BELONGING BEYOND BOUNDARIES: CONSTRUCTING A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN A WEST AFRICAN BORDERLAND By David Newman Glovsky A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of 2020 History—Doctor of Philosophy ABSTRACT BELONGING BEYOND BOUNDARIES: CONSTRUCTING A TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY IN A WEST AFRICAN BORDERLAND By David Newman Glovsky By treating colonial and postcolonial borders as suggestions rather than firm dividers, this dissertation argues that Fulbe people in West Africa built a cross-border community that questioned the relationship between citizenship, territory, and national belonging. In the borderlands of southern Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea (southern Senegambia), Fulbe created a semi-autonomous, transnational community outside of states. In the late nineteenth century, the French, British, and Portuguese colonial governments drew borders between the colonies of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea to divide and separate the peoples of these countries. This work, based on oral histories and archival research in six countries, argues that colonial governments never successfully controlled these borders, and that precolonial territorial strategies and networks have continued to the present. Thus, this research calls for a rethinking of conceptions of territoriality and space in Africa by focusing on Fulbe concepts of space and territory rather than those of colonial and postcolonial states. This study shows how Fulbe people made and remade spatial networks for a variety of reasons, adjusting their geographies in the face of state efforts to control and monitor movement. Throughout the colonial and postcolonial periods, Fulbe concepts of space and place superseded those of local governments, who exercised little control over borders, and thus, movement. This study shows how Fulbe people made and remade spatial networks for a variety of reasons, adjusting their geographies in the face of state efforts to control and monitor movement. From the late nineteenth century, Fulbe people regularly moved between Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea- Bissau, and Guinea for a variety of social, religious, political, and economic reasons. As a result of this movement, Fulbe citizenship came into question on a national level in Guinea and Guinea- Bissau during the 1960s and 1970s, leading to massive levels of emigration to neighboring countries like Senegal and the Gambia. Fulbe people often treated citizenship as fluid and flexible, laying claim to the rights of citizenship in multiple states. Through cross-border networks and ideas of belonging, they were able to mitigate some of the challenges of both the colonial and postcolonial periods. Their movement and refusal to categorize themselves along national lines subverts ideas that people belong to individual nation-states and offer a window for rethinking territorial belonging outside of the boundaries of modern states. Copyright by DAVID NEWMAN GLOVSKY 2020 To Kindima Seydi, whose love and kindness is an inspiration v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Through the process of working on this dissertation, I have run up innumerable (non- financial) debts, most of which cannot be repaid. Particular thanks are due to the thousands of people in southern Senegambia who have continually opened their homes to me over the past decade. Their generosity has moved me more than they will ever know. I must start my thanks in Senegal, the place where this project was born and forged. In March 2010, I stepped off a plane in Dakar, a Peace Corps Trainee unsure of where the next two years would take him. Mamadou Diaw, coordinator of what was then the Preventative Health and Environmental Education program, was a great boss and has been a continual friend over the last decade as he simultaneously conducted and finished his own Ph.D. The Peace Corps staff in Dakar and Thiès has continued to welcome me back long after my expiration date as a volunteer. Particular thanks should be given to Etienne Senghor, Mbouille Diallo, and Adji Thiaw, whose warmth and guidance shaped my years in Senegal. They, alongside Johanna Valente, decided that this slightly fearful 24-year old should spend two years in the Casamance, not realizing what this would lead to. Amadou Diallo and Samba Kande helped me to learn Pulaar, and I have been lucky that my research has allowed me to regularly see Samba over the past decade. This research would not have been possible without the help of Falaye Danfakha and Mady Camara, who shared a Boxer motorcycle with me through rural Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. Their company made research less of a challenge, and their willingness to assist through 220 interviews on Senegambia’s borders made my research better. I never tired of discussing with them any number of topics, and I am grateful for the time we spent together exploring unfamiliar regions. vi The two years I spent in Dabo, a town of roughly 6,000 people near the borders of Guinea- Bissau, the Gambia, and Guinea, shaped this project in so many ways. I dedicate this dissertation to Mariama “Kindima” Seydi, whose warmth and love truly knows no bounds. Since I first arrived in Dabo in 2010, she has treated me like her own. I am not sure I have the words to properly demonstrate how meaningful her love and support has been. I only hope my continual returns have given an indication. In addition to her generosity, she is also one of the funniest people I know. Mahamadou Balde and Salimatou Kande have been a source of emotional and physical sustenance over the past decade and have never made me feel like an interloper during all my years in Dabo. Watching Alassan Balde grow up has been a joy since our days playing soccer and sitting under the mango tree exchanging Pulaar for English words. Biri and Abdou Balde showed up later but have given me even more reason to keep returning. Hawa Balde was a wonderful counterpart and musiddo. Since my first days of Peace Corps, El Hadji “Nelson” Balde has been a true friend. Boubacar Balde has welcomed me into his home too many times. I must also thank Papa Sadhiou Balde, Ibrahima Sarr, Korka Ba, Jiwo Galle Kande, Makham, Kama, Diallo, Mariama, Lamin, Samba “Ibou,” Pathe, Boubacar “Senghor,” Kanta, Mama Seydou, and Oumar Balde, Mamadou Fofana, Ibrahima Balde, Yancouba Sane, Thierno Amadou Dieme, and Adama Dione. Since my time in Peace Corps, Mampatim has been a second home. The late Dello Balde welcomed me into his home as a volunteer, but then again when life brought me again to his doorstep. Men njonitii maa. He is greatly missed. The rest of the growing Balde household has been a source of joy and laughs. For this I think Hana, Bambey Balde, Fatoumata Diamanka, Aissatou Balde, Ousmane Balde, Tedi Balde, Tako Gano, Alassan Balde, Mar Kande, and Talla Gano. Boubacar “Carlos” and Korka Diallo, as well as their children Assi, Djiba, Fatoumata Binta, and Mariama, have been welcoming and too kind. Carlos was also an excellent sounding board for vii research and logistical questions. Yero and Mariama Balde and their family have never failed to make me feel at home. Adja Diop deserves thanks for her kindness and selflessness. Throughout the region of Kolda, I owe immense debts to all of those who helped facilitate research and provided beds and food while conducting research. In Badion, Mamadou Mballo remembered my visits during Peace Corps and welcomed me back. In Fass Kahone, Alpha, Salimatou, and Fatoumata Balde reminded me of Fuladu’s hospitality. My stops in Fafacourou included assistance from Seydou Ndiaye and Samba Kande. Debts owed in Thiewal Lao date back to 2010 but include the Sabaly and Gano families. The same is true of Oumar Balde and family in Sare Sara. In Pakour, Souleymane Boiro’s company was always welcome, and Moussa Diallo’s assistance crucial. Coumba N’Diaye and Pape Sow made Medina Yoro Foula a pleasant place to visit. Thiery Balde connected me to Ousmane Diao in Pata. In Kolda proper, I was lucky to be neighbors with Papiss Diane. Oumar Aw has been a dear friend since my time in Dabo. I would also like to thank Amadou Balde, Djiby Mane, Yaya Seydi, Ousmane Barry, Thedo Balde, and Hadime Sane. Boubacar Balde and I had a lengthy discussion about historical memory in Fuladu, for which I am thankful. My friendship with Momodou “Gobi” Bah gave me the good fortune to meet Boubacar and Ramatoulaye Jallow, who made Basse a more comfortable place. In Gabú, I received assistance from Boubacar Balde. Adulai Djau’s knowledge of the region and passion for research made the region feel more like home. This is only a short list of the people who welcomed me in hundreds of villages across Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. My research in various cities and archives around the world was facilitated by a massive number of people, all deserving of great thanks. The staff of the National Archives in Senegal welcomed me before and after their move, as did the staff of the libraries at IFAN and CESTI. I am appreciative for Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé’s deep understanding of the historical and social viii dynamics of southern Senegal and his willingness to