The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa

The Metis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa. By Hilary Jones. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Pp. ix, 276; photographs, bibliography, index, notes. $80.00/£58.00 cloth, $28.00/£19.99 paper, $23.99/£16.99 E-book.As recently stated by Elisabeth E. Foster in Faith in Empire} a central power represented by French officials and many local counter-power brokers and interest groups coexisted in French colonial Senegal. Foster has persuasively argued that the realities on the African ground were sometimes more decisive than metropolitan beliefs and practices in defining the modus operandi of the colonial state. One of those counter-powers and interest groups discussed in The Metis of Senegal by Hilary Jones, were people of mixed-race, who had long dominated the public life on Saint Louis Island in northwestern Senegal. Although scholars have mentioned the decisive role of this community in reshaping the history of urban Senegal, this theme has never been the subject of detailed historical investigation. In this fresh scholarship Jones has convincingly discussed several critical themes that have been vaguely examined in previous studies, most of which date back to three or four decades ago. She has updated our knowledge by retracing the rise and fall of the Metis between the late 1700s and the early 1900s, through the use of many private and public sources.There is a general tendency to confine the colonial encounter to the interactions between European and African men. But Jones has used a more holistic approach by emphasizing the roles of both men and women in the formation of metis identity on the Island. She has well demonstrated how the marriages a la mode du pays operated as a gateway for the appearance of a distinctive society and culture in a region where coexisted peoples from multiple identities. Benefitting from the slave trade and from the expansion of gum trade, early metis families progressively accumulated substantial wealth and political power at the expense of other social categories, such as Muslim traders. Jones has made several references on these disparities, but she has not given more concrete examples to back up her line of arguments.French officials wanted to use the metis as business partners in the assimilation process and in the consolidation of the colonial state. But Jones has shown that the relations between these two groups could be adversarial or peaceful at any given time; and what triggered these shifting attitudes on both sides were the individual interests at stake. When discussing the metis agency, or their capacity to act under different historical contexts, Jones provides many good examples to show how they negotiated with colonial officials, challenged state decision-making processes, re-adjusted to new economic changes, or/and took advantage of expanding democratic institutions, for the sake of safeguarding their personal interests. …

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