The assimilationist tradition gave rise to a complex, third form of nationalism in Senegal, which had a profound effect on the postwar political development of the territory. Assimilation operates at a number of different levels, but in Senegal essentially referred to the fact that African residents of the Four Communes of Senegal (the so-called originaires) had, since 1916, had full French citizenship rights and, with the exception of the World War II years, they had also, since 1914, been represented in the French National Assembly by a black African depute. A recurrent demand of the Senegalese French-educated elite throughout the twentieth century was for assimilation to be made a reality—not necessarily, as has sometimes been suggested, in the sense of wanting to become “Black Frenchmen,” but in the sense of wanting full equality of rights with Europeans. However, assimilation also entailed a certain emotional attachment to, and cultural identification with, France. to the strength of this assimilationist tradition, postwar Senegalese nationalism was thus a complex phenomenon.
The first postwar legislative elections to take place in Senegal were the Constituent Assembly elections of
1945. At these elections, French citizens, which meant mainly the originaires, voted in the first electoral college for their depute, while certain categories of subject (mainly those with a French education or who had fought for France) voted in the second college. Lamine Gueye, a longtime advocate of assimilation who had joined the French Socialist Party (Section Franpaise de l’Internationale Ouvriere, or SFIO) and helped to found the Senegal section of the SFIO in 1938, was elected from the first college, while Leopold Sedar Senghor, whom he had chosen as his running mate, was elected from the second college. By the time of the Second Constituent Assembly elections in 1946, all inhabitants of the French colonies had become citizens of the French Union, as the empire was now to be called. Citizenship of the French Union did not, however, confer the same rights as French citizenship: for example, citizens of the former were not represented proportionally in the French parliament on the same basis as citizens of the latter and only certain categories of citizens of the French Union (mainly those who had voted in the 1945 election) were allowed to vote. On this occasion, as for the National Assembly elections in November 1946, there was a single electoral college, and Gueye and Senghor were elected on both occasions. However, Senghor quickly sought to distance himself from the straightforward assimila-tionism of Gueye and left the SFIO to found his own party, the Bloc Democratique Senegalais (BDS), in 1948. Despite its stated commitment to assimilation, Senghor felt that the SFIO leadership was only interested in the African empire to the extent that it delivered votes in Paris for the SFIO, and that it paid little heed to what was in Africa’s best interests. It had, for example, voted against a single college for African elections and against equal pensions for French and African war veterans. In contrast to the SFIO, the power base of which was the Four Communes, the BDS was to be a mass party organizing throughout the territory. Senghor was no secessionist, however, and his new party aimed to work within the French Union for the restoration of African dignity and for the implementation of the 1946 constitutional commitment to a “Union based on the equality of rights and duties, without distinction of race or religion.”
It should be noted that, in following this path, Senegal’s political leaders isolated the territory from the mainstream of French West African politics. In
1946, the political leaders of the other territories of French West Africa had gathered in Bamako to create the interterritorial Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA). Pressure from the SFIO minister for overseas France, Marius Moutet, meant that Gueye and Senghor did not attend the meeting. As a result, Senegal was never a lead player in French West Africa’s first interterritorial political organization and, although the RDA, in the form of the Union Democra-tique Senegalaise (subsequently renamed the Mouvement Populaire Senegalais, or MPS) led by Doudou Gueye, was present in the territory, it was always overshadowed by Senghor’s BDS. In the 1951 and 1956 legislative elections, the BDS (subsequently renamed the Bloc Populaire Senegalais, or BPS) easily defeated Lamine Gueye’s Socialist Party, and the RDA, which swept the board in most of the rest of French West Africa in 1956, gained only one per cent of the vote in Senegal.
