petit atlas des bâtiments militaires). For the role of trees in the sanitation of Dakar see ANS, P 178, Assainissement de Dakar, état sanitaire, 1878–1907; ANS, P 167, Urbanisme de Dakar, rues et places, etc., 1901–18. Note par l’inspection de l’agriculture sur la plantation des avenues de Dakar, 28 September 1907. For Sinou’s words see Sinou, Comptoirs et villes colonials du Sénégal, p. 203. 71 For the central square (penc), large trees and indigenous urban design in West Africa see Eric Ross, Sufi City: Urban Design and Archetypes in Touba (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2006), pp. 176–214 (including Ibn Battuta’s testimony on p. 196). ‘Way’ (tariqah in Arabic) means a path, which, in the Sufi tradition, is connected to an idealistic search after ultimate truth. The Senegalese Mouridiyya is a Sufi ‘Way’ established by Sheikh Amadou Bamba (1853–1927). It is based in the city of Touba, organised around a central square with the (tree-analogous) great mosque and orthogonal layout. 72 Ross, Sufi City, pp. 117–75. 73 ANS, 1 D 23, Plan du poste de Médine, Génie, sous direction général, 1864. 74 Malverti and Picard, ‘Algeria: Military genius’, p. 207. 75 Alain Sinou, ‘Les moments fondateurs de quelques villes coloniales’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 81–3 (1981), 375–88 (pp. 377–9). 76 Sinou, ‘Les moments fondateurs’, pp.  380–1, 385–7. See also Alain Sinou, ‘The “Plateau” in West-African, French-speaking colonial towns:  Between garden and city’, in Bigon and Katz, Garden Cities and Colonial Planning, pp. 74–97. 77 This is in spite of Park’s relatively constrained description: ‘I had heard Bammakoo much talked of as a great market for salt, and I felt rather disappointed to find it only a middling town’ (23 August 1795). In Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1903), p. 219. 78 In Joseph Gallieni, Mission d’exploration du Haut-Niger:  Voyage au Soudan français, 1879–81 (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1885), p. 244 (my translation). 79 Sinou, ‘Les moments fondateurs’, p. 386. Sinou, ‘The “Plateau” ’.

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French colonial Dakar 80 ANS, 6 D 23, Mission sanitaire du Sénégal, bâtiments militaires de la Place de Dakar, description, assiette du casernement, 1901. 81 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp. 315–16, 233–4, 254, 265. 82 The use of metal for building became popular by the late nineteenth century as part of the Industrial Revolution. For the implementation of a metal skeleton for building in the colonial world, pioneered by Britain and followed by France after two decades, see King, The Bungalow, Chapter 6; Gilbert Herbert, Pioneers of Prefabrication: The British Contribution in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 83 Kunle Akinsemoyin and Alan Vaughan-Richards, Building Lagos (Lagos:  F.  & A. Services, 1976), p. 43. 84 For examples of military barracks dated to the last quarter of the nineteenth century and made of permanent and temporary materials, with or without a verandah, see ANS, 6 D 8–10, Baraque type C en paillotte; barraque type A en bois; barraque type A en maçonnerie, 1883. 85 King, Colonial Urban Development, pp.  79–81; Curtin, Death by Migration, Chapters 2, 3. 86 For the identification of the colonised with disease in colonial Senegal see Lengyel, Dakar, pp. 30–3; and for the same in colonial South Africa: Maynard Swanson, ‘The sanitation syndrome:  Bubonic plague and urban native policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–9’, Journal of African History, 18:3 (1977), 387–410. 87 Louis Capperon, ‘Pinet-Laprade: Gouverneur du Sénégal et dépendances, mai 1865–17 août 1869’, Ph.D. dissertation (Université de Paris, 1952), Part I; Jacques Charpy (ed.), La Fondation de Dakar (1845, 1857, 1869): Collection des documents (Paris: Larose, 1958), p. 560. 88 Liora Bigon and Alain Sinou, ‘The quest for colonial style in French West Africa:  Prefabricating Marché Kermel and Sandaga’, Urban History, 39:4 (2013), 709–25. See also Chapter 4. 89 Gamble, The Wolof of Senegambia, p. 54. 90 Gamble, The Wolof of Senegambia, pp.  93–5; Eunice Charles, Precolonial Senegal: The Jolof Kingdom (Boston, MA: Boston University, African Studies Center, 1977), pp. 8–10. For the ‘grand’rue’ appellation see a 1970 interview with two elders from Dakar: Philippe David, Paysages dakarois de l’époque coloniale (Dakar: ENDA, 1978), p. 9. 91 Sinou, ‘La Sénégal’, p.  51; Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp. 227–31. 92 For more on the reasons for the Lebu disquiet see Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–20 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971), pp. 30–7. Most colonial documents are preoccupied with the land ownership issues on Cap Vert, including names of Lebu owners, compensation amounts and petitions. For a detailed colonial report intended to summarise the land disputes on Cap Vert until 1948 and their roots see ANS, 4 P 22: Etude du conseiller général Robert Delmas. 93 Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle’, pp. 400–6. For equivalent cartographic evidence see, for instance, Cambridge University Library, map of Dakar. 94 Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle’, p. 420; Ndiouga Adrien Benga, ‘Du modèle dégradé au contre-modèle, la question municipale:  Rufisque (Sénégal, 1926–60)’, in Coquery-Vidrovitch and Goerg, La Ville européenne outre-mers, pp.  261–88 (pp. 261–4, 269–70). 95 In Pasquier, ‘Villes du Sénégal au XIXe siècle’, p. 406 (my translation). 96 As to the embellissement of Dakar’s cityscape, see ANS, 4 P 272, Villas, Plateau, 1922–23, programme de concours pour l’édification de villas et maisons d’habitation à construire à Dakar (Sénégal) pour le compte du Gouvernement général de l’AOF.

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C HAP T E R  T HREE

Street naming, infectious diseases and planning in early colonial Dakar: segregationist insights Introduction The establishment of Dakar as a colonial, imperial and federal capital city both in French sub-Saharan Africa and in the French colonial imagination was no different from any other colonial city in Africa, and beyond in terms of segregationist thinking. As in fact was clear from every monograph on any contemporary colonial city, the planning of residential segregation on a racial basis, to various degrees, could be regarded as a ‘default’ situation. This chapter illustrates both the site-relatedness of this situation in early colonial Dakar and its inter-colonial, transnational facets. It examines, in great detail and using rich visual records, the relationship between toponymic issues and sanitary considerations in urban planning there. It also examines the process of dissemination of medical and planning ideas amongst the European colonising nations. Regarding the toponymic issues, research on street naming systems in general and on colonial street names in particular is not abundant. In this chapter the French colonial policy regarding street names in Dakar will be analysed, as well as the accompanying colonial terminology that was applied in Dakar’s quarters. With occasional references to the pre-colonial and post-colonial periods, we shall focus here on street names in early colonial Dakar, following Pinet-Laprade’s preliminary master plan of the 1860s. While residential segregation was never a stated policy on the part of the colonial authorities there, which formally fostered assimilation, it will be shown that toponyms had a key role in the alienation of the indigenous population in the city centre. As the latter was considered ‘European’ and a chief lieu de colonisation in West Africa, colonial urban toponyms there reflected an official memory that excluded African histories and identities. Alternative naming systems of reference to certain urban areas on the part of the [ 79 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Dakarois will be discussed, either challenging or supplementing their French counterparts. As to the reciprocal relations between the outbreak of infectious diseases and the planning of the colonial city in sub-Saharan Africa, we will concentrate on the French segregationist policies following the outbreak of the bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914, with occasional reference to other case studies. Taking into account the precedent planning and sanitary policies in Saint-Louis, the 1914 policies in Dakar could be conceived as most dramatic, resulting in a displacement of a considerable portion of the indigenous population, who did not want or could not afford to build à l’européen, to the margins of the colonial city. Aspects of residential segregation are analysed here through the perspective of cultural history and that of colonial planning and architecture, in contrast to the existing literature on this topic. The latter, as will be referred to below, expands on the statutory policies of the colonial authorities facing the 1914 plague in Dakar, the plague’s socio-political implications and the colonial politics of public health there. In the light of relevant historiography, and a variety of secondary and primary sources, this chapter exposes the contradictions that were inherent in the French colonial regime in West Africa. These contradictions were wisely used by the African agency, so that such a seemingly urgent segregationist project was actually never accomplished. Together with this, relevant transnational and ‘top-down’ processes will also be discussed, stressing the importance of public events and the printed media in the dissemination of planning and medical knowledge in the colonial context. More explicitly, we shall concentrate on the organisation, guiding rationale and conclusions of the conference on yellow fever that was held in Dakar in April 1928. This conference provides us with an insight into how inter-colonial networks for administrating disease and urban planning in sub-Saharan Africa operated. During the period of ‘empire building’ national rivalries were strengthened but at the same time there emerged international and inter-colonial coordination. This contemporary cooperation-cum-competition is well reflected in the Dakar conference, throwing some light on the meaning and implications of such transnational networks of scientific expertise. Against this background another comparative issue will be touched upon: residential segregation on a racial basis in British and French sub-Saharan Africa.

Names, norms and forms: a preliminary note Recent tendencies in cartography and landscape studies established the understanding that the physical landscape is, to a great extent, an [ 80 ]

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

outcome of representational and ideological realms of the involved interest groups, and a contested sphere of the memories and invented traditions of these groups.1 In the following, at least a part of the meanings and implications behind the French and the indigenous nomenclature of early Dakar’s urban space will be revealed. The period referred to, starting from the first master plan designated for the city in 1862 until the 1930s, the heyday of European colonialism in West Africa, is interesting for our purposes. This is because in this early time of the consolidation of Dakar as an exemplary French colonial city, the spatial language, and the derivative conceptual and actual practices of the colonial regime could be discerned there more clearly. While in present-day Dakar it is noticeable that the post-colonial State absorbed and adopted this spatial language and these practices,2 the early colonial period represented a confrontation in this regard. That is, an uneven encounter between two universes of spatial hierarchies, codifications and toponyms – that of the coloniser versus that of the colonised. None of which, needless to say, was naive, but was rather a reflection of the changing perspectives, interests and experiences of its users. Through the prism of the issue of residential segregation, which dominates the analysis below, several complementary questions are raised here. What was the role of the contemporary toponymy in the creation of ‘our’ socio-cultural space and identity versus those of the ‘others’? How could derogatory terminological practices play a central role in an urban territory over which the policy of assimilation was exercised? How did the colonial names of streets and quarters in Dakar contribute towards the de-familiarisation of the Dakarois with the city centre, originally inhabited by them? How did these names support the colonial authorities in creating an informal residential segregation between the expatriate and the African communities? And, what were (and, indeed, still are) the indigenous views on these issues? While research on place names (toponymy) is an established field in historical geography, the suggested answers on these questions are significant in the light of the fact that research on street names as a cultural phenomenon is rather scanty.3 Moreover, studies that deal with colonial street names or, more particularly, with street names in colonial Dakar, are very few. They are worthy of expansion and thus are incorporated into our discussion, with specific remarks.4 Dakar is examined in this context because, as a colonial city, the incarnation of the power relations in its public sphere is particularly salient. Moreover, as the capital of the AOF Federation from 1902, it was regarded by the colonial authorities as a model space for French West Africa, to which, under the colonial doctrine of assimilation, some Parisian spatial planning elements could be imported. Yet most [ 81 ]

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French colonial Dakar

of the planning projects there were designated for the expatriate population and not for the indigenous one. On the social level, one of the consequences of the formation of imperial Dakar as a model space was that marginal groups in terms of origin, composition, activities and lifestyles were subjected to rigid control and repression by the colonial State, leading to their exclusion from the central urban areas. These groups – such as ex-slaves, vagabonds and temporary internal migrants, often criminalised in the colonial discourse – were defined as a ‘human obstruction’ or ‘social plague’, and their presence was considered to jar with colonial (urban) norms.5 The first streets to be paved, lined with trees, lit, properly drained and regulated as ronds-points were therefore those of the white residential quarters. These quarters (namely, Dakar-ville and the Plateau) overshadowed the ‘other’ parts of Dakar, which, as the contemporary urban vocabulary clearly testifies, were not considered an integral part of the city. The fashioning of parts of Dakar almost exclusively after the image of the coloniser and for his benefit was related to the centralistic tendency inherent in assimilation and the French republican tradition. Another point of view was presented by the indigenous pre-colonial settlement organisation and toponyms, which, in this formative period, were based on essentially non-European perceptions. Against this background, street names in early colonial Dakar will not be discussed here per se. Rather, we shall focus on how the French colonial authorities in Dakar made use of the street naming system in order to foster an informal residential segregation there between the expatriate and the indigenous populations. Residential segregation was informal in Dakar, though the city’s first Euro-centric master plan (1862) and the creation of a separate quarter for the Africans (1914) were carried out by the colonial Government. It was quite convenient for the French authorities to justify segregationist moves on the basis of different ‘habitudes de vie’, ‘niveaux d’éducation modern’ and ‘différences de moeurs’.6 The colonial urban situation in West Africa did not necessitate a formal colour bar based on racial distinctions, as was the case in South Africa. Residential segregation could be maintained through stringent sanitary or building-material legislation that kept Africans with ‘primitive’ notions in this regard well away from Europeans. The additional means that were applied by the French regime to intensify residential segregation were primarily physical in their nature or implications, such as sanitary laws, regulations of building materials, and a selective imposition of western modes of living and modes of planning. While these means will be discussed later in the chapter, we shall open with the street naming system in French West Africa in general and in Dakar in particular, representing a conceptual barrier, [ 82 ]

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meaningful in its signification, that was consciously applied over colonial urban space.

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The first street names of Dakar: the colonial perspective Claude Faure has listed all the street names offered by Pinet-Laprade for Dakar, together with their origins.7 These referred to the initial orthogonal plan of Dakar-ville in the period between the 1860s and the 1880s (Figure  2.16), long before the establishment of the Médina (the indigenous quarter of 1914, north-west of Dakar-ville) and the Plateau (the expatriate quarter of the 1910s, south of Dakar-ville) (Figure  3.1). It should be noted that while the names of some major arteries were later changed – some of them repeatedly during the colonial and post-independence periods – a considerable number of the original names have lasted to this day. Though the city’s master plan was detailed as to the position of new streets; market places; and future administrative, public and military edifices, names of streets were not yet included. The latter, conceived by Pinet-Laprade and confirmed by the Administrative Council, were established in May 1863, about a year after the approval of the plan by the governor of Senegal.8 The Council, together with the governor of the colony (Senegal) or, alternatively, the governor general of the AOF, would be responsible for adding and changing street names in Dakar, from this embryonic stage throughout the colonial period. The street names on Faure’s list, thirty-eight names in all, can be divided into four reference groups. His original list was indeed very detailed, but it was only a terse chronicle with no analysis, which seems typical of Faure’s profession at that time: had become the first archivist of the AOF in 1911.9 Our quadripartite division is helpful in understanding the typical lines of French colonial thought. The division below reflects the European linear meta-narrative, a narrative whose Euro-centric essence testifies to a partial and selective history as inferred from these street names. The first category in Faure’s list refers to metropolitan street names. In late-nineteenth-century Dakar, this category only comprised a single street:  boulevard National (originally named by Pinet-Laprade rue Impériale). This was the main east–west artery of the orthogonal plan, which traversed its core: place Prôtet. The second category has twenty-four names: most of the total list of thirty-eight. These were names of individuals who had played significant roles in the effective colonisation of Senegal and the regions beyond it. Most of them were military and naval officers, who had died in battles against local [ 83 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 3.1  The three main quarters and street names in early colonial Dakar, in the 1910s.

Islamic powers (for instance Descemet, Dagorne, Mage) or of malaria and other diseases (for instance Caille, Parent, Parchappe). Governors (Blanchot, Canard), military engineers (Vincens), surgeons (Thèze, Roux) and explorers (Raffenel) can also be included here (­figure 3.2). This chief second category represents an essentially occidental phenomenon: the obsession with personal honour and fame, embodied in street names, together with the nationalisation of the right to name, is connected with broader developments of the nation state. Whereas there is a debate about the relevancy of the nation-state model to [ 84 ]

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Figure 3.2  Recent photo of rue du Docteur Roux, Dakar. Most of the colonial street names in the city centre were preserved following independence.

post-colonial, current, sub-Saharan Africa, the model itself was certainly not yet in existence in pre-colonial times. Names of pre-colonial settlements in West Africa – these had virtually no street names and numbers in the western sense, related to state monopoly and taxation – developed informally, and rarely referred to individuals. The third category consists of French site-related names, which means, in this context, names that marked certain sites created by the new colonising power. Five streets are included herein: avenue du Barachois, implying the barrage built at its end as a modest beginning of the port; rue de l’Hôpital, leading to the newly established hospital in the future Plateau; rue du Cimetière, marking the original location of the European cemetery, which would later be relocated; and rue de la Gendarmerie and rue de l’Administration, though the ‘site-relatedness’ of both can be debated, as the buildings they represented were in fact situated in other parts of the town.10 There were also a few streets that shifted among two or three of the categories above, already by the 1880s. Such were quai des Messageries and quai de la Mission, between place Prôtet and the port (1863), which created a ‘broken’ street that was later named boulevard de l’Impératrice in 1865 and then, in 1888, renamed boulevard Pinet-Laprade11 (boulevard El-Hadji Djily M’baye today). [ 85 ]

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French colonial Dakar

The last, fourth category comprises African names, a minor group of eight among the thirty-eight names on Faure’s list. Indeed, even these names were only designated to support the French regional master-narrative, an aim more clearly manifested by the previous categories. In the three cases where a local settlement was mentioned (rue de Kaolak, rue de Dialmath and rue de Médine) it was in fact in praise of French military posts or fortresses that had heroically been established there. In another case, that of rue de Thann, between marché Kermel and the port (Figure 3.1), the reference was to one of the eleven pre-colonial Lebu villages in that area, which, following Pinet-Laprade’s plan, would be transferred farther inland. Moreover, in this village the chief (sëriñ) of Ndakaru as a whole had resided. The last four African names (Niomré, Thîong, Caronne and Sandiniéry) referred to southern Senegalese villages that had been occupied by the French around the 1860s.12 In fact, when the local histories had not been totally ignored, they were subjected to the history of the coloniser. From 1887 on Dakar was considered one of the quatre communes, the Four Communes of Senegal, following Saint-Louis, Gorée and Rufisque (see Chapter 1). In the light of this new political status, two points should be stressed here. First, one of the reasons that prevented the French colonial authorities from enforcing a wholesale residential segregation in Dakar on a legislative basis was this status of the city. The latter could make official segregation an embarrassing issue. The local and Islamic Lebu population was actually originaire, and thus its gradual expropriation from Dakar’s city centre (Dakar-ville) was accompanied by compensations on the part of the colonial State. Second, by contrast to the pre-colonial urban tapestry in the other three communes, urban culture was never developed in the Lebu settlement of Dakar (Ndakaru) prior to Cap Vert’s occupation by Prôtet. Such culture was created in the other three communes from the seventeenth century by the métis. This point highlights Dakar as a somewhat artificial creation at this initial stage – a situation that also seems to fit its description by the novelist Pierre Loti as ‘a kind of sketched colonial city laid upon the sand and the red rocks, an improvised resting-place for vessels’.13

Later developments in colonial street names in Dakar The newly acquired status of Dakar as the AOF’s capital in 1902, thanks to considerable ameliorations in infrastructure and means of communication, contributed to the consolidation of the highly selective official memory. The latter then engendered new categories of street names that did not exist in the seven other capitals of the [ 86 ]

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

colonies that belonged to the AOF. This phenomenon is somewhat equivalent to the opposed relationships between the highly institutionalised street names in Paris and the looser approach in this regard that was practised in the provinces. Indeed, the newly established French Dakar and its relatively simplistic street naming policy can hardly be compared to its much more challenged and older counterpart in France, with its various revolutions and the marks they left on its street topomymy.14 Yet, in one respect at least, a significant similarity can be pointed out: Paris’s privileged and exemplary status in relation to other French cities and their vernacular imageries is parallel to Dakar’s preferential position amongst the AOF’s other colonial capitals. Following the new-capital status of Dakar, however, four main arteries, each twenty metres wide, were opened in Dakar and planted with trees.15 Their establishment was approved by the governor general, who also approved their names. The names were not only metropolitan, but typically republican: Boulevard de la République, beginning at the Palais du Gouverneur Général and connecting Dakar-ville with the future Plateau; avenue de la Liberté, connecting the colonial hospital with rond-point de l’Etoile; avenue Gambetta, north of rond-point de l’Etoile towards avenue Faidherbe, which stretched from the Médina; and the later westwards extension of the previously mentioned boulevard National (Figure 3.1).16 While republican appellation was widely accepted for streets in France itself, its effect in the colonial environment evokes some questions. Indeed, the Government was aware of possible difficulties that a considerable amount of republican reference could cause. For instance, under the assimilation-oriented educational programme, the few Africans who were eligible for post-secondary-school education in Dakar were meant to become French; yet the French colonial authorities constantly proved to have misgivings about the inclusion of republican subjects, such as the history of the Revolution, in these programmes, which, in their opinion, could over-intensify political awareness on the part of the students regarding the colonial situation. It was not only the colonial situation that was characterised by a false fraternité, a denied égalité and an absence of liberté.17 As pointed out by the anthropologist Ernest Gellner, universalistic and egalitarian ideas are abstract, cerebral and resent-engendered. As they have an ‘ethnic’ colouring in their essence, it is not that one fails to acquire them, but more often that they are acquired in the ‘wrong’ idiom:  ‘Frenchmen are meant to be, not Catholic perhaps, but at any rate not Muslim.’18 It seems, though, that in the early stages of the policy of assimilation in French West Africa, and especially before the First World War, there [ 87 ]

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French colonial Dakar

was no apparent contradiction between the two, and Africans were expected to love France and Africa simultaneously.19 The new status of Dakar also necessitated, as was suggested by Governor General Van Vollenhoven, a change of site-related names, such as rue de l’Hôpital (also named, informally, route de l’Ambulance), into more ‘appropriate’ ones. The last mentioned street thus became, following an official decree of May 1903, avenue Roume, in memory of the second governor general of the AOF.20 By the late 1950s, some of the street name categories mentioned above became more substantial, and others were added. These tendencies represented a particular development in the colonial federal capital that was absent, for instance, from Bamako, Abidjan or Conakry – capitals of other AOF colonies.21 In Dakar in the late 1950s, for example, street names that referred to metropolitan history  – of individuals, events, the Revolution  – constituted a higher percentage by comparison to those in the other local capital cities. Dakar was also the only colonial capital that named two streets after French authors – Emile Zola and Victor Hugo – and one after a non-French personality – Franklin Roosevelt – all three on the Plateau. Though the category of names of individuals connected with the region remained the most developed one until the eve of independence, as it was in Pinet-Laprade’s time, the number of Africans among these was exceptionally low in Dakar compared with the other local capitals of the colonies of the AOF.22 This strongly externalised toponymic symbolism, which created an official semiotic façade to the AOF’s capitals that almost effaced the local factor and was particularly intensive in the model space of Dakar, could be seen in French northern Africa as well. In colonial Bône (Algeria) all street names that were inspired by regional history reflected a very limited reading of that history: names that recall the Roman period were stressed on the expanse of Arab and Ottoman names, not accidentally. Only two streets bore explicitly Islamic names: rue de Croissant, referring to the Muslim crescent, and rue de Cadi, referring to the Muslim tribunal that was situated there.23 This unbalanced attitude of the French colonial authorities towards the African factor is also apparent in maps of contemporary Dakar. In one of the earliest maps of Dakar to give street names, dating from 1895,24 Dakar-ville seems to end where it bordered on the indigenous huts area. There is, though, an overlapping zone on the map, where some of the huts coincided with the edges of Pinet-Laprade’s paved, and named, arteries. The latter was named ‘Native Town’ (‘ville indigène’); but beyond that to the west there is only an empty space. At this stage of the establishment of Dakar, the concentrations of indigenous houses were known as ‘ville indigène’, ‘village indigène’ or ‘village [ 88 ]

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

Figure 3.3  Plan of Dakar in 1915, lacking the newly established Médina quarter of 1914.

des noirs’ – terms invariably denying that these neighbourhoods were indeed an integral part of a city. A plan of Dakar published in 1915 is very detailed as regards the names of all the streets in the Plateau, the privileged expatriate quarter, and in Dakar-ville, which gradually became the commercial area. Yet this plan fails to give equivalent data for the Médina – the indigenous quarter which was established a year before  – it seems not to exist at all (Figure 3.3).25 This fact might not be surprising considering the circumstances under which the Médina was created  – to be discussed below – which resulted in permanent residential segregation on a racial basis. This derogatory practice continued well into the early 1940s, and throughout the 1950s.26 A plan of Dakar published in 1958 shows that the orthogonal streets of the Médina were only identified by numbers, [ 89 ]

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French colonial Dakar

from 1 to 71, and did not bear any names27  – a practice that underwent some change in post-colonial times when African names replaced some of the numbers. This plan also shows that two main routes in the area of the Médina did bear African names: avenue El Hadji Malik Sy, which connected the Médina with the north towards the village of Hann; and avenue Blaise Diagne, which connected the Médina with Dakar-ville (Figure 3.1). The two African names were not a casual choice of the Administrative Council. They represented political leaders in the colony  – one was connected with its religious Islamic life, and the other with the emergence of modern political movements  – who never threatened the French colonial role in Senegal.28

From the ‘Plateau’ to the ‘Médina’: terminologies of colonial urban landscape The self-centred approach of the French to street naming in Dakar was unambiguously manifested from the very establishment of the city up to the late eighteenth century. In the early twentieth century, when Dakar became the federal capital of the AOF, this institutionalised tendency was further intensified, and was also inspired by the colonial doctrine of assimilation. In fact, this street naming system can be viewed as part of a broader phenomenon, of European spatial languages of colonial urban landscapes in general. Using a language-oriented approach in this context, according to Anthony King, provides information about the spatial distribution of social and political powers, and about the colonial imagination. Colonial systems of nomenclature indicate the different categories and sub-categories – social, political, cultural – through which the urban space was both conceived and actually created.29 Needless to say, the separatist terminological structures regarding the formal organisation of the colonial city testify more to the colonial culture than to the cultures of the colonised. While King stressed the essentially anglophone language of this landscape, with special reference to British India, we shall refer below to its francophone West African counterpart. Whether residential segregation was generated by this colonial urban vocabulary – which implied spatial divisions rather than a homogeneous sphere – or whether it gave rise to them will remain an open question. In Dakar, as in other French colonial cities in West Africa, such as Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Brazzaville (French Congo) and Kayes (French Sudan, modern Mali), the residential quarter of the expatriates was called Plateau. Originally implying a higher ground level, this term, a key notion in the French colonial urban discourse, represented the [ 90 ]

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

ideals and the elitist dimension of the French presence in West Africa. Geographically, the Plateau as a preferred zone that was intended for the expatriate population  – it consequently became a privileged urban space – was associated with health considerations and with the European colonial powers’ tradition of military camps. These camps, especially overseas, were generally placed at a distance from the local population, as the case of the British ‘cantonment’ (and ‘Hill Station’) in India and Sierra Leone shows.30 In the French case, topography was a further means of symbolising the unequal distribution of wealth and socio-political power between the Europeans and the locals. The symbolic meaning of Plateau was particularly conspicuous in Niamey (Niger), were the European quarter that was so named was not in fact established on higher ground at all. In Kayes, a few structures and the presence of only a small number of military and civilian French servicemen were enough to justify this name.31 In the French colonial urban discourse, the Plateau was often regarded as the ‘European city’ (ville européenne) or ‘white city’ (ville blanche). The African quarter, on the other hand, was referred to as the ‘African city’ (ville africaine), ‘indigenous village’ (village indigène) or ‘indigenous quarter’ (quartier indigène). In some cases the term cité was used to refer to the African district, which is quite ironic because it bears medieval connotations in French, as opposed to the term ville.32 In North Africa the Plateau was called the ‘new city’ (ville nouvelle) as well, in order to distinguish it from the ‘old city’, or the ‘traditional city’, of the indigenous population. This distinction was not necessarily chronological, but it rather perpetuated two binary cosmologies, respectively: an open, linear and rational one, versus a dark, labyrinthine and superstitious other.33 The Plateau was also occasionally referred to as ‘urban zone’ (zone urbaine), while its African counterpart was referred to as ‘semi-urban zone’ (zone semi-urbaine). In many places the European part of the city was called the ‘residential zone’ (zone résidentielle), as against the ‘African quarters’ (quartiers africains), even where it did not actually serve for residence.34 Moreover, the ‘nice quarters’ (beaux quartiers) that characterised the former stood in sharp contradistinction to the latter’s bidonvilles (shanty-towns). In between these quarters another characteristic was apparent, generic in both its physical form and its naming, the cordon sanitaire. Intended to serve as a barrier between the European quarters and their indigenous counterparts, it constituted a key component in colonial urban planning and was common amongst the various colonial powers, under various appellations. No matter under which name or connotation, the segregationist function of the term was quite clear.35 [ 91 ]

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French colonial Dakar

In colonial and post-colonial literature the non-residential area is referred to as cordon sanitaire, sanitary or green belt (implying its supposed medical advantages), free zone, neutral zone, recreation ground or zone non aedificandi – i.e. a zone where building is prohibited. Systematised by the Township Ordinance of 1917 in a series of Nigerian cities such as Zaria, Kano and Forcados,36 ‘non-residential areas’ had already been established in the French and Belgian territories in Africa too. In most cases  – from Niamey to Abidjan, Conakry, Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Pointe-Noire, Brazzaville and Tananarive37  – the pretext for such semi-official policy was a hygiene obsession. Yet scholars have already pointed to the psychological and emotional role of this separation – even dressing for dinner in the middle of backwater India, for instance, was claimed to provide some degree of security essential for British agents to consolidate their identity and thus rule effectively.38 In the main urban centres of the neighbouring Belgian Congo, the cordon sanitaire in the capital Léopoldville (modern Kinshasa), was based on a golf course, a botanical garden and a zoo. Crossing that belt was prevented by the police, and it was only in 1956 that the colonial authorities, harsher than those of the British and French, allowed the Congolese elite to live in the European quarter.39 What was common to all these situations and terms was that the African population, including its forms of residence, was not a substantial part of the colonial urban landscape. It promoted the narrative of the coloniser and its values as ultimate and absolute. In addition, the fact that the majority of the streets of Dakar’s Médina were actually numbered and not named corresponded with the grid plan of this quarter as a means of government security and control.40

