Senegalese 'into Frenchmen'? The politics of language, culture, and assimilation (1891--1960

This dissertation is about two creation myths. The first myth, the making of Frenchmen, was expounded upon in Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen; The Modernization of Rural France, 1870--1914. Weber provides a historical account of how French urbanites during the Third Republic (1870--1940) "created" Frenchmen out of peasants. Weber argues that the Third Republic was the critical period when the rural peasantry was "civilized" en masse as a result of receiving standardized public instruction and learning to speak the French language, rather than one of the regional dialects.;Senegalese "into Frenchmen"? During the French colonial period in Senegal (1891--1960), anyone who was born in one of the Four Communes---Saint-Louis, Goree, Dakar, and Rufisque---was classified as an originaire or French citizen and had the juridical right to French nationality. Anyone born beyond one of these Four Communes, however, was designated as a French subject.;This dissertation proposes that the originaires were acculturated into the French citizenry in a similar manner as their metropolitan counterparts. I argue that the French attempted to export the "technology of nationalism" from the metropole to the colony. By 'technology of nationalism,' I make reference to the French practice or savoir faire (know how) for French nationalism that entailed exposing "less civilized" populations to the French conceptualization of territoriality and citizenship, the French metropolitan school system, and the French language.;The Politics of language, culture, and assimilation (1891--1960). The second myth highlights how the originaires responded to the French colonial project. I examine how the politics of language, culture, and assimilation, as envisioned by the originaires, informed their interpretation of what it meant to be a French citizen. While the French colonial state tried to sharpen juridical, institutional, linguistic and cultural "distinctions" between the populations living within the Four Communes and the Senegambian hinterland, the originaires tried to "blur" these distinctions. The French "civilizing mission" failed in Senegal largely because the originaires co-opted the French technology of nationalism, and responded with their own counter-nationalism.