¹ The term originaire describes African residents of Senegal's Four Communes (Saint Louis, Gorée, Dakar, and Rufisque). I found no evidence to suggest that this term was used before the early twentieth century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, official reports, as well as European and métis authors, referred to urban elites as habitants (see fn. 12 below). In the early twentieth century, the term originaire appears in reports to refer to individuals who were born or had established permanent residency in the Communes. I suspect that the term held new political significance for the urban community in the early twentieth century as African town residents mobilized to challenge attacks by colonial officers who questioned originaire claims to permanent residency which was a condition for being eligible to vote. In 1916, Blaise Diagne succeeded in passing legislation in the Paris legislature that confirmed the citizenship rights of all adult male residents of Senegal's colonial towns. On originaire identity, see Diouf, M., ‘Assimilation coloniale et identités religieuses de la civilité des originaires des Quatre Communes (Sénégal)’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 34:3 (2000), 565–87Google Scholar.

² François Manchuelle first made this observation in his case study of the role of the Devès in commune politics during the 1890s. I build on this discussion by considering métis activities in the local assemblies between 1870 and 1920. Manchuelle, F., ‘Métis et colons: la famille Devès et l’émergence politique des Africains au Sénégal, 1881–1897’, Cahiers d’ Études africaines, 24:96 (1984), 477–504CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Studies of politics in Africa tend to understand democratic institutions in the colonial period as evidence of the bifurcated nature and, therefore, inherent weakness of the colonial state. I am interested in how inhabitants of colonial towns used these institutions as arenas for cooperation and contestation with colonial authorities in the early colonial state, as opposed to the late colonial state. On the weakness of the colonial state, see Young, C., The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven, CT, 1994)Google Scholar; and Mamdani, M., Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton, NJ, 1996)Google Scholar.

⁴ The term métis first appears in official reports on French West Africa concerning the problem of ‘illegitimate’ children born of sexual relations between European officials and African women in the early twentieth century. Eighteenth- and nineteenth–century observers used the term ‘mulatto’ or borrowed Caribbean racial terminology to describe racial categories in Senegal's coastal towns, even though these labels did not hold the same meaning for the urban community as they did for colonial officials seeking to order African populations. See Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (ANS) H25, Governor General of French West Africa, dossier œuvres d'assistance aux enfants métis, 1912–18. On the category of métis in French West Africa, see White, O., Children of the French Empire: Miscegenation and Colonial Society in French West Africa, 1895–1960 (New York, 1999), 4–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Ann Stoler, Emanuelle Saada, and Owen White have produced compelling analyses of mixed race identity as a category of rule or as a social and legal problem in French history. While critical to our understanding of race in the French metropole and empire, these studies emphasize state structures but neglect how people of mixed racial ancestry navigated the societies that they lived in. Stoler, A. L., ‘Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 31:1 (1989), 134–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saada, E., Les enfants de la colonie: Les métis de l'empire français entre sujétion et citoyenneté (Paris, 2007), 13–20Google Scholar; White, Children. See also Vergès, F., Monsters and Revolutionaries: Colonial Family Romance and Métissage (Durham, NC, 1999)Google Scholar.

⁶ While studies of mixed race identity in the Americas have demonstrated this point, African Studies scholarship has only recently begun to take up this question. On the significance of métis identity in colonial Africa, see Barrera, G., ‘Patrilinearity, race, and identity: the upbringing of Italo-Eritreans during Italian colonialism’, in Ben-Ghiat, R. and Fuller, M. (eds.), Italian Colonialism (New York, 2005), 97–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; C. E. Ray, ‘Policing sexual boundaries: the politics of race in colonial Ghana’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Cornell University, 2007); and Jean-Baptiste, R., ‘“Miss Eurafrica”: men, women's sexuality, and métis identity in late colonial French Africa, 1945–1960’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 20:3 (2011), 568–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a recent work on the social construction of race in colonial Africa see, Glassman, J., War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington, IN, 2011)Google Scholar.

⁷ Lee, C. J., ‘The “native” undefined: colonial categories, Anglo-African status and the politics of kinship in British Central Africa, 1929–38’, Journal of African History, 46:3 (2005), 457–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Cooper and Burbank assert that we commonly assume that the nation-state is the most efficient and evolved form of political organization, despite the fact that empires have endured for longer. Imperial intermediaries, in their view, were critical components of the function of empires across time and place. See Burbank, J. and Cooper, F., Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ, 2010), 1–14Google Scholar.

