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Urban planning, colonial doctrines and street naming in French Dakar and British Lagos, c. 1850–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

LIORA BIGON
LIORA BIGON*
Affiliation:
Bezalel Academy for Arts and Design, Jerusalem, Israel
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Abstract:

The published literature that has thoroughly treated the history of European planning in sub-Saharan Africa is still rather scanty. This article examines French and British colonial policies for town planning and street naming in Dakar and Lagos, their chief lieux de colonisation in West Africa. It will trace the relationships between the physical and conceptual aspects of town planning and the colonial doctrines that produced these plans from the official establishment of these cities as colonial capitals in the mid-nineteenth century and up to the inter-war period. Whereas in Dakar these aspects reflected a Eurocentric meta-narrative that excluded African histories and identities, a glimpse at contemporary Lagos shows the opposite. This study is one of few that compares colonial doctrines of assimilation to doctrines of indirect rule as each affects urban planning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , December 2009 , pp. 426 - 448
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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36 During the colonial period (from the 1880s), Dakar and the offshore Island of Gorée, Rufisque and Saint-Louis were known as the Quatre communes. Each commune was controlled by a council, which was elected by all its adult males, and a mayor, who was the president of the council. All the indigenous inhabitants, called originaires, were considered French citizens and legally enjoyed the same civil and political rights as Frenchmen. The distinction between residents of the communes and rural inhabitants (sujets) acquired its greatest political importance before and during World War I. See, for more, Johnson, W., The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford, 1971)Google Scholar.

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45 Cited in W.N. Geary, ‘The development of Lagos in 50 years’, West Africa, 16 Aug. – 4 Oct. (1924), n.p. For the growing prestige of the Marina area see Hopkins, A., ‘Property rights and empire building: Britain's annexation of Lagos, 1861’, Journal of Economic History, 40, 4 (1980), 777–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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47 This paragraph is based on Rhodes House (Lugard) MSS Brit. Emp. S. 99 I, 1901–16, Revenues and expenditure, fols. 238–49, 1913.

48 Faure, Histoire, 148–54.

49 Ibid., 149, 153.

50 Conklin, A Mission, 248–9.

51 For a comparison of the street names in several AOF capital cities in the 1950s, 336 names in all, see H. d'Almeida-Topor, ‘Le modèle toponymique colonial dans les capitales de l'ouest africain francophone’, in Coquery-Vidrovitch and Goerg (eds.), La ville européenne outre mers, 235–43.

52 Prochaska, Making, 209–15.

53 See, for example, Plan of Dakar in 1958. Cambridge University Library, Map Collection.

54 About M. Sy see D. Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920 (Athens, OH, 2000), 194–207. About Diagne see Suret-Canale, French, 440–3.

55 According to A. Diouf and A.F. Diop, two old residents in Dakar who were interviewed by I.M. Dieng in the 1970s, in P. David, Paysages Dakarois de l'époque coloniale (Dakar, 1978), 7, 25–8, 38. It is also clear from ANS, H22, l'Hygiène à Dakar, 1919–20: Rapport sur l'hygiène à Dakar de 1899 à 1920, 384. This official source lists every area within Dakar-ville and the Plateau 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.

56 As testified by A. Diouf in David, Paysages dakarois, 9.

57 J.A.O. Payne, Table of Principle Events in Yoruba History (Lagos, 1893), 22. Lagos' street names were first documented by Payne in 1868.

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63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Such as in the North African cases of Algiers and Rabat. These cases exemplify that even where the pre-colonial urban layout was densely developed and congested (the casbah etc.), different parts of it could be demolished in favour of a rond-point system and wide straight avenues (see Çelik, Urban Forms; Wright, The Politics).