talk through them. Mamadou Moustapha Sow is an excellent researcher and friend, and our conversations about Kolda’s history were highlights of my time in Dakar. Ibrahima Thiaw was always welcoming at IFAN, as was Ousmane Sene at WARC. Daha Cherif Ba provided me with a research affiliation at UCAD. Mouhamadou Mountaga Diallo and I had helpful discussions about mobility and migration in Senegambia. In Banjul, the staff of the National Records Service (NRS) deserve particular recognition for their work ethic, even on days where I was the only researcher in the archive. I also benefitted from the resources at the National Center for Arts and Culture’s (NCAC) Oral History Archive in Fajara. My work at the NRS was facilitated by NCAC’s then-assistant director, Hassoum Ceesay, and director, Baba Ceesay. Buba Saho and particularly John Gomez made Brikama/Wullinkama a welcoming place to live and later to visit. At the University of the Gambia, I was welcomed by Pierre Gomez and Ensa Touray. In Bissau, I felt instantly comfortable at INEP due to Leopoldo Amado, who provided not just an affiliation but invaluable help in building connections in eastern Guinea-Bissau. Raul Fernandes was a valuable resource in understanding the landscape of doing research in Guinea-Bissau. Miguel de Barros lived up to his reputation as both an activist and a scholar and demonstrates what research should truly be about. Mamadou Jao and Tcherno Djalo were helpful in understanding the Fulbe context in Guinea-Bissau. I also benefitted from the assistance of both Armando Contekunda and Vincent Foucher. Samba Tenem Camará’s knowledge of lumos and their transnational context was crucial. This research received financial as well as emotional and academic support. I conducted three summers of pre-dissertation research in Senegal, the Gambia, and France, funded by MSU’s College of Social Science, as well as through online teaching assignments through the Department of History. Graduate assistantships from the Department of History as well as FLAS Fellowships ix through MSU’s African Studies Center supported me through the early years of my graduate career. The bulk of the research for this project was funded by a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad grant, which allowed me to conduct interviews and visit archives in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Portugal. The final phase of writing this dissertation had room to breathe because of an ACLS and Mellon Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship. My students in History 201 and Social Science 499 allowed me to try out many of the big picture ideas of this dissertation and sharpened my thinking about colonialism, borders, and migration. My interest in history and geography was nurtured by my parents, Bob and Sue Glovsky. My mother spent much of my childhood shuttling me back and forth from the library until I had read a book on nearly every country in the world. They both encouraged me to pursue my interests and to dream big, although I’m not sure this is what they had in mind. They put up with my frequent physical absences from their lives and though I’m sure my distance was a sacrifice, never made it feel so. I am truly grateful for their love and support. My late grandmother, Priscilla August Glovsky, inspired me as a child with her love of travel and her desire to understand the world. My maternal grandmother, Marilyn McCoy Smith, exhibits a kindness and graciousness that never that I couldn’t dare to match. I hope that I have made them all proud. My siblings Michael, Caroline, and Andrew have provided a source of support and distraction on three continents during the process of completing this dissertation. In recent years., I have been delighted to add Jenna Barbary-Glovsky to my family, as well as my niece Alice. The same has been true of Rich Barber. Before beginning my Ph.D., I had the good fortune to have my interest in history nurtured by teachers at both the high school and college level. At Wayland High School, Joseph McCoy recognized something in me that I’m not sure I recognized until a decade later. At Dartmouth, I had the good fortune to be advised by Annelise Orleck, a model scholar, activist, and person. There x is more of her in this dissertation than she may realize. In the History Department, I also benefitted from the teaching of Ed Miller, Bruce Nelson, Richard Kremer, Joseph Cullen, Christopher Schmidt, and Gene Garthwaite, even if my middling academic performance did not reflect their teaching. For introducing me to geography’s concepts, theories, and utility, I must thank the whole of the Dartmouth Geography Department. Ben Forest deserves particular thanks for his help with the graduate application process as well as welcoming me back into the community of geographers even after I decided to do a Ph.D. in history. I’d like to think this project truly began in Prague in 2006. My interest in religion also dates back to Dartmouth and owes much to Randall Balmer. At Michigan State, I have been surrounded by a community of exceptional scholars. Walter Hawthorne took this ill-formed project on after a phone conversation while I stood outside in the rain under the overhang of a New York City bodega. His academic, emotional, and financial support have made this project what it is. His knowledge of Guinea-Bissau and African history more broadly has made me a better scholar. Retirement has not made David Robinson less active, for which I am forever grateful. He is the most incisive critic I have, and the time he has devoted to nurturing young scholars even in retirement is admirable. His knowledge of Senegal and West African Islam challenged me to never forget the religious landscape and transnational connections of this part of southern Senegambia. Nwando Achebe has been supportive and generous and demonstrated how to be a scholar and a teacher. Charles Keith deserves particular thanks for his willingness to read anything, as well as being a sounding board for all things academic and personal. He also encouraged me to think globally. Liam Brockey’s expertise on early modern European empires and on the history of the Portuguese Empire helped contextualize a much longer history and gave me an appreciation for the contingency of the European presence worldwide. xi Over the course of my time at MSU, I benefitted from the guidance of many other faculty. In particular, I must thank Laura Fair, Peter Alegi, John Aerni-Flessner, Lewis Siegelbaum, Leslie Moch, and Mara Leichtman. Mónica da Silva taught me Portuguese well enough to do archival research and work in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal, which made this project feasible. Mohamadou Diatta gave me enough comfort in Wolof to bargain all over Dakar. David Wiley and Roger Bresnahan provided valuable coaching through the grant application process. MSU’s African Studies Center has done so much for me over the years and have created a community that made my work more interdisciplinary. I must thank Jamie Monson, the late James Pritchett, John Metzler, and Ann Biersteker for this, as well as for the FLAS Fellowships that funded my studies in Pulaar and Wolof. Lisa Hinds dealt with the challenge of supervising the logistics of transnational research, and never pushed back on my large pile of handwritten receipts. Both she and Lisa Fruge help the center run and have made it a welcoming place both personally and academically. In the History Department, Elyse Hansen and Jeanna Whiting have helped me with more university bureaucracy than I care to admit. My friends in East Lansing/Lansing, both academic and otherwise, have made this Massachusetts transplant comfortable in the Midwest. Joey Bradshaw and I have made many memories in both Michigan and Senegal. Eddie Bonilla and I strategized graduate school and talked sports over far too many lunches to count. His hard work and thoughtfulness as a graduate student pushed me to be better. Jodie Marshall has been the source of academic and personal support, and a great host in Zanzibar. My time was always made better by Akil Cornelius. I am grateful to have begun my graduate career with Kathryn Lankford, Heather Brothers, and Liao Zhang. Coming into this program, I benefitted from the advice of many colleagues further along. Lindsey Gish gave me advice I didn’t know I needed. Andrew Barsom allowed me to blow off xii steam talking about sports and life. I also benefitted advice and guidance from my fellow Africanists Caleb Owen, Hibakwa Chipande, David Kalonji Walton, Shaonan Liu, and Liz Timbs. John Milstead and I had too many arguments about football strategy. After arriving in East Lansing, I was grateful to be joined by James Blackwell. I am also grateful for the fellowship of Tara Reyelts, John Doyle-Raso, Katie Greene, Eric Kesse, Abdoulie Jabang, Ryan Carty, and Caitlin Barker, who kept me connected to the Africanist community after I returned from research. Outside of History, I have benefitted from Emily Riley’s friendship and love of Senegal. Fredy Rodriguez provided laughs and an immense amount of emotional support during our time living together and after. Both Emily and Fredy reminded me of anthropology’s immense value. I had too many accidental run-ins with Idris Abubakar that ended up as long