Senegal achieved political independence from France in April 1960. At first Senegal was integrated into the Mali Federation with the French Sudan. After the collapse of the federation Senegal became an independent nation. Lepold Sedar Senghor, a prominent intellectual and poet, was named the first president (Shillington 2005).
Senegal followed a distinct path of postcolonial politics. Being the African country with the oldest links with France, Senegal faced the hardest task of postcolonial adaptation. Four old French communes, including the city of Saint Louis on the edge of the great Mauritanian desert, were gradually incorporated into Senegal during the course of the twentieth century. The first difficulty of decolonization arose when the city of Dakar lost its administrative role as the capital of the disbanded federation of French western Africa and the elite had to seek new outlets for their talent and training. The great harbor also lost its commercial primacy. Senegal’s leaders remained loyal to France while peasants continued to export unprocessed peanuts and Senegalese workers continued to eat French bread for which they paid dearly (Birmingham 1995).
The widely accepted definition of decolonization is the process by which former colonies, or non-self-governing territories, become self-governing states. In content, decolonization means the termination of a colonial relationship. There are four levels in which decolonization operates. First, an independent government with full power within the boundaries of the colony is created. The colonial power will lose its political rule of the colony and a new government will be established. Second, the provision of public goods and government services is decide and managed by the new government. The colonial power will stop shouldering the costs of running the colony. Third, new social and economic institutions are eventually created, aiming at the establishment of political rights and at improving the levels of economic and social well-being of the population. Fourth, there may be a process of incorporating culturally distinct groups in the community, including non-native settlers and different native population groups (Group and Gata 2000).
It has been said that the Second World War accelerated the decolonization process in Africa (Chafer 2002). The end of World War II witnessed newly independent countries swept across Asia and Africa. The European colonizers weakened. There are different factors that contributed to the speedy decolonization process. The Second World War, weakened the control of European empires on their colonies. Some of them had lost their colonies during the war and found it difficult to restore control over them afterward, while others were so depleted economically by the war that they might have come to view the maintenance of a colonial empire as too great a burden. Another factor might have been the emergence of an educated elite among the natives of the colonies who commanded political power locally and who sought independence for their homeland.
Decolonization of Senegal, like many countries in Africa accelerated after the Second World War. France was weakened by the Second World War. Many Senegalese, who had joined the French army expecting to fight against Germany in defense of the Republic, viewed France’s abandonment of the struggle against Germany in 1940 without a battle as a sign of weakness. The succeeding exactions of the war effort, which saw forced labor increase, incomes fall and imported goods become virtually impossible to obtain, provoked renewed resistance to colonial rule. After the war, two superpowers emerged – the United States and USSR. These countries do not support colonialism. Because of these the French empire was forced to reconsider their colonial policies. Yet it was precisely at this moment that the empire took on unprecedented importance for France as it sought to maintain its world power status in the post-war world. Thus it was that France, emerging from the war economically, diplomatically, and militarily battered, found itself in the 1940s and 1950s desperately swimming against the anticolonial tide. This effort led it to repress an anticolonial uprising in Madagascar in1947-1948, at a cost of some 90,000 lives, and into two highly damaging anticolonial wars, in Indochina and Algeria. Under threat of eviction elsewhere in its empire, the retention of black Africa within its sphere of influence became crucial to France’s strategy to maintain its world role. Senegal was a key lynchpin in this strategy. Not only was it France’s oldest colony in black Africa, but Dakar was the seat of the federal Government-General of French West Africa and residents of the Four Communes of Senegal, who were French citizens, had been electing a deputy to the Chamber of Deputies in Paris since the previous century. This complicity between African and French governing elites was crucial to the large smooth transition from colonial rule to independence in French Black Africa. The fact that French Black Africa largely avoided the chaos and bloodshed decolonization in other parts of the French empire has led many French politicians and some commentators to suggest that French decolonization in this part of the world successful and exemplary. It was against this background that the political choices made by African leaders like Senghor played a key role in the transition, determining the strategy and outcomes of decolonization. Just as the “French” presentation of the decolonization process in black Africa, as the product of an enlightened policy, is a post hoc rationalization that does not do justice to the untidy reality of what actually happened, so too is the “nationalist” of independence as the outcome of a struggle successfully waged against the colonial “enemy”. The reality of what happened on the ground was much less clear-cut: on each side, different groups with changing objectives created shifting alliances in order to promote their own agenda and interests. Thus, in order to avoid being outflanked on the left, African leaders such as Senghor pursued a policy that often meant allying themselves with French leaders against the more radical elements within their own nationalist movements. So, for example, when President Charles De Gaulle offered Senghor the opportunity to take immediate independence in the 1958 referendum that established the Fifth Republic, he, together with all the other leaders of French Africa apart from Sekou Touré in Guinea, refused. Instead, he campaigned successfully to persuade the
Senegalese to vote yes to the French Community and against immediate independence, arguing that this was the best way of maintaining the flow of French development funds. Less than two years later, when the growing international tide against colonialism and the political economic costs to France of maintaining colonial rule convinced De Gaulle to move rapidly to grant independence to black Africa, Senghor, in common with the leaders of a number of former French colonies in black Africa, chose to retain close political, military, and cultural links with France. The French retained a military base on the outskirts of Dakar after independence.
After decolonization, Senegal maintained a special relationship with France. While the relationship brought undoubted political, economic, military, and diplomatic benefits to France over many years, the benefits to Senegal have come under increasing scrutiny in Senegal. During decades of government instability and military coups in much of Africa, the special relationship no doubt contributed to the political stability Senegal has enjoyed since independence. The Franc zone also provided monetary stability. On the other hand, the increasingly over-valued currency made it difficult for Senegal to export onto world markets, resulting in persistent and growing trade deficits until France decided to devalue the currency by 50 percent in 1994. And Senegal’s privileged links with France have been a disincentive to building wider alliances, both within the region and beyond (Chafer 2003).
References
Birmingham, D 1995, The Decolonization of Africa, Routledge.
Chafer, T 2002, The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful Decolonization?, Berg, New York.
Chafer. T 2003, France and Africa: The End of the Affair? The View from Senegal, SAIS Review,
<http://eprints.libr.port.ac.uk/archive/00000062/01/SAIS.pdf>.
Group, N R and Gata, J E 2000, War and Peace: The European Decolonization Process,
< http://www.polarizationandconflict.org/Papers/garoupa.pdf
Shillington, K 2005, Encyclopedia of African History, CRC Press.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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