⁹ Robinson, D., Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens, OH, 2000)Google Scholar; Lawrence, B. N., Osborn, E. L., and Roberts, R. (eds.), Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, WI, 2006)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ I use the gender neutral spelling grumet, adopted from the original Portuguese word grumete, grumet (alternatively in French as gourmets/gourmettes) which referred to a cabin boy or apprentice seaman in medieval Europe. In Senegambia, the term came into usage because the earliest Africans to work on river and ocean craft adopted Christianity. Writing in the mid-nineteenth century, David Boilat defined Senegal's grumets as ‘baptized blacks’. A. D. Boilat, Esquisses Sénégalaises (Paris, 1984 [orig. pub. 1853]), 39.

¹¹ This estimate is given by H. O. Idowu in his study of the mulatto population in colonial Senegal. The data is based on a description in a 1909 account and a 1916 census report listing the ‘mulatto’ population of the colony. By 1916, the administration was more concerned with counting the mixed race individuals who were abandoned by French fathers in the colony rather than the old métis families of Gorée and Saint Louis. Idowu, H. O., ‘Café au lait: Senegal's mulatto community in the nineteenth century’, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 6:3 (1972), 272Google Scholar; de la Salle, A., Notre vieux Sénégal: son histoire, son état actuel, ce qu'il peut devenir (Paris, 1909), 101–2Google Scholar.

¹² The French term habitant appears to have originated with the settlement of Africans around the Saint Louis fort after its construction in 1659, which was called l'habitation. Writing in 1853, Abbé David Boilat described three categories of habitants: ‘mulattos’, gourmets or ‘baptized blacks’ and their signare wives, and free African Muslims. In the nineteenth century, Saint Louis's elites were known as habitants. Boilat, Esquisses, 209–12.

¹³ Interview with Christian Valantin, Dakar, 16 May 2000; Interview with André Guillabert, Saint Louis, Senegal, 19 Feb. 2000.

¹⁴ The gum for guinées trade along the Senegal river has existed since the mid-eighteenth century and dominated the European market for gum. On the gum trade, see Webb, J., Desert Frontier: Ecological and Economic Change along the Western Sahel, 1600–1850 (Madison, WI, 1995), 97–131Google Scholar. On the métis role in diplomatic relations with the Wolof kingdoms, see L. C. Phillips, ‘Kajor and its diplomatic relations with Saint-Louis du Sénégal, 1763–1861’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Columbia University, 1972).

¹⁵ Roger Pasquier's research confirmed the depth of the financial crisis for the métis elite, thus revising Samir Amin's conclusion that the collapse of the Saint Louis traders' economy occurred with the consolidation of French rule in 1920. Subsequent research on African traders in the peanut basin revealed that Saint Louis traders were more resilient than Pasquier assumed. I find that Saint Louis's elimination of protectionist policies that excluded African traders in the gum trade, as well as the 1848 decree ending slavery, resulted in significant property losses that affected the métis's ability to dominate the middlemen trade and led to their pursuit of higher education and liberal professions. Amin, S., ‘La politique coloniale française à l’égard de la bourgeoisie commerçante Sénégalaises, 1820–1960’, in Meillassoux, C. (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa: Studies Presented and Discussed at the Tenth International African Seminar at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, December 1969 (Oxford, 1971), 361–76Google Scholar; R. Pasquier, ‘Le Sénégal au milieu du XIXe siècle: la crise économique et sociale’, (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris-IV, 1987); Barry, B., ‘Introduction: commerce et commerçants sénégambiens dans la longue durée: étude d'une formation économique dépendante’, in Barry, B. and Harding, L. (eds.), Commerce et commerçants en Afrique de l'Ouest: Le Sénégal (Paris, 1992), 35–58Google Scholar; Jones, H., The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington, IN, forthcoming 2013), 40–61Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Archives Départementale de la Gironde, Bordeaux (ADG), Séries T#23, Dossier 4, Livres d'inscription des nouveaux élèves, Lycée Michel Montaigne, 1875–7.