Street and place names: indigenous perspectives and the Dakarois context While names of European personages who were active in the AOF and contributed to the success of the empire constituted the chief category of street names in early colonial Dakar, in pre-colonial West Africa this category rarely ever existed. Though Wolof and Lebu settlements had certain guidelines for formal organisation (see Chapter 2), place names were developed informally. The first major work, however  – a thorough investigation into the meaning and structure of toponyms of the territories of former French West Africa  – was that of Louis-Fernand Flutre. A professor at the Faculté des Lettres of the University of Dakar in the 1950s, he suggested a quadripartite division of these regional, pre-colonial names: a total of 1,650 toponyms.41 The origins and meanings of the names, which did not refer to particular [ 92 ]

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‘streets’ in settlements, but rather generally to the settlements themselves, to quarters within them or to particular geographic areas, are divided into four language groups: Negro (West African local languages such as Bambara, Diola, Soninke etc.); Berber and Moor (nomads, especially Touareg and Moor, who live across the Sahara and mainly speak Tamachek); Arab (North African Arabic); and European (Portuguese, Dutch and early French). Most of the place names in the first three groups are ‘natural’ names, related to local environmental features, geography, fauna and animals: Fadou, in today’s Mali for example, means ‘big tree hard to climb on’ in Diawara. The meanings of these local names were also occasionally connected with historic or legendary origins of the setting, with ethnic groups, and with religious or other practices. The category of ‘proper names’ is however strictly limited in the naming of settlements in the AOF area, in the vernacular languages – Berber and Moor – and in Arabic. It comprises, in Flutre’s research, only a few cases in each of these groups, usually referring to the founding father of the settlement. Early European names, by contrast, contain references to ‘natural’ entities as well, and include a high percentage of ‘proper names’. The latter express gestures of honour to metropolitan saints, such as Cape Saint-Bernard, and kings, such as Saint-Louis after King Louis IX of France – both in Senegal. A considerable number of place names refer to local generals, admirals and captains, and later also to officers and administrators. Concerning colonial Dakar, silent are most of the sources on questions such as whether the new street names were accepted by the Dakarois at the preliminary stage of the colonisation, to what extent the latter’s knowledge of the French language enabled them to use these names, whether they understood the notions ‘boulevard’ and ‘avenue’, and whether they used the house numbers as well. Ethnography can perhaps be a better source for answers to these questions than written materials; yet such research seems particularly problematic concerning the early colonial period on the Cap-Vert peninsula. Then, the encounter between the coloniser and the colonised was shaped, inter alia, by Pinet-Laprade’s 1862 master plan for Dakar and its accompanying gradual displacement of the local Lebu population towards the edges of Dakar-ville. Such questions will probably remain open as regards much of this period. Commentaries regarding the formal organisation of colonial Dakar in the early twentieth century imply that the local residents had their own systems of reference to specific locations within the town. These references were directly related to the eleven Lebu settlements (or villages) of which pre-colonial Ndakaru was composed. Figure 2.2 shows the locations and names of these villages in 1853, according to a map [ 93 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 3.4  Lebu huts in Dakar in the 1910s. Fortier’s postcard.

made by Louis Faidherbe. The early Lebu toponyms perhaps replaced the French street naming system, or, more probably, were used side by side with the latter. These toponyms were not only related to these eleven villages, but more particularly to smaller units within them, including names of lineages and families. For instance, the area of the General Hospital of today on the Plateau, which was inhabited by the Lebu people of the settlement of Gouye, was named ‘Gouye’ by the Dakarois. For a more specific geographic reference, one or another of the smaller villages of which Gouye was composed could be referred to, such as Kay Biram Koddou. This could be further elaborated by referring to a certain lineage within it, such as Bègn, or a certain family, such as Mbeng.42 Aerial photos of Dakar-ville from the early twentieth century indicate that many sub-units of these villages, in the form of several compounds that were grouped together, were actually restrained by, or moulded into, Pinet-Laprade’s plan. Indeed the pre-colonial formal organisation and building materials of these were generally preserved: an arrangement by compounds comprising thatched huts and a central space. Yet, as is also clear from further contemporary visual evidence, this organisation was now traversed by the gridiron western system of broad and straight streets. Figure  3.4 exemplifies the way the Lebu compounds situated in Dakar-ville or at its margins were [ 94 ]

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arranged in conformity with the overall orthogonal plan. It was taken in the 1910s by Edmond Fortier, a French photographer who lived in Dakar-ville at the time. Fortier, whose images are celebrated today in commercial and academic circles, made his living from selling picture postcards, depicting both local and colonial cultures in a picturesque, orientalist manner.43 One of the problems of this indigenous reference system of urban localities, however, is that most of the Lebu settlements were pushed towards the extending margins of the European residential areas of colonial Dakar. This process, which was initiated as early as 1862 with Dakar’s first master plan, was gradual yet constant. Moreover, some of the villages, such as Kaye, experienced displacement (or, using the French colonial terminology, déguerpissement) several times.44 Indeed, the names of several pre-colonial Lebu settlements were preserved in the modern French street names, such as rue de Thann, yet these were very few. In addition, in the early days of the establishment of colonial Dakar, its Lebu residents would occasionally refer to the first streets that were introduced by the French informally, by a landmark, as these streets constituted a considerable innovation in the local landscape.45 It is most probable that upon the alignment of neighbouring streets and avenues, such references became irrelevant and gradually disappeared. It is interesting to note in which situations the colonial authorities in Dakar were forced to accept compromises, in terms of terminology, and to embrace the local system of reference for particular geographic areas within what was considered by them as ‘our streets and our boulevards’.46 Needless to say, the latter quotation refers to Dakar-ville and the Plateau, quarters that were intended for the habitation of the expatriate population, and were perceived as ‘modern’ and ‘European’. An official survey from 1920 on the subject of public hygiene in these very quarters of contemporary Dakar reveals many of the local conceptions concerning names of sites there. It comprises a list prepared for the benefit of relevant European staff, such as doctors and sanitarians, who came in direct contact with the African residents of Dakar-ville and the Plateau:  that is, a list of every area within these quarters in which the indigenous population was living, according to the local name of the area (a name of a village and/or a lineage), its borders (as defined by the French naming system) and its ethnic affiliation. One example, out of the thirteen such areas that were identified by the survey, is:  ‘Dieko/Comprised within Rue de Thiès, Rue Sandiniéry, Rue Blanchot, Avenue Gambetta/Occupied by Lebus’.47 Strikingly, the names of about half of these areas (i.e. six) could be clearly identified by the village names that were indicated in Faidherbe’s map of Cap Vert almost seventy years before. [ 95 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Though this list is an official source, it offers an outstanding testimony on the Dakarois urban toponymy in colonial times, which was not based on street names in the western sense. Indeed, the indicated areas were occupied almost exclusively by several thousand Lebu, the native population of Cap Vert peninsula, to whom were added several other non-native ethnic groups that rented parcels from them. This fact is not incidental. This 1920 report was prepared only a few years after the creation of the Médina, bearing in mind the bubonic plague that was, at least formally, the reason for the establishment of this poorly equipped quarter in 1914. By then, the colonial authorities had managed to transfer to the Médina only a relatively small proportion of the African residents of Dakar-ville, while most of them continued to leave in the city centre. Today, the main arteries of the relatively new districts outside the heart of Dakar pay homage to the great men of Senegal, such as avenue Cheikh Anta Diop; to Lebanese personalities, such as rue Ramez Bourgi and rue El Hadj Abdoukarim Bourgi; to Tunisians, such as avenue Bourguiba; to Guyanais, such as avenue Félix Eboué; and to key figures of decolonisation, such as boulevard du général de Gaulle. This tendency implies that the most popular category of colonial street names, that is, of individuals who played major roles in the local and regional history, is in fact still relevant after the independence, and that only the context of the names has been changed to fit the post-colonial atmosphere. This is also true with regard to several of the main arteries of the oldest districts of the city, Dakar-ville and the Plateau. There, only minor modifications were introduced after the 1960s, such as the replacement of avenue Roume with modern avenue Léopold Senghor, or of boulevard Pinet-Laprade with modern boulevard El-Hadji Djily M’baye. Yet most of the streets at the city centre still bear their strictly colonial affiliation dating back to the early twentieth century, such as avenue Faidherbe, rue Jules Ferry, rue Kléber and avenue Pasteur. This post-colonial semantic landscape, particularly in Dakar-ville and the Plateau, evokes some questions that are not easily answered. Do the French street names persist owing to neglect and indifference on the part of the Senegalese Government and people? The streets of the Médina for instance, which are indeed marked by official, white-on-blue signposts (apart from some that are handwritten), still bear numbers, as in colonial times, rather than names (Figure  3.5). Or, alternatively, does the persistence of the French naming system reflect the relatively peaceful decolonisation process that characterised most of the countries of francophone West Africa? Ironically, avenue Ponty, named after a governor general of the AOF, was renamed avenue Pompidou after independence. It is also noteworthy that some [ 96 ]

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Figure 3.5  House in Dakar’s Médina on the crossroads of streets 5 and 8. The address is handwritten on the wall by the occupant to promote his business.

Dakarois today continue to use colonial names for those very streets whose names were changed in post-colonial times. In popular usage, it is still quite common to hear avenue ‘Roume’ instead of ‘Senghor’, or avenue ‘Ponty’ instead of ‘Pompidou’.48

Between racial spatiality and sanitary policy in early colonial Dakar Indeed, the passage from the colonial toponymic rationale towards the exploration of the spatial aspects of the French sanitary policies in Dakar is only complementary. Spatial analysis of the French politics of residential segregation following the outbreak of bubonic plague in Dakar in 1914 (and previous cases both there and in Saint-Louis) can be illuminating. This is because the existing literature on the topic deals less with the cultural history of urban planning and architecture, and more with the statutory policies of the colonial authorities facing the 1914 plague (Seck, Bruno Salleras), the plague’s socio-political implications (Raymond Betts, Elikia M’Bokolo), and the colonial politics of public health there (Myron Echenberg).49 [ 97 ]

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French colonial Dakar

A wider historiographic view reveals that critical work on the history of colonial sanitary and public health policies in sub-Saharan Africa is a bourgeoning field, though the urban space per se is not normally its main focus.50 The history of colonial urban space in sub-Saharan Africa has also become a growing field, though it can be argued that traditionally, it gained much more attention in the francophone, rather than the anglophone, literature (see Chapter 1). Segregationist policies as a key feature in colonial urbanism have also attracted much critical research attention, especially in the post-colonial period. There is no doubt that one of the first book-length studies dealing thoroughly with the political, economic, cultural and visual implications of these phenomena is that of Anthony King on British India.51 Philip Curtin’s survey article concerning sub-Saharan Africa is equivalent in its pioneering approach to King’s work.52 However, while both of these studies can be considered the first swallows of summer, this academic ‘summer’ tends to focus on former colonies, which enjoyed a relatively higher order of colonial preferences. Apart from British India, these included Australian cities, British Singapore and French Indo-China  – to give but a few examples.53 Similarly, colonial urban space, public health and residential segregation in French North Africa and South Africa have received much more scholarly attention than their counterparts in sub-Saharan, tropical Africa.54 Like the entire colonial urban space in Africa, as designed by France, Britain, Belgium and other colonial powers, in imperial Dakar segregationist policies – or residential sectorialisation between the involved groups – played a key role. Whether formally or informally enforced, segregationist moves were tightly related to contemporary racial prejudices and assumptions concerning sanitation in tropical countries, especially in Africa. Against this background, Maynard Swanson’s paper from the 1970s, dealing with the Cape Colony of South Africa, was one of the pioneers. Coining the notion ‘sanitation syndrome’ in the academic literature, Swanson argued that already by the early twentieth century, well before the initiation of the formal ‘apartheid’ policy by an Afrikaner party in 1948, the African population of Cape Town was pushed out beyond its urban boundaries.55 These spatial moves were related to the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900, originating in southern China and spreading over the maritime routes. Though the contamination rate among the Africans was not higher than among the ‘coloured’ or white populations, the plague was identified with the black population and the black population with the plague, embodying both biological fact and social metaphor. Considering the socio-economic tensions between the main urban sectors and the conception of the black population as a barbaric collective that threatened the order and [ 98 ]

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health conditions in the ‘European’ city, there is little wonder that the plague was used so dramatically by those who favoured segregationist measures as a social solution. Cape Town serves as a paradigm for contemporary Dakar, and for other colonial cities in Africa under French or other European regimes. In spite of the fact that for various reasons the expatriate minority in the colonial period preferred to reside in a separate quarter wherever possible, segregationist moves varied in character amongst the colonial powers as to stated motives, statutory means and the general political framework. It has been noted, for instance, that in West Africa the British authorities preferred a more institutionalised legislative framework for residential segregation between the coloniser and the colonised communities, especially under Lord Lugard.56 Their French counterparts preferred the opposite, as will be shown below, drawing on a variety of other explanations. In addition, South Africa – as well as other colonies that were intended for white settlement such as Algeria or Southern Rhodesia – should be distinguished at this point from West Africa. Never designated for a permanent white settlement, both British and French colonial projects in West Africa were underfunded and understaffed. Consequently, the relatively minor friction between the white and the black communities there – a region that did not experience white nationalism or industrialisation, or have a ‘poor white’ class – did not necessitate an enforcement of systematic or rigid residential segregation, backed by sanitary laws.57 Nevertheless, the establishment of the ‘Médina’ by the French colonial authorities – the new quarter in Dakar designated for the African population – was one of the most rigorous acts in the history of this city. This sudden move was not carefully planned, but rigidly enforced following an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1914. Indeed, only a few similar dramatic moves are known in the urban history of tropical Africa, such as the case of Douala under German rule. There, 20,000 coastal Dualas were transferred to a newly established native town in 1910, a kilometre from the coast. This move was forcefully applied without any plague emergency, discouraging local opposition by executing the leader, Manga Bell, in 1914.58 But in Dakar, what started as a medical or pseudo-medical issue gradually became a considerable urban and social problem, though this segregationist move was never fully completed. As a consequence, spontaneous and organised responses on the ‘African side’ were felt, not only on the conceptual level, but also in terms of spatial perceptions and their influence on the usage of the urban area. For this reason, the colonial urban sphere should not be perceived as terrain for exercising unidirectional power by those with formal political control over those colonised, but rather [ 99 ]

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French colonial Dakar

as a constantly challenged and contested sphere.59 In order to penetrate beyond the typical representation of the interests of the colonial authorities in archival documentation and to represent some of the spatial conceptions of contemporary inhabitants of Dakar, reading between the lines and even against the text was also necessary, backed by some field work. Colonial urban planning included a large array of related policy tools upon which sanitation laws relied – such as zoning, taxation and state revenues, urban land claims, and political security. The reciprocal relationships between the sanitary debate in early-twentieth-century Senegal and the attempts to establish residential segregation on a racial basis in French Dakar will be discussed below. These visual and conceptual aspects of the colonial urban space are also illuminated against the background of their nineteenth-century precedents in Dakar and Saint-Louis. If the consequences of the establishment of Dakar’s Médina were somewhat surprising, the initiative and atmosphere beyond it were not unprecedented in Dakar. As already implied, the Senegalese region, and later the colony of Senegal, were conceived by the contemporary French expatriates as ‘terre des fièvres et de la barbarie’ (land of infectious diseases and barbarity),60 in accordance with the general European conception of West Africa as ‘the white man’s grave’. In 1900, for instance, it was acknowledged that the miserable sanitary conditions of Dakar would ‘never allow the creation of a major settlement for Europeans’.61 On the other hand, since ‘Dakar’s reputation for insalubrity [was] the most established among all French colonial cities’,62 the French authorities regarded the sanitation of this town – the façade of their colonial empire on the Atlantic  – as a challenge. It was not only a matter of prestige, since every epidemic created in its turn a chaotic situation that endangered the entire colonial project there.63 Rather than regulating the whole of Dakar’s urban space, contemporary sanitary legislation and projects actually segregated the two main communities. This was achieved by eliminating as many of the African straw huts as possible in Dakar-ville  – the ‘European’ centre of the city, and its older section.64 In fact, measures for the elimination of the indigenous dwellings in Senegal’s urban centres were already about 100years old. As early as 1803 Saint-Louis’s governor, François Blanchot, promoted the use of brick for building rather than straw, and taxed straw huts. A  house made of bricks or stone consequently signified wealth, strength and attachment to the influential European sector. The straw hut, by contrast, signified slavery and ‘barbarism’.65 Prosperous families of merchants among the métis that adopted or imitated western cultural values refused to live in [ 100 ]

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‘chaumières’ (thatch-roofed huts) like the ‘nègres’  – however black they themselves were. Later, straw huts were also condemned in Saint-Louis’s municipal laws, aiming to drive ex-slaves and small traders, who could not afford the use of brick, out of the crowded island, and to provide better protection against frequent outbreaks of fire.66 Yet it is not clear how enforceable such laws were prior to formal colonisation, when the merchants’ insistence on laissez-faire was strong enough to be enforced on the governor. Indeed, the governor himself quite often collaborated with the interests of the local dominant métis families, who used to select the town’s mayor from among themselves. Even after the mid-nineteenth century, when measures were taken by the colonial authorities to get rid of the huts, using troops to do so,67 the straw-hut-landscape never entirely disappeared from Saint-Louis and Dakar. In fact, it became the ultimate image of Senegalese colonial towns.68 Contemporary maps of Saint-Louis clearly distinguish among durable premises made of bricks, and two kinds of temporary ones: regulated straw huts on certain legally acquired plots, and haphazardly set-up straw huts, which were not recommended by the colonial administration. This distinction is exemplified, inter alia, in the legend of a map dating from 1884 (Figure 3.6), in which a third category, the straw barracks of the Senegalese troops, is also indicated.69 The colonial name of the northern extension of Saint-Louis, which, contrary to the settlement-proper, was mainly occupied by these huts, testified to the negative image of the straw huts. It was named ‘Langue de Barbarie’ (Tongue of Barbary). While ‘Langue’ referred to the sand spit, the word ‘Barbarie’ had an ambivalent meaning. On the one hand, this extension was physically connected to the northern territories of the Moors (Maures), Berberdom – the land of the Berbers of North Africa. On the other hand, barbarie in French (contrary to berbère) means ‘roughness’or ‘primitiveness’ (barbarism).70 The first expulsions  – these affected the Lebu (Lébou) population, the original inhabitants of Cap-Vert peninsula  – had indeed started with the formal occupation of Dakar, towards the end of the 1850s. The Lebu villages of Kaye and Thann were displaced to about a kilometre inland for the sake of laying the first streets, and the residents were compensated.71 With the realisation of the 1862 master plan for the city, their counterparts of Ngaraf, Thiérigne and Hock were also pushed in the same direction. Further displacements took place after the yellow fever epidemic of 1900. By 1905 the majority of Lebu villages had moved west of Dakar-ville, only to be pushed farther inland over the next three years (Figure 3.7).72 Many of these operations were directed by Senegal’s lieutenant governor. In 1905, for example, he [ 101 ]

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Figure 3.6  Extracts based on plan of Saint-Louis, 1884, showing the separation in the status of the built areas for the purpose of taxation and expropriation.

required building permission for any new structure in Dakar, which was only given where permanent building materials – en dur – were used. Perishable materials, or anything that was not considered en dur, included mud (known as pisé or banco in the context of the traditional building of the region), cloth, straw, tarred carton and lattice-work. These were considered illegal in Dakar-ville from 1905 on. Outside its unofficial borders, however, in what gradually became villages (or quartiers) indigènes, regulations were less strict, and non-permanent building materials were allowed.73 Thus, quite a clear differentiation between the two communities had become marked in Dakar by the 1910s. Yet contemporary French colonial thinking, formally at least, always avoided lingering over racial discourse. Though the latter aspect was assigned by them to the British colonial polity, careful town planning legislation, ostensibly taking into account social differences and sanitary problems, assisted in creating a de facto system of racial segregation on the French side. Though these pre-1914 displacements in Dakar were characterised as being small-scale and unsystematic, the idea of residential segregation there was always present. [ 102 ]

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Figure 3.7  The displacement of the Lebu quarters from Dakar’s city centre by the early twentieth century.

One of the reasons that prevented the French colonial authorities from enforcing a wholesale residential segregation in Dakar on a legislative basis was indeed the political status of the city. This status – i.e. being one of the Four Communes  – particular to the French regime in West Africa, would make official racial segregation an inconceivable issue. Moreover, in line with the concept of assimilation, Algeria was considered nothing less than an extension of France from 1871, following the completion of the French conquest; and Dakar too was proclaimed by the Colonial Congress of 1889 as a distant suburb of Paris.74 The fact that Dakar became the headquarters and the capital of [ 103 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 3.8  The inauguration of the wide, tree-lined avenue Gambetta in Dakar, 1912, as part of the assainissement projects.

the AOF Federation in 1902 complicated any realisation of residential segregation on a formal basis, which now became an uncomfortable, if not illegal, idea. The British colonial regime in West Africa by contrast never professed to extend London to Lagos, or to carry out such ambitious plans of social engineering. But neither is there any reason to believe that Dakar really became a twin of Paris, nor even its twin-tobe. In reality, for instance, on the eve of the First World War there were still only about 100 European doctors for a French-ruled African population of around 10 million.75 Colonial sanitary reforms (assainissement) were directly related to other projects of urban development, such as the establishment of Dakar’s main streets – usually tree-lined and twenty metres wide (Figure 3.8).76 But the contemporary experience with Dakar’s Médina shows that improving urban sanitation was not realised by the introduction of mass medicine, but by introducing residential segregation. At the same time, the French authorities never felt committed, either economically or emotionally, to the segregationist project there, which also languished because of local and international politics. [ 104 ]

Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

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The 1914 plague and the establishment of Dakar’s ‘Médina’ Between 1894 and 1914, a wave of bubonic plague epidemics spread across the world, by way of sea routes that had been created by the European forces. From Australia to South Africa, it finally reached northern Africa, after hitting Grand-Bassam (Ivory Coast), Accra and Dakar. The number of dead in Dakar during the plague, which began in April 1914 and ended in January 1915, was 3,653, out of a total population of 26,000.77 In the first weeks following the outbreak, the idea of complete separation between what was gradually to become the quartier indigène and Dakar-ville was still not apparent. Yet harsh measures were taken. These included the burning of huts, along with the formation of quarantine camps and vaccination of the population. The population of Dakar tended not to cooperate, and these measures were administered by force with the help of the police.78 In addition, two cordons sanitaires, each 900 metres wide, were established in Dakar at this stage, placing large parts of the country and the city in quarantine and restricting free movement of Africans. The first cordon sanitaire was temporary. It stretched between the village of Hann, at the northern edge of Dakar, to further north, closing over the neck of the Cap Vert peninsula in order to prevent the disease from spreading to the rest of the colony. No building or free movement was permitted on it, apart from the colonial Senegalese forces (tirailleurs), who went on horseback.79 The second cordon sanitaire was established inside the colonial city centre, along the wide avenues. It served as a barrier between Dakar-ville and the native quarters to its west. This cordon eventually also proved to be short lived and was almost immediately annulled. While Europeans were permitted to move freely everywhere, Africans, especially those employees who were considered ‘vital’ for Dakar’s ‘material life’, were obliged to carry a ‘pass’ (the pass, given to vaccinated Dakarois, tended to be shared by everyone who wished to travel out of the city).80 This interrupted the commercial life of the city and seemed unsuited to the prevention of the spread of the plague. Yet the relatively non-built-up space created by the second strip, as implied by later commentators and maps of Dakar, actually served as a barrier between Dakar-ville and the Médina-to-be well after the 1914 plague. Derwent Whittlesey, for example, a visitor in Dakar in 1941, mentioned a 900-metre belt devoid of buildings that still separated these two areas, and contained only a racecourse and a stadium.81 This area, a de facto ‘neutral zone’, is also clearly shown on maps of Dakar of the 1920s, with a Champ de courses between Dakar-ville and the Médina; [ 105 ]

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Figure 3.9  One of the first residences of the newly established Médina, 1915. Notice the opening words of the Quranic sura al-Fatihah on the gable.

by 1957, on the eve of independence, this area had been kept relatively vacant, confined to these sports facilities and several public institutions. In July 1914, only three months after the outbreak of the plague, several ordinances issued by the lieutenant governor of Senegal enforced severe rules regarding construction and the salubrity of houses. All thatched huts in the area stretching from the then avenue Gambetta eastwards to the sea had to be demolished, while permanent structures had to be fumigated.82 Plots were offered in a newly established ville indigène to those who could not afford or did not want to build en dur. There, in order to attract Africans, laws regarding land-use were lax in comparison with Dakar-ville, now designated for Europeans. Indeed, one of the considerations in the creation of the ville indigène was the cost of compensation for re-erecting the burnt-out huts in Dakar-ville.83 The colonial administration provided straw for the building of residences in the Médina, low-cost standard structures made of wooden beams and bricks, for those who wished and could afford to build permanently. In practice, most of the residential units in the Médina in the immediate period after its creation were made of wooden beams (Figure 3.9).84 Owing to the severity of the situation, these ordinances were quickly applied. By August the proposed new residential quarter had been [ 106 ]

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defined geographically – north-west of the older sections of Dakar. In the following months a few thousand Africans were transferred to the area, originally named ‘village de ségrégation’. Ironically, the then governor general thought that this name might mislead the indigenous population. It implied that those people transferred there after a few days of enforced isolation for medical reasons were still contaminated. Moreover, it created the wrong impression that the transfer to the ‘segregation village’ was temporary, or that the building regulations there would be too rigid.85 This ‘village’  – the name also clarifies that at this early stage the quarter was not perceived as a real part of the ‘city’  – was named Médina (or la Médine). The meaning of the word médina in Arabic is ‘town’ or ‘dwelling place’, but in the colonial context it was used to designate the living quarters of the ‘natives’, whether the old Muslims of North Africa or those of the newly created Dakar counterpart.86 The long-standing presence of Islam in the AOF colonies, since the eleventh century, and the fact that the great majority of the AOF population was Muslim, may explain the ‘borrowing’ of this notion. The local name for this quarter in Dakar, however, was Tilène, which means in Wolof ‘a region visited by jackals’.87 The sandy, infertile and relatively low terrain of the Médina tended to flooding a great deal in the rainy season; both brackish water and high population density there were sources of illness in themselves. Minimal infrastructure was only laid at the end of the 1920s, and was further developed, at intervals, until the 1950s. It included most basic projects, such as open sewers, water pumps, some lighting and asphalt roads, as well as modest public constructions, such as a market, a mosque and a caravanserai.88 The grid plan of the Médina, the first example of systematic indigenous settlement in Senegal, was also a means of government security. It facilitated recapturing deserters from forced labour and military service. And, as often recalled by a director of public works in the AOF, a single armoured car placed at an intersection could control the entire length of two streets (Figures 3.10 and 3.11).89 However, the poor conditions of the Médina were not the cause of the fact that by that time only 8,000 Dakarois were living in the Médina, while 20,000 were still living in Dakar-ville, most of them in sub-standard houses.90 The fact that a considerable portion of Dakarois were actually left in Dakar-ville is clearly noticeable in aerial photos of Dakar-ville taken after the Médina’s establishment.91 These indicate that many sub-units and Lebu compounds were moulded into the gridiron plan of Dakar’s city centre. Each compound was composed of several groups of round (and later rectangular) huts. This organisation, which originated in pre-colonial forms, was now traversed by the western gridiron [ 107 ]

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Figure 3.10  Part of a map showing the Médina’s orthogonal plan, 1916.

system of broad, straight streets. Figure 3.4 for instance, shows that the Lebu compounds that were situated in Dakar-ville or at its margins were arranged in conformity with a street line framed by the overall orthogonal plan. Moreover, an official survey on the subject of public hygiene from 1920, about five years after the Médina’s establishment, clearly shows the Lebu enclaves that were still left in Dakar-ville. It identifies thirteen such areas in the city centre, listed by exact location and name.92 Indeed, the majority of the Bambara and Toucoleur residents of Dakar were transferred to the Médina in the summer of 1914, but this was not the case with the Lebu. The latter, being the original population of Cap Vert, had already been the main sufferers from colonial land policy, subsequent to the realisation of the 1862 colonial plan [ 108 ]

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Figure 3.11  Intersection of streets in the Médina.

for Dakar. Further expropriations took place when Lebu landowners of confiscated terrains in the Médina-to-be area had been obliged by the colonial court to accept compensation that was considerably lower than that initially offered. They regarded the small amounts of money as a bribe, yet their appeals were dismissed for being submitted ‘too late’.93 Emotions ran high because of several other related confrontations,94 culminating in a Lebu refusal to sell food in the markets of Dakar to the whites and their servants. This Lebu market-based boycott, as noted by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, was one of the first boycotts in the pre-First World War political history of West Africa, somewhere between a strike and a revolt.95 The sanitary issue became immediately confused with the political one, as Blaise Diagne had been elected as the first black African deputy to the French Parliament one day after the official announcement of Dakar as plague-affected. Diagne’s position was equivalent to William Ponty’s, the governor general of the AOF. Yet both, acting in a broader political sphere, had to mediate between the two opposing groups: hundreds of angry Lebu on the verge of violent struggle, and the local French and métis community, represented by the municipality, who fostered residential segregation.96 The reason Diagne, however, did not support the French sanitary policies was French patriotism. On [ 109 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 3.12  One of Lebu’s original households, still existing today, on Dakar’s Plateau.

the eve of the First World War, his support for the campaign to recruit more tirailleurs for the French army was vital. In return, his demand for improvement of the conditions of African soldiers, both in the AOF and abroad, had to be met.97 Ponty, for his part, was cautioned by the minister of the colonies in Paris that any bloody incident with the Lebu would most probably be manipulated by the Germans and Turks in order to agitate the Muslims in the colonies against France. Ponty therefore stopped hut demolitions, and the transfer to the Médina was delayed.98 Some twenty years later, the Public Works Department of the AOF reflected with much dissatisfaction upon the unaccomplished segregation project in Dakar. According to the department, as aforementioned, more than 20,000 natives, mostly Lebu, were still living in Dakar-ville on land they refused to sell, and their ‘dilapidated’ straw huts were rented at rather high rates to thousands of African immigrants (Figure 3.12).99 [ 110 ]