conversations. Arfang Dabo has been a friend in East Lansing and a welcoming host in Senegal. I have been fortunate to have Chad Papa and Christina Biedny as friends both in Senegal and the U.S. Gobi Bah was first a Pulaar teacher and then a friend and gave me an excuse to speak Pulaar in East Lansing. I am also thankful for Rachel and Dana Hlavaty, Kristina Sankar, and Liz Osterhage. The past six years have given me an academic community for which I am forever grateful. I met Sarah Zimmerman very early in this process and she has been a great friend across continents. Assan Sarr’s own devotion to graduate students has greatly improved my scholarship and time spent in the Gambia. Bala Saho helped me find housing in the Gambia. Lauren Honig and I have discussed all things Senegal over the course of my time in graduate school. Rebecca Wall has been a thoughtful and kind friend on both sides of the Atlantic. While abroad, I also gained much from my time talking with my fellow researchers. Among them, I must thank in no particular order Devon Golaszewski, Andrew Lebovich, Lamin Manneh, Laura Ann Twagira, Sam Anderson, Julie Landweber, Jenna Nigro, and Sam Kalman. Sarah Westwood, Robyn d’Avignon and I have all xiii made the transition from Peace Corps Volunteer to researcher, and I must thank Robyn for connecting me with Falaye Danfakha and Mady Camara. When I began this project, Nate Carpenter talked me through the history of Fuladu. I have learned much about Guinea-Bissau— and Senegal—from Aliou Ly, and on the challenges of Fulbe in Guinea from Trey Straussberger. Thankfully friendship exists outside of the academy as well. Nova Robinson’s friendship and guidance has gotten me through graduate school as well as through undergrad. The same is true of Natalie Koch. Haley Morris, Jenna Sherman, Sheila Dunning, Zack Styskal, Jen Garfinkel, Katherine Gorman, and Stu Reid kept me connected to Dartmouth even while living apart. Nick Peper always reminded me that talking sports was a welcome refuge to graduate school. My Peace Corps colleagues have served as an immense resource in my life since 2010. They are too numerous to list, but the short version includes Cara Steger, Geoff Burmeister, Kelly Henkler, Wilma Mui, Jenae Woodward-Williams, Paul Levy, Maddie Tiee, Evan Spark-Depass, Justin Tien, Jessica Goza, Mika Bangcaya, Meg Thompson, Jason Haack, Katie Pollack, Sharon Forstbauer, and Mary Cadwallender. I was fortunate to build a new network of volunteers while conducting research, and must then thank Alicia Gorina, Annie Cleary, Lexi and Boubacar Boiro, Laura d’Elsa, Abigail Pershing, James Hickey, Jim Courtright, and Rob Ball. Akshay Deverakonda connected me to communities across the eastern Gambia and asked thoughtful questions. Sam and Sharon Carter hosted me in Dakar many times over the year, including for a good portion of this research. They have always treated me as family and not just family by marriage. I must thank my in-laws, Scott and Shelly Thams, and Julie and Tom Kukuruda, as well as Claire and Carrie Thams. The entire Thams and Hall families have provided a welcoming respite from dissertation work, especially Joyce and Dick Thams. xiv My greatest debt is owed to Lauren Thams, who I met early on in this project. This work often brought us physically farther apart while traveling to conduct research brought us closer together. I would never have finished this dissertation without her. Her warmth, understanding, and humor continue to be a source of joy in my life. Through this process, she came to love Senegal as much as I do. I cannot imagine this project without her. xv TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................................... xix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................... xx Introduction: Borders and Belonging in West Africa ..................................................................... 1 Migration, Mobility, and Borders in Precolonial Southern Senegambia .................................. 11 The shift to colonial rule and colonial boundaries .................................................................... 17 Colonial Power and the Formation of Anti-Colonial Space ..................................................... 28 Alternative Futures—Rethinking the Nation-State at the Colonial Margins ............................ 37 Establishing Nations and (Nation-)States: The Challenge of Borderland Peoples ................... 40 Alternative Geographies and a Failure of Imagination ............................................................. 47 Sources ...................................................................................................................................... 49 Structure .................................................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 1: The Development of Territorial Organization in Southern Senegambia to 1903 ....... 57 Understanding Kaabu and its Political Organization ................................................................ 62 The Political Geography of Kaabu ........................................................................................... 67 Mobility in Kaabu ..................................................................................................................... 72 Mandinka-Fulbe Relations ........................................................................................................ 74 The Fall of Kaabu ..................................................................................................................... 77 The Beginnings of Fulbe Rule .................................................................................................. 79 Fuladu’s Expansion ................................................................................................................... 81 Fulbe Rule in Forriá .................................................................................................................. 85 Migration within and around Fuladu ........................................................................................ 87 European Cooperation and Competition ................................................................................... 91 The Slow Colonial Expansion into Fulbe Territory .................................................................. 95 Musa Molo’s Faustian Bargain ............................................................................................... 102 Border Delimitation ................................................................................................................ 107 The Flight of Musa Molo ........................................................................................................ 111 Greater Fuladu in 1903 ........................................................................................................... 113 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 114 Chapter 2: Borders without Enforcement in the Early Twentieth Century ................................ 117 Southern Senegambia at the Beginning of Colonial Rule ...................................................... 121 The Weakness of Early Colonial States .................................................................................. 125 The Powerlessness of Colonial States over Borders ............................................................... 127 The Social Life of the Borderlands ......................................................................................... 131 Opportunities for Freedom ...................................................................................................... 135 Political Rivalries and Migration ............................................................................................ 139 Evading Forced Labor and Taxation ....................................................................................... 147 Military Conscription .............................................................................................................. 151 The Peak of Military Conscription: World War I ................................................................... 155 xvi “Strange Farmers,” or Les Navétanes ..................................................................................... 161 Trade Across Borders ............................................................................................................. 164 The Growth of Islam: Religious Interconnectivity in Southern Senegambia ......................... 168 Traveling Marabouts .............................................................................................................. 172 Conclusion: The Relative Weakness of Early Colonial States and the Building of a Cross- Border Community ................................................................................................................. 176 Chapter 3: Competing Conceptions of Territory: Power and Migration during the Interwar Years ..................................................................................................................................................... 178 The Influence of Borders in Interwar Southern Senegambia .................................................. 180 General Patterns of Migration ................................................................................................. 