From mariage à la mode to weddings at town hall : Marriage, colonialism, and mixed-race society in nineteenth-century Senegal

The institution of served as the basis for the formation of mixed-race society in Senegal's coastal towns.1 In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, African and Afro-European women called signares entered into temporary marital unions with European merchants and officials stationed on the island of Saint Louis. These practices, known in French as manage a la mode du pays, closely resembled notions of engagement and found among Wolof populations of the mainland. By the early nineteenth century, the mixed-race inhabitants of the islands increasingly combined new concepts of marital exchange and ceremonial practices learned from visiting Catholic priests and European settlers with local traditions. Writing in the 1840s, Abbe David Boilat, a member of the indigenous clergy and son of a signare, called for the Christian population to eliminate superstitious practices and abandon manage a la mode du pays.2 He advised Christian families to base their society on the sacred ties of marriage by adhering to contracts that strictly conformed to the expectations of the Catholic Church and the requirements of the French state. By the establishment of Third Republic France in 1870, Senegal's mulatto population no longer followed the marital practices of their foremothers but rather insisted on marital unions sanctioned by the Church and considered legal according to French civil law. For these families, the ritual of declaring the intention to be married at town hall and having an officer of the civil state record it in the civil registry became an integral part of the ceremony. What accounted for this shift? How and why did men and women of mixed racial ancestry coming of age in late nineteenth-century Senegal develop new strategies? A number of scholars have examined the formation and development of urban and coastal societies in British West Africa. These studies have illustrated the development of kinship ties and social practices that created dynamic urban communities in Lagos, Freetown, and Cape Coast.3 Much less attention has been paid to the social history of coastal communities in the areas of West Africa shaped by French colonial rule. Recent scholarship has contributed to our knowledge of identity formation, the emergence of mixed-race populations, and the nature of for communities along the Senegambian coast until 1800.4 Historians, however, have yet to address the change in practices and the meaning of marital strategies for mixed-race families in Senegal's towns within the context of colonial rule. Analysis of private family genealogies, the civil registry for marriages and births, and and baptism records from the Saint Louis Parish provide a window into the interior lives of men and women of mixed racial ancestry in colonial Senegal.5 The examination of these family histories shows that Senegal's mixed-race population used the institution of to consolidate their wealth, acquire symbolic capital, and shore up their position as citizens of the Republic as opposed to subjects of colonial Senegal. Mixed-Race Populations and French Colonialism in 19th-Century Senegal Men and women of mixed racial ancestry in Senegal referred to themselves as mulatto. Today, they are more commonly known as metis, the French term for people of mixed racial ancestry. In the nineteenth century, French administrators and town residents used the term habitants to refer to the population of Black Muslim, Black Catholic and mixed-race men and women who maintained permanent residents in the town and owned property.6 More specifically, the habitants formed the nucleus of civic and commercial life in the nineteenth-century port city and administrative capital called Saint Louis by the French and Ndar by the Wolof. Although Senegal's mixed-race families also resided in the French settlement on Goree Island, off the coast of the Cape Verde peninsula, the town of Saint Louis remained the center of metis social, economic, and political life. …

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