¹⁷ The two seminal works on Senegal's modern political history are Johnson, G. W., The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford, CA, 1971)Google Scholar; and Zuccarelli, F., La vie politique Sénégalaise, 1789–1940 (Paris, 1987)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ ANS 4E6, #2, Gouverneur General à Monsieur le Ministre des Colonies, Conseil Général, 1903–1907; Sonolet, L., L'Afrique occidentale française (Paris, 1912), 12–16Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Political scientists who observed the emergence of postcolonial governments in Africa made similar observations. David Apter viewed the one party system in the Gold Coast's transition to independence as a ‘Tammany-type machine’. Aristide Zolberg traced the reliance on the idea of ‘clan’ politics to work by early scholars of African politics who divided political organization into ‘mass parties’ and ‘cadre’ or ‘patron’ parties; the latter were characterized by individual personalities, weakly articulated national goals, and undisciplined behavior. Patron parties centered on ‘native authorities’ rather than the population and, thus, were viewed as undemocratic. Apter, D. E., The Gold Coast in Transition (Princeton, NJ, 1955), 202Google Scholar; Zolberg, A., Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa (Chicago, 1966), 9–12Google Scholar. For comparison with municipal politics in France during this period, see Cohen, W., Urban Government and the Rise of the French City: Five Municipalities in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1998)Google Scholar. For a theoretical explanation of the relationship between merchant capital, the emergence of the bourgeoisie, and political power in modern France, see Bourdieu, P., The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, trans. L. C. Clough (Stanford, CA, 1996)Google Scholar.

²⁰ Rufisque was granted commune status in 1880 and Dakar in 1887. The direct administration territories were divided into the first arrondissement consisting of Saint Louis and posts along the Senegal River. The second arrondissement referred to Dakar-Gorée, Rufisque, and river posts along the Sine, Saloum, Casamance, and Southern Rivers.

²¹ Recognition of the special status of Senegal's town residents dates to the eighteenth century. As early as 1763, British officials noted a tradition of choosing a mayor from among the notable residents of the town. In the revolutionary era, Senegal's town residents petitioned French officials for municipal government. The most well known petition is the 1789 Cahiers de doléances presented to the Etats-Généraux by the habitants of Senegal. The cahier is reprinted in Lamiral, M., L'Afrique et le peuple affriquain considérés sous tous leurs rapports avec notre commerce et nos colonies (Paris, 1789)Google Scholar.

²² The grandes colonies consisted of Martinique, Guadeloupe, Guiana, and Réunion. In 1834, the marine ministry sent a request to the governor of Senegal asking his opinion about whether a General Council should replace the Conseil Privé. The governor thought it unnecessary and the decision was postponed again until 1840. In this period, officials exclusively appointed métis to the advisory council. Johnson, Emergence, 56–7.

²³ The idea of granting Senegal representation in the Paris legislature appeared briefly in 1791. Thilmans, G., L'Hôtel du Conseil Général à Saint Louis du Sénégal: documents pour servir à son histoire et sa réhabilitation (Dakar, 2004), 9Google Scholar; Johnson, Emergence, 47–8.

²⁴ The decree specified that these rights were to be enjoyed ‘in the colony’. It is striking that Paris first attempted to clarify voting rights in Senegal when no electoral institutions existed. The language of the decree is reproduced in Bonnardel, R., Saint Louis du Sénégal: mort ou naissance? (Paris, 1992), 136Google Scholar.

²⁵ Mbaye, S., Histoire des institutions coloniales françaises en Afrique de l'Ouest, 1816–1960 (Dakar, 1991)Google Scholar.

²⁶ ANS 4 E4/1, Délibération séance de 2 mai 1878 au sujet de la suppression des municipalités et du rétablissement au Sénégal d'un Conseil Général.

²⁷ Initially, the administration published proceedings of the session in the official newspaper, Moniteur du Sénégal. The proceedings were published in separate volumes after 1885. ‘Arrêté portant promulgation au Sénégal et dépendances des décrets des 4 février et 5 mars sur l'organisation et les attributions du Conseil Général’, Moniteur du Sénégal et Dépendances, No. 1208, 4 avril 1879, 63–4. An 1897 administrative order modified the organization of the assembly, increasing the number of representatives to twenty with ten for the first arrondissement (Saint Louis) and ten for the second arrondissement (Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar).