183 Avoiding Forced Labor, Taxation, and Military Conscription ............................................... 195 Military Conscription .............................................................................................................. 202 Intra-colonial Migration .......................................................................................................... 204 The “Gold Rush” for “Easy Money” ...................................................................................... 207 Expanding the Ummah ............................................................................................................ 212 Border Control ........................................................................................................................ 218 Border (Re-)Delimitation ........................................................................................................ 221 The Growth of Colonial Infrastructure ................................................................................... 223 Detaching from Growing Colonial States ............................................................................... 228 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 231 Chapter 4: The Beginning of the End: Migration and State Control before Independence ........ 233 The Postwar Landscape .......................................................................................................... 237 Controlling the Border ............................................................................................................ 244 Staggered Movements toward Independence ......................................................................... 247 Senegal ................................................................................................................................ 247 French Guinea ..................................................................................................................... 250 The Gambia ......................................................................................................................... 252 Portuguese Guinea .............................................................................................................. 255 Postwar Migration Flows ........................................................................................................ 257 Strange Farmers/Navétanes ................................................................................................ 262 Clandestine Trading ............................................................................................................ 268 Political Migration .............................................................................................................. 273 Other Reasons for Migration .............................................................................................. 274 Islamic Networks at the Close of the Colonial Period ............................................................ 276 Traveling Clerics ................................................................................................................. 280 Guinean Independence and the Marginalization of Fulbe ...................................................... 281 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 285 Chapter 5: Independence, Liberation, and the Challenges of National Belonging, 1958–early 1980s ........................................................................................................................................... 288 Guinea: A Slow but Massive Exodus ..................................................................................... 293 Crossing the Border ............................................................................................................ 295 Defining a Transnational Futa Jallon .................................................................................. 299 Economic Migration ........................................................................................................... 301 Seasonal Farming ................................................................................................................ 305 xvii Cattle and Other Quotas ...................................................................................................... 308 Re-Opening the Border ....................................................................................................... 310 Portuguese Guinea: Independence, Migration and the Question of Fulbe Integration ........... 311 Cross-Border Raids and Connections ................................................................................. 312 Refugees and Movement during the War for Independence ............................................... 315 Fulbe Collaboration? ........................................................................................................... 320 Post-War Movement ........................................................................................................... 326 Establishing Sovereignty ........................................................................................................ 329 Senegal and the Gambia: How Special Should the Relationship Be? ................................ 332 The Continuation of Migration Patterns ............................................................................. 336 Seasonal Farming after Independence ................................................................................ 339 Smuggling ........................................................................................................................... 341 Bringing Marginal Regions into the Fold ........................................................................... 344 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 346 Chapter 6: Medina Gounass and the Construction of Extra-National Space .............................. 350 Creating an Alternative Geography ........................................................................................ 355 The founding of a community ................................................................................................. 360 The First Forty Years .............................................................................................................. 364 Decentralization: Medina Gounass enters Senegalese politics ............................................... 371 Making Muslims, Controlling Citizens .................................................................................. 374 Autonomy in a Religious Border Community ........................................................................ 381 Cross-Border Ties, Then and Now ......................................................................................... 386 Economics Beyond Borders .................................................................................................... 392 Transnational Smuggling ........................................................................................................ 394 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 397 Conclusion: The Postcolonial Incorporation of Citizens: Territorial Belonging Reconsidered . 400 Regional Organizations and Territorial Belonging ................................................................. 408 The Senegambia Confederation—The Failure of Political Community ................................. 410 Lumos and the Strength of Civil Society ................................................................................ 415 Diaobé, The Center of the (Market) Universe ........................................................................ 419 Guinea-Bissau: The Tensions of Integration .......................................................................... 421 Senegambian Border Issues in the Twenty-First Century ...................................................... 424 Informal Naturalization: The Making of Citizens .................................................................. 427 Citizenship and Xenophobia in Independent Africa ............................................................... 431 The value of fluid and flexible citizenship in rural southern Senegambia ............................. 434 Sacrificial vs. fluid citizenship ................................................................................................ 437 The past and future of fluid citizenship .................................................................................. 439 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................ 441 APPENDIX A: NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY, NAMES, AND LINGUISTIC TERMS ...... 442 APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY OF PULAAR, SENEGAMBIAN, AND GEOGRAPHIC TERMS ................................................................................................................................... 444 APPENDIX C ......................................................................................................................... 449 APPENDIX D ......................................................................................................................... 