There were two main foci of the nationalist campaign during the first ten years of the Fourth Republic: on the political front, it was for Africans to be given a greater say over their own affairs, while on the socioeconomic front, trade unions demanded equal economic and social rights with Europeans: equal pay for equal work, the right to metropolitan family allowances, and the adoption of a new overseas labor code were key demands. The leitmotif of these demands was equality with Europeans, and Africans made important breakthroughs in each of these areas during this period: for example, the new overseas labor code was adopted by the National Assembly in 1952 following a five-year coordinated campaign by political parties and trade unions. These African successes, which promised greatly to increase the cost of colonial rule, and the deteriorating situation in Algeria, which provoked fears in France of a similar explosion in Black Africa, led the government to introduce the first major political reform in black Africa since the 1946 Constitution. This was the loi cadre (enabling act) of 1956. In the run-up to its adoption, a debate took place between African political leaders and in the wider nationalist movement over whether powers should be devolved to Africans at the level of the federation, the position favored by Seng-hor, or whether they should be devolved down to the constituent territories, as Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire wanted. This debate was of crucial importance to Senegal, because devolving powers to the federation would have kept the federation together and, given that the federal government was traditionally based in Dakar, Senegal could hope thereby to retain its dominant political position within the federation. Devolving powers to the territories, on the other hand, promised to marginalize Dakar. In the end, it was the Houphouet-Boigny proposals that were adopted, which led Senghor to accuse the French government of setting out to “balkanize” West Africa.
The elections to the new territorial assemblies established by the loi cadre took place on March 31, 1957. The BPS won a resounding victory, and Mamadou
Dia became the African vice president of the new government council. (Senghor chose not to take a portfolio.) In an effort to promote territorial unity and cement support for the new African-led government, there was now a drive for political unity, as a result of which the BPS joined forces with Lamine Gueye’s Socialists to form the Union Progressiste Senegalaise (UPS), although neither the MPS nor the newly formed Parti Africain de l’Independance, which was committed to immediate African independence, joined. The UPS became the Senegalese section of the Parti du Regroupement Africain (PRA), which was a coalition of most of the non-RDA parties in French West Africa. The UPS quickly split, however, over strategy for the campaign for the constitutional referendum of September 1958. With the collapse of the Fourth Republic, Charles de Gaulle returned to power and called a referendum over the question of membership of the French Community, as the French Union was now to be called. Gaulle made it clear that a yes vote would ensure continued cooperation from France, while a “no” vote would mean immediate independence “with all its consequences.” Senghor and Dia, fearing the economic consequences of an abrupt French withdrawal, called for a yes vote and were immediately denounced by a section of the party, which favored a novote and left to form the PRA-Senegal. The result was a crushing defeat for those campaigning for a novote, since nearly 98 per cent of those voting voted yes. Radical nationalists who, out of a commitment to the Pan-African ideal, wanted to keep the federation together as a first step on the road to a united Africa and who campaigned for a no vote as the best way to hasten African independence, now found themselves politically marginalized. The position of the UPS was unassailable, and when its leaders decided, a little over a year later, to ask France for independence, it was on their terms—that is, through negotiation and in cooperation with France.
Following the vote, several French West African political leaders put forward their own proposals for a West African federation, but these plans collapsed in the face of opposition, notably from Houphouet-Boigny, who put pressure on neighboring territories not to join by playing on their fears that any such federation would be dominated by Dakar. In the end, only Sudan and Senegal remained committed to the idea, and they formed themselves into the Federation du Mali in January 1959. It was as part of the Federation du Mali that Senegal gained its independence on June 20, 1960. The federation did not last long, however. Historical differences, personal rivalries, and ideological disagreements led to its collapse before the end of the year, amid recriminations on both sides. Senegalese independence thus brought with it the collapse of Senghor’s dream of an African federation.
Tony Chafer
See also: Senegal: Colonial Period: Four Communes:
Dakar, Saint-Louis, Goree, and Rufisque; Senghor,
Leopold Sedar.
Further Reading
Ajayi, A. D. E. and M. Crowder (eds.). History of West Africa, vol. 2, 2nd ed. Harlow, England: Longman, 1987.
Barry, B. “Neocolonialism and Dependence in Senegal.” In Decolonisation and African Independence: The Transfers of Power, 1960-80, edited by P. Gifford and W. R. Lewis. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988.
Benoist, J.-R. de. L’Afrique Occidentale Frangaise de 1944 a 1960. Dakar: Nouvelles Editions Africaines, 1982.
Crowder, M. “Independence as a Goal in French West African Politics, 1944-60.” In French-Speaking Africa: The Search for Identity, edited by W. H. Lewis. New York: Walker, 1965.
Ly, A. Les Regroupements politiques au Senegal (1956-1970). Paris: CODESRIA/Karthala, 1992.
Vaillant, J. G. Black, French and African: A Life of Leopold Sedar Senghor. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.
World History