²⁸ By 1850, French officials decided to send students from Senegal to France for secondary and higher education rather than create French schools beyond the primary level in Senegal. The General Council allocated scholarships to students for higher education with the majority going to the children of the métis elite. D. Bouche, ‘L'enseignement dans les territoires françaises de l'Afrique Occidentale de 1817–1920’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Université de Paris I, 1975).

²⁹ In August 1885, a colonial commission comprised of three to five members of the General Council was formed to handle the day-to-day affairs of the assembly. On 28 January 1888, Saint Louis celebrated the inauguration of the building, designed by councilors and built with funding from the administration, to house the offices of the assembly and its meeting rooms. On construction of the building, financing and its contemporary renovation, see Thilmans, L'Hôtel.

³⁰ Bacre Waly Guèye, son of Saint Louis trader Bandia Waly, began as an agent in Bakel for the Bordeaux commercial house Rabaud and later established his own trade house that operated from Podor. Guèye served as the only African member of the General Council in the nineteenth century. On Bacre Waly Guèye, see Fall, B. and Sow, A., ‘Les traitants saint-louisiens dans les villes-escales du Sénégal, 1850–1930’, in Barry, and Harding, (eds.), Commerce, 187Google Scholar. On the organization of the General Council, see ‘Décret instituant un Conseil général’, article 23, Moniteur du Sénégal, No. 1208, 4 avril 1879.

³¹ The administration maintained close surveillance of deliberations and member's activities. Meetings were open to the public but could be closed to hear certain questions deemed inappropriate for public hearing, such as requests for financial assistance. In 1890, Governor Clément-Thomas required that the inspector of the colonies sit in on the General Council meetings. The inspector's position became a useful tool for the administration since he reported to the colonial ministry. The governor could request that the inspector investigate elections and the activities of elected officials that the administration viewed with suspicion. ‘Décret instituant un Conseil général au Sénégal’, Titre III: Des attributions du Conseil général’, article 33, Moniteur du Sénégal, 66–8. On appointment of an inspector see, ANS 4E4/41, Directeur de l'intérieur au Gouverneur du Sénégal, Saint Louis, 22 décembre 1890.

³² ANS 1Z8/9, Lt. Gov à Justin Devès, Saint Louis 30 mai 1910; ANS 1Z8/10, Justin Devès à Lt. Gouverneur, Saint Louis, 2 juin 1910.

³³ ‘Conseil Général Procès-verbal de la séance du 24 novembre au 6 décembre 1879’, Moniteur du Sénégal, 81.

³⁴ The guinée debate had significant reverberations in Senegal and Bordeaux. The decree favored Gaspard Devès's trade houses as it allowed guinées imported from Pondicherry, where Devès had interests in a French-owned textile factory, to pay a lower import duty. The decree was the subject of debate in the Chamber of Commerce in Bordeaux and contributed to the removal of Governor Louis Brière de l'Isle from Senegal. For a historical treatment of the debate over the customs decree, see Ndiaye, F., ‘La colonie du Sénégal au temps de Brière de l'Isle, 1876–1881’, Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, 30:2 (1968), 463–512Google Scholar.

³⁵ ‘Discours M. Descemet, Président du Conseil, prononcé le 8 décembre à 10 heures du matin à la clôture de la première session du Conseil général’, Moniteur du Sénégal, 30 décembre 1879, 233–4.

³⁶ On Saint Louis traders (métis and black) and their diplomatic ties with Cayor, see Thilmans, G., ‘Lat Dior, Cheikh Saad Buh et le Chemin de Fer’, La Revue Saint Louis, Lille, Liège No. 1 (Dakar, 1992), 15Google Scholar, document in author's possession. On the telegraph line in upper Senegal see, Robinson, D., Chiefs and Clerics: Abdul Bokar Kan and Futa Toro, 1853–1891 (Oxford, 1975), 124–38Google Scholar.

³⁷ ANS 4E4/23, Le commandant de Cercle de Podor au directeur des affaires politiques, Podor, 24 août 1886.

³⁸ Le Réveil du Sénégal, an independent newspaper that appeared in 1886 and was likely founded by G. Devès and his métis ally J. J. Crespin, published an article that challenged the administration's characterization of Samba Laobé's death as a response to the ruler's ‘insolent provocation’ in the Moniteur du Sénégal. The ‘Jeandet Affair’, in which the French responded by publicly decapitating the suspected perpetrators of the commandant's murder, has been well documented. On the Saint Louis response to Samba Laobé's death see, Diouf, M., Le Kajoor au XIX siècle: pouvoir ceddo et conquête coloniale (Paris, 1990), 278–80Google Scholar. On the Jeandet affair, see Manchuelle, ‘Métis’, 477–594.