450 APPENDIX E ......................................................................................................................... 451 xviii APPENDIX F ......................................................................................................................... 452 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 453 xix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Rough boundaries of southern Senegambia………………………………………..…….2 Figure 2: Late nineteenth century map of greater Senegambia……………………………..……...4 Figure 3: Map of Senegal featuring the Upper Casamance (Kolda)…...………………………….5 Figure 4: Research interview locations…………………………………………………………...51 Figure 5: Kaabu’s (“Khabou or Ngabou”) rough location as of the mid-nineteenth century……...58 Figure 6: Map of the Fulbe Islamic revolutions across West Africa ……………………………...65 Figure 7: Engraving of a Fulbe Town from Moore’s Travels into the inland parts of Africa.…….71 Figure 8: Rough boundaries of Fuladu at its greatest extent………………………………………84 Figure 9: 1906 map of the Gambia, Portuguese Guinea and the Casamance …………………..106 Figure 10: Colonial period migration in southern Senegambia…………………………………119 Figure 11: Map of the colonial Gambia, 1948…………………………………………………...185 Figure 12: Sékou Touré, 1962…………………………………………………………………..252 Figure 13: Bagging of peanuts in the Gambia, 1948…………………………………………….264 Figure 14: Fulbe emigration from Guinea and Portuguese Guinea, , 1960s and 1970s …………289 Figure 15: Fulbe emigration from Guinea………………………………………………………295 Figure 16: Emigration from Portuguese Guinea during the war for independence…………….318 Figure 17: Raising of the Bissau-Guinean flag, Canjadude, 1974……………………………….328 Figure 18: Location of Medina Gounass from Google Maps……………………………………353 Figure 19: Canhamina, Guinea-Bissau, border crossing with Senegal ………………………….406 Figure A-20: Administrative Map of Senegal……………...…………………………………....449 Figure A-21: Administrative Map of the Gambia…………………………………………….....450 Figure A-22: Administrative Map of Guinea-Bissau……………….……...…………………....451 Figure A-23: Administrative Map of Guinea……………....…………………………………....452 xix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS AHD — Arquivo Histórico Diplomático, Lisbon, Portugal AHM — Arquivo Histórico Militar, Lisbon, Portugal AHU — Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon, Portugal ANOM — Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer, Aix-en-Provence, France ANS — Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar, Senegal ANSD — Agence nationale de la statistique et de la démographie, Senegal AOF — Afrique Occidentale Française (French West Africa) ATT — Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, Portugal BCGP — Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa BSGL — Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa CFA — West African CFA franc CFDT — Compagnie française pour le développement des fibres textiles CGCE — Comptoir Guinéen du Commerce Extérieur CGCI — Comptoir Guinéen du Commerce Intérieur CFGTA — Confédération générale des travailleurs africains CRAD — Comité Régional d’Assistance pour le Développement DSG — Démocratie Socialiste de Guinée ECOWAS — Economic Community of West African States FLING — Frente de Libertação da Guiné GOMB — Gambia Oilseeds Marketing Board IRIN — Integrated Regional Information Network ISCSP — Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal MLG — Movimento de Liberação da Guiné xx NCAC — National Center for Arts and Culture, Oral History Archive, Fajara, The Gambia NRS — National Records Service, Banjul, The Gambia OMVG — Organisation de Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Gambie (The Gambia River Basin Development Organization) PAIGC — Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde PDG — Parti Démoratique de Guinée PDS — Parti Démocratique Sénégalais PS — Parti Socialiste du Sénégal (formerly the UPS) PSSG — Senegalo-Gambian Permanent Secretariat PIDE — Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado PRO — Public Records Office, Kew, United Kingdom SGL — Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal SODEFITEX — Société de développement et des fibres textiles UEMOA — Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine (West African Economic and Monetary Union) UNGP — União dos Naturais da Guiné Portuguesa UPLG — União Popular para Libertação da Guiné UPS — Union progressiste sénégalaise xxi Introduction: Borders and Belonging in West Africa In January 2017, nearly 100,000 Gambians fled their country at a time of political crisis. The Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh, had refused to leave office after losing the presidential election the month before. Fearing that the unstable political climate would lead to chaos and violence, more than 95 percent of those fleeing went to neighboring Senegal, with an estimated 3,500 more crossing through southern Senegal before seeking refuge in Senegal’s southern neighbor, Guinea-Bissau. In both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, displaced populations relied on their hosts to feed and house them. Most of those who fled the Gambia relied on their own personal connections; given the Gambia’s small size, most Gambians have family in surrounding Senegal. When Jammeh finally agreed to leave office and go into exile in late January, almost all of these Gambians returned home.1 It was not just Gambians who followed the election and its aftermath closely, but also the populations of bordering regions of Senegal. In Kolda (also known as the Upper Casamance, see Figure 3), the Senegalese region south of the eastern Gambia, the Gambian election and its aftermath was a primary topic of conversation.2 To anyone who has spent time in either the Gambia or the part of Senegal to its south (the Casamance), the interest in these neighboring regions came as no surprise. Since the drawing and subsequent delineation of colonial borders in the region during the end of the nineteenth century, 1 Hélène Caux, “As Gambia crisis passes, displaced return from Senegal,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, January 24, 2017, https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2017/1/588719bf4/gambia-crisis-passes-displaced-return- senegal.html (last accessed March 26, 2020); “Afluxo de refugiados gambianos à Guiné Bissau,” RFI português, January 11, 2017, https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2017/1/588719bf4/gambia-crisis-passes-displaced-return- senegal.html (last accessed March 26, 2020); Lassana Cassamá, “Gambianos procuram refúgio na Guiné-Bissau,” Voice of America, January 12, 2017, https://www.voaportugues.com/a/gambianos-procuram-refugio-em- bissau/3673646.html (last accessed March 26, 2020). 2 I lived in different parts of the region of Kolda during this period and spent much of my time talking about the election and whether Jammeh would accept the results of the election. I also lived in Kolda during the 2011 Gambian elections, where Jammeh handily won in an election few would call legitimate. As a result, there was very little discussion within Senegal of those elections. 1 residents of the region have moved back and forth between the two colonies/countries. The same has been true of Senegal’s southwestern neighbor, Guinea-Bissau (formerly the colony of Portuguese Guinea). Over the course of the twentieth century, these three countries became increasingly tied together, as well as to the Futa Jallon highlands of Guinea. In forming communities of belonging across colonial and postcolonial borders, these populations offered an alternative to ideas of colonial and national belonging put forth over the course of the twentieth century. Movement across borders offered opportunities to residents of southern Senegambia3 to escape the worst excesses of colonial rule, profit economically, and create new Islamic communities. Communities moved to avoid taxation, military conscription, and forced labor, to transport agricultural products and livestock, and to marry across borders. Figure 1. Rough boundaries of southern Senegambia 3 See Figure 1. I use the term southern Senegambia to represent the eastern Gambia (the Central River and Upper River Regions), the Upper Casamance of southern Senegal (the Kolda Region), eastern Guinea-Bissau (the Gabú and Bafatá Regions), and to the northwesternmost portion of Guinea. Later on, Futa Jallon—the southeastern part of the highlighted area—becomes more closely tied to these areas. See the map above, created by the author. 