Global History, Globally Seminar: Mamoudou Sy (Senegal)

"Policing the Railways: Peanut Trade and Social Mobility Alongside the Corridor Dakar-Saint Louis, 1885-1905"

Mamoudou Sy, Université du Sine Saloum El Hadji Ibrahima Niass de Kaolack, Kaffrine, Senegal 

Comment:

Nicole Bianchini, PhD Candidate in History, University of Sao Paulo

Noam Maggor, Lecturer in American History, Queen Mary, University of London

ABSTRACT:
At the end of the 19th century, North Senegambia experienced a new political social and economic dynamics. On the political side, different kingdoms where lived different ethnic groups became a French protectorate. Economically, they experienced a progressive economic transition from millet-crop agriculture to a growing peanut production, an oleaginous crop from America. This economic transition followed the progressive end of the Atlantic slave trade, which started in the beginning of the 19th century. The region offered favorable physical conditions to peanut growing, which led the emergence of the peanut basin. On the social side, Senegambians lived in unequal societies and slave owners were able to better connect themselves to the rest of the world since they could mobilize slave labor to produce agricultural goods for the European markets, which were conveyed via a new railway line, called the peanut railway, connecting the region to seaports. The development of these new phenomena, facts and practices did not, however, undermine the very backbone of the slave society. Why did the French colonial administration allow slavery to persist? Why did the colonial police limit its policing operations alongside the corridor thus not getting involved in the areas of agricultural production?

This paper looks at the overlapping history of these three novelties in North Senegambia: the peanut basin, the railway and the colonial policing along the corridor. It is the history of the encounter, in rural area, between Senegambians, Europeans, Syrian-Lebanese from the informal agricultural and commercial sectors and the colonial bureaucracy. Admittedly the chronological framework is tight, yet it is goes from the inauguration of the Dakar-Saint Louis railway (1885) to the adoption of a legal measure to abolish domestic slavery in French West Africa

The six members of the Global History Network are collaborating on a biweekly summer seminar featuring talks by our scholars, as well as commentary from a graduate student and a faculty member for each presentation.

The paper and Zoom meeting link are available by request to wigh@wcfia.harvard.edu.