Street naming, infectious diseases and planning

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The inter-colonial conference on yellow fever, Dakar, 1928 Moving from the particular situation in Dakar in 1914 regarding the plague and segregationist planning, we shall proceed now to Dakar in 1928  – once again a fertile land for transnational aspects of disease administration and segregationist aspects. In tracing the very process of circulation of ideas and the dissemination of knowledge and expertise under the colonial situation in West Africa, a prominent point should be highlighted: the involved colonial powers’ advocacy of the necessity of residential segregation and sanitary belts between the coloniser and the colonised populations in such a relatively late period in terms of contemporary scientific advancement in tropical medicine. This advancement seems to contradict any segregationist ideas. The inter-colonial conference on yellow fever was held in Dakar in April 1928. A representative group of professionals, mostly health and medical high officials from French West Africa and the French mandated territory of Togoland, participated, as well as those from the four British colonies of the region:  The Gambia, the Gold Coast, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. In addition, the director of the West African Yellow Fever Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation attended the conference. In what follows, several effectively contradictory issues that existed simultaneously in relation to this conference will be elaborated on, such as international cooperation between the imperial powers versus competition and suspicion, and ‘pure’ medical concepts versus the adaptation of science to the colonial situation. We shall thus develop a more comprehensive understanding regarding the idea of transnationality and the contemporary meaning and implications of transnational networks of scientific expertise, especially against the background of another issue – that of residential segregation on a racial basis within the colonial urban spheres. A wider historiographic view reveals that critical works on the history of residential segregation, colonial sanitary and public health policies in sub-Saharan Africa (and beyond) form a rapidly growing field. While it may seem inappropriate to refer to these works en bloc, by offering more case studies than comparative research, these insightful works show how disease and its management were deeply embedded in the socio-cultural, political and economic colonial background, and how this essentially subjective issue influenced colonial spatialities.100 Here, however, we would like to use the case-study of the inter-colonial yellow fever conference in Dakar in 1928 to illuminate how such transnational networks for administering disease and urban planning in sub-Saharan Africa operated, and were articulated and manipulated. [ 111 ]

French colonial Dakar

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The Dakar conference: international aspects More than any preceding period, according to Saskia Sassen, the period from the late nineteenth century until the Second World War is characterised by two global tendencies, oscillating between rivalry and cooperation. The first is the creation of a global scale that was largely constituted through the projection of national capitalisms onto foreign geographic areas. With each major power aiming at exclusive control over its colonial territories, inter-capitalist national rivalries strengthened, to the point of war, which in turn stimulated further rivalries and nationalism. The second feature was that national states began to develop various forms of international coordination  – especially, but not exclusively, economic  – producing many rapid inter-state agreements and launching various international codes. The emergence of internationally coordinated corporate capitalisms was therefore nationally based.101 Aside from the proliferation of international fairs and exhibitions, which were also about nation building, expansionism brought with it a recognition of the responsibility of the State in sanitary, urban planning and public works projects, inter alia. While Sassen’s analysis highlights the economic aspects of these interrelated developments in the creation of the world scale, a series of urban historians have comprehensively treated the renewed role of the State through urban planning legislation and innovation in the light of contemporary national and international cooperation-cum-competition, especially in and amongst the European métropoles.102 A recurring issue is that of the nationalistic expressions that accompanied the urban reformist policies at that time, applied whether circulated formally or informally. Paul Rabinow, to borrow an almost random example, indicated that it was a familiar refrain amongst planning bodies in France in the early twentieth century to say that France was falling dangerously and sadly behind other European nations in all planning areas, in spite of the fact that reformist planning ideas had obviously originated there.103 Similar nationalistic fears concerning Europe’s main urban centres radiated, not unnaturally, to their respective overseas territories. Reflecting on the history of colonial planning in British Lagos, the 1946 Town Planning Commission that was sent to Nigeria reported that, aside from the sanitary disgrace, ‘The observer, in walking round and wading through the streets and byeways [sic] of Lagos, may well have in mind the French town of Dakar or the Belgian capital of Leopoldville. He is likely to draw an unflattering conclusion which, though probably wrong, is a weapon in the hands of our detractors.’104 In the early twentieth century, following the initiation of DSL railway, the improvements to Dakar’s port and its new building [ 112 ]

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impetus, Dakar was perceived as a ville impériale in the French colonial imagination, and it was sometimes even called ‘l’Inde noire’  – recalling the grandiose plan of British New Delhi. At the same time, the opinion was widely shared among those concerned with colonial affairs, especially in Britain since at least 1910, that the lack of coordination among the empire’s constituent parts was appalling. Ignorance regarding both the practices of other neighbouring colonial powers and the ‘burning problems’ in Africa at the time was also acknowledged in the 1920s.105 Because individual territories in sub-Saharan Africa had so little funding at their disposal, state leaders encouraged inter-departmental collaboration in research. Moreover, during the interwar period the British Government and the League of Nations increasingly supported scientific coordinating conferences  – international and pan-African – in specific territories and metropolitan centres. These events enabled the technical staff to share information and consider common problems and strategies to inform policy and practices. Making the British-led, monumental 1929 project of the African Research Survey as the focus of her study, Helen Tilley elaborates on the contemporary transnational networks and inter-imperial circulation of intellectual, scientific exchanges.106 Yet it is very difficult to gain from this study an understanding of international conferences that were held at that time in non-English speaking territories in Africa and beyond, of the papers given by non-British delegates who attended such conferences, or of their influence in non-British colonies. Answers to such questions might be provided through our examination of the rationale and implications of events such as the inter-colonial conference on yellow fever that was held in Dakar in 1928. This conference also provides an opportunity to understand how the global tendencies of the period, as mentioned above by Sassen as oscillating between rivalry and cooperation, were mirrored in this event, together with its actual influence in the field of colonial urban planning. The Yellow Fever Conference was held in Dakar, between the 23 April and 1 May 1928. Its objectives were to enable the colonial governments to cooperate in studying the problems associated with the prevalence of yellow fever throughout West Africa, and to explore possible channels for stamping out the fatal disease, particularly for European expatriates.107 Several organisational issues concerning the Dakar conference raise fundamental questions as to the nature of the contemporary international collaboration:  for instance, why delegates from non-British/French colonies in West Africa did not attend the conference  – an issue that would be regretted a few years later.108 In addition, it was Percy Selwyn-Clarke who used the opportunity furnished [ 113 ]

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French colonial Dakar

in Dakar in 1928 to protest against the deliberate non-coordination on the part of the West African colonial governments regarding diagnosed cases of yellow fever within their territories. In many cases – involving French Dakar and Belgian Matadi and Boma  – the various colonial authorities of West Africa reported the cases with a considerable delay. In other cases, the disease was reported only after an area was finally proclaimed as free from infection.109 The main reason for this situation was usually economic, as ships coming from infected areas were subjected to several days’ quarantine observation, which might damage trade and might even cause other vessels to bypass infected ports. Consequently, Selwyn-Clarke recommended establishing a central bureau, staffed by French and British officers, for the collection and dissemination of epidemiological data in West Africa. Yet this inter-colonial endeavour was ruled out by the then governor of the Gold Coast and the colonial secretary in London, because of its expected cost.110 Indeed, the extremely limited allocation of funds was not only a characteristic of the British colonies in West Africa. The most striking features of the Pasteur Institute in Dakar were, according to Selwyn-Clarke during his 1928 visit, its small staff  – the director, who had to carry out all the routine work, being the sole qualified European  – and the small number of animals available for biological experiments.111 While this famous institute and its overseas network were closely related to French national pride and colonialist lobbies, most of the branches, especially in Africa, had no more than one or two workers with appropriate medical qualifications. The institute in Paris kept close scientific control over the new branches, yet was reluctant to legitimise them. For instance, the microbiological laboratory of Saint-Louis in Senegal was established about a decade after the metropolitan institute (in France), in 1896. It was transferred to Dakar in 1913, but was not officially recognised until 1924. In Dakar, it was housed for a long time in dilapidated buildings, and moved to better accommodation only in March 1937 (Figure 3.13).112 In fact, regardless of their nationality, colonial states in sub-Saharan Africa were generally run on meagre resources, underfunded and understaffed. They could not carry out their sanitary and other plans for urban public health and they were not intended to serve the indigenous populations; nor were the public health measures intended to eradicate malaria and yellow fever, the two diseases most threatening to Europeans. Indeed, there was one issue over which a mutual agreement was virtually complete amongst the West African colonial states. This was the urban segregation on a racial basis. This phenomenon was far from being new in colonial Africa, but the main surprise [ 114 ]

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Figure 3.13  The 1937 art deco monumental façade of Institut Pasteur, Dakar.

in the context of the Dakar conference was the relatively late date of the conference and thus the relatively late support for such a parochial urban feature.

The Dakar conference: segregationist aspects The Dakar conference report contains 183 paragraphs, providing an extraordinary summary of the conference’s contextual and organisational details. It was also dotted with several photographs and maps [ 115 ]

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French colonial Dakar

showing sanitary and public works in Dakar; its commercial port; and what had been called the ‘poor’, ‘primitive’ thatched huts of its indigenous population and their fumigation using the Clayton motor machine and cylinders of sulphur dioxide gas. Of the total 183 paragraphs, only two dealt explicitly with residential segregation. It was Dr Lasnet, the inspector general of the AOF’s medical service, who first mentioned segregation in paragraph 71. Indicating that mortality amongst the indigenous population was exceptionally high, and that the Syrio-Lebanese population presented a real danger of spreading yellow fever because of its indifference to hygiene and spatial mobility, he observed that racial residential segregation was practised wherever possible. The main reasoning was that the local forms of habitation were essentially unhygienic. ‘[B]‌ut in the Four Communes of Senegal, where the metropolitan legislation is in force and where the natives who own the land have indisputable rights, the problem is particularly complex.’113 Indeed, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, it was a complex and an uncongenial idea, if not illegal, in the light of the status of Dakar. The second mention of residential segregation, in paragraph 87, was made by Dr Viala, the director of the Medical and Sanitary Services of French Togoland. He emphasised seven cases of yellow fever amongst the expatriates who lived ‘in regrettable contact’ with the African inhabitants and that measures had had to be taken during the outbreak to evacuate all Europeans and Syrians living in the African area to a temporary camp about five miles from Lome.114 That teaches us that residential segregation on a racial basis was not enforced by legal means in the French West African colonies, and sometimes (e.g. in Dakar) was even enforced in spite of the existence of republican legislation. But segregation was a very common practice in spite of the fact that for almost three decades before the 1928 conference mosquitoes had been properly identified as the carriers of infectious diseases such as yellow fever and malaria. An example of segregationist measures in the British West African colonies was given in the Dakar conference by Dr Selwyn-Clarke, in an accurate report on yellow fever on the Gold Coast. In his long and technical report, the subject of residential segregation appeared at the very end, almost as a self-evident conclusion. According to Selwyn-Clarke, ‘the history of the Gold Coast has again and again proved the value of segregation of so-called non-immunes [i.e. Europeans] as one of the foremost and certain methods of yellow fever prevention’. He also asserted that ‘concerted action by all West African Administrations advising that every endeavour should be made to secure the provision of accommodation for non-Africans at least 400 metres from African [ 116 ]

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townships would go a long way to help to bring about this very elementary and necessary reform’.115 Selwyn-Clarke’s adherence to the Lugardian 400-metre cordon sanitaire rule, for more than a decade after its first design, is peculiar in many senses, especially because it was contested not only on a medical basis but also by African intellectuals and commoners. Determined to keep a physical gap, if not psychological as well, between Nigeria’s colonisers and the colonised in his Township Ordinance of 1917, Lugard defined a 440-yard non-residential area between European and native reservations.116 The breadth of 440 yards was fostered by Lugard since it was believed that Anopheles mosquitoes could not fly beyond that distance. In fact, they could be carried much farther by the wind. The turning point that Lugard’s Township Ordinance brought about, however, was the establishment in most Nigerian cities of separate European residential areas as a doctrine, system and new key element in inter-racial relationships.117 At this point we do not wish to duplicate previous research, referred to above, which recently elaborated on the convergence between sanitary issues and colonial urban planning in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. Its essence might be described in the words of Tony King, who would add quotation marks to ‘health’, since its interpretation always reflects a specific cultural and behavioural context. In the colonial context ‘health’ arguments often served as an excuse for achieving total ecological transformation by the incoming power.118 Reflecting on the aspect of transnationality regarding the issue of residential segregation and yellow fever as mirrored in Dakar’s inter-colonial conference, we would only like to stress that here the colonial powers seemed indeed to be in full concert and coordination without reservations. ‘In view of the foregoing’, it was summarised at the conference resolutions, ‘the Conference is of the opinion that provision should be made as soon as possible and in accordance with the laws of the colonies concerned for separate residential areas’.119 Yet while science is essentially ‘transnational’ and doomed to be disseminated through uncontrolled and unexpected channels  – the dubious solution of residential segregation as one of the ultimate counter-measures against the disease was anti-scientific, if not anti-transnational, by nature. The street naming system in French Dakar supported the alienation of the indigenous population from what was considered the colonial urban sphere. Street names in Dakar-ville and the Plateau, amongst other modes of planning, served the actual needs and the imagery of the European sector almost exclusively. Contrary to the Médina, which was not perceived as an integral part of colonial Dakar then, [ 117 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Dakar’s Plateau and Dakar-ville were planned as an elitist sphere, magnifying the linear and the partial narrative of the expatriate community. Simultaneously, the very creation of the Médina quarter in 1914 also contributed to the exclusion of the colonised populations from Dakar-ville and from what was considered the city per se. While, in assimilative spirit, Dakar was considered, since 1887, one of the Four Communes of Senegal, the establishment of official residential segregation there might have been inappropriate. The Médina thus was created according to a sanitary ordinance, which grew out of the 1914 bubonic plague epidemic. Yet this quarter was absent in contemporary maps, and its streets were numbered, rather than named. These practices drew their legitimacy from the privileged status of Dakar as the AOF’s capital city, and the French republican and centralist tradition. The African factor was applied only when it supported the Euro-centric desired image – in cases of submission or cooperation. West African points of view regarding naming of places were discussed in order to sharpen the distinction between western and regional urban practices in the early period of colonisation:  the indigenous, pre-colonial toponymy was not obsessed with names of individuals or personal fame and prestige. Later on, Dakarois perceptions concerning specific areas within the quarters of Dakar-ville and the Plateau were examined, against the background of the gradual displacements of the native population towards the north-west of Cap Vert by the colonial regime. The local population had its own system of reference to those sites within the old city centre, where most of the Lebu had actually managed to survive the French déguerpissement to the Médina in 1914. Indeed, colonial documentation proves the existence of such local toponymy – it was even embraced by the French authorities when some of its officials had to work with the Dakarois and gain their collaboration in matters of urban hygiene. Yet the politics and policies of assainissement in the colonial urban context were not merely a welfare project, motivated by purely public hygiene objectives. Facing health hazards that haunted the West African coast, early-twentieth-century French colonial urban policies were marked by internal conflicts, and oscillated between two main ends. The first was a preference for sanitary measures that were temporary, yet immediate and severe against specific indigenous groups, as recommended by the medical authorities. The second purpose was the use of plagues as a means of establishing a ‘final solution’ to the question of co-habitation, thereby fostering residential segregation. Through the examination of these opposing forces within the community of the colonisers, it was shown in this chapter that various indigenous forces also had a considerable role in the extent of the actual realisation of [ 118 ]

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colonial residential policies, through direct and indirect responses to sanitary reforms. Consequently, the wide gap between colonial desires and the African reality was stressed, as well as the gap between theory and eventual practice, the doctrinal and the practical, the intended and the achievable. The main cause of the partial victory of the local agencies concerning Dakar’s assainissement was the budgetary constraints of the colonial State. The consequent strength-cum-weakness of the latter led it first to try to establish a clear residential separation between the two main communities, and then to fail in practice. Senegal’s colonial urban sphere was not exceptional in using pseudo-medical explanations to create residential segregation. Segregationist policies accompanied by sanitary arguments were in fact an integral feature in both the determination and the planning of the colonial city in general, be it French, British, Belgian or other. Yet in the French colonies the racial reasoning was never overt and was usually masked by ‘cultural’ explanations. Neither was there any formal legislative basis directly related to racial differences. Yet segregation on medical or pseudo-sanitary grounds backed by building regulations could easily produce a ‘dual-city’ policy of racial segregation. With full support for residential segregation on a racial basis, the inter-colonial conference in Dakar in 1928 exposed in great detail how national interests existed side by side in dynamic tension with international cooperation. The international coordination-cum-reciprocal suspicion was also described against the metropolitan and colonial backgrounds in terms of urban planning and sanitary issues, and in accordance with Sassen’s characterisation of the contemporary global scales of economic geography  – the latter premise is also fundamental in literature dealing with transnational issues in science.120 At the same time, residential segregation as a preventive measure against yellow fever amongst the expatriate population was sweepingly agreed upon in the inter-colonial arena, even at the relatively late date of 1928. It shows that while knowledge normally ‘travels’ and tends to be disseminated transnationally, it was also well ‘situated’ within the colonial equation of asymmetrical relationships. The analysis of Dakar’s inter-colonial conference on yellow fever exemplifies the subversive relationship that existed between science and empire, especially in the era of late European colonialism. It also demonstrates that science, otherwise truly transnational by essence, was recruited for colonial state and empire building. Under the colonial machinery, its ‘transnationality’ – normally perceived as an uneven and non-linear ‘flow’ that transcends existing nationalisms, potentially challenging and non-governmental121  – was subjected to political and economic manipulation, surveillance, and controlled restructuring. [ 119 ]

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French colonial Dakar

What comparative and absolute conclusions can be drawn from addressing the politics of this noteworthy event in the history of public health and urban planning in Africa and the present-day situation? This is a leading question in terms of the main variables discussed: the management of yellow fever outbreaks in (West) Africa in colonial times, transnational networks of governance, and expertise and urban planning. During the colonial period, it was only from after the Second World War until decolonisation in the 1950s that the urban physical structure of racial segregation in West Africa began to fall into disuse. This coincided with the virtual disappearance of yellow fever in parts of Africa between 1939 and 1952, when a systematic mass vaccination programme was set up.122 In the last three decades, however, yellow fever has re-emerged in tropical African countries, constituting a major public health problem there. While its resurgence and the failure to control the disease have resulted from a combination of factors, prominent among them being an insufficient political commitment by African governments, some countries, such as Cameroon, show a relative success in combating the disease.123 Indeed, following the decolonisation era and after independence, under both the heading and impetus of ‘developmentalism’ and ‘cooperation’, many colonialist parochial terminologies and urban practices were replaced by global and more technical ones, as part of a general ideological change. Consequently, the previous atmosphere of a ‘colonial science’ – oriented exclusively towards colonial political and economic interests – gradually faded, together with a simultaneous provision of relatively more appropriate planning and basic infrastructure. The main concerns in the following chapter are stylistic developments in the public architecture of colonial French Dakar until the interwar period. Some of the main guiding ideas that were reflected in the current chapter will also be echoed in the next, as related to segregationist and transnational issues. The integration of architectural classicism in the colonial project created both an authoritative image (intended for the colonised) and a modern image (intended for the coloniser), as sought by the colonial authorities. At first the neo-classical style prevalent in public buildings aimed to serve colonial administrative and economic interests, thereby rendering those buildings ‘foreign’, and on the conceptual level segregating the autochthonous ‘Other’. By the interwar period, with the gradual change in the French ruling philosophy, another style was apparent, no less historicist. Based on regional formalistic styles, it therefore introduced a transnational dimension. This was through the dissemination of visual motifs across and within the French North African and sub-Saharan territories. These visual motifs were, as we shall see, always subjected to colonial interpretation and imagery. [ 120 ]

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Notes   1 Engaging a multidisciplinary approach, a few key studies are: James Duncan and John Agnew (eds), The Power of Place (Boston, MA:  Hyman, 1989); Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash (eds), Spaces of Culture:  City, Nation, World (London:  Sage, 1999); Thomas Mitchell (ed.), Landscape and Power (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1994); Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1983); Pierre Nora (ed.), Realms of Memory:  The Construction of the French Past, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, 3 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).   2 After the independence, colonial paradigms regarding the naming of streets have tended to persist, though their contents were occasionally modified so as to correspond with post-colonial views on matters of paying homage to individual personalities.   3 For recent literature on place names see, for instance: Naftali Kadmon, Toponymy: The Lore, Laws and Language of Geographical Names (New York: Vantage Press, 2000); John Murray, Politics and Place-Names: Changing Names in the Late Soviet Period (Birmingham:  Department of Russian, University of Birmingham, 2000); Paulina Raento and Cameron Watson, ‘Gernika, Guernica, Guernica? Contested meanings of a Basque place’, Political Geography, 19 (2000), 707–36; Reuben Rose-Redwood, Derek Alderman and Maoz Azaryahu, ‘Geographies of toponymic inscription: New directions in critical place-name studies’, Progress in Human Geography, 34:4 (2010), 453–70. For literature on street names see, for instance: Maoz Azaryahu, ‘The power of commemorative names’, Environment and Planning D, 14 (1996), 311–30; Duncan Light, Ion Nicolae and Bogdan Suditu, ‘Toponymy and the Communist city: Street names in Bucharest, 1948–65’, GeoJournal, 56 (2002), 135–44.   4 A few studies that were not incorporated into the text but should be mentioned in this context are: UNESCO, African Ethnonyms and Toponyms (Paris: UNESCO, 1984); Brenda Yeoh, ‘Street-naming and nation-building:  Toponymic inscriptions of nationhood in Singapore’, Area, 28:3 (1996), 298–307; Ambe Njoh, Planning in Contemporary Africa (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 235–60.   5 Ibrahima Thioub, ‘L’enferment carcéral:  Un instrument de gestions des marges urbaines au Sénégal XIXe–XXe siècles’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 37:2/3 (2003), 269–97 (270).   6 For these quotations see Archives nationales du Sénégal (hereafter ANS), P 190, Assai­ nis­se­ment et urbanisme de Dakar, village de Médina, création de village, 1915–19.   7 Claude Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île du Cap Vert et des origines de Dakar (Paris: Larose, 1914), pp. 148–54. Several parts in the following are based (with permission) on:  Liora Bigon, ‘Names, norms and forms:  French and indigenous toponyms in early colonial Dakar, Senegal’, Planning Perspectives, 23 (2008), 479–501; Liora Bigon, ‘A history of urban planning and infectious diseases: Colonial Senegal in the early twentieth century’, Urban Studies Research, 2012 (2012), 1–12.   8 Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île, p. 148.   9 For a short history of the National Archives of Senegal see Saliou Mbaye, Guide des archives de l’Afrique Occidentale française (Dakar:  Imprimerie Saint-Paul, 1990), pp. 11–15. 10 Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île, pp. 150–2. 11 Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île, p. 148. 12 Faure, Histoire de la presqu’île, pp. 149, 153. 13 Pierre Loti, Le Roman d’un spahi (Paris: Pierre Lafitte, 1923 [1881]), p. 69. This fiction was written following a visit to Senegal. 14 Daniel Milo, ‘Street names’, in Nora, Realms of Memory, pp. 363–89. Milo traced the historical complexity and the tensions between collective communal memory and popular initiative in the street naming of Paris, versus the latter’s external symbols of publicity, state monopoly and nationhood. 15 ANS, P 167, Urbanisme de Dakar, rues et places, 1901–18 (1915); P 173, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar, 1912–19, construction de l’avenue Gambetta; K 19, Assainissement de Dakar, l’ouverture de l’avenue de la République, 1900s–1910s.

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French colonial Dakar 16 Georges Ribot and Robert Lafon, Dakar: Ses origins, son avenir (Paris: Larose, 1908), pp. 77–8. 17 As noticed by Rabinow, particularly in relation to Morocco under Lyautey:  Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), p. 278. 18 Ernest Gellner, Encounters with Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 42–3, 148. 19 Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 248–9. 20 Philippe David, Paysages dakarois de l’époque coloniale (Dakar: ENDA, 1978), p. 41. 21 Hélène d’Almeida-Topor, ‘Le modèle toponymique colonial dans les capitales de l’ouest africain francophone’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg (eds), La Ville européenne outre mers:  Un modèle conquérant? (XVe–XXe siècles) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), pp. 235–43. 22 D’Almeida-Topor, ‘Le modèle toponymique’, pp. 239–41. 23 David Prochaska, Making Algeria French:  Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 209–15. This is true in spite of the obvious differences between the character of the colonial (urban) situations in French North Africa and in French West Africa, as has already been mentioned above in brief. 24 The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), FO 925/320, map of Dakar in 1895. 25 Map of Dakar in 1915, published in Jean Delcourt, Naissance et croissance de Dakar (Dakar:  Clairafrique, 1983), n.p. Also in ANS, P 167, Urbanisme de Dakar, rues et places, 1901–18 (1915). 26 This is clear from these items:  town plan of Dakar, 1941, prepared by the AOF’s Geographical Service, Cambridge University Library, Map Collection; and map of Dakar in 1957, published in Gilbert Houlet, Dakar, Saint-Louis et leurs environs (Paris: Hachette, 1957). 27 Plan of Dakar in 1958, Cambridge University Library, Map Collection. 28 For more about Sy and Diagne see David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens:  Ohio University Press, 2000), pp.  194–207; Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–45, trans. Till Gottheiner (New  York:  PICA Press, 1971), pp. 440–3. 29 Anthony King, Spaces of Global Cultures:  Architecture, Urbanism, Identity (London:  Routledge, 2004), pp.  141–60. See also Anthony King, Colonial Urban Development:  Culture, Social Power and Environment (London and Boston, MA: Routledge, 1976), pp. 58–66. 30 King, Colonial Urban Development, Chapter  7; Odile Goerg, ‘From Hill Station (Freetown) to downtown Conakry (First Ward)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 32:1 (1998), 1–31. Freetown’s Hill Station was inspired by the official recommendations of Drs Stephens and Christophers, who, following their visit to West Africa and India from 1900 to 1903, prompted racial segregation as the only malaria prevention for Europeans in the British empire:  Philip Curtin, ‘Medical knowledge and urban planning in tropical Africa’, American Historical Review, 90:3 (1985), 594–613. 31 Christopher Winters, ‘Urban morphogenesis in francophone black Africa’, Geographical Review, 72:2 (1982), 132–54 (p. 141). 32 Christian Topalov, ‘The urban vocabulary of social stigma in late 20th c. France’, paper for the European Association of Urban History (EAUH) International Conference, Prague, 28 August–1 September 2012. 33 For more on these opposed imageries see Shirine Hamadeh, ‘Creating the traditional city:  A  French project’, in Nezar AlSayyad (ed.), Forms of Dominance:  On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992), pp. 241–60. 34 Winters, ‘Urban morphogenesis’, p. 141; Sénégambie–Niger reports: Reports to the Governor General from local officials, 5 vols, Vol. IV: Cercle de Kayes, CASE A59, Royal Commonwealth Society Collection, Cambridge. 35 In practice, however, difficulties in the application of the original function of the cordons sanitaires were faced in all the colonial cities because of living necessities and

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning everyday challenges – a situation that culminated during the post-colonial period in these ex-belts serving as spaces of meeting and friction par excellence amongst the urban residents. 36 See, for more: TNA, CO 1047/659, plan of the Town of Forcados, Southern Nigeria, 1910. Nigeria’s National Archives, Ibadan (NNA), CSO 26, 11136, European reservation, Ikoyi, 1917–36; and CSO 26, 14623, Classification of township under the Township Ordinance, 1917. 37 See relevant city profiles in Jean Royer (ed.), L’Urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays tropicaux, 2 vols (La Charité-sur-Loire:  Delayance, 1932). Also:  Marc Le Pape, ‘De l’espace et des races à Abidjan entre 1903 et 1934’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 99 (1985), 295–307 (pp.  295–6); Odile Goerg, Pouvoir colonial, municipalités et espaces urbains: Conakry-Freetown des années 1880–1914 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), pp. 66–83, 93–119; Alain Sinou, Le Comptoir de Ouidah (Paris: Karthala, 1995), p. 145. 38 King, Colonial Urban Development, p. 39. 39 René Schoentjes, ‘Considérations générales sur l’urbanisme au Congo Belge’, in Royer, L’Urbanisme aux colonies, pp. 170–88 (p. 172). 40 As noted (with no further reference) in Jacques Bugnicourt, ‘Dakar without bounds’, in Aga Khan Award for Architecture, Reading the Contemporary African City (Singapore: Concept Media, 1982), pp. 27–42 (p. 30). 41 Flutre’s proficiency with local languages spoken in the AOF territory enabled him to carry out extensive research (1957) on toponymy prior to the French effective colonisation. See Louis-Fernand Flutre, Pour une étude de la toponymie de l’AOF (Dakar: Faculté des lettres, Université de Dakar, 1957). The next paragraph is based on this source. 42 According to Aliane Diouf and Fatim Diop, two old residents in Dakar who were interviewed by Mbaye Dieng in the 1970s, in David, Paysages dakarois, pp.  7, 25–8, 38. 43 For more about Fortier’s series see David Prochaska, ‘Fantasia of the photothèque: French postcard views of colonial Senegal,’ African Arts, 24 (1991), 40–7. 44 Assane Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine (Dakar: IFAN, 1970), pp. 122–30. 45 Aliane Diouf in David, Paysages dakarois, p. 9. 46 Cited in ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar, 1919–1920, rapport sur l’hygiène à Dakar de 1899 à 1920, p. 384. 47 ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar, p. 384. 48 The lack of a fierce ideological or anti-colonial dimension in West Africa’s urban toponymy touches the anglophone sphere as well. For instance, the name of Gambia’s capital was changed from Bathurst, after the secretary of the Colonial Office, to Banjul – ‘fibre’ in Mande – only after almost a decade following independence. 49 Seck, Dakar:  Métropole ouest-africaine; Bruno Salleras, ‘La peste à Dakar en 1914: Médina ou les enjeux complexes d’un politique sanitaire’, Ph.D. dissertation (Paris, EHSS,1984); Raymond Betts, ‘The establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914’, Africa, 41 (1971), 143–52; Elikia M’Bokolo, ‘Peste et société urbaine à Dakar: L’épidémie de 1914’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 12:1–2 (1982), 13–46; Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine: Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–45 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002). 50 See, for instance (partial list, in chronological order): Gerald W. Hartwig and David K.  Patterson (eds), Disease in African History (Durham, NC:  Duke University Press, 1978); Megan Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Cambridge:  Polity Press, 1991); Maryinez Lyons, The Colonial Disease:  Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire, 1900–40 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1992); Philip Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter with the Tropical World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1995); Philip Curtin, Disease and Empire: The Health of European Troops in the Conquest of Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 51 King, Colonial Urban Development. While this study brilliantly reflected the viewpoint of colonial society, only a few pages were dedicated to the colonised counterpart, a drawback that was later discussed and rationalised by the author.