2 However, these individuals and communities did not see themselves as operating in an international space, moving between colonies and later independent states. They saw themselves as moving through one larger, interconnected space, where borders were a suggestion rather than a reality. Archival documents suggest that borderland residents saw these borders as insignificant and treated them as such. However, it was only when I started to conduct interviews that I realized that Fulbe—the primary focus of this study—and other southern Senegambians conceived of this area as one larger space. At the end of every interview, I would ask how one side of the border differed from the other. Nearly every person responded with a similar answer; they said “fof ko gotum” (“it’s all the same” in Pulaar, the language of the Fulbe), “fof ko duula goto” (“it’s all one place”), or perhaps most insightfully, “fof ko leydi goto” (“it’s all one country/land/territory”).4 This space is often referred to as Fuladu in reference to the precolonial polity that covered much of this region. Fuladu does not encompass all of the areas discussed in this dissertation, but the idea of a larger interconnected geographical identity covers most of the Fulbe areas of southern Senegambia.5 Fulbe communities exist across greater Senegambia, a zone of great climatic and ecological diversity. The northern edge of this region is the Senegal River. The river’s headwaters begin in northern Guinea before traveling northward, eventually making up the border between Senegal and its neighbor to the north, Mauritania. The middle part of the Senegal River is known as Futa Toro, home to an eighteenth and nineteenth century Fulbe kingdom of the same name. Outside of the river basin, northern Senegambia is a dry region with limited rainfall. However, the Gambia 4 The word leydi has a multiplicity of meanings in Pulaar (the language of the Fulbe. It can mean country (Senegal ko leydi am – Senegal is my country), or it can refer to land/ground/dirt/a particular territory. The sense used in my interviews referred to a larger geographical space that for the purposes of belonging was similar to a country. 5 While Fulbe from the Futa Jallon highlands of Guinea also migrated to other Fulbe areas of southern Senegambia, Futa Jallon is considered geographically apart from the lower elevations of Fuladu. 3 River represents a change from the dry, semi-arid climate of northern and central Senegambia to the tropical savanna of southern Senegambia. The river stretches the length of the country of the Gambia, providing ample water for agricultural communities living nearby. The eastern Gambia, which is part of this study, is a mixture of Fulbe, Mandinka, Soninke, and several other ethnicities. The Gambia River originates in the Futa Jallon highlands of northern Guinea, a wet, highland region typically about 3,000 feet above sea level. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, Futa Jallon was home to an Islamic state of the same name, which lasted until French colonization at the close of the nineteenth century (see Figure 2).6 Figure 2. Late nineteenth century map of greater Senegambia 6 See Futa Toro in northern Senegal (“Fouta”) and Futa Jallon to the south (“Fouta Djallon”). Adapted from Société de géographie. “Séance du 16 juin 1882. Itinéraire au Fouta-Djallon et au Bambouk par le Docteur J. M. Bayol. 1881,” available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b550109760 4 Though the primary ethnic group in central Senegal is the Wolof, the Casamance, by contrast—the part of Senegal south of the Gambia—features a wider variety of communities. The Upper Casamance, the Senegalese region under study here (see Figure 3), is primarily a Fulbe region, though it was majority-Mandinka until the nineteenth century.7 The Middle Casamance, just to the west, is typically associated with Mandinka, although it is also very diverse. The Lower Casamance, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, is predominantly Jola.8 Both Fulbe and Mandinka have been more closely associated with centralized communities and polities, in contrast to the decentralized Jola to their west. To the south of Senegal is Guinea-Bissau, whose eastern regions are mostly Fulbe and Mandinka, but whose western, coastal regions are made up of decentralized communities like the Balanta, Jola (known as Felupe in Guinea-Bissau), and Bijago.9 Figure 3. Map of Senegal featuring the Upper Casamance (Kolda) 7 From Wikimedia Commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kolda_in_Senegal.svg. The two regions to the west (from left to right) are the Lower Casamance (Ziguinchor) and the Middle Casamance (Sedhiou) respectively. 8 For background on the Lower Casamance, Peter Mark, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History of the Basse Casamance since 1500 (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1985). 9 Walter Hawthorne, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations Along the Guinea-Bissau Coast, 1400- 1900 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2003). 5 In the Pulaar language, there are many terms that refer to communities or national structures. The broadest of these is dental, which refers to community in the broadest possible sense.10 In this spirit, the Senegalese musician Baaba Maal has a song entitled “Dental (United States of Africa),” implying the relative weakness of individual African states in the face of the larger community of Africans. Dental is often used to refer to religious communities, and the Tijani holy city of Medina Gounass in southern Senegal explicitly refers to its larger community of followers as a dental. Narrower than the dental is the lenyol, which can refer to lineage, ethnicity, nation, or people. It is for this reason that Maal named his band Daande Leñol (Voice of the People).11 Fulbe in southern Senegambia—and in many parts of greater Senegambia—refer to their ancestors as a lenyol (lineage), but it can also be used to describe Fulbe people more broadly, or even the inhabitants of a particular country. The concept of national territory is represented by the term leydi, which refers to a state but also to the land or ground itself. This triple meaning of the word represents the traditional relationship between a polity and its territory and has a long history among Fulbe peoples across West Africa.12 In southern Senegambia, Fulbe people refer to both sides of the border as leydi goto, meaning one country or the same country. The people of both sides of the border are part of the dental or lenyol. The bounds of the community do not end 10 In this broader sense, its meaning can be considered close to humanity itself. Mamadou Niang’s Pulaar-English dictionary lists dental as “union” or “confederation rally,” and a large dental (dental mawngal) as a “mob” or “mass.” Niang, Pulaar: Pulaar-English, English-Pulaar Standard Dictionary (New York: Hippocrene, 1997), 21. Dental itself is often used to describe a meeting or gathering, though this is today often replaced by the French réunion. Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé points out, “The dental, taken in its most restrictive sense, means gathering but in a stronger sense, it means community, with all that it implies as a form of organization and solidarity (unity, community gathering).” N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts face à la ‘modernité’: Le dental de Madina Gounass à l’épreuve,” in Momar-Coumba Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal contemporain (Paris: Karthala, 2002), 617. This is the way I have understood the term in my discussions in Pulaar, and the way in which I am defining it here. Niang’s dictionary translates nation as ngéndi as “nation” in the sense of one’s motherland. Niang, Pulaar, 74. In my experience in southern Senegambia, lenyol is more common. Niang’s dictionary focuses on the Pulaar of Mauritania, Senegal, and the Gambia, within which there are many different dialects. Niang, Pulaar, x. 11 Leñol is an alternate spelling of lenyol (which I believe is easier for English-speakers). 12 In eastern dialects of Pulaar (often known as Fulfulde), leydi becomes lesdi. 6 at the border, and thus, movement between different sides of the border in order to migrate or to transport goods is seen as legitimate if not necessarily legal. Prior to European colonization, Fulbe people had ideas of territory and its limits, from the level of the kingdom and province to smaller spaces like villages, fields, and family compounds. Nomadic populations had different territorial ideas than more sedentary ones, characterized by shifting pastoral zones based on a variety of factors. Those notions would shift substantially in times of drought.13 Territorial spaces shifted often, whether for political, economic, social, or religious reasons. People moved in and out of southern Senegambia depending on the conditions around them, making the region one of transition between the area north of the Gambia River, the Lower Casamance to the west, and the Futa Jallon highlands to the southeast. Despite larger political bodies, local political control was primarily exercised by village chiefs, meaning that attachment—both positive and negative—was primarily at the settlement level.14 Fulbe people did have ideas of boundaries, even if the firmness of those boundaries grew weaker for more distant frontiers. The boundary of one’s fields or house could be known as kalasal, which referred to the fences or hedges put around the outside to delineate the ownership of space. A broader boundary was known as kéérol, which could refer to the limits, boundaries, or frontiers of a community or polity of any particular size.15 Today, these words have mostly been replaced by loan words from French (frontière), English (border), and Portuguese (fronteira).16 13 Kane, “Les Frontières et leurs consequences,” 1289–91. As discussed earlier, in Pulaar the word for territory or state is leydi. The words for a territory’s limits are or kéérol (plural keeri). The limit of a field or house is described as kalasal, referring to a fence or outside wall of some kind. 14 Sirio Canós Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns: archaeological landscapes of the Upper Casmanace (Senegal), 7th–19th C.” (PhD Dissertation, University College London, 2016), 127. 