³⁹ ANS 4E4/41, Directeur de l'intérieur au Gouverneur du Sénégal, Saint Louis, 22 décembre 1890.

⁴⁰ These practices were instituted by the three governors responsible for ensuring French control over newly subjugated territories in the 1890s: Léon Emile Clément-Thomas, Henri de Lamothe, and Jean-Baptiste Chaudié. Henri de Lamothe wrote explicitly that de-annexation would advance progress and avoid interference from the assemblymen of the first arrondissement. Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix en Provence, France (CAOM) Papiers Henri de Lamothe, 4/PA/2 dossier 4, pièce 8, H. de Lamothe, Gouverneur de 1ère classe des colonies, en congé, à Monsieur le Ministre des Colonies, Analyse: Note sur les budgets régionaux du Sénégal, Mesnil-sur-Oger, le 23 Septembre 1896, 4. As the first governor general of French West Africa, Chaudié passed the 1900 finance law in violation of procedures that required the proposal to be presented to the governor's advisory council and the General Council. On métis responses to the finance law, see ANS, Sénégal et Dépendances: Conseil Général session ordinaire de 1900, Saint Louis, (imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1900), 90–7.

⁴¹ Johnson, Emergence, 110–11; Zuccarelli, La vie, 80–5.

⁴² ANS, ‘Vœu de M. H. Devès, tendant à l'application de l'article 57 de l'ordonnance organique de 1840’, Colonie du Sénégal: Conseil Général, Session Ordinaire de Mai 1905, St. Louis, (imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1905), séance 25 mai 1905, 44–6.

⁴³ ANS, ‘Lecture d'une lettre du commissaire général adjoint de la Mauritanie informant le Conseil du décès de M. Coppolani’, Colonie du Sénégal: Conseil Général, Session Ordinaire de Mai 1905, Saint Louis (imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1905), séance 27 mai 1905, 22–32.

⁴⁴ Roume called this a compromise between the metropolitan General Council, the General Council of Cochinchine, and Algeria's finance delegation. ANS 4G4/2, Gouverneur Général de l'Afrique occidentale française à M. le Ministre des colonies. No date is given on the document but the language suggests that the proposal was authored in 1905.

⁴⁵ Règlement Intérieur du Conseil Colonial (Saint Louis, Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1930), ch. 1 and ch. 2; ANS 4E13/79, télégramme, Saint Louis, 12 mars 1920.

⁴⁶ Interview with André Guillabert; ANS 1Z/129, Blaise Diagne, Député du Sénégal à Louis Guillabert, Président du Conseil Colonial du Sénégal, 29 septembre 1916; and ANS 1Z129/2, Discours prononcé par M. H. L. Guillabert, Président du Conseil Colonial du Sénégal à M. Albert Sarraut, Ministre des Colonies, 11 octobre 1921.

⁴⁷ On British east, central and southern Africa, see Lee, ‘The “Native”’, 462–74. For a nuanced treatment of how race, class, and, gender served to order French and Dutch colonial communities in south-east Asia, see Stoler, ‘Rethinking Colonial Categories’.

⁴⁸ Postcolonial studies scholars have re-examined the concept of métissage as both cultural practice and social construction. For Françoise Lionnet, métissage is a way of reading that emphasizes bricolage, as Claude Levi-Strauss used the word, but that also brings together ‘biology and history, anthropology and philosophy, linguistics and literature’. The result of cultural mixing, as Lionnet and Vergès show, defies the categories imposed by colonial rule. For Vergès, people of mixed racial ancestry embodied the contradictions, ambiguities, and anxieties of the colonial state. For others, the product of the European and African/Asian encounter is praxis because the act of inter-racial mixing defies the categories imposed by colonial rule. It becomes the basis for creating heterogeneous and heteronomous identities in the postcolonial, globalized world. In twentieth-century Africa, colonial rule created the appearance of homogenous, monolithic racialized identities that juxtaposed the categories of African and European, français and indigène, civilized and subject. See Vergès, Monsters, 8–12. On métissage as praxis see, Lionnet, F., Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, and Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, 1989), 8–9Google Scholar.

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