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French colonial Dakar 52 Curtin, ‘Medical knowledge.’ 53 Jyoti Hosagrahar, Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism (New  York:  Routledge, 2005); King, Colonial Urban Development; Anthony King, The Bungalow: The Production of a Global Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press 1995 [1984]); Jane Jacobs, Edge of Empire: Postcolonialism and the City (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power and the Built Environment in Colonial Singapore (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1996). 54 For a far from inclusive list, see (in chronological order):  Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Saul Dubow, Racial Segregation and the Origins of Apartheid in South Africa, 1919–36 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989); Rabinow, French Modern; Prochaska, Making Algeria French; Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991); AlSayyad, Forms of Dominance; Saul Dubow and William Beinart (eds), Segregation and Apartheid in Twentieth-Century South Africa (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations:  Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait (eds), Urbanism: Imported or Exported? (Chichester: Wiley and Sons, 2003). 55 Maynard Swanson, ‘The sanitation syndrome: Bubonic plague and urban native policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–9’, Journal of African History, 18:3 (1977), 387–410. 56 Robert Home, ‘Town planning, segregation and indirect rule in colonial Nigeria’, Third World Planning Review, 5:2 (1983), 165–75. Lugard (1858–1945) was born in India to missionary parents, and served as the first high commissioner of the protectorate of Northern Nigeria (1900–06), the governor of Hong Kong (1907–12), and finally the governor general of Northern and Southern Nigeria (1912–19). 57 As recent study shows, even in the extreme case of South Africa under the apartheid regime, a comprehensive system of control was far from being achieved through planning practices. Jennifer Robinson, ‘A perfect system of control? State power and “native locations” in South Africa’, Environment and Planning, 8:2 (1990), 135–62. And there were, of course, more ‘grey’ groups and spatialities between the ‘black’ and the ‘white’ societies in colonial Africa. In addition, there are some cases where residential segregation in the French colonies might be considered more social than racial  – that is, in the case of the ‘assimilated’, who were permitted to live in the European quarter. Laurent Fourchard, ‘Propriétaires et commerçants africains à Ouagadougou et à Bobo-Dioulasso (Haute-Volta) fin 19ème siècle–1960’, Journal of African History, 44:3 (2003), 433–61. 58 Carl Nightingale, Segregation:  A  Global History of Divided Cities (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 184–5. 59 This conception was developed, for instance, in Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Hardmondsworth: Penguin, 1977); Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge:  Selected Interviews and Other Writings (Brighton:  Harvester Press, 1980); Yeoh, Contesting Space. 60 Alain Sinou, ‘La Sénégal’, in Jacques Soulillou (ed.), Rives coloniales: Architectures de Saint-Louis à Douala (Paris: ORSTOM, 1993), pp. 31–62 (p. 51). 61 Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM), FM SG, SEN/XII, 110, Note sur la salubrité de Dakar et sur les moyens préconisés pour l’améliorer, 1900. 62 Ribot and Lafon, Dakar, p.7. Ribot had served as the chief doctor of the colonial troops in Senegal, and was now in charge of the sanitary services in Dakar. 63 ANOM, FM SG, SEN/XII, 50, Etat sanitaire de l’Afrique Occidentale, Companie française de l’Afrique Occidentale, 14 November 1900. 64 Alain Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal: Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar (Paris:  Karthala, ORSTOM, 1993), pp.  189–90. ‘Straw huts’ in our context mean thatch-roofed buildings with walls made of straw. While in the Upper Senegal, Mali and other parts along the Sudanese belt there was a preference for using mud (banco) for permanent housing, mud building was impossible in the sandy dunes

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning of the region of Cayor (Kajoor), the coastal belt of Senegal (between Dakar and Saint-Louis). 65 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp. 158–9. 66 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 161. See also an article by the mayor of Saint-Louis: Paul Vidal, ‘Incendies à Guet N’Dar’, Périscope africaine (25 December 1937). The latter calls the colony’s government to subsidise prefabricated houses for the poor fishermen, stating that with materials like straw the pompiers always come too late. 67 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 208. 68 Nineteenth-century colonial novelists, such as Pierre Loti, contributed to the consolidation of the image: Loti, Le Roman d’un Spahi, pp. 1–2, 6, 16, 88, 140. See also E.  C. Nwezeh, Africa in French and German Fiction, 1911–33 (Ibadan:  University of Ife Press, 1978); Tzvetan Todorov, On Human Diversity:  Nationalism, Racism and Exoticism in French Thought, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 69 TNA, CO 700/West Africa 24. 70 Indeed, an article in the Moniteur du Sénégal et dépendance: Journal officiel (4 July 1865) confirms the existence of these two meanings. It deals with the inauguration of a floating bridge in Saint-Louis, regarded as a demonstration of French civilisation versus local ‘barbarity’ and as an example of the general improvement in communication with rive des Maures – that is, ‘Langue de Barbarie’. 71 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 129. 72 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 129. 73 For more about the pre-1914 building regulations, see ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar; Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 133. 74 Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), pp. 13, 31. 75 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg, L’Afrique Occidentale au temps des français (Paris: La Découverte, 1992), p. 31. 76 See, for instance, ANS, P 168, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar: Travaux de l’avenue des Madeleines, 1905–13; ANS, P 173, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar, 1912–19. 77 M’Bokolo, ‘Peste’, p. 13. 78 M’Bokolo, ‘Peste’, p. 16; Betts, ‘The establishment’, p. 144. Sanitary measures met opposition in the métropole as well. For popular resistance to the apparatus set up to fight the cholera epidemic in Paris in 1832, which was backed by the police, see Rabinow, French Modern, pp. 36, 38–9. 79 For the two cordons see ANS, P 190, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar; Salleras, ‘La peste’, pp. 101–2; Betts, ‘The establishment’; Echenberg, Black Death, Part I. 80 ANS, H 55, Peste à Dakar, 1914. 81 Derwent Whittlesey, ‘Dakar and other Cape Verde settlements’, Geographical Review, 31:4 (1941), 609–38 (p. 631). 82 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 134. 83 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 134. 84 ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar. 85 ANS, H55, Peste à Dakar. 86 This argument was inspired by Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 281. 87 Seck, Dakar: Métropole ouest-africaine, p. 136. 88 ANS, 4P 133, Urbanisme à Dakar:  aménagement de la Médina, plan d’extension, 1927; ANS, 4P 1514, Mosquée de Dakar, 1938; ANS, 4P 1537, Construction d’un Marché couvert à Médina, 1940; ANS, 4P 512, Residence de Médina, 1941; ANS, 4P 141 and 144, Médina, secteur 2B, plans et devis, 1940–55. 89 As noted (with no further reference) in Bugnicourt, ‘Dakar without bounds’, p. 30. 90 Betts, ‘The establishment’, p. 148. 91 For the aerial photos see ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar. 92 ANS, H 22, L’hygiène à Dakar, p. 384.

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French colonial Dakar   93 For full details on the 1914 expropriations see ANOM, FM 1tp/95, Création d’un village de ségrégation, expropriation des terrains du village indigène de Médina près Dakar, 1915; ANS, P 190, Assainissement et urbanisme de Dakar.   94 See, for more, Betts, ‘The establishment’, pp. 145–9.   95 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘Emeutes urbaines, grèves générales et décolonisation en Afrique française’, in Robert Ageron (ed.), Les Chemins de la décolonisation de l’empire français, 1936–56 (Paris: CNRS, 1986), pp. 493–504 (p. 493).   96 Betts, ‘The establishment’, pp. 145, 147.   97 Betts, ‘The establishment’, p.  151. See also Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, pp. 147–50, 155–6.   98 For more about the positions of Ponty and Diagne see ANS, H 55, Peste à Dakar. See also Betts, ‘The establishment’, p.  151. A  considerable part of Echenberg’s recent study deals with the 1914 epidemic, and covers very thoroughly these critical days in Dakar. Though it touches issues of residential policies, its analysis of the socio-political aspects of the plague is most comprehensive (Echenberg, Black Death, Part I).   99 Inspection Générale des Travaux Publics de l’AOF, ‘L’Urbanisme en Afrique Occidentale française’, in Royer, L’Urbanisme aux colonies, pp. 146–57 (p. 154). 100 This partial list includes book-length studies only:  David Arnold (ed.), Warm Climates and Western Medicine: The Emergence of Tropical Medicine, 1500–1900 (Atlanta: Rodopi, 1996); Heather Bell, Frontiers of Medicine in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1899–1940 (Oxford:  Clarendon, 1999); Liora Bigon, A History of Urban Planning in Two West African Colonial Capitals:  Residential Segregation in British Lagos and French Dakar (1850–1930) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009); Curtin, Disease and Empire; Echenberg, Black Death; Nancy Gallagher, Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Rita Headrick, Colonialism, Health and Illness in French Equatorial Africa, 1885–1935 (Atlanta: African Studies Association Press, 1994); King, Colonial Urban Development; Lyons, The Colonial Disease; Kerrie MacPherson, A Wilderness of Marches:  The Origins of Public Health in Shanghai, 1843–93 (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1987); Laurence Monnais-Rousselot, Médecine et colonisation:  L’aventure indochinoise, 1860–1939 (Paris:  Editions CNRS, 1999); Randall Packard, White Plague, Black Labor:  Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Hartwig and Patterson, Disease in African History; Vaughan, Curing Their Ills; Yeoh, Contesting Space. 101 Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), Chapter 3. 102 Gordon Cherry, Cities and Plans: The Shaping of Urban Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London:  Edward Arnold, 1988); Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow:  An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996); Marjatta Hietala, ‘The diffusion of innovations:  Some examples of Finnish civil servants’ professional tours in Europe’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 8 (1983), 23–36; Kenneth Kolson, Big Plans:  The Allure and Folly of Urban Design (Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Brian Ladd, ‘City planning and social reform in Cologne, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf, 1866–1914’, Ph.D.  dissertation (Yale University, 1986); Rabinow, French Modern. 103 Rabinow, French Modern, pp. 260, 267–8. 104 Report of the Lagos Town Planning Commission with Recommendation on the Planning and Development of Greater Lagos, June 1946 (Lagos:  Government Printer, 1946), p. 17. 105 Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 (Chicago and London:  University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 69–71. 106 The African Survey was an unprecedented metropolitan project (1929–38), designed to examine the extent to which ‘modern’ knowledge was being applied to African

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Street naming, infectious diseases and planning problems. It served as a main authority for consultation on the part of the British colonial policy architects, and gave an impetus to British development schemes until the era of decolonisation. Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory. 107 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P.  S. Selwyn-Clarke on the Yellow Fever Conference at Dakar, 1928 (Accra: Government Printing Office, 1929). 108 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Ministry of Health, correspondence, 10 January 1931; Colonial Office, correspondence, 60786/29 general, 6 November 1930. 109 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P. S. Selwyn-Clarke, p. 23. 110 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Government House, Accra, correspondence, 60186/29, 28 September 1929. 111 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P. S. Selwyn-Clarke, p. 5. 112 Anne-Marie Moulin, ‘Patriarchal science:  The network of the overseas Pasteur Institutes’, in Patrick Petitjean, Catherine Jami and A. M. Moulin (eds), Science and Empires: Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion (Boston, MA:  Kluwer, 1992), pp.  307–21; Suret-Canale, French Colonialism, pp. 404–6; Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, Chapter 2; ANOM, FM SG, SEN/XI, 50, Police, hygiène et assistance, fièvre jaune, 1895–1904. 113 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P. S. Selwyn-Clarke, p. 8 (my translation from the French). 114 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P. S. Selwyn-Clarke. 115 Both quotes are from:  TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P.  S. Selwyn-Clarke, p.  25. It was Selwyn-Clarke, then the Lagos Medical Officer of Health, who investigated the outbreak of bubonic plague in Lagos in 1924, revealed its roots in Sekondi and Kumasi (the Gold Coast), and recommended isolation and extensive demolition of African residences there:  NNA, CSO 26, 13001/1–8, Outbreak of plague in Lagos, 1924–26. 116 Frederick Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, 1922), pp. 148–9. NNA, CSO 26, 14623, Classification of township. 117 ‘The retirement of Sir Frederick Lugard’, Lagos Weekly Record (23 February1919), 1–22. 118 Anthony King, ‘Exporting planning:  The colonial experience’, in Gordon Cherry (ed.), Shaping an Urban World (London: Nansell, 1980), pp. 203–26 (p. 210). 119 TNA, CO 323/1050/5, C50019, Report by Dr P.  S. Selwyn-Clarke, p.  37 (my translation). 120 See, for instance: Elisabeth Crawford, Terry Shinn and Sverker Sörlin, ‘The nationalization and decentralization of the sciences: An introductory essay’, in Elisabeth Crawford, Terry Shinn and Sverker Sörlin (eds), Denationalizing Sciences:  The Contexts of International Scientific Practice (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), pp. 1–42; Andrew Jamison, ‘National political cultures and the exchange of knowledge: The case of systems ecology’, in Crawford, Shinn and Sörlin, Denationalizing Sciences, pp. 187–208; Sverker Sörlin, ‘National and international aspects of cross-boundary science:  Scientific travel in the 18th century’, in Crawford, Shinn and Sörlin, Denationalizing Sciences, pp. 43–72. 121 Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Transnational’, in Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (eds), The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History from the Mid-19th Century to the Present Day (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2009), pp. 1047–55. 122 World Health Organization, The Yellow Fever Initiative Injection: One Injection, Ten Years’ Protection (2007), www.who.int/csr/disease/yellowfev/yfbooklet_en.pdf (accessed 5 October 2014), pp. 2–3. 123 Oyewale Tomori, ‘Yellow fever in Africa:  Public health impact and prospects for control in the 21st century’, Biomedica, 22 (2002), 178–210 (p. 178).

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CHA P T E R  FO U R

The quest for architectural style for French West Africa: invented traditions and ideologies in colonial Dakar Introduction It seems that drawing on the term ‘the invention of tradition’ is particularly useful for the analysis of the French colonial architecture in Dakar up until the interwar period, yet not without being aware of its historiography and problematic. Originally coined and explained by Eric Hobsbawm in his 1983 introduction to his co-edited volume under this title, this celebrated term had an immediate impact within the social sciences, especially in the areas of nationalism and governmental studies. It spread into architectural research only after more than a decade. In the built-up context of Africa, ‘invented traditions’ have been used quite recently with almost exclusive reference to the heritage of the French in North Africa. By bringing sub-Saharan Africa to the fore, and through a critical analysis of the term ‘invented tradition’, this chapter examines architectural stylistic developments in French Dakar up until the interwar period. Taking into account the Dakarois contemporary architectural repertoire, the physical features of two colonial markets  – marché Kermel and marché Sandaga – are highlighted and interpreted.1 These markets were established at the beginning of the twentieth century in the European heart of the city. In terms of general size and building techniques, both are based on prefabricated iron. Kermel and Sandaga evoke the great covered markets and similar structures erected in France and other European countries in the late nineteenth century. Yet, in matters of style, each constitutes a unique and outstanding monument in Dakar as well as in French West Africa in general. Relying on primary and secondary sources and on fieldwork, we would like to explore the stylistic origins of these markets and to analyse their meaning against the background of the colonial situation in sub-Saharan Africa. Moving from the transplanted fin-de-siècle neo-Moorish towards an imagined [ 128 ]

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neo-Sudanese, we discuss each paradox, on both theoretical and physical levels. While this chapter focuses on the period between the late nineteenth century and the interwar years, some of the present-day implications and symbolism of these markets have not been ignored, and therefore short references to the post-colonial period have been provided where it seemed appropriate. Occasionally referring to other contemporary buildings as well, in Dakar and beyond, our examination uncovers a process of invention of tradition to which several visual layers can be assigned. These visual elements evoke questions regarding French contemporary aesthetic conceptions and political motives. They represent a discursive relationship between French colonial styles and regional vernacular Islamic traditions, shaped by the French colonial doctrines of assimilation and association. In addition, the role of the built-up form in the self-building of colonial identity versus colonised ‘otherness’ will be analysed, showing the intimate connection between racial and spatial politics, and among modernism, historicism and colonialism. The analysis also shows that vernacular architecture in ‘black’, sub-Saharan Africa was ‘Africanised’ by the French colonial regime in a similar process to that by which vernacular building traditions in North Africa were ‘orientalised’ by the same regime. This transnational process of stylistic dissemination within the continent’s territories and overseas exposes relationships among visual representations, identity, and colonial policies and politics.

Invented traditions, historiography and the contextual framework It was Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s co-edited volume The Invention of Tradition (1983) that stimulated a series of publications on the cultural politics of and the relationships among the formations of State, nationalism, identity and ethnicity.2 Expanding on ‘neo-traditions’ within different parts of the British empire, including Scotland, Wales, India and Africa – the latter has been covered by Ranger himself3 – this volume has immediately created its own topic. There is hardly any need to repeat Hobsbawm’s definition, given in his introduction, that ‘invented tradition’ means ‘a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past’.4 While these practices ‘normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past’,5 the result is in fact a discontinuity with it. [ 129 ]

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Yet it is within the fields of sociology and anthropology that the term ‘invented tradition’ has received the strongest criticism. Considering the inherently dynamic and practical nature of all traditions and their use of history as a cement for group cohesion, the distinction between traditions that are invented and those that are not was found hard to understand.6 Similarly, as an analytical tool, the wide-ranging applications of this term within these fields can be roughly cast in two main approaches. The first is that the focus on ‘invention’, ‘making’ and ‘creation’ preoccupies us with a supposed need to distinguish between genuine ‘customs’ and invented ‘traditions’, between the ‘authentic’ and the ‘spurious’.7 The second approach is more relativist and constructivist, conceiving that as symbolic constructs that are always defined by societies in the present, all traditions are genuine.8 While this approach removes the assumed dichotomy between the ‘authentic’ and the ‘spurious’, it conceptualises traditions as pragmatic and contemporaneous, and thus is also a departure from Hobsbawm’s definition by being de-historicist.9 In this chapter these two approaches, the historical and the more culturally relativist, are combined. In other words, the specific micro-historical context of the colonial and post-colonial architecture of marché Kermel, marché Sandaga and some other buildings will be taken into consideration in view of the traditions-as-genuine versus the traditions-as-constructed pair. But the analysis also expands beyond this binary, referring to the processual dimensions of political constructs, symbolic and aesthetic actions, colonial cultures and ideologies, agency and history. It is interesting to note, however, that Hobsbawm uses architecture as one of the first and ‘striking’ examples for his oxymoronic term; that is, by referring to the ‘deliberate choice of a Gothic style for the nineteenth-century rebuilding of the British parliament, and the equally deliberate decision after World War II to rebuild the parliamentary chamber on exactly the same basic plan as before’.10 This case somewhat resembles, for instance, that of marché Kermel, which was also reconstructed in the 1990s following its complete destruction by fire. Yet the reconstruction, as an exact replica of the French colonial structure, was not carried out by the same regime or power, but rather by the independent Senegalese State. This fact adds some complexity to Hobsbawm’s argument that factitious continuity is a response to ‘novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition’.11 That is, in many senses, it was not the African past that was carefully reconstructed by post-colonial Senegal, but the French expatriate one. This reciprocal process of patrimonialisation is interesting, as in colonial studies there is a tendency to emphasis the social construction of [ 130 ]

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tradition by colonial authorities in order to preserve social order while subordinating indigenous societies to colonial rule.12 Yet Kermel’s reconstruction means that colonialism  – together with its invented traditions – was not merely a unidirectional political phenomenon. Regarding the African continent, while the term ‘invented tradition’ has been employed in historical and anthropological research,13 examples from studies in art and architectural research are not abundant and include reference to French North Africa almost exclusively.14 François Béguin’s renowned book Arabisances on the French neo-Moorish buildings in Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia was published in 1983, the same year of Hobsbawn and Ranger’s.15 The term ‘invented tradition’ was yet to be explicitly theorised in it. An appropriate theorisation was developed in 1991 by Gwendolyn Wright, referring inter alia to the architectural politics of the French in Morocco and connecting between colonial doctrines and aesthetics.16 The contribution of this chapter therefore lies in continuing this line of thought by expanding on the reciprocal relations between colonial forms and ideologies, and in the application of these relations into sub-Saharan Africa. The subject of the two main colonial markets in Dakar, however, which are amongst the oldest in the AOF and of regional importance beyond the colony of Senegal, has only been treated in passing in the relevant literature, if at all. In fact we are aware of only two very short written pieces dedicated to marché Kermel and marché Sandaga so far within the research literature on the history of colonial urban planning and architecture in French West Africa in general, and in Senegal in particular. The first, about Kermel, was published by the French historian and urbanist Alain Sinou in 1997. It interpreted the structure from the perspective of the evaluation and conservation of historical monuments and heritage.17 The second, published in 2006, consists of a few comments about marché Sandaga, as part of a broader summary of one of the architectural styles in colonial Dakar.18 Yet the contribution of this chapter does not stem from this subject alone. Drawing on published material and archival sources in France and Senegal, and on-site fieldwork, we would like to illuminate the uniqueness of each of these structures in the context of the history of French West Africa and colonial urban Senegal/Dakar. While some primary sources that have never been used before in the literature assisted us in discovering previously unknown colonial architectural developments, especially concerning Sandaga, marché Kermel still offers a challenge for the urban historian. Destroyed by fire in 1993 and rebuilt immediately afterwards as an exact replica of the previous structure, no traces of its files and plans, nor the name of the architect, can be found in the national archives of Senegal or of France. [ 131 ]

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By tracing the stylistic origins of these two markets in terms of physical form and conceptual ideas, together with short overviews on other selected, contemporary buildings, the cultural politics behind the creation of the colonial urban space will be discussed below. This architectural repertoire reflects, inter alia, a complex negotiation both symbolically and politically, as well as discursive relationships between French colonial building styles and the indigenous Islamic traditions of West Africa. These relationships are analysed against the background of the then French colonial policies and the role of the built-up form in the self-construction of the colonial identity versus the colonised ‘other’. Constructed through a re-appropriation of vernacular aesthetic traditions by the French colonial authorities, this identity was therefore an invented construct. Yet while in French North Africa the new policy of borrowing from the indigenous visual symbolism was exemplified in the neo-Moorish or arabisance public architecture, in West Africa there was a hesitation on the part of the colonial authorities regarding which local models were deemed suitable enough to borrow. While the initial search was manifested in the structure of marché Kermel – an outstanding and singular monument in West Africa – a subsequent solution for the same architectural and ideological problem was applied in the nearby marché Sandaga. The latter building was not singular but rather constituted an invented tradition that was shared amongst a series of several such structures, built under the same stylistic inspiration.

Marché Kermel: looking for an appropriate style? The origins of marché Kermel date back to 1862, with the establishment of Dakar as a colonial city immediately after the French occupation of the Cap Vert peninsula. In fact, Kermel’s square is already clearly visible in Pinet-Laprade’s master plan, breaking the gridiron layout with its polygonal lines. This square was designated to the east of place Prôtet)today’s place de l’Indépendance), near the port. Sandaga’s rectangular square, for instance, which was also designed in 1862 by Pinet-Laprade, was placed to the west of place Prôtet, on the main caravan route to the hinterland (Figure 2.16).19 The squares of both Kermel and Sandaga have preserved their original function as the main urban markets up until today, together with place Prôtet, which was initially designed as the hub of the colonial city, with major administrative and transport functions. In 1865, a large shed on Kermel’s square was designed by the Department of Bridges and Roads (Service des Ponts et Chaussées) of the colony of Senegal for the protection of produce from dust, rain [ 132 ]

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Figure 4.1  Plan of Kermel’s original structure, 1865.

and sun. It was a strictly functional structure made of metal pillars and roofing, with no embellishment, intended inter alia to reduce the street-stall phenomenon that was disapproved of by the colonial administration (Figure 4.1).20 The name ‘Kermel’ (then ‘Quermel’) was probably a distortion of quernel (kernel) – a reference to the thriving regional commerce in grains and spices. The transformation of the shed into a semi-monumental market in the early twentieth century is directly related to the ideological aspects of the French colonial project. The period of the French military conquest of sub-Saharan Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century [ 133 ]

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French colonial Dakar

was followed by a period of administrative organisation of these territories. This culminated in 1895 in the creation of the large-scale AOF Federation with its centre in the city of Dakar from 1902, as aforementioned.21 Yet the impetus to build in early-twentieth-century Dakar was not only related to its prospective role as an imperial city in the French colonial imagery and the accompanying mise en valeur of the colonies. As has been well exemplified by the historian Alice Conklin, the French colonial project, especially in West Africa, was not distinguishable from France’s mission civilisatrice. This notion implied that the AOF’s indigenous populations were too primitive for self-government, though they were capable of being socially and morally uplifted, and that the French considered themselves, because of their presumed superior culture, revolutionary past and industrial power, to be the best people for this mission.22 As a result, the Euro-centric rhetoric that accompanied the mission civilisatrice was dominant in the terminologies of the French policy makers during that period. It was closely related to the French colonial doctrine of assimilation, the general aim of which, as asserted by the Third Republic, was to turn the colonies into an integral part of the mother country. The sixth paragraph of the third constitution of 1795 labeled the colonies as inseparable parts of the republic and subjected them to the same laws. In line with this, following the invasion of 1848, Algeria was considered nothing less than an extension of France. Dakar was likewise proclaimed by the Colonial Congress of 1889 to be a distant suburb of Paris.23 Aside from the economic aims of the exploitation of raw materials and manual labour of the indigenous population, the overt rhetoric of the mission civilisatrice  – i.e. ‘civilising’ the ‘natives’ through mental, social and material engineering  – was dominant in the language of French policy makers of that period. On the spatial level, this meant that the colonial urban areas, especially in Senegal, were perceived by the colonial authorities as the very embodiment of a ‘modern’ and ‘civilised’ place. Therefore their African residents should turn into évolués, and virtually become integrated into French values. Yet, as shown by Conklin, the physical mise en valeur of West Africa was oriented almost exclusively towards the material gains of metropolitan France, and the civilising mission ideology was far from serving the needs of the African community as promised. Colonial urban space was perceived as essentially European. Improvements there were targeted at the expatriate population only, and if the African residents benefited from them it was often only indirectly and randomly.24 [ 134 ]

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There was, however, much more that ought to be learnt by such an ‘uncivilised’ autochthonous population. Architecture, which for a long time was considered by the colonial administrators to be an especially effective ideological transmitter, could also be recruited to play a role in the colonising mission. Eminently visual, architecture could be seen by all, and could provide both an answer and a reason for the imperial project, which was under constant metropolitan surveillance and leftist critique. In other words, the visual, architectural ‘splendour’ would seem to legitimatise the colonising efforts, while the metamorphosis of pre-colonial Ndakaru into a city of permanent edifices would justify the presence of the colonialists. In fact, the construction of a ‘real city’ was sought to offset the disastrous image of the colonial city, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the popular imagination, this became a place dominated by an essentially masculine white population, subjected to all kinds of tropical temptations, in a land of fevers and barbarity, surrounded by thatched, round huts.25 In addition, the building of Dakar as an imperial capital was meant to impress other nations in a period when France and Britain were competing for world conquest. Aware of the British colonial empire, Dakar wished to be conceived as the ‘black Indies’, or as the façade (or ‘mirror’) of the French colonial empire on the Atlantic.26 All these issues were evident in contemporary Dakar. Serving as a major maritime port, a hub for transportation to and from the interior, and a regional capital, early 1900s Dakar was mainly composed of buildings ‘with no charm’. Its commercial buildings were built too quickly by the expatriate merchants, and its simple administrative and military structures were too similar to one another, with their locations predetermined by sanitary considerations.27 Against this background the question of an appropriate architectural style was central to the debate of which models should serve an inspiration for the building of monuments in the colonies. At first, the colonisers’ traditional preference for neo-classicism was clearly apparent in Dakar, together with a reproduction of official metropolitan architecture. Among the Dakar examples in the early twentieth century – the same period when marché Kermel was erected  – are the governor general’s Palace, the House of Commerce, and the town hall. Alongside the formalistic, somewhat megalomaniac reference to Antiquity, hygienic considerations were also incorporated, such as outer galleries encircling the main body of these edifices, intended for ventilation.28 Before continuing with Kermel’s stylistic dilemma, we shall expand below on the Dakarois’ neo-classical background, and on its visual vocabulary and implications. [ 135 ]

French colonial Dakar

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A glimpse of neo-classicist Dakar: the style of the conqueror The design of public space in post-1902 Dakar was influenced by the city’s perception as an exemplar on which other cities in the AOF Federation could be modelled. In terms of urban form, assimilation meant uprooting the existing socio-physical environment and replacing it with a new and ‘modern’ one. In Dakar, where there was considerable friction between the coloniser and the colonised, and where economic resources tended to be more available than in other AOF territories, the pre-colonial sphere underwent considerable change. This change was accomplished through urban legislation, which resulted in a comprehensive system of orthogonal, paved streets with well-lit, tree-lined sidewalks (Chapter  3). Around place Prôtet, cafes and theatres were established as well, creating the impression of a French city.29 This impression was reinforced by public statues and the imperial architectural style, both of which stressed the neo-classicist tradition and contributed to French political and cultural hegemony. At the same time, the policy of assimilation sought to dispossess the Africans of their own building traditions and methods of settlement organisation. This was clearly described by the Tunisian author Albert Memmi: Finally, the few material traces of that [pre-colonial] past are slowly erased, and the future remnants will no longer carry a stamp of the colonized group. The few statues which decorate the city represent (with incredible scorn for the colonized who pass by them every day) the great deeds of the colonization. The buildings are patterned after the colonizer’s own favorite designs; the same is true of the street names, which recall the faraway provinces from which he came.30

Classical iconography was used by the French colonial authorities in Dakar in the early twentieth century, for its public buildings in particular. This iconography corresponded with the assimilative and drew virtually nothing from vernacular forms. In fact, this colonial policy was so aligned with the neo-classical style in the French colonies that the latter has been dubbed in recent critical scholarly work, though with reference to North Africa, the ‘conqueror style’ (‘style du vainqueur’).31 Paradoxically, while the architecture of private residences for the expatriate community was increasingly adapted to the tropical environment (e.g. ‘the house with the verandah’ and ‘the bungalow-compound complex’ analysed by King32), the old metropolitan practice was embraced for public buildings in the French dependencies overseas. Radiating from Paris out to Saigon, Algiers and Dakar, neo-classicism was overwhelmingly favoured by the Third Republic for its public edifices (Figure 4.2). [ 136 ]

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Figure 4.2  French postcard from the 1930s showing the neo-classical Municipal Theatre in Algiers, built for the French expatriates in 1853 on place de la République.