15 Niang, Pulaar, 52–53; and Kane, “Les Frontières et leurs consequences,” 1289–91. 16 Interestingly, there is not an exact correlation between the official language of a particular country and which loan word one uses for it. This is evidence of the deep connections between different sides of each border. 7 Despite the international vision that regards states as bounded containers and borders as separating demarcated territories, I argue that borderland peoples in Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea- Bissau, and Guinea rejected this claim, and over the course of the twentieth century put forth an alternative vision of territory and space than that of colonial and postcolonial nations in the region. This dissertation centers on the Fulbe of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea,17 and argues that in these rural borderlands, Fulbe people used their location to create semi-autonomous, transnational communities, and in doing so, subverted colonial and postcolonial claims to sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, it was not just Fulbe, but southern Senegambians broadly who built these cross-border communities. I contend that at a time where many throughout the colonial world were rethinking ideas of sovereignty, the actions of southern Senegambians represented the putting into practice of an alternative conception of the relationship between states and communities. This reflects an alternative “spatial topography,” which as Charles Carnegie points out in the case of the mid-nineteenth century Caribbean, “significantly alters present-day political perspectives tied to fixed notions of race and territory.” These alternative spatial topographies have continued in the Caribbean until the present day.18 However, as Carnegie does, it is equally if not more important to study the ways in which personal and communal spatial topographies demonstrate a view of transnational space at odds with national understandings of border crossing and sovereign space. Fulbe people were able to strategically manipulate the differences between French, British, and Portuguese imperial regimes of power, which made colonial states wary of enacting 17 Fulbe are also known as Fula, Peul, and further to the east as Fulani. 18 The quote is from Charles Carnegie, Postnationalism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 136–37, but Postnationalism Prefigured deals in large part with this disconnect between national identity and everyday spatial practice. The “spatial topographies” of individuals and communities reflect the different geographies that individual people put into practice, as opposed to those of states, focused on the territorial boundaries of the states themselves. 8 burdensome demands that could lead to migration. During the 1960s and 1970s, the liberation struggle in Portuguese Guinea and nationalist projects in Guinea made Fulbe marginal in new nationalist narratives, people in-between nations rather than fully integrated into a particular one. In the case of Guinea, cross-border ties made Fulbe suspect to their government, a people without a clear connection and association to the Guinean state. Some Fulbe did proudly become a part of their particular states, but most who moved did so within a larger cross-border space rather than to other regions or capital areas within national borders. The movement of Fulbe people throughout southern Senegambia challenges nationalist ideas of autochthony in colonial and postcolonial Africa. If Fulbe populations moved consistently between colonies and states but within Fulbe spaces, to which territory did they belong? African governments have spent much of the postcolonial period attempting to build national communities, tied back both to precolonial polities and the hardships endured by colonial rule. Mobility and migration have threatened these postcolonial projects. If surviving the colonial period in a given territory is sufficient for national inclusion, then postcolonial migrants are left out. If that distinction is pushed even further back—as is often the case in Africa—then a large proportion of the population is deemed unworthy of citizenship.19 While in much of Africa debates about autochthony are central to ideas of belonging, in rural parts of southern Senegambia these debates are less important. Fulbe people see themselves as autochthonous to each state, even while their relatively recent arrival is accepted historical fact. Until recently, citizenship has been granted to those who arrived even as adults, and uncontroversially so. 19 For example, Sara Dorman, Daniel Hammett, and Paul Nugent (eds.), Making Nations, Creating Strangers: States and Citizenship in Africa (Boston: Brill, 2007); Peter Geschiere and Francis Nyamnjoh, “Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging,” Public Culture 12, no. 2 (2000), 423–52; and Bronwen Manby, Struggles for Citizenship in Africa (London: Zed Books, 2009). 9 The acceptance of cross-border movement and the ability to blend legally and socially into new communities is directly tied to the shared importance of Islamic brotherhoods to communities in rural parts of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea, an importance that grew due to traveling marabouts (clerics) over the course of the twentieth century.20 These clerics deepened cross-border connections through religious education, proselytization, and other forms of community-building. While more localized forms of belonging were consistent throughout southern Senegambia, national forms of belonging took different forms. In Senegal and the Gambia, peripheral border communities were often ignored by central governments. However, they were not specifically excluded from the national imaginary. On the other hand, Fulbe in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau saw their place in emerging nation-states contested due to their perceived lack of interest in the project of postcolonial state- and nation-making. More often than not, colonial and postcolonial Fulbe movement served to further integrate cross-border Fulbe communities into a larger territory of belonging, while creating separation from national capitals and centers of power in Dakar, Banjul, Bissau, and Conakry. The mobility of the colonial and postcolonial periods was in part a response to the challenges and opportunities posed by new political and economic conditions, yet these movements were rooted in precolonial ideas of mobility and migration. Some aspects of precolonial mobility continued into the colonial period, as French, British, and Portuguese rule in colonial southern Senegambia by no means changed every aspect of life. Most of the region was marginal to colonial political and economic concerns centered on areas of greater strategic importance or closer to state centers of power. Just as various pressures often led to migration in 20 On the importance of Islamic brotherhoods in nation-building in Senegal, see Leonardo A. Villalón, Islamic society and state power in Senegal: Disciples and citizens in Fatick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), and Donal Cruise O’Brien, Momar-Coumba Diop, and Mamadou Diouf, La construction de l’État au Sénégal (Paris: Karthala, 2002). 10 search of a better life prior to colonization, so too did migration during the colonial and postcolonial periods come out of similar factors. In the lead-up to independence, as elites imagined alternative political futures to the Westphalian nation-state, Fulbe people in southern Senegambia enacted cross-border ideas of belonging through a geographic region that encompassed several sovereign states.21 Migration, Mobility, and Borders in Precolonial Southern Senegambia To understand the cross-border dynamics of Fulbe in the twentieth century, we must foreground the relationship between boundaries, governments, and populations in southern Senegambia prior to the imposition of European borders. Greater Senegambia—from southern Mauritania moving south to Guinea and east to western Mali—was an interconnected space, where a variety of peoples migrated within a larger geography.22 Throughout the precolonial period, polities were organized around fluid ideas of sovereignty and territoriality, and this was particularly true on the margins of states. The power of states tended to dissipate as it radiated outward from the center of power, and therefore the bounds of any particular state became murky as these limits depended on the ability of governments to collect taxes and exert authority over populations at any given time.23 Therefore, particular polities could move in and out of larger federations. 21 The idea of alternative futures in decolonization is discussed at greater depth later in this introduction, but most relevant here are Frederick Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation: Remaking France and French Africa, 1945-1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), Gary Wilder, Freedom Time: Negritude, Decolonization, and the Future of the World (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). Both of these texts include Senegal and focus on the country’s first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor. Wilder also discusses the Martinican poet and intellectual Aimé Césaire. 