Indeed, the massive and elaborate edifices that resulted were not only meant to impress, among others, the African colonised populations; the seeming ‘primitivity’ of the latter was often compared, in French colonial discourse, with the character of peasants at home.33 French policy designers hoped that the introduction of new architectural models would eventually lead both the African colonised and the French peasants to desert their traditional lifestyles. The following examples, all from early-twentieth-century Dakar, exemplify a syncretic use of Greco-Roman, Renaissance and even Victorian visual motives, approving the virtually universal aesthetic traditions of the Occident. The Palais du Gouverneur Général was built in 1908 on the Plateau, with William Ponty as its first resident (Figure 4.3). Its monumentality reflects a significant moment in the architectural history of the colony. Seen from almost every part of the contemporary city, it was also the first building visible to those arriving from the Atlantic and the métropole. Prominent in the present-day cityscape as well, especially from Gorée, it is even called ‘the White House’ in popular parlance. The three-storey building included arcades, pilasters and balustrades; in the [ 137 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.3  French postcard from 1928 showing Dakar’s Palais du Gouverneur Général, 1908.

centre of its symmetrical façade, a gabled pavilion projected outwards. It was crowned by a massive lantern, decorated with Doric, Gothic and Rococo elements.34 Unfortunately, these elaborate architectural details were damaged by the hot, humid climate of West Africa, and the building of today, which serves as the Presidential Palace, is shorn of these features (Figure 4.4). The formalistic elements of this style, which were non-functional and largely composed of stucco decorations, exemplify how vulnerable these buildings were in terms of resistance to climatic conditions. Among other disadvantages associated with the realisation of the ‘conqueror style’ in the tropics was the need to import building materials, or whole sections of buildings, from the métropole, as well as the cost of those imports. Indeed, previous experience with these imported building materials and styles had already demonstrated the vulnerability of such structures in terms of climatic resistance and adaptation to the tropical environment. The first chapel to be built on Dakar’s Plateau, for example, was ruined by termites, which undermined its foundations. When a second chapel was created in 1878, contemporaries refused to increase the size of the openings, which were better suited to northern France, despite the heat. ‘This chapel [ 138 ]

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Figure 4.4  Senegal’s Presidential Palace in Dakar, today.

will constitute a real marvel’, it was pronounced immediately after the allocation of sufficient funds for this purpose.35 But after the chapel’s campanile had twice collapsed because of cracks created by the humid climate, a 1905 municipal decree finally ordered that the building be demolished.36 The contemporary situation in the neighbouring British territories in West Africa shows, time and again, how practical considerations were outweighed by a desire to impress. The first British Consulate building in Lagos Island, for instance, was made of prefabricated corrugated iron, which was so unfit for purpose that the British governor of 1872 preferred to live on his yacht. The building was so hot, he said, that its inmates would spend sleepless nights wandering with mattress and pillow about the cast-iron verandahs, seeking a shaft of air.37 The Chambre de Commerce, which was built in 1910 and still faces place Prôtet, asserted the economic importance of Dakar over its neighbours among the AOF colonies. It combined stylistic representations of the French commercial houses that influenced colonial authorities –particularly those in Marseille and Bordeaux. The façade of this two-storey structure is regular and symmetric, with colonnades, balustrades, amphorae and Ionic capitals. The official badge of the Chamber of Commerce, encircled by garlands, can be seen on the [ 139 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.5  Dakar’s Chamber of Commerce (built 1910), today.

projecting part of the façade, emphasised by two pairs of double columns with Corinthian capitals (Figure 4.5).38 The Palais de Justice was built in the same decade and is well preserved to this day (Figure  4.6). Situated on place de l’Indépendance (formerly place Prôtet), its neo-classical façade is still dominant, with an entrance made of a gable supported by two pilasters. The façade is symmetrically divided into two parts by its entrance, accompanied by a play of colours that suggests a slight difference between one wing and the other: the left wing’s colonnade is composed of blind arches, while the right wing’s is supported by iron columns. The third storey of this building is the lowest, slightly hidden from view. Today, the building serves as Senegal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The current court of justice was inaugurated in 1959, inspired by international and art deco styles. It is situated on the southernmost point of the Plateau, on the site where one of the first colonial fortresses was erected. Located near the port to the north of place de l’Indépendance, the Hôtel de Ville (town hall, built in 1914)  constitutes an almost exact replica of such contemporary buildings in France, including its façade and the design of the accompanying garden (Figure  4.7). Apart from the classical motifs that surround the clock on the roof and that are prominent in its front arcade, this structure somewhat resembles – in [ 140 ]

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Figure 4.6  A present-day photo of Dakar’s Court of Justice in the 1910s, now Senegal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Figure 4.7  Dakar’s town hall (built 1914), today.

[ 141 ]

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French colonial Dakar

its massiveness, roof tiles and ground-floor style – the military caserns of the city centre. The assimilative process fostered cultural dispossession of the colonised groups  – what directly affected the colonial public sphere. Aside from the political and economic dispossession that characterised the colonial period, cultural dispossession was also expressed in the public monuments erected by the colonial authorities in Dakar and in other cities of the AOF. In addition to the contemporary use of neo-classicism in this way, the ‘conqueror style’ appeared in these monuments, reflecting an exclusive official commemoration. The symbolic meaning of these public monuments, similarly to Dakar’s colonial toponymy, strengthened the cultural hegemony of the French regime and its invented traditions. These traditions advanced – both conceptually and physically  – the dualistic structure inherent in the colonial situation. Criticising this spatial and mental dualistic configuration of empire, Frantz Fanon writes: ‘a world divided into compartments, a motionless, Manicheistic world, a world of statues: the statue of the general who carried out the conquest, the statue of the engineer who built the bridge; a world which is sure of itself, which crushes with its stones the backs flayed by whips: this is the colonial world’.39 In parallel to the placing of these statues on the ground, a considerable number of administrative documents are preoccupied with the appointment of sculptors, the costs of materials and erection, the appropriate commemorating script, and their placement and displacement in view of urban developments. As well as ‘reading’ the ‘physical documents’ of colonisation  – i.e. walking among the streets and buildings of Dakar and other neighbouring AOF capital cities – reading the actual written documents is quite astounding. It is astounding because the sight of public monuments, their mediums and symbolism, arouse questions as to their relevance for the urban majority, the African public. It is impossible today to read some of the wording that accompanied the erection of these statues without irony. For instance, the correspondence between one of the district governors in Ivory Coast with the inspector general of public works there in the 1930: ‘I have the honour to inform you that a monument should be erected in Abidjan to commemorate one of our greatest African pioneers [i.e. a French colonialist]:  Governor General Binger.’40 And it is impossible not to wonder what the thoughts of the African residents of French Sudan were, passing the road junction and the French military post of Tabankort, and seeing there the 1934 monument to the French geologist René Chudeau, ‘who did a great deal for the geological study of Africa, and most of whose materials are preserved in the museum [i.e. the National Museum of Natural History, France]’.41 [ 142 ]

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It seems that the Federation’s Government assigned a considerable importance to these statues, which contributed towards the creation of a regional memory and an identity for the European expatriate community, and towards fixing this memory and identity as opposed to that of the ‘Others’. At the inauguration ceremony of the monument for the commemoration of Governor General Noël Ballay in Conakry in 1908, all the city’s European community were present, together with several curious Africans; the minister of the colonies himself, arriving specially from Paris with his secretary general; the governor general of the AOF, arriving specially from Dakar; and Conakry’s mayor.42 It seems that in spite of the economic restraints that characterised the French colonial regime in West Africa – which necessitated a relative modesty in the materials selected and their quality  – the colonial authorities gave much attention to this issue. It commissioned, for instance, artists from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris for the monuments’ designs. Was the purpose of the public monuments to constitute a part of the same model-space that at least in colonial theory should have been imitated by the Africans? Were these monuments targeted at the colonised population at all, including the tiny minority of évolués? Were they intended to impress the metropolitan audience, including those who resisted the colonial endeavour, in their effort to duplicate ‘civilised’ spatial configurations known from ‘home’ into foreign and ‘savage’ territories? Or maybe these monuments were designed to give the expatriates a more crystallised sense of identity, effectively legitimating their overseas presence and pioneering role? Edmond Fortier and some other French colonial photographers documented these public monuments, among many other scenes, well. This documentation was in the form of series of thousands of postcards that were bought by colonial functionaries and merchants to be sent back home for their friends and relatives. On one of these postcards, sent by a French serviceman to his spouse in France, the photograph depicted a street in Dakar. Right over the photo the serviceman added an arrow and wrote below: ‘I live here!’. Indeed, the very visual documentation of the urban public space and its identification as ‘European’ provided mental security for these expatriates – a population that, in West Africa, was essentially temporary and mobile. In the interwar period, when the empire seemed stable and peaceful, Dakar and its other AOF counterparts experienced a renaissance in public monuments. Some almost random examples from Dakar are the statue in memory of the Italian victims of the First World War in Bel Air cemetery (1934), and that in memory of the Red Cross nurse Thérèse Nars on the Plateau (1938) (Figure 4.8) – both are still in their original locations.43 The monument in memory of the Tirailleurs [ 143 ]

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Figure 4.8  Monument Thérèse Nars on Dakar’s Plateau, today.

Sénégalais (‘Demba et Dupont’), originally inaugurated on the Plateau’s rond-point de l’Etoile (today place Soweto) in 1923, is now situated near the port. The latter could be regarded as an almost empty gesture;44 as was the case of the monuments to Faidherbe and Ponty (both 1921). While these were removed from the square in front of the Palais du Gouverneur Général in the post-colonial period, Faidherbe’s monument in the central square of Saint-Louis is still in place.45 The last monument to be mentioned here is that of Van Vollenhoven, inaugurated in the triangular square in front of the Palais du Gouverneur Général in 1921 (Figure 4.9).46 Van Vollenhoven served as the AOF’s governor general for only two years (1917–18), before his death in Europe in one of the last battles of the First World War, but was renowned for his pro-African policy. While his bronze bust was [ 144 ]

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Figure 4.9  Monument to Van Vollenhoven in Dakar (erected 1921), today.

removed from the niche of the monument, the marble frame is still in place, exemplary in its ‘conqueror style’ neo-classicism. Visual motifs from Antiquity are glaring, such as the lion’s head in its upper part, lion’s claws in its lower part and the inserted marble relief at the front.

Marché Kermel: finding an appropriate style? In their quest for appropriate visual constructs to be applied in the West African environment, several colonialists, however, criticised the export of almost ‘identical’ metropolitan models into the overseas territories, and wished to produce a unique colonial architecture. Certain stylistic features in vernacular architecture were considered by some colonial urbanists as a worthy source of inspiration. The [ 145 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.10  French postcard from the 1940s showing neo-Moorish colonial architecture in Algiers: the main post office, 1910.

incorporation of vernacular decorative elements into colonial architecture was first developed by the French in North Africa. In the colonial mind, this area demonstrated a certain degree of civilisation, and its occupation was accompanied by considerable anthropological and scientific interest – though somewhat orientalised – regarding the cultural aspects of the indigenous groups. The architectural outcome, referred to as ‘neo-Moorish’ or arabisance style, was an invented colonial tradition. It suggested a decorative synthesis between two aesthetic traditions: that of the indigenous, now colonised, societies, and that of metropolitan modernism, which already included historicist tendencies (Figure 4.10).47 While this trend reflected a shift towards a softer colonial approach, there is a certain irony, however, in the term ‘neo-Moorish’, which implies two layers of invented tradition. That is, aside from the ‘neo-’ itself, the somewhat orientalist appellation ‘Moor’ had long been used in Europe to refer to Muslims, from Mauritania to Spain. It included a variety of ethnic and other groups such as Arabs, Berbers, Iberians, Wolof and Mandingue – for this appellation had also been invented. But in sub-Saharan Africa the historicist (or neo-regional) question remained open for a while, as administrators seemed to struggle to find, amongst the vernacular mud (also called adobe or banco) and straw [ 146 ]

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Figure 4.11  Postcard showing marché Kermel in Dakar in the 1910s.

structures, appropriate models of inspiration. The round straw huts, of a relatively small size and height, were perceived as being identical to each other, temporary in nature and of unsophisticated technique. These features were interpreted as signs testifying to the primitive character of the African population.48 Having failed in finding appropriate, appealing models in the region, the administrators turned to their earlier North African experience, and imported the neo-Moorish style of colonial public building to sub-Saharan Africa. The presence of the Islamic religion on both sides of the Sahara served as a reasonable basis for this apparent stylistic solution. Marché Kermel reflects this North African neo-regional stylistic trend, combined with a prefabricated foundation  – a cast-iron technique for commercial manufacture that reached its zenith in Europe and beyond around the mid-nineteenth century (Figure 4.11). Kermel’s architectural design, winner of a competition that closed on 31 October 1907, was in line with the form of the square and represented a unique edifice in Dakar, dissimilar to any other existing structure. Work on it started in April 1908 and was completed by 1910.49 It included a gallery encircling the main body of the building, prefabricated metal elements that were cast in France and constituted the structure’s frame, and imported decorative friezes. In terms of building and general size, Kermel evokes qualities similar to the great metal markets that were erected in France itself and in other European countries in the late [ 147 ]

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French colonial Dakar

nineteenth century.50 Pioneered by Britain, the European tradition of covered prefabricated markets  – and indeed train stations, the colonial cottage or ‘bungalow’, and other public buildings – spread quickly through the western and colonial world.51 It dominated the contemporary urban scene from San Francisco to Johannesburg and from colonial Lagos to colonial Dakar, and was popular even 100 years later. In the late 1940s, for instance, French manufacturers still provided a catalogue of portable buildings, including covered markets very similar to Kermel’s, for use in mainland France and for shipment overseas; orders from Senegal were taken.52 One’s first impression of the structure, however, is of the three great portals, each of which is an entrance to the market, endowing it with an ‘exotic’ and oriental look that was seemingly designed more for a European eye than for the Senegalese. The three portals, or gateways, are not visible together and therefore do not give the market a massive or ‘heavy’ character. They are designed in the form of a horseshoe arch, which evokes an immediate association with the Arab-Muslim world. This association is reinforced by the alternation of the then white (today yellow) and red brick colours in the portals’ walls. While the horseshoe-arch shape and the brick colour are elements prevalent in medieval religious architecture in North Africa, Kermel’s arches are not part of any sacred architecture, but rather of a French colonial style subjected to the aesthetic vocabulary of the then fashionable art deco (Figure 4.12). The interest of the colonial administration in market architecture is evident in the original urban location reserved for Kermel, a central commercial place in the city; in the market’s structural elements, which conform to the prefabrication tradition of that time; and in its architectural pretensions in terms of ideology. The chief economic function is still very strong in African countries, where urban markets are important for all the inhabitants and occupy an especially central location. While in the colonial period most of the official public buildings were designated for the expatriates and were generally erected in their reserved quarters, Kermel was meant to be used by the entire urban population. It was therefore located near the main points of communication:  the seaport and the central train station. Its commercial function and location contributed to its popularity in the city, though by post-colonial times Sandaga’s supremacy gradually increased at Kermel’s expense, with the latter subsequently serving as a food-and-artefacts market, mostly for the Senegalese bourgeoisie, foreign residents and tourists. Moreover, Kermel plays a key role in both today’s popular and State symbolism. It is the site of one of the earliest anti-colonial [ 148 ]

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Figure 4.12  Marché Kermel today, with one of its three entrance portals.

events of urban resistance ever documented in French West Africa, when, in 1914, an economic boycott against the expatriate residents was proclaimed by the market’s African vendors (then mostly Lebu and Wolof).53 Their refusal to sell foodstuffs to Europeans or to their domestic servants came in reaction to the colonial Government’s decision to oblige Dakar’s population to build permanent housing within the city centre. In reaction to the outbreak of a bubonic plague epidemic that year, the owners of ‘sub-standard’ dwellings were designated for displacement to another quarter, albeit with limited success.54 In post-colonial times Kermel, as a centre of economic [ 149 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.13  Kermel’s ruins following the 1993 fire, Le Franc, 1994.

commerce in the city, became a symbol of the global economy and the marginalisation of West Africa and its currency, the CFA franc, within it. Such bitter popular emotions were crystallised, for instance, in the 1995 film Le Franc by the Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, which represents abstract economic concepts via everyday human dramas. The film’s hero, a penniless musician living in a shanty town, marches through a Dakar of both dilapidated houses and prestigious buildings after winning the national lottery. With the lottery representing survival, the global economy appears as a game of chance for the developing countries – a whimsical commentary on the French Government’s 50 per cent devaluation of the CFA in 1994. One of the scenes dwells at length on the ruined, burnt-out marché Kermel just after the 1993 conflagration, with the hero standing at the centre of this concentric space, a symbol of the almost impossible situation, and outstanding visual testimony to Kermel’s ruinous state (Figure 4.13).55 As to State symbolism, the unique aesthetic and urban functions of Kermel explain its value in terms of historical heritage more than does its relative age – slightly more than 100 years. Upon its destruction, the entire Senegalese press deplored the event while not ignoring the colonial character of the structure – a ‘heritage’ that could be challenged in some other formerly colonised places, especially where the colonial experience was much more rigid, such as in the Belgian Congo, Southern Rhodesia or Algeria. Kermel’s subsequent reconstruction resulted in an almost complete replica of the previous structure, which also testifies to the distance felt by some of the present-day [ 150 ]

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Senegalese agencies who deal with the technical and political process of the preservation of historical monuments from the colonial period. This period and its physical souvenirs are not necessarily synonymous in their eyes with cultural and economic oppression (Figure 4.12). Moreover, during the next decade it is worth noting that Kermel’s architectural model was the only one exhibited in the office of the Dakar Architecture and Historical Monuments Bureau. The designation of this market as a historical monument by the State of Senegal confirms its place in the historical memory of the nation in general, and in the history of its capital city in particular.

The style of the protector: an architectural solution? Marché Kermel represents a short period of stylistic hesitation on the part of the French colonial authorities through their attempt to assign North Africa vernacular aesthetics to sub-Saharan Africa on the basis of the spread of Islam in both areas. Marché Sandaga, as we shall see, represents a seemingly closer stylistic solution to the same problem, though no less invented, and with its own set of problems. Situated at the meeting point between the old colonial residential and commercial parts of Dakar and the indigenous residential quarters, Sandaga’s location was also made to adjoin Cap Vert’s caravan route from the hinterland. Similarly to the square of Kermel, that of Sandaga is already shown, under this name, in the first master plan of the city of 1862 (Figure 2.16). Its name derives from ‘Santiaba’, one of the pre-colonial local Lebu villages that were originally located there on the dunes.56 While marché Kermel constituted Dakar’s main market until the 1920s, its prominence was replaced by that of marché Sandaga a decade later, upon the establishment of its new structure in August 1934 (Figure  4.14).57 Plans for building the Sandaga market were made by Dakar’s municipal authorities as early as the mid-1920s.58 Marché Kermel is unique, as it constitutes the only neo-Moorish building in the city. The uniqueness of the new marché Sandaga, on the other hand, stems from its embodiment of a different stylistic solution to the very same political-cum-architectural problem of the French colonial regime. Marché Sandaga, similarly to Kermel, also combines art deco motifs with neo-regional features of invented colonial tradition based on local styles, but this time the indigenous styles were borrowed not from North Africa but rather from sub-Saharan Africa  – that is, the Sahel and the Sudan. The vernacular architecture found within the AOF region was considered by many administrators until the early twentieth century to [ 151 ]

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Figure 4.14  A 1930s postcard of marché Sandaga in Dakar.

constitute merely temporary structures. The seeming lack of monumentality in the pre-colonial architecture of Senegal was a source of disappointment for the administrators when set against the glorious mosques and temples of North Africa (and Indo-China). The latter edifices testified to the might of the conquered empires, and made the colonial regime in comparison appear all the more grand and heroic from a metropolitan viewpoint. Colonel Weithas, for instance, spoke at the 1931 congress on colonial urbanism, held in France, of the ‘absence of indigenous types of architecture’ amongst the natives of sub-Saharan Africa, ‘from the aesthetical point of view’.59 It was also stated at the same congress that ‘monuments for preservation do not exist. The old native towns do not present any interest. It would thus be difficult to preserve them, because they are not built of permanent materials. Local architecture is non-existent.’60 At the same time, the ‘discovery’ of the medieval mosques of the Niger delta in western Sudan and the mud houses of the rich merchants of the old indigenous cities of Djenné, Bamako and Timbuktu fascinated other colonial administrators. They had finally found local monuments that were worthy of imitation (see, for instance, Figures 2.7, 2.8). These findings coincided with the understanding that in place of the proclaimed efforts to turn the ‘natives’ into ‘whites’ under the influence of the supposedly superior European civilisation and urban vision, a new form of cooperation between the coloniser and the colonised was essential. Nevertheless, this kind of cooperation was no [ 152 ]

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less paternalistic than the one it was intended to replace, since its approach to the difference among human races was based on contemporary racial theories. The resulting colonial doctrine, however, was called association, and was designed to replace assimilation, increasingly criticised at home on moral and practical grounds. Calling for tolerance and conservation of local cultures, the association policy drew its inspiration from Dutch as well as British thinking about Indirect Rule – ruling with minimal interference in local affairs for maximum colonial economic prosperity. This is in spite of the fact that colonialism was never perceived as a purely economic issue and was closely related to national pride, especially in the case of France. Moreover, it is acknowledged in the literature that in the French case there was always an assimilationist thread within association, and that the new doctrine was never precisely defined.61 This approach, developed in Dakar following the First World War, rested on two premises: that in order to preserve French authority the previously denounced, old ‘traditional’ elite should be incorporated in governance in some form; and that this incorporation, under proper surveillance, was in the best interests of the colonised population as well.62 From an architectural perspective, it was also believed that this approach, combined with the provision of social facilities such as schools and hospitals, would ‘pacify’ the colonised more effectively than military power. As the French architect Joseph Marrast asserted upon the completion of his Moroccan-inspired Casablanca Courthouse in 1920, such edifices would win the natives’ heart and sympathy.63 In a nutshell, French policy designers understood that in order to be both coherent and ideologically tolerant, new formal models needed to embrace aspects of local societies and cultures. The immediate result of this understanding in sub-Saharan Africa was the invention of the neo-Sudanese style, which drew its inspiration from the African dynasties of the Islamic empires of the Sahel and the western Sudan regions. Jean Boulègue, for instance, enumerated the five medieval mud mosques in northern Senegal and their formalistic features, from which, among other western Sudanese buildings, the AOF’s colonial authorities probably drew their inspiration.64 Indeed, some of the indigenous sources of inspiration for the neo-Sudanese style and realisations of this style are found in today’s Mali (then French Sudan). Among these examples are the cases of the colonial ‘rehabilitation’ of Djenné’s great mosque (1900s), the structures of the Office du Niger in Ségou and the mosque in Mopti (1930s). Boulègue’s documentation is, however, outstanding in showing this rare indigenous building tradition within the borders of Senegal. His documentation also indirectly reveals the paradox in the application of neo-Sudanese architecture in [ 153 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Dakar – a colonial city that was established on sand dunes, where mud construction could never be carried out and where its closest examples were actually situated a few hundred miles away, in Fouta Toro in inland, northern Senegal, close to the Malian border! The ‘neo-Sudanese’ style, which presented France as a tolerant protector of the Africans, was the dominant idiom for colonial public buildings in the interwar period, and especially by the 1930s. Its quintessential expression was found in the model space of Dakar – as the case of marché Sandaga shows  – though it could also be seen in other AOF local capitals. Among the regional examples are the railway stations in Bobo-Dioulasso and Ouagadougou in Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), and the main market of Bamako, Mali’s capital (Figure 4.15). This style can be considered the sub-Saharan version of its North African neo-Moorish counterpart, and for this reason can be called the ‘protector style’ (‘style du protecteur’) as well.65 Among the other names for the neo-Sudanese style appearing in the literature one can find ‘style AOF’ and ‘Nigerian style,’ though ‘neo-Sudanese’ is the most dominant of the three. The ‘Nigerian’ appellation can be explained by the fact that both northern Nigeria and Niger are part of the Sahel region and share, inter alia, a strong Islamic orientation and common themes in terms of vernacular architecture and building materials. The Gidan Makama Museum in Kano, Nigeria exemplifies this. Originally built in the fifteenth century as a temporary palace for Kano’s aristocracy, it has now been renovated in concrete in the aesthetic spirit of this palace. Adapted for the museum’s needs by the addition of several galleries, it is recognised as a National Monument by Nigeria’s Government (Figure 4.16). In examining the consolidation of the neo-Sudanese style one finds an elaborated Hobsbawmian process of ‘invented tradition’ on the part of the colonial authorities. It is possible to say that this invented tradition subjected West Africa to a Euro-centric process comparable to that which Edward Said has delineated for the Orient. According to Said, the Orient was not conceived in its true reality but was ‘orientalised’ by the West, the latter serving as observer, judge and jury of every aspect of ‘oriental’ behaviour.66 It is therefore ironic that, more than the West African terrain, what contributed most to the creation and crystallisation of the neo-Sudanese style were the Universal Exhibitions and Colonial Exhibitions held in Europe, especially in France itself. Ten such exhibitions were held between 1855 and 1937 in France, with financial support from the Government. Within the framework of this institutionalised system of visual imagery, Africa was represented in a picturesque manner that included an almost zoological perception of the ‘natives’ of ‘African France.’67 [ 154 ]

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Figure 4.15  Architectural detail of Bamako’s main market, built in the neo-Sudanese style, the 1920s.

Another related issue, yet to be investigated, is the presence of dozens, if not hundreds, of West African residents at these various exhibitions in France and in the West in general until the interwar period. According to archival sources, from 1900 to 1906 alone, thirty-five Africans, mostly jewellery makers from the Upper Senegal and Niger, were brought to Marseille’s colonial exhibition; thirty men and children from Senegal were brought to the ‘industrial exhibition’ in Reims; fifty Africans were brought to the ‘international exhibition’ in Lille; sixty-five French African subjects were brought to create an ‘African [ 155 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.16  Section of Gidan Makama Museum in Kano, Nigeria, today.

village’ in Buffalo, New York, and fourteen for a similar exhibition in Chicago; and two aristocratic families from the Macina kingdom in the Middle Niger were brought to the colonial exhibition in Paris. What were the thoughts of these active African participants in such exhibitions? In all of these cases it was argued that their participation had been approved in order to create an ‘exotic atmosphere’ through the built form of the relevant pavilions, and there was a fear that ‘their contact with civilisation, from a moral point of view, had constituted a most malign influence over them’.68 The ‘exotic’ visual imagery, however, was also tightly connected to the aforementioned ‘discovery’ of the Sahelian mud architecture, which stirred the French imagination and yielded a fundamental aesthetic appreciation and admiration  – a cultural phenomenon thoroughly studied by the art historian Labelle Prussin.69 Within a short time, however, the imagery of the ‘western Sudanese’ building style froze in France and became fossilised. It also became for the West a symbol of ‘traditional’ architecture in the AOF, a symbol for every West African pavilion in every colonial exhibition, whether French, British, Belgian or German.70 Though one of the aims of these exhibitions was to raise French public awareness of the colonies overseas, the attitude of the French public to the colonial empire was, even in the golden age of colonial expansion, as Raymond Betts points out, apathetic at [ 156 ]

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best, antipathetic at worst.71 The AOF’s regional architectural style was thus developed at first in Europe and only then found its way back to the AOF. The borrowing of exotic, local architectural languages was applied using an external logic and was subjected to western aesthetic principles, such as symmetry. Moreover, the European reinforced concrete that was normally used in the construction of neo-Sudanese buildings was finished in an ochre colour to evoke an association with the original earth- and mud-colours of the savannah. Indeed, while the actual repertoire of the neo-Sudanese buildings was extremely limited, its geographic frontiers and the meanings they reproduced could be somewhat surprising. The historian Gregory Mann uncovered stylistic similarities between the neo-Sudanese pavilions that were erected in the colonial exhibitions and monuments that were erected in several French towns that experienced long friction with West Africans, especially with soldiers during the two world wars. In the village of Chazelles-sur-Lyon, for example, a tata was erected in the cemetery for African soldiers who were killed there by the Germans in June 1940. In the coastal town of Fréjus a small neo-Sudanese mosque was built, designated to serve the religious needs of the contemporary tirailleurs. In Fréjus in the south of France, camps for African and Asian soldiers who suffered from the European cold were set up. The mosque was built in 1928 following complaints by African soldiers that a pagoda had already been erected for their Asian comrades, and a church for those from Madagascar.72 Further evidence testifying that the neo-Sudanese style became naturalised in the French colonial imagery in both France and its colonies, and perceived as an ‘authentic’ African style and the protector style par excellence, was not located in France of West Africa, but in Indo-China! During the Indo-China War (1946–54) confidential correspondence took place between the supreme commander of the French Army in Saigon, the high commissioner of the republic, the military cabinet in Paris and the governor general of the AOF in Dakar. The subject of this correspondence was a programme to establish an ‘African House’ (maison africaine) in Saigon and in the port city of Haiphong for West African soldiers who fought for France in Indo-China. Each building was designed to hold 150 soldiers, offering them rooms for sleeping, eating, reading and meeting, and sanitary facilities, as well as a small mosque for prayer.73 It had been agreed that ‘its architectural appearance and internal arrangements [of the “African House”] is inspired by neo-Sudanese art in order to create the desired African atmosphere’.74 What resulted was a neo-Sudanese creation, as the style that represented West Africa in the eyes of the colonisers and that was supposed to create the appropriate environment in which the ‘black soldiers’ would feel at home. [ 157 ]

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French colonial Dakar

The subject is not only terminology from the protector’s language. The choice to spread the invented neo-Sudanese into Indo-China, two decades since its use had diminished in West Africa itself, was, as we shall see, amazing. Moreover, according to the correspondence, the ‘two plans of the “House” [in Saigon and Haiphong] were designed in a purely African style’.75 At this point we can ask, similarly to the features of the French West African pavilions at the colonial exhibitions, is it possible to place together in one master style the multiplicity of architectures of the western Sudan, including its varied populations? And, is it possible to consider the invented result a ‘pure’ object?

A glimpse of marché Sandaga and neo-Sudanese Dakar In fact, there are only few neo-Sudanese buildings that actually exist in the AOF, including Dakar. They were all erected as colonial public buildings in the interwar period, particularly in Dakar’s model-space as a regional capital. While marché Sandaga constitutes one of them, as we shall see below, they also include, in Dakar, the Polyclinique of the Médina, the old Maternité at the Dantec Hospital, Malik Sy School, the Cathedral and the IFAN Museum.76 The Polyclinique (Health Centre) is also known as the Institut d’Hygiène Social, the Centre de Santé or the Maternité. Built in 1932, it is situated in avenue Blaise Diagne, which connects the Médina (the quarter originally established for the Africans by the colonial authorities) to the city centre. The structure is symmetrical, with a monumental entrance reminiscent of the tendency to stress the entrance in indigenous mosques. Other borrowings from this mud architecture were the zigzag pattern and the tapering engaged columns. The projecting waterspouts on top of this building were intended to echo the timber beams that project from the mud walls, originally intended to strengthen them after the wet season. The reinforced concrete was given an ochre colour, for the reason already mentioned (Figure 4.17). The old Maternité – the building is now unused – resides within the complex of the Dantec Hospital on the southern Plateau (Figure 4.18). Built in the early 1930s, the structure is now in a dilapidated state, hidden from the main road by considerable vegetation. With its two storeys and architectural style it greatly resembles the Polyclinique, though the general impression is less massive because of the character of its blind, thin columns that stretch well above the roof. The blind columns were painted in red-loam colour against the ochre background of the rest of the building, a tonality play that is associated again with the ground colours of the region. The entrance is slightly symmetrically emphasised by the staircase, and above the door a little granite [ 158 ]

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Figure 4.17  The façade of the Polyclinique of the Médina, Dakar (built 1932), today.

statue of a mother breastfeeding her child is noticeable. Interestingly, this generic scene, central in the aesthetic tradition of the European Christian civilisation, crowns the entrance to this pseudo-Islamic building. Here as well, two rows of zigzag patterns run along the lower part of the building, together with a row of projecting waterspouts along its upper panel. Ecole Malik Sy was built in the early 1930s in the Médina, not far from the Polyclinique. Established by the colonial authorities in honour of this Senegalese cooperative Tijani-Sufi leader, the building served as a secular primary school. While the monumental entrance with its elongated columns recalls both Antiquity and the international style in its geometric simplicity and alignment of elements, the other three sides are composed of arcades headed by ‘Sahelian’ spouts (Figure 4.19). The building was coloured in a brown-red reminiscent of the indigenous vernacular. Another example is the Cathédrale du Souvenir Africain, an edifice initiated in 1936, though already conceived in 1913. It was established at a central point in the heart of the colonial city, at the boulevard de la République, and was considered ‘Sudano-Byzantine’ in style. Above the main part of the edifice a great dome was set, recalling Byzantine architecture. Yet the two campaniles, the battered walls, the ochre [ 159 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 4.18  The old neo-Sudanese building of Dakar’s Maternité, Dantec Hospital in the 1930s.

colouring and the projecting waterspouts are suggestive of western Sudanese mosques (Figure  4.20). To this stylistic syncretism were added, in the inner space of the cathedral, decorations on red sandstone from French Sudan, a massive timber from Gabon, marble from Tunis and Morocco, and granite from Brittany.77 Several scholars who have commented on the overall impression of the building see in it a striking lightheartedness78 and a surprising hybridity.79 One of them even adds an exclamation mark after the stylistic characterisation as Sudano-Byzantine.80 Indeed, the actual and symbolic presence of such [ 160 ]

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Figure 4.19  Section of Malik Sy School, Dakar in the 1930s.

Figure 4.20  Dakar Cathedral (designed 1913, built 1936), today.

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Figure 4.21  IFAN Museum, Dakar (built 1938), today.

an imposing structure in a central place in the city centre (on one of its most prominent star-like crossroads, just in front the Presidential Palace) is intriguing, especially in the light of the fact that more than 95 per cent of the indigenous inhabitants in this country are Muslims. Presenting art from all over West Africa in an ethnographic context, the IFAN Museum for African Art served from 1938 to 1957 as the headquarters of IFAN (Institut Français d’Afrique Noire, renamed in the post-colonial period as the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire).81 It was originally established as the residence of Dakar’s French administrator, situated on the central place Soweto on the Plateau, formerly rond-point de l’Etoile (Figure 4.21). This two-storey building is situated [ 162 ]

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Figure 4.22  Marché Sandaga (built 1934), today.

at the centre of a garden planted with cocoa, baobab and tamarind trees. The symmetry is noticeable, with a structural emphasis on the main entrance, further highlighted by an octagonal crown and a dome. The art deco inspiration is also noticeable, with an eclectic touch combining selected motifs from vernacular traditions such as the zigzag pattern, the blind columns and the waterspouts. The new marché Sandaga should be considered an integral part of this series of buildings. It was inaugurated in 1934 and exemplifies the contemporary gradual acceptance of neo-Sudanese elements. Marché Sandaga constitutes a symmetrical structure with monumental façade, a zigzag pattern and sun screens incorporated as part of the building in art deco style. Here as well, the reinforced concrete was given an ochre colour, and the tapering pseudo-columns were borrowed from the vernacular mud architecture. The projecting waterspouts on top of the building were intended to echo the timber beams that projected from the mud walls, originally designed to strengthen them after the wet season (Figure 4.22). A remarkable ‘discovery’ in the architectural history of Sandaga is that not only had the neo-Sudanese style found its way from metropolitan Europe back to the AOF, but that so, literally, had the building itself! The metal framework of Sandaga’s structure underwent a secondary use in that it was lifted from the AOF’s pavilion at the Marseille colonial exhibition in 1922. This was in spite of the [ 163 ]

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French colonial Dakar

exceptionally utilitarian approach of the colonial mind that this kind of import implies, as the head of Dakar’s district was quite annoyed at the expense of shipping the 100-ton Sandaga-to-be metal skeleton over the Atlantic.82 Moreover, it is clearly apparent from the archival file regarding the construction of this market in Dakar that the architectural model in Marseille constituted a direct source of influence for Sandaga’s aesthetics, even though several changes were introduced to fit it into a market.83 The neo-Sudanese style was created by a few colonial administrators  – its main architect, a Tangier-based Frenchman invited by the AOF Government, was François Cornilleau. The style remained an almost anecdotal, embryonic and hesitant enterprise, sometimes vague in terms of stylistic coherence. It was only applied to public buildings, and it exercised little influence outside the AOF in general and Dakar in particular. As Albert Memmi reflects concerning its equivalent North African neo-regional realisations, ‘occasionally, the colonizer starts a neo-Eastern style … but it is only exoticism (like old guns and antique chests) and not a renaissance, the colonized himself only avoids his own past’.84 In many respects the interwar period was a period when modernity, modernism (referring to its historicist facet) and the colonial endeavour intersected to expose the Euro-centric essence of colonialism as a hegemonic project. Colonial, main urban markets such as marché Sandaga  – and a few other public buildings  – were indeed erected for the benefit of the indigenous population and sometimes were inspired by their local visual aesthetics. Yet these were meagre, tending to be situated in the main places of colonisation, and to justify colonial rule by creating an image of promoting tolerance. On the major crossroads of today’s avenue Lamine Guèye and avenue George Pompidou, marché Sandaga and its immediate environs are among the most vivid and bustling places in Dakar, hosting a large, informal Senegalese sector. From foodstuffs, footwear and fabrics to a great variety of electronic appliances, its present-day cosmopolitan environment includes a considerable proportion of women vendors, Mourides, Lebanese, Senegalese and other Africans, Europeans, and North Africans. It is said that ‘all roads lead to Sandaga’. Moreover, we have noticed that some Senegalese mercantile businesses overseas in western post-colonial cities are named after Sandaga!85 Though Sandaga, similarly to marché Kermel, is considered a historical monument by the State of Senegal, it suffers from being particularly insalubrious and overpopulated, almost anarchic in impression. In comparison to Kermel, Sandaga is physically in a state of advanced deterioration, which endangers its occupants, and the market currently stands in the [ 164 ]

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midst of a poignant political dispute. The dispute concerns the rehabilitation of the structure, in which process it may be moved to another central site in Dakar.86 As, from time to time, and especially during election time, Sandaga and environs turn into a fierce arena of negotiations among the hundreds of vendors and the Government authorities regarding matters such as the stall phenomenon, taxes and related licenses – sometimes literally inflamed – violent resistance is expected if the authorities declare it is to be moved. The interest of the colonial State in market architecture is implied in the central place that was reserved for Kermel and Sandaga in terms of both physical location and stylistic imagery. The markets Kermel and Sandaga, similarly to colonial train stations – which were constructed on the basis of the same techniques of prefabrication as their counterparts in contemporary Europe  – merited much attention on the part of the colonisers. Beyond the functional aspects of these markets, the ideological pretentions of the policy designers of the French colonial regime are reflected in their architectural forms. In contrast to other official buildings that were mostly designated for Europeans and were generally confined to the reserved expatriate quarters, Kermel and Sandaga were erected near the main axis of commercial interchange, the maritime port and central train station, or close to the African quarters and inland routes, respectively. Their use, and the many who frequent them, may partially explain the popularity of these places and their post-colonial heritage value as historic monuments. At the same time, as public institutions in colonial times, colonial markets were confined to representing spaces of patronage, not so much directed towards the needs of the colonised populations or the amelioration of their living quality. These spaces were rather intended by the municipalities to control trading resources for the maintenance of supporting expatriate clientele.87 Aesthetically, Kermel and Sandaga are products of relatively little-known architectural styles in sub-Saharan Africa, with the first apparently the only neo-Moorish colonial building in the area, and the second one of the rare examples of the neo-Sudanese style. These markets’ architecture constitutes material evidence for the colonial quest after a formalistic language appropriate for the model-space of the AOF’s capital city. Motivated by ideological considerations, the very form of Kermel and Sandaga can be conceived as an exemplary case of a French colonial invented tradition – a tradition whose problems, ironies and paradoxes have been revisited in this chapter. The post-Second World War era was characterised by more extensive developments in urban planning and infrastructure for the colonial [ 165 ]

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French colonial Dakar

sub-Saharan dependencies, followed by changes in the architectural style. Historicist designs such as the neo-classical or the neo-Sudanese were deserted in favour of the international style in architecture, accompanied by skyscrapers, which were noticeable in the ports and capital cities along the West African coasts. Until recently, the mud architecture of western Sudan was considered not much more than a ‘shelter’.88 In the last decades, various surveys and theoretical and historical studies have shed some light on the Islamic architecture in sub-Saharan Africa and the western Sudanese vernacular traditions.89 These traditions were re-evaluated and investigated as to their relevance to present-day modes of construction, designs, applicability in terms of energy and economical savings, and adaptation to the local climate.90 Moreover, this ‘architecture without architects’ also became an object of Thoreau-like adornment of native ingenuity and its ‘magnificent mud’.91 Taking into account the rich building forms of the western Sudan, this chapter ends with the interwar period. This period could be considered a ‘golden age’ of metropolitan and colonial modernities – with the ‘and’ here designating differentiation rather than conjunction between both processes of modernity. As has been noted by several scholars in different contexts, the modernising role of colonialism – as an imaginative project with material consequences – was incarnated in a series of hegemonic projects. In claiming knowledge as a justification for continued imperial rule, colonial governments were also asserting that Africa’s forms (of knowledge) were mostly irrelevant.92 But the modernising idea did not have the effects its originators sought. The effect has been addressed by some of the colonised – Arab, Jewish, Indian and West Indian – who point, respectively, to its ambivalence,93 its cul-de-sac nature,94 the need to look for alternative models of thinking and actions,95 and the need to include extra-European narratives in it.96 These are Euro-centric because their engendered meaning – ‘characteristic of the present or recent times’, or being ‘up to date’ – is used, as Anthony King puts it, not only ‘in relation to the past of one’s own (always Western, Northern) society, but … in relation to the present of someone else’s (always Eastern, Southern) society’.97 The case of Dakar, however, exemplifies the gap between the pretences of the French colonial regime in West Africa, both the ideological and the architectural, and the reality. First, as in other places in the French colonial world, such as contemporary Guadeloupe,98 the radiation of the neo-classical imperial style from France to the AOF colonies reflected the assimilationist approach per se. Then, in the absence of pre-existing local models considered appropriate by the colonial authorities, indigenous traditions were invented. The [ 166 ]

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neo-Moorish style of North Africa was therefore no more artificial than its neo-Sudanese counterpart. Invented by a small colonialist community, the latter style remained a limited enterprise, in terms of physical location and scope, function, stylistic ambiguity, and symbolic implications. The logic behind the ‘protector style’ reflects the change in French colonial doctrine from assimilation to association by the early twentieth century. Visual culture, especially in the context of architecture and urbanism, was an intrinsic part of the French overseas policy. It embodied a sophisticated rhetoric of cooperation and conservation by which orientalism was not diminished, but further elaborated. Showing some tolerance towards vernacular traditions and the indigenous populations, this style incorporated their values into the colonial project symbolically, but not politically. Such freedom of real and imagined architectural expression was accelerated and empowered by, and particularly overt in, colonial situations. Moreover, it was in the French colonial experience that the colonies were regarded as laboratories or ‘experimental terrains’ (champs d’expérience) for planning and architecture.99 In other words, in the colonial situation and political system, especially before the Second World War, relative freedom was granted to the colonial authorities to carry out plans that might never have been allowed at that time at home. This approach was expressed, inter alia, in the 1935 declaration of Robert Delavignette, the headmaster of the Ecole Coloniale, that French Sudan should be used as a model for the reorganisation of cities in France itself;100 it was also expressed in the conceptualisation of Dakar as a model space at the regional level; and its architecture served as a ‘mirror’, or ‘facade’ for the success of the French imperial project on the Atlantic.101 In addition, these colonial aesthetic tendencies also contributed to the freezing of urban development initiatives by confining them to the level of the picturesque. These tendencies were apparent not only in the public buildings, but also in the residential sector. A letter from April 1931, sent by Verdier, the head of Dakar’s Public Works Department, to the AOF’s governor general, was preoccupied with the issue of the beautification (embellissement) of the city (read: the Plateau). It was proposed that this be achieved through, among other things, aestheticisation of the residences situated along the main roads of the city centre and the Plateau quarter. This endeavour focused on the decoration of the buildings’ façades, enriching the existing ‘limited’ repertoire that so far had been criticised for being too dull, rigid and overwhelmingly military-inspired. The more ‘artistic’ character now being sought was supported by appropriate legislation. In order to meet this essential need for beautification, it had been argued, a new [ 167 ]

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French colonial Dakar

professional architect-urbanist from the métropole should be retained by the colonial authorities, because the current architect-entrepreneurs had so far totally failed to achieve positive results. In addition, a special committee was appointed to investigate the reason for their failure and to question why their plans were devoid of any stylistic elegance. If additional economic expenditure were to be involved here, wrote Verdier, the end justified its imposition on those European and African houses whose façades were along the main roads.102 Indeed, most homes on the Plateau belonged to Europeans. Behind these formalistic colonial pretences, the living conditions of the Dakarois in the ‘real city’ beyond this quarter only deteriorated. Funds allocated to the improvement of the infrastructure of the indigenous residential quarters remained meagre until the late 1940s, including further limitations during the two World Wars and the economic crisis of the late 1920s. In many respects, under the pragmatic visual policies of the colonial authorities, as expressed in the built form, architectural styles were invented by a selective use of metropolitan or vernacular aesthetics for the realisation of political ends. Going beyond some binary research approaches that evolved from the Hobsbawmian thesis – that is, traditions-as-genuine versus traditions-as-constructed – this chapter has emphasised the contemporary and processual aspects in political constructs. Thus, our use of the term ‘invented tradition’ in this context has not been aimed to differentiate between the ‘true’ and the ‘false’, the ‘authentic’ and the ‘spurious’, in architectural elements. Rather, it has been useful here in showing that visual language constitutes testimony for operational processes, policies and politics throughout the ages. Connections among symbolic and aesthetic actions, colonial cultures and ideologies, agency and history, have been demonstrated as well. Representing a specific cultural and historical meaning, this visual language and symbolism also mediated among local, regional and transnational – both francophone-pan-African and European – frontiers.

Notes   1 Several parts of this chapter were published in co-authorship with Alain Sinou, out of which Sinou’s several paragraphs on marché Kermel are incorporated here with his (and the publisher’s) permission: Liora Bigon and Alain Sinou, ‘The quest for colonial style in French West Africa: Prefabricating Marché Kermel and Sandaga’, Urban History, 39:4 (2013), 709–25. See also Liora Bigon, Luce Beeckmans and Alain Sinou, ‘The invention of a tripartite architectural tradition: The case of Marché Kermel in Dakar, Senegal’, forthcoming in Architext, 2016.   2 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Another catalyst has been Benedict

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The quest for architectural style Anderson, Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991 [1983]). Publications are too numerous to be listed here; for some examples see below.   3 Terence Ranger, ‘The invention of tradition in colonial Africa’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 211–62. While Ranger is an Africanist, another contributor to this volume, Hugh Trevor-Roper (Professor of History at Oxford University), is famous for his Euro-centric statement that at least pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa had no history, putting the label ‘unhistoric’ on the whole of the African continent. See Finn Fuglestad, ‘The Trevor-Roper trap or the imperialism of history: An essay’, History in Africa, 19 (1992), 309–26 (p. 309).   4 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing traditions’, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, pp. 1–14 (p. 1).   5 Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, p. 1.   6 John Picton, ‘The Invention of Tradition by Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger: A  review’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 52:1 (1989), 201–2 (p. 201).   7 For Hobsbawm’s distinction between ‘custom’ and ‘tradition’ see Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, p. 2. For examples of this approach and (self-) criticism see Terence Ranger, ‘The invention of tradition revisited: The case of Africa’, in Terence Ranger and Olufemi Vaughan (eds), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth Century Africa (London:  Macmillan, 1993), pp.  62–111. Corinne Kratz, ‘ “We’ve always done it like this … except for a few details”: “Tradition” and “innovation” in Okiek ceremonies’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35 (1993), 30–65; Anthony Smith, ‘The nation:  Invented, imagined, reconstructed?’, Millennium, 20 (1991), 353–68.   8 See especially Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, ‘Tradition, genuine or spurious’, Journal of American Folklore, 97:385 (1984), 273–90 (p. 288). See also Charles Briggs, ‘The politics of discursive authority in research on the “invention of tradition” ’, Cultural Anthropology, 11:4 (1996), 435–69; Alan Hanson, ‘The making of the Maori:  Culture invention and its logic’, American Anthropologist, 91 (1989), 890–902; Jean Jackson, ‘Culture, genuine and spurious: The politics of Indianness in the Vaupés, Colombia’, American Ethnologist, 22 (1995), 3–27.   9 See also Byron King Plant, ‘Secret, powerful, and the stuff of legends: Revisiting theories of invented tradition’, Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 28:1 (2008), 175–94 (p. 179). 10 Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–2. 11 Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, p. 2 (my italics). 12 This sentence is inspired by Thomas Spear’s anthropological research, ‘Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa’, Journal of African History, 44 (2003), 3–27 (pp.  3–4). See also:  Johan Lagae, ‘From “patrimoine partagé” to “whose heritage?”: Critical reflections on colonial built heritage in the city of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo’, Afrika Focus, 21 (2008), 11–30. 13 Bert Ingelare, “Does the Truth Pass across the Fire without Burning?” Transitional Justice and Its Discontents in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, Discussion Paper 7 (Antwerpen:  Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, 2007), pp. 33–5; Amy Kaler, ‘ “Many divorces and many spinsters”: Marriage as an invented tradition in southern Malawi, 1946–99’, Journal of Family History, 26:4 (2001), 529–56; Ranger, ‘The invention of tradition’; Ranger, ‘The invention of tradition revisited’; Spear, ‘Neo-traditionalism’. 14 These are mainly preoccupied with the question of colonial pseudo-authenticity: Muriel Girard, ‘Invention de la tradition et authenticité sous le Protectorat au Maroc: L’action du Service des Arts indigènes et de son directeur Prosper Ricard’, Socio-anthropologie, 19 (2006), http://socio-anthropologie.revues.org/563 (accessed 1 October 2014); James Housefield, ‘Moroccan ceramics and the geography of invented traditions’, Geographical Review, 87:3 (1997), 401–7; Charlotte Jelidi, ‘Politique patrimoniale

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French colonial Dakar et production architectural dans les médinas marocaines sous le Protectorat français (1912–56)’, Le cartable de Clio, 9 (2009), 21–33 (esp. pp. 24–6). 15 François Béguin, Arabisances, décor architectural et trace urbain en Afrique du Nord, 1830–1950 (Paris: Dunod, 1983). 16 Gwendolyn Wright, The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), esp. p. 9. 17 Alain Sinou, ‘Le Marché Kermel: Un objet patrimonial singulier en Afrique noire’ – this six-page contribution is the most prominent within Chrescht Klein, Gabrielle Meschi and Mauro Petroni (eds), Le Marché Kermel (Rome: Edizioni Percaso, 1997), pp. 31–6. This publication celebrated Kermel’s 1994 reconstruction. 18 Thomas Shaw, Irony and Illusion in the Architecture of Colonial Dakar (Lewiston, NY:  Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), pp.  104–6. The book deals with the neo-Sudanese colonial architecture in Dakar and its origins (to be mentioned below). Its original contribution lies in the fourth chapter, in which the author analyses several neo-Sudanese structures in Dakar. Here Sandaga is mentioned in passing, but in a different way from previous relevant literature. 19 Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (hereafter ANOM), FM SG, SEN/ XII/12, Plan des alignements de la ville de Dakar, 1863 (1862). See also Jacques Charpy, La Fondation de Dakar (1845, 1857, 1869): Collection des documents (Paris: Larose, 1958), pp. 291–5. We only presume that the old caravan route implies that the site of Sandaga served as a pre-colonial marketplace within the Lebou territory. This invites further research. 20 ANOM, FM SG SEN/XII/13, Projet d’un marché à construire sur la Place Quernel à Dakar, 13 October 1865. 21 For more on the AOF and its organisational politics see: Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–45, trans. Till Gottheiner (New  York:  PICA Press, 1971). 22 Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–3. 23 Martin Lewis, ‘One hundred million Frenchmen: The assimilation theory in French colonial policy’, in Robert O.  Collins (ed.), Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, 1860–1960 (Englewood Cliffs:  Prentice Hall, 1970), pp.  165–78 (p.  166); Raymond Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 13. 24 Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, pp. 38–72. See also: Alain Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal: Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar (Paris: Karthala, ORSTOM, 1993), pp. 273–97. 25 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, pp. 94, 95, 321. 26 ANOM, FM SG, SEN/XII, 110, Note sur la salubrité de Dakar et sur les moyens préconisés pour l’améliorer, 1900. British contemporary sources concerning colonial urban Lagos; for example, it compares Lagos’s appearance to that of Dakar in quite a francophobic manner. 27 In fact, most of the colonial urban development of Dakar, from the establishment of this city in the late 1850s, was governed by the sanitary discourse. In archival records, too many to list here, Dakar’s urban project was classified as ‘sanitation’ or even assainissement, i.e. ‘purification’ (see Chapter  3). For the question of the embellissement, which became critical by the early 1930s, see ANOM, FM Guernut, 57, Urbanisme dans la circonscription de Dakar et dépendances, letter of 8 April 1931. 28 Alan Sinou, ‘La Sénégal’, in Jacques Soulillou (ed.), Rives coloniales: Architectures de Saint-Louis à Douala (Paris: ORSTOM, 1993), pp. 31–62. 29 Jean Delcourt, Naissance et croissance de Dakar (Dakar: Clairafrique, 1983), p. 82. 30 Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, trans. Howard Greenfield (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 104. 31 Béguin, Arabisances, p. 14. 32 Anthony King, Colonial Urban Development:  Culture, Social Power and Environment (London and Boston, MA: Routledge, 1976), pp. 123–55.

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The quest for architectural style 33 For instance: ‘[les] paysans français n’ont jamais quitté leur village! Les Berbères, au contraire, n’hésitent pas à parcourir 300 kms à pied pour aller assister à la fête du Mouton à Meknès’ (the French peasants have never left their village! The Berbers, in contrast, do not hesitate to cover 300 km on foot in order to participate in the Feast of the Sheep [i.e. Eid al-Adha, the major Islamic Feast of the Sacrifice] in Meknes.’ In Vivier E. de Streel, ‘Introduction’, in Jean Royer (ed.), L’Urbanisme aux colonies et dans les pays tropicaux, 2 vols, Vol. I  (La Charité-sur-Loire:  Delayance, 1932), pp. 9–14 (p. 11; my translation). 34 Archives nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (hereafter ANS), 4 P 346, Palais du Gouvernement Général, Dakar:  construction, clôture et porte grille des pavillons d’entrée et installation du moteur d’éclairage, 1905–37; ANS, P 121, Bâtiments de Dakar, Hôtel de Gouverneur Général, 1903–07. See also Marème Dione, ‘Dakar au fil des plans’, in Soulillou, Rives coloniales, pp. 221–38 (p. 222). 35 Jean Delcourt, ‘Les anciennes églises de Dakar’, Horizons africains, 274 (1974), 18–21 (p. 19). 36 Delcourt, ‘Les anciennes églises de Dakar’. 37 James Pope-Hennessy, Verandah:  Some Episodes in the Crown Colonies, 1867–89 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), p. 133. 38 ANS, 4 P 501, Hôtel de la Chambre de Commerce de Dakar, 1925. 39 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove Press, 1963 [1961]), pp. 65–6. 40 ‘J’ai l’honneur de porter à votre connaissance qu’un monument doit être élevé à Abidjan en vue de commémorer l’un de nos plus grands pionniers africains:  le Gouverneur Général BINGER.’ In ANS, 4 P 1795, Erection d’un monument à Abidjan pour commémorer le Gouverneur Général Binger, 2 March 1937 (my translation). 41 ‘[A]‌la mémoire du géologue Chudeau qui a fait tant pour l’étude géologique de l’Afrique, et dont les matériaux sont en grande partie conservés au muséum’. In ANS, 4 P 1503, Inaguration d’une stèle à la mémoire du géologue Chudeau, 23 January 1934 (my translation). 42 ANOM, FM, SG, AOF/X, 4, 3, Affaires diverses, monuments, Monument Ballay, 30 January 1908. 43 See also: ANS, 4 P 1508, Monument aus morts italiens au cimetière de Bel Air, 1934; ANS, 4 P 1509, Monument Thérèse Nars, 1938. 44 The statue of ‘Demba et Dupont’ was originally named ‘Monument aux créateurs disparus et à la gloire de l’armée noire de l’AOF’ ; see file under this name in ANS, 4 P, 1506. See also Ruth Ginio, ‘African colonial soldiers between memory and forgetfulness: The case of post-colonial Senegal’, Outre-mers, 94:350–1 (2006), 141–55. 45 See also:  ANS, 4 P 1505, Monument Ponty à Dakar, 1921; ANS, 4 P 1501, Statue de Faidherbe à Dakar, installation, 1921. For more discussion see Robert Aldrich, Vestiges of the Colonial Empire in France: Colonial Monuments, Colonial Memories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 46 See also ANS, 4 P 1502, Square Van Vollenhoven à Dakar, 1921, commémoration. 47 For the historicist neo-regionalism as part of modernism in contemporary France and North Africa see Béguin, Arabisances; Wright, The Politics of Design. 48 Labelle Prussin, ‘The image of African architecture in France’, in Wesley Johnson (ed.), Double Impact:  France and Africa in the Age of Imperialism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), pp. 209–35. 49 Sinou, ‘Le Marché Kermel’, p. 32. 50 For instance, marché des Halles of Paris (the massive glass and iron version of the 1850s, dismantled and relocated in 1971), its contemporary in Dijon and the former vegetable market of Covent Garden, London. The legendary Crystal Palace of course comes to mind, though it was monumental and built not as a market, but for the London Great Exhibition of 1851. 51 This pioneering technique has been well researched, including its architectural developments and relation to colonialism and global economy. See Gilbert Herbert, Pioneers of Prefabrication:  The British Contribution in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Anthony King, The Bungalow: The

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French colonial Dakar Production of a Global Culture (New  York and Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1995 [1984]). 52 ANS, 4 P 2979, Maisons préfabriques en Cap Vert, 1947–49. 53 As noted by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘Emeutes urbaines, grèves générales et décolonisation en Afrique française,’ in Charles-Robert Ageron (ed.), Les Chemins de la décolonisation de l’empire français, 1936–56 (Paris: CNRS, 1986), pp. 493–504. 54 Raymond Betts, ‘The establishment of the Medina in Dakar, Senegal, 1914’, Africa, 41 (1971), 143–52. On related sanitary politics see also Myron Echenberg, Black Death, White Medicine:  Bubonic Plague and the Politics of Public Health in Colonial Senegal, 1914–45 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), pp. 51–137. 55 For another cinematographic perspective, focused on another market in Dakar  – Colobane  – in relation to its neighborhood, the city and the human imagination, see: Joanna Grabski, Market Imaginary (a film written, directed and produced by her, 2013; DVD available from Indiana University Press). The film trailer is available at http://vimeo.com/40033895 (accessed 1 October 2014); the film website is at http:// personal.denison.edu/~grabski/Market_Imaginary/Market_Imaginary.html (accessed 1 October 2014). 56 The eleven pre-colonial Lebu villages of N’Dakaru were documented by location and name by the renowned General Faidherbe in the 1850s. See Chapter 2. 57 Shaw, Irony and Illusion, p. 104. 58 ANS, 4 P 1499, Construction du Marché de Sandaga, correspondance, 1924–26. 59 ‘Au point de vue esthétique, en l’absence de types locaux d’architecture, on a recherché …’. In E.  Weithas, ‘Rapport général sur l’urbanisme en Afrique tropicale,’ in Royer, L’Urbanisme aux colonies, pp. 111–14 (p. 114). 60 ‘Les monuments à conserver sont inexistants. Les vieilles cités indigènes ne présentent aucun intérêt. Il serait, par ailleurs, difficile de les conserver, car elles ne sont pas construites en matériaux durables. L’architecture locale est inexistante.’ In Directeur des affaires économiques du gouvernement général, ‘L’Urbanisme en Afrique équatoriale française’, in Royer, L’Urbanisme aux colonies, pp.  158–9 (p.  158) (my translation). 61 See, for more, Betts, Assimilation and Association, pp.  10–31, 59–105; Raymond Betts, ‘Association in French colonial theory’, in Collins, Problems of History of Colonial Africa, pp. 178–88; Alice Conklin, ‘ “Democracy” rediscovered: Civilisation through association in French West Africa, 1914–30’, Cahiers d’études africaines, 37:1 (1997), 59–84; Conklin, A Mission to Civilize; Martin Lewis, ‘An assessment of assimilation’, in Collins, Problems of History of Colonial Africa, pp. 188–91. 62 Conklin expanded on the cynical aspect of the association, also finding Hobsbawm’s concept useful in the political ‘reinvented’ context. See her A Mission to Civilize, Chapter 6. About the link between the French parliamentary republic and its administrative empire under this new logic of colonial humanism, especially in the interwar period, see Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 63 Quoted in Wright, The Politics of Design, p. 1. 64 Jean Boulègue, ‘Mosquées de style soudanais au Fuuta Tooro (Sénégal)’, Notes africaines, 136 (1972), 117–19. 65 After Béguin, Arabisances, p. 14. 66 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 104–9. 67 Jacques Gubler, ‘Architecture and colonialism:  An historiographical safari’, Lotus International, 26:5 (1980), 5–19; Patricia Morton, Hybrid Modernities: Architecture and Representation at the 1931 Colonial Exposition, Paris (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 2000); Prussin, ‘The image of African architecture in France’. 68 ‘[L]‌eur contact avec la civilisation avait exercé sur eux, au point de vue moral, la plus détestable influence.’ In ANOM, FM SG AOF/II/4, AOF:  Affaires diverses, expositions, exposition de Marseille de 1905 (1905–07) (my translation). See also ANOM, FM SG AOF/II/3, AOF: Affaires diverses, expositions, recrutement d’indigènes pour expositions diverses, 1900–03. 69 See, for instance, Prussin, ‘The image of African architecture’.

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The quest for architectural style 70 Prussin, ‘The image of African architecture’; Morton, Hybrid Modernities. 71 Betts, Assimilation and Association, pp. 1–3. 72 Gregory Mann, ‘Locating colonial histories: Between France and West Africa’, The American Historical Review, 110:2 (2005), 409–34 (420). 73 ANS, 4 P 1521, Plan de maison africaine, 1953. 74 ‘Son aspect architectural inspiré de l’art néo-soudanais ainsi que ses dispositifs intérieurs sont propres à créer l’ambiance africaine recherché.’ In ANS, 4 P 1521, Plan de maison africaine. 75 ‘[D]‌eux plans de “Maison” conçus selon le style purement africain’. In ANS, 4 P 1521, Plan de maison africaine. 76 For a short overview of some of these buildings see also Shaw, Irony and Illusion, Chapter 4; and, for a critique, Liora Bigon, ‘Review of Thomas M. Shaw, Irony and Illusion in the Architecture of Imperial Dakar, Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 44:1 (2010), 207–9. 77 ANS, 4 P 270, Service des Bâtiments Civils: Crédits pour la tribune à l’occasion de la première pierre de la cathédrale, 1923. 78 Raymond Betts, ‘Imperial designs: French colonial architecture and urban planning in sub-Saharan Africa’, in Johnson, Double Impact, pp. 191–207 (p. 198). 79 Sophie Dulucq, ‘Les ambiguïtés du discours et des pratiques urbaines: Afrique noire francophone’, in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg (eds), La Ville européenne outre mers: Un modèle conquérant? (Xve–XXe siècles) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996), pp. 217–34 (p. 230). 80 Sinou, Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal, p. 336. 81 IFAN aimed at the creation of a research platform and systematic publication of research in regional life sciences, social sciences and the humanities. Yet because of the ever-present assimilative aspect even within the period of associationist discourse, IFAN quickly became a base for French Africanists, and never served as a qualifying centre for African scientists. In 1957, however, the institute was relocated to the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. 82 As we noticed in ANS, 4 P 1499, Construction du Marché de Sandaga. 83 ANS, 4 P 1499, Construction du Marché de Sandaga. For more on Sandaga’s spatial planning in comparative view see Luce Beeckmans and Liora Bigon, ‘The making of the central markets of Dakar and Kinshasa:  From colonial origins to post-colonial times’, available at http://journals.cambridge.org/ (accessed 20 July 2015); forthcoming in Urban History (a special issue on markets in modernisation, ed. Jon Stobart and Ilja Van Damme), December 2015. 84 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, p. 104. 85 The Sandaga Markets in Dallas, Texas, and lately in north Manchester (UK), are mere examples (as well as in Douala, Cameroon). 86 Jacques Ngor Sarr, ‘Rencontre entre le président de la république et le maire de Dakar’, Le Populaire (29 April 2010). 87 Momar Diop and Mamadou Diouf, ‘Enjeux et contraintes politiques de la gestion municipal au Sénégal’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 26:1 (1992), 1–23 (p. 6). 88 Labelle Prussin, ‘The architecture of Islam in West Africa’, African Arts, 1 (1967), 32–5 (p. 32). 89 For instance:  Labelle Prussin, Hatumere:  Islamic Design in West Africa (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1986); Paul Oliver (ed.), Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Tim Insoll, The Archaeology of Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 90 See especially Hassan Fathy, Natural Energy and Vernacular Architecture (London: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 91 Jean-Louis Bourgeois, Spectacular Vernacular:  A  New Appreciation of Traditional Desert Architecture (Salt Lake City: P. Smith, 1983), p. 5. 92 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society:  The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 15–19; Conklin, A Mission to Civilize, pp. 8–9.

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French colonial Dakar   93 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New  York:  Alfred A.  Knopf, 1993), pp. 186–90.   94 Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, pp. 144–5. Indeed, Memmi has previously been mentioned here as a ‘Tunisian author’, but his Jewishness played a key role in his understanding of the ambivalence and the contradictory emotions inherent in the colonial situation:  ‘I said that I  was a Tunisian national … but I was not a Moslem … they [the Jewish population] were undeniably “natives”, as they were then called, as near as possible to the Moslems in poverty, language, sensibilities, costumes, taste in music, odours and cooking. However, unlike the Moslems, they passionately endeavoured to identify themselves with the French’ (p. xiv).   95 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 3–23.   96 Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. xi–xii.   97 Anthony King, ‘The times and spaces of modernity (or who needs postmodernism?)’, in Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Ronald Robertson (eds), Global Modernities (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 108–23 (pp. 108, 115).   98 Eric Jennings, ‘Monuments of Frenchness? The memory of the Great War and the politics of Guadeloupe’s identity’, French Historical Studies, 21 (1998), 561–92 (p. 575).   99 As noted by Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations:  Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1997), p.  71; David Prochaska, Making Algeria French:  Colonialism in Bône, 1870–1920 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990), p.  68; Paul Rabinow, French Modern:  Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1989), p. 284. 100 Wright, The Politics of Design, p.  2 (quoted from Robert Delavignette, Soudan–Paris–Bourgogne (Paris:  Bernard Grasset, 1935), p.  253). Now called the National School of Administration, the Ecole Coloniale was established in 1889 to provide training for future administrators, both French and indigenous. 101 Bruno Salleras, ‘La peste à Dakar en 1914:  Médina ou les enjeux complexes d’un politique sanitaire’, Ph.D. dissertation (Paris, EHSS, 1984), p. 7. 102 ANOM, FM Guernut 57 B29, Urbanisme dans la circonscription de Dakar.

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Afterword: Dakar’s ‘old city’ and beyond

What can be learnt from this in-depth analysis of the spatiality of colonial Dakar from its establishment as a French colonial city through its formation as a chef lieu de colonisation in West Africa? Three main conclusions should be drawn from this study. The first is the multiplicity, fluidity and heterogeneity of the forces, players, policies and politics that contributed towards the shaping of Dakar’s visual and morphological appearance in the period of time examined. These qualities and their inherent dynamism, rooted in the morphogenetic process, imply not only the ‘study of Dakar’, but also, to borrow Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward’s approach, ‘study through’ the city. That is, the understanding of the circulation of planning ideas, expertise and knowledge in a way that enables us to move beyond the anthropological conception of the ‘field’ as a single and relatively geographically bound place, towards a relational conception of space. Aside from the territorial, therefore, another emphasis is given to the study of ‘situations’. This is in terms of the various relationships that exist beyond the physical:  the processes of creating webs, relationships and discourses among agencies, institutions and the players involved.1 This approach also takes into account the interplay among local, regional and global dimensions, an interplay that was well exemplified in our study and is embedded within its transnational perspective – the second point to be stressed here. The approach leads us to capture the relational situatedness of the spatiality of Dakar and of other urban sites more generally; and it also might balance critical geographical scholarship as ‘more analysis is needed on how – through what practices, where, when, and by whom – urban policies are produced in the global-relational context, are transferred and reproduced from place to place, and are negotiated politically in various locations’.2 As to the theme of relational situatedness vis-à-vis global and local mobility, it is only through the contextualisation of Dakar’s [ 175 ]

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French colonial Dakar

planning and architectural expressions that the meaning of their perceived and actual variety can be understood. The examination of the territorially embedded translations of these spatial expressions reveals a dynamic environment, rich in its particular interests and visions, on the cultural, economic and socio-political levels. ‘Studying through’ our chosen site also means drawing away from what is referred to in anthropology as ‘studying up’ (researching those who are considered powerful, such as colonisers) and ‘studying down’ (researching those who are considered powerless, such as the colonised), while advocating ‘tracing ways in which power creates webs and relations between actors, institutions and discourses across time and space’.3 This not only turns our attention to the ‘situational’ quality of Dakar’s environment, but also lets us conceptualise its site-related situation as transnational in character. By expanding on the centrality of the nation in creating imperial geographies, politics and economics in the late nineteenth century, Saskia Sassen’s philosophical account sees a turning point in this historical period, which extends until the interwar years. This period, at the centre of our discussion, is characterised by the creation of a world-scale through the projection of national capitalism onto foreign geographic areas:  through accelerated industrialisation, modernisation and underdevelopment; and through the multiplication of national imperialism and hence competition, all in the name of national aggrandisement and commercial gain. The various colonising efforts – and the French were no exception – therefore took place within the context of the domestic and imperial expansion of national capitalism.4 Embracing a transnational approach, together with our emphasis on the extra-European planning history of Europe, enables us to blur the expected hierarchies of this nation-centric background. In this sense, from the military settlement models to the neo-Sudanese style, not omitting the inter-colonial yellow fever conference, Dakar’s inter- transnationality can be conceived as a mobile and hybrid assemblage that ‘unfolds in a shifting terrain of borrowings, appropriations and alliances’.5 The third conclusion concerns the fragility of the policies, ideologies and urban conceptions of the colonial power in their actual implementation in situ. This issue is apparent throughout the various stages of shaping the space of the colonial city:  from its embryonic and hesitant beginnings, to trying to enforce segregationist schemes and anti-plague measures, until the interwar experiments in the consolidation of architectural designs. Amongst other reasons, the sparsity of economic resources at the disposal of the French colonial authorities in West Africa not only affected the implementation of these models, [ 176 ]

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Afterword

schemes, measures and designs, but was also significantly favourable to the interests of the indigenous populations and other local players. The latter, as shown in this study, occasionally channelled this weakness to their own advantage, which yielded a constant process of negotiation over claiming, reclaiming and disclaiming the urban space. In French (and British) West Africa, conquest and administration were backed by only meagre resources, run on shoestring budgets, and chronically underfunded and understaffed. This meant that colonialism was simultaneously exposing both its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it was characterised by extreme exertion of power on behalf of the colonial State, which led to some tempting ideas in the fields of urban planning and architectural forms, from the coloniser’s point of view. On the other hand, it was characterised by an unmistakable weakness of control by the same State, which led to the failure or only partial application of such ideas. Another important issue, this time facing urban developments in Dakar from the post-1930s, through the independence period and up to the present, is that the urban morphogenesis of Dakar somewhat recalls a multi-headed hydra that is almost impossible to capture. The richness, complexity and contradictions that characterised the urban tapestry of the interwar period have been multiplied ever since, at the physical level with its accompanied terminologies, and at the economical, political, administrative, religious and socio-cultural levels as related to the city’s spatiality. We shall lightly touch these aspects in the following, rendering only a glimpse of the ambiance of what became metropolitan Dakar today. Covering an area of 550 km2 (out of the total 196,712 km2 of Senegal), Dakar is home to a population of close to 3 million (out of the 2013 estimation of 13,567,338 for the whole of Senegal).6 Comprising a large portion of the national population since independence – 14 per cent in 1960, 18.8 per cet in 1976, 21.6 per cent in 1988 – Dakar today accounts for a quarter of the population in Senegal and produces over 80 per cent of the country’s total output. Metropolitan Dakar has 46 per cent of the country’s civil servants, 97 per cent of transport and trade staff, 96 per cent of bank employees, 95 per cent of industry and commerce, and 87 per cetn of permanent urban workers. It generates 55 per cent of Senegal’s GDP, officially employing a population of 591,790. Moreover, while the average population density in this country in 2006 was 54 inhabitants per km2 (62 per km2 in 2013), it was 4,541 per km2 in Dakar that year.7 On the socio-physical level, since the Second World War the city has expanded and continues to expand far beyond what is now called the ‘old city’ and what has been the focus of our investigation, the colonial [ 177 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 5.1  The present administrative division of Dakar Region.

quarters of the original centre, the Plateau and the Médina. By attracting a massive migration from the rural hinterland of Senegal and from neighbouring countries (especially francophone but later also from anglophone and lusophone sub-Saharan Africa), this expansion has overflowed beyond the bottleneck of the peninsula. In fact, the area of Rufisque today, one of the erstwhile Four Communes, is one of the administrative districts of what now is known as Dakar Region. This administrative unit consists of four districts (départements):  namely Dakar, comprising the ‘old city’ and adjacent quarters planned by the 1950s; Pikine – a large sprawl, with partly informal quarters; and the less densely populated Guédiawaye and Rufisque (Figure 5.1).8 Among many other consequences, this migration resulted in a considerable ethno-linguistic variety added to the basic, still dominant Lebu/Wolof element, to include Peul (Fulbe, Fulani), Toucouleur (Tukulor), Mandingue (Mandinka), Soninke and Serer from Senegal and environs, apart from more minor representation by a great variety of other autochthonous groups. The Syrio-Lebanese element, strikingly apparent under the French colonial umbrella since the early twentieth century, still holds commercial supremacy, though other players have entered into the transnational commercial scene since independence. These originate from North Africa, particularly Morocco, and other [ 178 ]

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Afterword

parts of the Muslim world, together with a growing Chinese involvement. In addition, since 1999, political instability in Abidjan, which was unofficially considered the ‘capital’ of francophone West Africa, resulted in an exodus and relocation of capital, foreign nationals and organisations to Dakar. This coincided with both land purchases in Dakar by wealthy Ivoirians and the Government’s ambition to provide Dakar with major economic, recreational and technological facilities on a regional scale. The presence of Europeans in Dakar, especially the 20,000 French expatriates, and other westerners is still relatively high by comparison with other African states in this sub-region – it might compete only with Nigeria; and Dakar is still labelled, as in the colonial period, the westernmost point in West Africa, referring to its orientation no less than to its geography. Yet one should not be misled by titles such as ‘Paris of the tropics’ or ‘garden city’ for this city, which, if they were ever true, were part of its colonial heritage. In terms of urban planning and management, the steadily rising urbanisation rates in Dakar Region are in accordance with similar trends in sub-Saharan Africa in general.9 In the words of AbdouMaliq Simone, with Pikine in mind, this situation results in a continuous state of emergency: What this means is that there is a rupture in the organization of the present. Normal approaches are insufficient. What has transpired in the past threatens the sustenance of well-being at the same time as it has provided an inadequate supply of resources in order to deal with this treat. Emergency leaves no time for accounting, no time to trace out the precise etiology of the crisis, for the sequence of causation is suspended in the urgency of the moment where recklessness may be as important as caution. The past brings the [urban] community to the brink, and at this precipice, what can there to be remember?10

Following the Second World War and during the decolonisation era, several agencies were founded in Dakar in order to deal with the uncontrolled expansion of the city and to eliminate residential informality, including the Service Temporaire d’Aménagement du Grand Dakar, the Société Immobilière du Cap-Vert (SICAP) and the Office des Habitations à Loyer Modéré (OHLM). But these were focused on improvement of the working class areas, providing low-density villas or other housing types based on a European rationale. Only a small proportion of the wage earners could actually reside in such projects: those who had fixed salaries and could afford the minimal rent. Such projects, including Michel Ecochard’s master plan for Dakar (1963–67), were also almost irrelevant in terms of the total number of housing units made available and the contemporary urban situation:  according to early 1970s statistics, 80 [ 179 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 5.2  Building made of temporary materials on the outskirts of Pikine.

per cent of the Dakarois had insufficient income for a standard urban home.11 Indeed, from the 1940 to 1980 it can be said that both developmentalist and cooperative planning agendas resulted in a further legitimation of residential segregation on a racial or socio-economic basis. This paid far more attention to the thin layer of bourgeoisie by comparison with the largely impoverished urban majority.12 Similarly, there were limited attempts to develop parts of Pikine, the peri-urban zone that stretches along the bottleneck that links the ‘old city’ with the hinterland and comprises about a million and a half people. These were undertaken in several stages from the 1960s, including a decentralist post-1980s planning agenda for the provision of services and infrastructure. Decentralisation, however, was never truly completed because of the political dependence of the Senegalese Government on the city centre.13 It ended up with the crystallisation of ‘legal’ land-based entities versus ‘illegal’ ones; Pikine became a symbol for shortcomings in planning and regulation, vulnerability, displacement, and tensions over rights and access to resources. At the same time, it became a symbol for new directions in creativity, dynamism and flexibility that are rooted in the informal sector, and for finding alternatives for habitation, consumption and social organisation, though modest and under harsh conditions (Figure 5.2).14 [ 180 ]

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Afterword

Yet the image of Dakar as an attractive metropolitan centre and therefore a focus for widespread debates and aspirations on political, economic, religious and cultural issues has played a central role in the process of spatialising the city.15 A  clear physical manifestation of this, for instance, is the presence of large, half-completed houses in almost every neighbourhood, funded by Senegalese expatriates. While most Senegalese working abroad choose to build in Dakar, it is not their only city of origin. The economic opportunities in this rapidly urbanising capital constitute a primary rationale behind such investments, despite the fact that construction is unregulated, slow, and nearly always unfinished or uninhabited. This phenomenon deeply impacts the future vision and present, popular experience of the shared urban space.16 On both the local and transnational levels, such movements of labour and capital are dominated by the Mouride brotherhoods, though other brotherhood groups, notably the Tijanes and Layennes, also support their member traders. This includes an informal economy of street and market trading, especially prevalent in central Dakar and around marché Sandaga. Brotherhood membership provides the social capital for new traders to commence entrepreneurship and to be introduced to networks of customers and suppliers at home and overseas.17 They also directly influence the spatio-symbolic dimensions with increasingly assertive religious celebrations and claims for particular sites in the city. In the case of the Mouridiyya, for instance, since 2002 a parade in commemoration of Amadou Bamba’s return from exile in 1902 has departed from place de l’Indépendance and ends at the port.18 Though the organisers deny any aim other than a religious one in tracing Bamba’s original route, this march through the heart of Dakar’s business and administrative district can only be interpreted as an expression and legitimation of Mouride power in the city. This is closely related to Mouride manipulation of the date and place of the parade, reflecting their growing influence, and efforts to reinvent a new historical imagery for Dakar.19 Most ironically, another layer of reinvention and recolonisation of Mouride imagery in the city appears under the new politics of global consumption:  a growing number of Chinese shops in the old city centre sell ‘Senegalese’ pictures. These are based on copies of photos of local Sufi saints, brought back from China after a careless process of duplication and enlargement, as well as price reduction.20 Present urban manifestations of popular memories and identities in Dakar form a ‘spectatorial realm’.21 This ranges on the visual level from the festivalisation of the city (pan-African and international sports games, the ‘Dak’Art’ biennale at various venues in the city [ 181 ]

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French colonial Dakar

Figure 5.3  Modernist architecture in Dakar, 1930s–1950s: the old international-style post office, Hotel La Croix du Sud, and Building Administratif of the Senegalese Government.

Figure 5.4  The cityscape of Dakar, as seen from the city centre inland. Notice the Great Mosque (1963) at the centre, and BCEAO to the right.

centre etc.) to the bourgeoning of cosmopolitan images through magazines, internet cafes, satellite television and the local RTS (Radiodiffusion Télévision Sénégalaise). From experiments in modernist architecture, to the Slavery Museum, Club Med and the Banque [ 182 ]

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Afterword

Figure 5.5  The ‘Third Millennium Gate’, Dakar, Corniche Ouest, 2000. Designed by Senegalese architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa.

Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO) (Figures 5.3, 5.4), Dakar’s urban landscape also constitutes, at a more official level, a preferred site for the erection of monuments celebrating governmental visions of nationalism and modernisation. These colossal monuments, such as the ‘Third Millennium Gate’ (2000) (Figure  5.5) and the ‘African Renaissance Monument’ (2009) tend to be located in the city centre, sometimes involving considerable expenditure; they look out over the Atlantic Ocean towards a desirable future. They also ignore the urban realities of post-colonial Senegal, their complexities, problems and challenges. [ 183 ]

French colonial Dakar

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Notes   1 Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward, ‘Relationality/territoriality:  Toward a conceptualization of cities in the world’, Geoforum, 41 (2010), 175–84; Eugene McCann and Kevin Ward, ‘Assembling urbanism: Following policies and “studying through” the sites and situations of policy-making’, Environment and Planning A, 44:1 (2012), 42–51. See also Jennifer Robinson, ‘Cities in a world of cities: The comparative gesture’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35 (2011), 1–23; John Allen and Allan Cochrane, ‘Beyond the territorial fix: Regional assemblages, politics and power’, Regional Studies, 41 (2007), 1161–75 (p. 1171).   2 McCann and Ward, ‘Relationality/territoriality’, 176.   3 Quoted from Janine Wedel, Cris Shore, Gregory Feldman and Stacy Lathrop, ‘Toward an anthropology of public policy’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 600 (2005), 30–51 (p.  40). Based on Cris Shore and Susan Wright, ‘Policy: A new field of anthropology’, in Cris Shore and Susan Wright (eds), Anthropology of Policy:  Critical Perspectives on Governance and Power (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 3–39 (p. 14). Directly inspired by McCann and Ward, ‘Assembling urbanism’, 47.   4 Saskia Sassen, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 132–40.   5 Inspired by Roy’s definition of ‘neoliberalism’ – Ananya Roy, ‘Conclusion, postcolonial urbanism: Speed, hysteria, mass dreams’, in Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (eds), Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global (Chichester: Blackwell, 2011), pp. 307–35 (p. 311). And also by Ananya Roy and Nezar AlSayyad, ‘Prologue/dialogue, urban informality: Crossing borders’, in Ananya Roy and Nezar AlSayyad (eds), Urban Informality:  Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2004), pp. 1–6.   6 Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Démographie (ANSD), République du Sénégal, Ministère du Plan, 2013, available at www.ansd.sn/index.php (accessed 1 October 2014).   7 See ANSD, 2013 (no population-density statistics for 2013); and also Amadou Diop, ‘Dakar’, in Simon Bekker and Göran Therborn (eds), Capital Cities in Africa: Power and Powerlessness (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2012), pp. 32–44 (p. 39).   8 For an excellent discussion of Dakar’s administrative districts and the local governance structure in Senegal see Tomohito Okuda, ‘Comparative study of participatory development for strengthening adaptability: A case study of informal settlement upgrading in Dakar, Senegal’, M.A. thesis (University of Tokyo, 2013), pp. 46–7.   9 On a global scale, the urbanisation rate of Africa at 1.1 per cent is second only to that of Asia, at 1.24 per cent. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision (NewYork: UNDESA, Population Division, 2008). 10 AbdouMaliq Simone, For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 4. 11 Alberto Arecchi, ‘City profile:  Dakar’, Cities, 2:3 (1985), 198–211. For more on Ecochard’s work in Dakar see Luce Beeckmans, ‘Making the African City: Dakar, Dar es Salaam, Kinshasa, 1920–80’, Ph.D.  dissertation (Groningen University, 2012). For his involvement in the Middle East see Eric Verdeil, ‘Michel Ecochard in Lebanon and Syria (1956–68): The spread of modernism, the building of the independent states and the rise of local professionals of planning’, Proceedings of the European Association of Urban History, 12th Conference, Lyon, 2008. The situation, however, has recently been changing in Dakar, with an investment directly in building by Senegalese expatriates. 12 This conclusion concerning Dakar’s planning agendas in these years is taken from Luce Beeckmans, who critically characterised the 1940–60 period as sharing a ‘development syndrome’, and the 1960–80 period as sharing a ‘cooperation syndrome’. Beeckmans, ‘Making the African City’. 13 This decentralism in planning was initiated by two research bodies, the Société Nouvelle d’Etudes pour le Développement in Senegal, and the Bureau Central des

[ 184 ]

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Afterword Equipements d’Outre-Mer in France. On the political complexities of Pikine’s decentralisation see Simone, For the City Yet to Come, pp. 29–34. 14 A recent, more ‘positive’ approach to informal settlements in developing countries goes beyond seeing the situation as a ‘problem’ alone. Rather, employing qualitative research methods, it points more broadly to the problematic  – this includes more positive and creative dimensions. See for instance Garth Andrew Myers, African Cities:  Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London:  Zed Books, 2011); AbdouMaliq Simone and Abdelghani Abouhani (eds), Urban Africa: Changing Contours of Survival in the City (Dakar, London and Pretoria: CODESRIA, Zed and University of South Africa Press, 2005); Simone, For the City Yet to Come. Echoes of this approach are reflected in pioneering older research on informal settlements, such as Akin Mabogunje, Urbanization in Nigeria (London: University of London Press, 1968); Robert A. Obudhu and Constance Mhlanga, Slum and Squatter Settlements in Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Praeger, 1988). We do not include here Rem Koolhas’s celebration of the informal (in Lagos) because his project is more idealistic than based on deep empirical experience (Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi and Hans-Ulrich Obrist (eds), Mutations (Barcelona: ACTAR; and Bordeaux: Arc en Rêve Centre d’Architecture, 2000). 15 In ‘Lefebvrian’ spirit, spatialising space means the recognition that social space is a social product; that every society produces its own space; and that ‘real’ space reflects mental space, including its associated images and symbols. Hence, the ‘object’ of interest must be expected to shift from ‘things in space’ to the dialectic process of the actual ‘production of space’. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1994 [1974]), esp. pp. 14, 36, 37, 39. 16 Caroline Melly, ‘Inside-out houses: Urban belonging and imagined futures in Dakar, Senegal’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52:1 (2010), 37–65. 17 Mamadou Diouf, ‘The Senegalese Muride trade: Diaspora and the making of a vernacular cosmopolitan’, Public Culture, 12:3 (2000), 679–702; Michal Lyons and Simon Snoxell, ‘Sustainable urban livelihoods and market-place social capital: A comparative study of West African traders’, Urban Studies, 42:8 (2005), 1301–20; Eric Ross, ‘Globalizing Touba: Expatriate disciples in the world city network’, Urban Studies, 48:14 (2011), 2929–52; Simone, For the City Yet to Come, pp. 21–62. 18 The founder of the Mouridiyya, a very influential Sufi brotherhood that had its origins in Senegal, Amadou Bamba (1850–1927) was exiled by the French colonial regime several times. He disembarked at Dakar’s port from his first –longest and most distant – exile in Gabon on 11 November 1902. The latter date is celebrated by the Mourides in a feast called the ‘maggal’. For Bamba’s biography see David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000), Part III. For Bamba’s visual expressions in Dakar see Allen Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles: California Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2003). 19 As told by Cheikh Anta Babou, only in 1988 did a Mouride merchant from Dakar’s Port Market think of organising a ceremony commemorating Bamba’s return from exile. Not only does the date of 11 November coincide with Armistice Day, which is still celebrated in France and around the world, including a ceremony in Dakar’s place de l’Indépendance; the symbolic meaning of the nearby boulevard de la Libération has now changed, referring to the liberation of Senegal from colonial power (instead of the original meaning – the liberation of Paris from the Nazis). Cheikh Anta Babou, ‘Urbanizing mystical Islam: Making Murid space in the cities of Senegal’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40:2 (2007), 197–223. 20 Allen Roberts, ‘Recolonization of an African visual economy’, African Arts, 43:1 (2010), 4–8. 21 This term, concerning Dakarois visual traffic, was borrowed from Joanna Grabski, ‘Making fashion in the city: A case study of tailors and designers in Dakar, Senegal’, Fashion Theory, 13:2 (2009), 215–42 (p. 217).

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A P P E NDIX

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Key events in colonial Dakar, 1850s–1930s

(The Appendix includes specific planned interventions and population censuses.) [1790–1812

The Lebu (Lébou) of Cayor under the leadership of Dial Diop gain independence from the Wolof empire.]

[1854–65

Faidherbe serves as the governor of Senegal; he creates the Tirailleurs sénégalais, and, together with Gallieni, completes the occupation of Cayor and the interior of Senegal.]

1857

Official French occupation of Cap Vert peninsula by Prôtet, the high commander of the off-shore island of Gorée. Dakar consists of eleven Lebu villages (a few hundred residents in all).

1862

A master plan for Dakar is drafted by Emile Pinet-Laprade, the head of the local Corps du Génie.

1863

Naming of the streets of Dakar-ville by its Administrative Council.

1865–69

Pinet-Laprade succeeds Faidherbe as the governor of Senegal.

1875

Resident population of Dakar 1,500.

1885

Initiation of Dakar–Saint-Louis railway; Dakar numbers about 6,000 residents.

1887

Dakar named one of the Four Communes of Senegal, following Saint-Louis and Gorée (1872) and Rufisque (1880).

1891

Dakar has about 8,700 residents (about 2,000 residents in Gorée).

1895

Creation of the AOF Federation, with Saint-Louis serving as its capital city for the next seven years.

1900

Construction of Dakar’s military seaport.

1902

AOF’s capital transferred from Saint-Louis to Dakar by the governor general, Ernest Roume.

1904

Opening of four main streets in Dakar-ville:  boulevard de la Républic, avenue de la Liberté, avenue Gambetta and

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Appendix

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boulevard National (an extension). (Re-)creation of the Comité Supérieur d’Hygiène et de Salubrité Publique and ofAssistance Médicale Indigène in Dakar by Roume. Resident population of Dakar about 18,000 (about 1,200 residents in Gorée). By 1905

Displacement of most of the Lebu villages of Dakar west of rue Vincens. A decree is issued by Senegal’s lieutenant governor, permitting the usage of permanent building materials only in Dakar-ville.

1906–14

New building impetus in Dakar-ville initiated under the AOF’s governors general Ernest Roume (1902–08) and William Ponty (1909–15).

1908

The Palais du Gouverneur Général is built on Dakar’s Plateau, with William Ponty as its first resident.

1908–10

Marché Kermel is built in Dakar’s city centre near the port (replacing the previous large shed erected there in 1865).

1910s

The Chambre de Commerce is built facing Dakar’s place Prôtet (today’s place de l’Indépendance), as well as the Palais de Justice (today’s Senegal’s Foreign Office). The Hôtel de Ville (town hall) is built north of the square.

1914

Severe bubonic plague epidemic in Dakar (1,390 deaths out of a total population of about 24,000) is followed by the establishment of Dakar’s Médina and of two cordons sanitaires in Dakar; both, as subsequently turns out, are temporary. Blaise Diagne elected as the first black African to the French Parliament, a position equal to that of William Ponty, the ­contemporaneous governor general of the AOF.

1910s–1930s

The establishment of Dakar’s Plateau.

1921

Population of Dakar about 32,500.

1926

Creation of the Office des Habitations Economiques by Governor General Carde.

1927

Improvement of the Médina’s infrastructure, including ­sewers, public water pumps, some street lighting and asphalt roads.

1928

The Inter-Colonial Conference on Yellow Fever held in Dakar in April.

1930s

Establishment of the Polyclinique (Health Centre, or Institute d’Hygiène Social, or Maternité) on avenue Blaise Diagne, the old Maternité in Dantec Hospital, Ecole Malik Sy and the original IFAN headquarters. Founding of the Cathédrale du Souvenir Africain.

1932

International Conference of Urbanism in the Colonies and Tropical Countries, France (attached to the Exposition Coloniale de Paris of 1931).

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Appendix

1938

The establishment of the new structure of marché Sandaga in August. Population of Dakar about 93,000.

[1960

Independence of Senegal, with Dakar  – numbering about 370,000 residents – as its national capital.]

[1950s–1970s Completion of the projects of SICAP and OHLM in Dakar, aside from the emergence of Pikine.] Estimated population in Dakar 2,496,244, in Senegal 11,077,484; average population density in Dakar 4,541 per km2, in Senegal 54 per km2 (62 per km2 in 2013).]

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[2006

[ 188 ]

B IB L IOGR AP H Y

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Archival sources Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence (ANOM)FM 1tp/95, Création d’un village de ségrégation, expropriation des terrains du village indigène de Médina près Dakar, 1915. FM Guernut, 57 B29, Urbanisme dans la circonscription de Dakar et dépendances, letter of 8 April 1931. FM SG AOF/II/3, AOF: Affaires diverses, expositions, recrutement d’indigènes pour expositions diverses, 1900–03. FM SG AOF/II/4, AOF: Affaires diverses, expositions, exposition de Marseille de 1905 (1905–07). FM SG, AOF/X, 4, 3, Affaires diverses, monuments, Monument Ballay, 30 January 1908. FM SG, SEN/XI, 50, Police, hygiène et assistance, fièvre jaune, 1895–1904. FM SG, SEN/XII/12, Plan des alignements de la ville de Dakar, 1863 (1862). FM SG SEN/XII/13, Projet d’un marché à construire sur la Place Quernel à Dakar, 13 October 1865. FM SG, SEN/XII, 50, Etat sanitaire de l’Afrique Occidentale, Companie française de l’Afrique Occidentale, 14 November 1900. FM SG, SEN/XII, 110, Note sur la salubrité de Dakar et sur les moyens préconisés pour l’améliorer, 1900. FM SG, SEN/XII, 119, Création d’un point d’appui de la flotte à Dakar, 12 October 1900. XL Mémoires 197, 64, Plan du poste de Bakel, 1864. XL Mémoires 197, 66, Poste du Thiès, 1864. XL Mémoires 197, 71, Forte de Niomré, 1865; Génie, sous direction général.

Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS)

1 D 23, Plan du poste de Médine, Génie, sous direction général, 1864. 3 G 3, 1–2, Commune de Saint-Louis, 1820s–1920s. 4 P 22, Etude du conseiller général Robert Delmas, membre du grand conseil concernant l’aménagement de la presqu’île du Cap Vert, 15 April 1948. 4 P 133, Urbanisme à Dakar: aménagement de la Médina, plan d’extension, 1927. 4 P 141 and 144, Médina, secteur 2B, plans et devis, 1940–55. 4 P 270, Service des Bâtiments Civils: Crédits pour la tribune à l’occasion de la première pierre de la cathédrale, 1923. 4 P 272, Villas, Plateau, 1922–23, programme de concours pour l’édification de villas et maisons d’habitation à construire à Dakar (Sénégal) pour le compte du Gouvernement général de l’AOF.

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INDE X

Abidjan 88, 90, 92, 142, 179 Algeria 5, 7, 14, 28, 37–8, 47, 75n.30, 88, 99, 103, 131, 134, 150 Algerian 37, 39, 47, 57 Algiers 47, 136–7, 146 America 3, 26, 51 anglophone 3, 4, 18n.16, 20, 90, 98, 123n.48, 178 AOF 5, 17n.26, 21, 32, 81, 83, 86–8, 90, 92–3, 96, 104, 107, 109–10, 116, 118, 123n.41, 131, 134, 136, 139, 142–4, 151, 153–4, 157–8, 163–7, 170n.21, 186–7 see also French West Africa apartheid 10, 98, 124n.57 arabisance 14, 131–2, 146 architectural 1–5, 13–14, 21–2, 33, 41–2, 48, 71–2, 120, 128, 131–3, 135–8, 146–8, 151, 153, 157–8, 163–8, 176 architecture/s 3, 11, 14, 39–40, 42, 46, 56, 61, 67, 71, 80, 97, 120, 128–32, 135–6, 145–6, 148, 151–6, 158–9, 163, 165–7, 182 assimilation 1, 6, 9, 17n.27, 18n.29, 38, 46, 79, 81–2, 87, 90, 103, 129, 134, 136, 153, 167 assimilationist 6, 153, 166 association 1, 12, 17n.27, 75n.42, 129, 148, 153, 157, 167, 172n.61, 173n.81 Atlantic 11, 32, 35, 57, 100, 135, 137, 164, 167, 183 Bamako 13, 21, 45, 58–9, 72, 88, 152, 154–5

Bamba, Amadou 77n.71, 181, 185n.18, 185n.19 Bambara 59, 93, 108 barrack/s 34, 48, 62–4, 71, 78n.84, 101 Beaux-Arts 48, 51, 55, 143 Belgian Congo 92, 150 Berber/s 93, 101, 146n.33 Betts, Raymond 13, 21, 30, 97, 156 Bordeaux 139 Brazil 44 Brazzaville 18n.30, 90, 92 Bridges and Roads (College; Department) 48–9, 57, 65–6, 132 Britain 12, 29, 51, 63, 78n.82, 98, 113, 135, 148 British 1, 3–4, 8–10, 15n.12, 16n.21, 21, 30, 32, 34–5, 37, 44, 47, 58, 61–4, 80, 90–2, 98–9, 102, 104, 111–14, 116, 119, 122n.30, 126n.106, 129–30, 135, 139, 153, 156, 177 bubonic plague 49, 78n.86, 80, 82, 96–9, 105–6, 109, 111, 118, 126n.98, 127n.115, 149, 176, 187 built form 2, 5, 13, 156, 168 bungalow 34, 71, 136, 148 business xi, 11, 67, 97, 164, 181 Cap Vert x, 22–25, 27–8, 30, 34, 42–4, 52, 60, 65, 67–8, 86, 93, 95–6, 101, 108, 118, 132, 151, 179, 186 cathedral/s 47, 158–61, 187 Catholic Mission/chapel 26–7, 29, 66, 69, 87 Cayor x, 24–5, 42, 44, 45, 124n.64, 186

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Chamber de Commerce 139, 187 Chinese 179, 181 colonialism/s 2, 5, 20, 25, 28, 47, 72, 81, 119, 129, 131, 153, 164, 166, 171n.51, 177 colonial regime 8, 11, 35, 62, 69, 80–1, 104, 118, 129, 143, 151–2, 165–6 colonisation 5, 21, 32–5, 68–9, 72, 74n.16, 76n.43, 79, 83, 93, 96, 101, 118, 142, 164, 175 colonised 5, 7, 13, 44, 46, 64, 68, 71–3, 78n.86, 81, 90, 93, 99, 111, 117–18, 120, 129, 132, 136–7, 142–3, 146, 150–3, 165–6, 176 coloniser/s 5, 7, 9, 42, 52, 56, 64, 71, 81–2, 86, 92–3, 99, 111, 117–18, 120, 135–6, 152, 157, 165, 176–7 commerce 21–3, 31, 68, 133, 135, 139–40, 149, 177, 187 commercial 10, 18n.30, 21–2, 26, 32–7, 44, 59, 67, 69, 70, 89, 95, 105, 116, 135, 139, 147–51, 165, 176, 179 Conakry 88, 92, 143 control 2, 7, 13, 20–2, 30, 34, 36–8, 40, 44–5, 51–2, 58, 60, 69, 71, 82, 92, 99, 107, 112, 114, 119–20, 124n.57, 165, 177 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine 4, 109, 172n.53 cordon sanitaire 91–2, 105, 117 Court of Justice 66, 140–1, 187 culture/s 1, 3, 12–13, 20, 23, 33, 36, 46–7, 56, 72, 86, 90, 95, 130, 134, 153, 167–8 Dakar-ville 10, 82–3, 86–96, 100–2, 105–10, 117–18, 186–7 deathly sleep 13, 21 decolonisation 3, 12, 33, 96, 120, 126n.106, 179 Diagne, Blaise 18n.30, 90, 109, 158, 187 Diop, Dial 25, 186

dissemination 14, 79–80, 111, 114, 120, 129 Dutch 10, 30, 35, 93, 153 Ecole Coloniale 46, 167, 174n.100 empire/s 3, 10, 12, 21, 23–4, 30, 33–4, 37–9, 41, 51, 55, 58, 68, 80, 92, 100, 119, 129, 135, 142–3, 152–3, 156, 186 engineer/s (civil; military) 21, 34, 39, 45, 47–9, 50–2, 57, 66, 72, 84, 142 engineering (e.g. social) 15n.6, 43–4, 104, 134 Engineering Corps 28, 33–4, 37, 39, 44–5, 48–53, 55–66, 71–2, 75n.39 English 4, 21, 34, 113 Europe 1, 3, 39, 48, 51, 67, 144, 146–7, 154, 157, 163, 165, 176 European 1–4, 6, 9–12, 14, 15n.10, 16n.15, 18n.30, 22–3, 25–32, 35–6, 38, 42–4, 49, 51–2, 59, 62, 65, 67–9, 71, 79–83, 85, 90–3, 95, 99–100, 104–6, 112–14, 116–17, 119, 122n.30, 124n.57, 128, 134, 143, 147–9, 152, 157, 159, 164–6, 168, 176, 179 évolué/s 7, 134, 143 exhibition 112, 154–8, 163, 171n.50 Faidherbe, Louis 25–6, 37–8, 42–7, 49, 55, 58, 65, 68, 76n.46, 87, 94–6, 144, 186 Faure, Claude 83, 86 fort/s 11, 20, 51, 76n.43 Fortier, Edmond 94–5, 143 fortifications 34, 44, 50–1, 60, 65 fortified 10, 25, 34–5, 37, 39–41, 55–6, 76n.43 fortress/es 22, 25, 28–9, 39–42, 55–6, 58, 60, 66, 86, 140 Foucauldian (Michel Foucault) 47, 51, 73n.2

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Four Communes (of Senegal) 4, 7–8, 10, 38, 49, 75n.42, 86, 103, 116, 118, 178, 186 Fouta Toro (Fuuta Tooro) 24, 41, 154 France 6, 11–13, 22, 29, 38, 45–6, 50–2, 61–2, 68, 87–8, 98, 103, 110, 112, 128, 131, 134–5, 138, 140, 142–3, 147–8, 152–7, 166–7, 187 francophone 4, 7, 16n.18, 16n.21, 90, 96, 98, 168 French Sudan (Mali) 17n.26, 21, 32–3, 40–1, 57–8, 72, 75n.39, 76n.43, 90, 142, 153, 160, 167 French West Africa (federation) 4, 9, 13–14, 16n.21, 17n.26, 21, 25, 32, 34, 37–8, 49, 51, 59, 71, 81–2, 87, 92, 111, 116, 128, 131, 149, 157–8 see also AOF Fulani (Peul, Fulbe) 178 Gabon 160, 185n.18 Gallieni, Joseph 37, 49, 58–9, 75n.39, 186 Gambia 30, 111, 123n.48 geography 2, 7, 29, 81, 93, 119, 179 Germans 74n.14, 99, 110, 156–7 global 2, 3, 9, 112–13, 119–20, 150, 171n.51, 175, 181, 184n.9 Gold Coast 111, 114, 116, 127n.115 Gorée/n xi, 7, 10, 22, 25–31, 34–5, 37–8, 43–4, 54, 60, 65–9, 86, 137, 186–7 Gothic 130, 138 green x, xi, 30, 47, 56, 92 gridiron 50–1, 56, 65, 67, 94, 107, 132 see also orthogonal groundnut/s x, 25–7, 29, 45, 69 habitation/s 7, 11, 35, 95, 116, 118, 179–80, 187 Hann x, 33, 52, 53, 77n.70, 90, 105 Haussmann, Georges Eugène 47, 55, 76n.56 heroic 5, 12, 21, 34, 86, 152 historiography 3, 14, 21, 34, 80, 128–9

Hobsbawm, Eric 14, 128–30, 154, 168, 169n.7, 172n.62 Hoyez, H. L. 13 hygiene x, 92, 95, 108, 116, 118, 158, 187 ideological 6, 34, 45, 48, 72, 81, 120, 123n.48, 132–3, 135, 153, 165–6 ideology/ies 14, 20, 46, 128, 130–1, 134, 148, 168, 176 IFAN (e.g. Museum) 158, 162, 173n.81, 187 imperial 2, 5, 9, 12–13, 20, 29, 32, 34, 44, 46, 51, 58, 79, 82–3, 98, 111, 113, 134–6, 166–7, 176 imperialism 12, 21, 32, 51, 176 independence x, 13, 25, 49, 74n.24, 83, 85, 88, 96, 106, 120, 121n.2, 123n.48, 177–8, 186, 188 India/n 1, 15n.12, 61–2, 64, 90–2, 98, 122n.30, 129, 166 indirect rule 9, 153 infectious diseases 13, 21, 28, 38, 44, 52, 64, 79, 80, 100, 116 inter-colonial 14, 73, 79, 80, 111, 113–14, 117, 119, 176, 187 international 5, 12, 21, 29, 32, 65, 80, 104, 112–13, 119, 140, 155, 159, 166, 181–2, 187 interwar (years; period) 1, 2, 7, 10, 12, 14, 42, 113, 120, 128–9, 143, 154–5, 158, 164, 166, 172n.62, 177 invented tradition/s 14, 81, 128–9, 130–2, 142, 146, 154, 165, 168 Islam 38, 40, 53, 107, 151 Islamic 7, 22–5, 50, 67, 84, 86, 88, 90, 129, 132, 147, 153–4, 159, 166, 171n.33 Ivory Coast 17n.26, 90, 105, 142 Kano 92, 154, 156 Kaye (Lebu village) 25, 95, 101 Kayes (Mali) 35, 41, 58, 90–1 Kermel xi, 66–7, 86, 128, 130–3, 135, 145, 147–51, 164–5, 168n.1, 187

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King, Anthony 34, 64, 90, 98, 117, 136, 166 Kita 35, 41, 58 labour 8, 11, 38–9, 45, 51, 107, 134, 181 Lagos 63, 104, 112, 139, 148, 170n.26, 185n.14 laissez faire 9, 11, 101 Lebanese (Syrio-) 96, 116, 164, 178 Lebu x, 23–30, 43–4, 52, 65, 67–8, 78n.92, 86, 92–6, 101, 103, 107–10, 118, 149, 151, 172n.56, 178, 186–7 Léopoldville (Kinshasa) 92, 112 London 4, 104, 114 Lugard, Lord 10, 99, 124n.54 Lugardian 117 Lyautey, Hubert 2, 13, 32, 37, 47, 74n.26, 122n.17 Madagascar 75n.39, 76n.56, 157 malaria 29, 39, 64, 84, 116, 122n.30, 144 Mali (empire; French Sudan) 17n.26, 32, 40, 53, 55, 58, 90, 93, 124n.64, 153–4 Malinké (Mandingue, Mandinka) 24, 146, 178 Marseille 62, 139, 155, 163–4 Martinique 33, 51, 75n.30 Maternité 158, 160, 187 M’bor 25, 29, 65 medical 14, 59, 63, 79–80, 92, 99, 107, 111, 114, 116–19, 187 medicine 29, 104, 111 Médina (Dakar; North Africa) 10, 51, 83, 87, 89–90, 92, 96–7, 99–100, 104–18, 158–9, 178, 187 Médine (Mali) 35, 55–6, 58, 86 metal 48, 63, 78n.82, 133, 147, 163–4 métis 10–11, 36, 67–9, 86, 100–1, 109 métropole/s 3, 6, 14, 16n.15, 29, 33, 62, 112, 125n.78, 137–8, 168 military post/s 34, 39, 41, 55, 75n.39, 86, 142

mise-en-valeur 5, 71, 134 mission civilisatrice 43, 134 model space 1, 6, 81–2, 88, 143, 154, 158, 165, 167 modernisation 22, 173n.83, 176, 183 modernism 129, 146, 164, 171n.47, 182 Moor 93, 101, 146 morphogenesis 1–3, 5, 10, 14n.1, 177 Morocco 14, 32, 37, 39, 76n.56, 122n.17, 131, 160, 178 Mouride (Way; Mouridiyya) 53, 55, 77n.71, 164, 181, 185n.18, 185n.19 mosques/s 24, 39–41, 47, 53, 56, 67, 76n.44, 77n.71, 107, 152–3, 157–8, 160, 182 mud (building material) x, 35, 39–42, 56, 59, 63, 76n.43, 102, 124n.64, 146, 152–4, 156–8, 163, 166 Municipal/ity 8, 101, 109, 137, 139, 151, 165 Muslim/s 7, 55, 87–8, 107, 110, 146, 148, 162, 179 Ndakaru x, 23, 25–8, 67–8, 86, 93, 135 Neo-Classicism 51, 135–6, 142, 145 Neo-Moorish 14, 128, 131–2, 146–7, 151, 154, 165, 167 Neo-Sudanese 42, 129, 153–8, 160, 163–7, 170n.18, 176 New Delhi 15n.12, 34, 113 Ngaraf 25, 101, 187 Niger 17n.26, 37, 58, 91, 152–6 Nigeria/n 10, 58, 92, 111, 117, 124n.56, 154, 156, 179 North Africa/n 1, 4, 7, 10, 14, 30, 88, 91, 93, 98, 101, 105, 107, 120, 122n.23, 128–9, 131–2, 136, 146–8, 151–2, 154, 164, 167, 178 North-West 3, 4 occupation (colonial; military) 12, 22, 25, 27, 29–30, 33–4, 37, 43, 47, 55, 69, 86, 101, 132, 146, 186

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originaires 7, 38, 86 orthogonal 50–3, 55–7, 59, 65, 67, 71, 75n.39, 77n.71, 83, 89, 95, 108, 136 see also gridiron Pan-African 113, 168, 181 Paris 17n.26, 37, 39, 43, 46–7, 49–50, 55, 59, 81, 87, 103–4, 110, 114, 125n.78, 134, 136, 143, 156–7, 171n.49, 179, 185n.19, 187 Pasteur 96, 114–15 Pikine 178–80, 185, 188 Pinet-Laprade, Emile 30–2, 45, 65–9, 71, 79, 83, 85–6, 88, 93–4, 96, 132, 186 Place de l’Indépendance 29, 60, 67, 132, 140, 181, 185n.19, 187 planning colonial planning 1, 3, 12–13, 34, 64, 71–2, 80, 112 planning history/ies 1, 3, 33, 176 planning practices 2, 4, 124n.57 urban planning 3, 5, 12–14, 20–1, 35, 50, 66, 71, 76n.56, 79–80, 91, 97, 100, 111–13, 117, 119–20, 131, 165, 177, 179 town planning 13, 21, 33, 35, 48, 67, 102, 112 Plateau 8, 10, 29, 54, 59, 66, 82–3, 85, 87–91, 94–6, 110, 117–18, 137–8, 140, 143–4, 158, 162, 167–8, 178, 187 Polyclinique 158–9, 187 polytechnic 45–6, 48, 65 Pompidou, George 96–7, 164 Ponty, William 96–7, 107, 110, 126n.98, 137, 144, 187 port/s x, 5, 27, 32–3, 43–4, 65–6, 68–9, 71, 76n.48, 85–6, 112, 114, 116, 132, 135, 140, 144, 148, 157, 165–6, 181, 185n.18, 185n.19, 186–7 Porto Novo 92 Portuguese (seamen; navigators; merchants) x, 10, 30, 35, 93

post-colonial 10, 23, 51, 68, 73n.1, 79, 81, 85, 90, 92, 96–8, 121n.2, 122n.35, 129–30, 144, 148–9, 162, 164–5, 183 pre-colonial 10–11, 19n.38, 23–6, 34, 40, 42, 51, 67, 79, 85–6, 92–5, 107, 118, 135–6, 151–2, 169n.3, 170n.19, 172n.56 prefabricated 128, 139, 147 prefabrication 148, 165 primitive 9, 82, 101, 116, 147 Prôtet, Léopold (also a square) 22–3, 25, 27, 29–30, 60, 66–8, 83, 85–6, 132, 136, 139–40, 186–7 pseudo-scientific/sanitary/medical 9, 12, 73, 99, 119 Public Works 20, 49, 50–2, 70, 107, 110, 112, 116, 142, 167 Rabat 2, 13, 32–3, 47, 74n.26 race/s 11–12, 19n.40, 153 racial 9–11, 18n.28, 19n.40, 62, 64, 72, 79–80, 82, 89, 97–8, 100, 102–3, 111, 114, 116–17, 119–20, 124n.57, 129, 153 railroad/s 5, 70 railway/s 32, 39, 44–5, 47, 58, 71, 112, 154, 186 Ramadan 22–3 Renaissance 50, 67, 137, 143, 164, 183 Republican 9, 82, 87, 116, 118 Revolution 47–8, 74n.11, 78n.82, 87–8 Roman 50, 67, 88, 137 rond-point 82, 87, 144, 162 Roume, Ernst 32, 74n.25, 88, 96–7, 186–7 Rufisque 7, 10, 30, 35, 38, 69, 71, 86, 178, 186 Sahara 30, 68, 93, 147 Sahel xi, 41, 151, 153–4, 156, 159 Saigon 46–7, 136, 157–8 Saint-Louis x, 7, 10–11, 13, 15n.5, 17n.26, 21, 29–39, 42–5, 49, 51, 54, 60, 62–5, 67, 69, 72, 74n.16,

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74n.24, 76n.43, 76n.46, 80, 86, 93, 97, 100–2, 114, 125n.66, 125n.70, 144, 186 Sandaga 25, 66, 128, 130–2, 148, 151–2, 154, 158, 163–5, 170n.18, 181, 188 sanitary 9, 14, 33, 50, 57, 62, 64–5, 71, 73, 79–80, 82, 92, 97–100, 102, 104, 109, 111–12, 114, 116–19, 124n.62, 125n.78, 135, 157, 170n.27, 172n.54 Sanitary Department; Services x, 52, 116 sanitation xi, 20, 77n.70, 98, 100, 104, 170n.27 Sassen, Saskia 112–13, 119, 176 savage/s 43, 51, 54, 143 Ségou 41, 153 segregation 9–11, 13–14, 18n.30, 62, 64, 71–3, 79–82, 89–90, 97–104, 107, 109–11, 114, 116–20, 122n.30, 124n.57, 180 segregationist 9–10, 12–13, 79–80, 82, 91, 98–99, 104, 111, 115–16, 119–20, 176 Selwyn-Clarke, P. 113–14, 116–17, 127n.115 Senegal 1, 4, 7–8, 10–11, 13, 18n.30, 20–1, 23–5, 28, 30, 33, 34–51, 53, 55–60, 64–5, 68, 72, 76n.44, 83, 86, 90, 93, 96, 100–1, 106–7, 114, 116, 118, 130–2, 139–41, 148, 151–5, 164, 177–8, 186–8 Senegalese 5, 11, 17n.23, 17n.26, 34, 38, 86, 96, 101, 105, 130, 144, 148, 150–1, 159, 164, 180–3 Senegambia 7, 26, 50, 52, 55 Senghor, Léopold 96–7 Serer (Sérère) 24–5, 178 Sierra Leone 37, 91, 111 Sine-Saloume 24 Sinou, Alain 34, 52, 57–8, 131, 168n.1 slavery 10–11, 25–8, 35, 38–9, 82, 100–1, 182

South Africa 2, 3, 9, 16n.15, 78n.86, 82, 98–9, 105, 124n.57 South-East 3, 4 Spain 51, 146 straw (huts) 22–3, 30, 33, 63, 100–2, 106, 110, 124n.64, 125n.66, 146–7 street names/naming 9, 13, 65, 79, 81–97, 117, 121n.3, 136 sub-Saharan Africa 1–4, 12, 14, 15n.12, 16n.15, 19n.42, 19n.44, 20–1, 23–4, 29, 34–5, 45, 47, 49, 52, 75n.30, 79–80, 85, 98, 111, 113–14, 117, 128–31, 133, 135, 146–7, 151–3, 165–6, 169n.3, 173n.78, 178–9 Sudan (East Africa) 32 Sudanese (style) 40–2, 56, 76n.44 Sufi 53, 55, 77n.71, 159, 181, 185n.18 surveillance 13, 28, 37, 46, 49, 51, 60, 69, 119, 135, 153 Sy, Malik 90, 158–9, 161, 187 tata 40, 42, 50, 56, 59, 157 Thann 25, 86, 95, 101 Thiès 76n.43, 95 Timbuktu 39, 152 tirailleurs sénégalais 38, 105, 110, 143, 157, 186 toponym/s 79, 82, 92, 94 toponymic 14, 73, 79, 88, 97 toponymy 81, 96, 118, 123n.41, 123n.48, 142 Toucouleur 38, 40–1, 178 town hall 57, 135, 140–1, 187 township/s 10, 92, 117 transatlantic 26, 65 transnational 5, 14, 17n.24, 34, 51, 73, 79–80, 111, 113, 117, 119–20, 127n.121, 129, 168, 175–6, 178, 181 transnationality 2, 117, 176 tree/s 24, 47, 50, 52–6, 71, 77n.70, 77n.71, 82, 87, 93, 104, 136, 163

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Tunisia/n 14, 47, 75n.30, 96, 131, 136, 174n.94

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urban historian/s 3, 57, 112, 131 urban history/ies 4, 10, 99 vegetation x, 52, 158 verandah 61, 64, 71, 78n.82, 136, 139 vernacular 13, 39, 42, 52, 55–6, 87, 93, 129, 132, 136, 145–6, 151, 154, 159, 163, 166–8, 185n.17 violence 13, 20, 52 water xi, 43, 48, 58, 68, 70–1, 107, 158–60, 163, 187 West Africa 1, 5–10, 12, 21–2, 27, 29–30, 32, 35, 38, 44, 47, 53, 62–3, 68, 77n.71, 79–82, 85, 90–3, 96, 99–100, 103–4, 109,

111, 113–14, 116, 118, 120, 132, 134, 138–9, 143, 145, 150, 154–8, 162, 166, 175–7, 179 western Sudan (region) 13, 39, 40–2, 50, 63–5, 67, 75n.41, 124n.64, 151–3, 156, 158, 160, 166 West Indian 166 white settlement 28, 38, 47, 99 white settler 7, 10 Wolof (Oulouf) 24–5, 30, 42, 44–5, 50, 67, 92, 107, 146, 149, 178, 186 World War First 8, 12, 32, 87, 104, 109–10, 143–4, 153 Second 12, 13, 47, 112, 120, 130, 165, 167, 177, 179 yellow fever 29, 39, 44, 49, 80, 101, 111, 113–20, 176, 187

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