22 The classic study of the interconnectedness of Senegambia is Boubacar Barry’s Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, translated by Ayi Kwei Armah (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 23 For Senegambia in particular, Ahmadou Fadel Kane, “Les frontières et leurs conséquences en Afrique de l'Ouest de la Mauritanie à la Guinée Conakry: éspace mauritano-guinéen” (PhD Dissertation, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, 2010), 1296. Jeffrey Herbst argues, “In many precolonial societies, a significant difference existed between what control of the political center meant and what the partial exercise of power amounted to in the hinterland. Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 [2000]), 40. 11 Until the 1860s, southern Senegambia was dominated by the federation of Kaabu. While Kaabu’s strength and the territories under its control shifted constantly, it remained the dominant political formation of the region. However, this would change during the second half of the nineteenth century. This last half-century before the imposition of European rule was a time of great change in southern Senegambia. The fall of the Mandinka-centered Kaabu in the 1860s led to a transition to Fulbe rule through the polity of Fuladu, led by Alfa Molo and later his son Musa. The period of Fuladu coincided with the first treaties signed with Europeans in the early 1880s, which eventually chipped away at Fuladu’s sovereignty until Musa Molo was finally dethroned in 1903. Boundary-drawing and delineation in the 1880s and 1890s led to relatively firm borders between Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea, although these borders were essentially unguarded and unclear to most people living in the region. Within Futa Jallon, power shifted from the traditional ruling families into the hands of Alfa Yaya of Labé, who moved the balance of power away from the traditional power centers of Futa Jallon toward the northwest, close to where the Guinea-Bissau/Guinea border is today. Kaabu, the central political formation of southern Senegambia until the 1860s, is best described as a federation of member states ruled by particular lineages, whose loyalty to the broader federation and allegiance to Kaabu’s monarchy ebbed and flowed based on power relations at any given time. The inability of its central government to extend its power outward was particular notable among the nomadic and semi-nomadic Fulbe populations on Kaabu’s edges.24 This territorial fluidity extended past Kaabu’s fall into the kingdom of Fuladu, which ruled much 24 Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé, “Identités ethniques et territorialisation en Cassamance,” in Michel Ben Arrous and Lazare Ki-Zerbo (eds.), Études africaines de géographie par le bas / African studies in geography from below (Dakar: CODESRIA, 2009), 44. 12 of the region until Musa Molo, the last king of Fuladu, fled to the Gambia in 1903.25 These dynamics were similar in many parts of Africa, where areas could be influenced by multiple polities simultaneously.26 There was a range of borders, boundaries, and frontiers throughout precolonial Africa. Some states, like Borno near Lake Chad, Ovamboland in Namibia, and Buganda, had “precise boundaries” and controlled a particular bounded space.27 However, most, like Kaabu and Fuladu, had imprecise boundaries at best, and boundaries by themselves had little value other than what resources could be marshalled within them.28 Despite the lack of a specific location, the idea of a “boundary of exclusion” was common throughout the continent, because that was how “rulers distinguished between taxable populations and those who might be raided.”29 There were substantial territorial gaps between larger, more centralized states and decentralized groups, while particular areas claimed fealty to more than one state.30 In many circumstances, losing territory was preferable to fighting a war over a marginal area.31 In different parts of Niger alone, borders 25 Sirio Canós Donnay refers to Kaabu as a state and a confederation, which in the early period was “superficially centralised.” Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns,” 127. On Fuladu, ibid, 71. Toby Green and George Brooks also both refer to Kaabu as a federation rather than a centralized polity. Toby Green, The Rise of the Trans- Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 33, and George Brooks, Landlords and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in Western Africa, 1000–1630 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 113. By contrast, Mamadou Mané refers to Kaabu as an empire. Mané, Contribution à l'histoire du Kaabu: des origines au XIXe siècle (Dakar: IFAN, 1979), 28. 26 Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World: Boundaries, Territoriality, and Sovereignty in Africa,” translated by Steven Rendall, Public Culture 12, no. 1 (2000), 259–84. 27 Vincent Hiribarren, A History of Borno: Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State (London: Hurst & Company, 2017), 33. On Ovamboland, Gregor Dobler, “Boundary drawing and the notion of territoriality in pre- colonial and early colonial Ovamboland,” Journal of Namibian Studies 3 (2008): 7–30. Buganda is the subject of Richard Reid, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002). 28 Kane, “Les frontières,” 1302. 29 Paul Nugent, “Arbitrary Lines and the People’s Minds: A Dissenting View on Colonial Boundaries in West Africa,” in Nugent and A. I. Asiwaju (eds.), African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits and Opportunities (London: Pinter, 1996), 60. 30 Nugent, “Arbitrary Lines”; and Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 261. Richard Roberts also describes how Segu’s boundaries operated as a frontier that alternated between contraction and expansion. Roberts, Warriors, Merchants and Slaves: The States and the Economy in the Middle Niger Valley, 1700–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 39. The idea of overlapping sovereignty was also present in Southeast Asia. Thonchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994). 31 Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 46. 13 could be dangerous areas, inhabited zones, no man’s lands, or disputed spaces.32 Achille Mbembe argues, Whether the “boundary” was a state boundary or some other kind, it was meaningful only through the relationships it maintained with other forms of difference and of social, jurisdictional, and cultural discrimination, the forms of contact and interpenetration at work in a given space. It was a question not of boundaries in the legal sense of the term, but rather of the borders of countries and of interlaced spaces, taken as a whole.33 This description fits with Georg Simmel’s observation of a boundary as “not a spatial fact with sociological consequences, but a sociological fact that forms itself spatially.”34 These socially constructed boundaries had a diversity of spatial arrangements, as southern Senegambians made, shaped, and ignored a variety of borders and boundaries during the precolonial period. Later, they would continue to manipulate colonial and postcolonial borders where and when they could. In some areas, particular states restricted access to territory. In much of Niger, there were no strict barriers, but mobility was restricted and controlled by the polities of the region.35 This is what Benedetta Rossi has termed a “kinetocracy,” where the primary aim of government is to control movement.36 This was by no means exclusive to Africa, as Carnegie points out the importance of “the politics of movement” in the nineteenth century Caribbean.37 John Torpey argues that monopolizing the “legitimate ‘means of movement’” is a hallmark of the modern state,38 but this was attempted by the precolonial states of southern Senegambia as well. The 32 Camille Lefebvre, Frontières de sable, frontières de papier: histoire de territoires et de frontières, du jihad de Sokoto à la colonization française du Niger, XIXe-XXe siècles (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2015), 14. 33 Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 264. 34 Georg Simmel, Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, edited by David Frisby and Mike Featherstone (London: Sage, 1997 [1908]), 143 35 Lefebvre, Frontières de sable. 36 Benedetta Rossi, “Kinetocracy: The Government of Mobility at the Desert’s Edge,” in Darshan Vigneswaran and Joel Quirk (eds.), Mobility Makes States: Migration and Power in Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 223–56. See also Rossi, From Slavery to Aid: Politics, Labour, and Ecology in the Nigerien Sahel, 1800–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 37 Carnegie, Postnationalism Prefigured, 116. 38 John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Chapter 1. The chapter is based on Torpey’s earlier article, “Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate ‘Means of Movement,’” Sociological Theory 16, no. 3 (1998), 239–259. 14 question of movement was closely tied to ideas of “wealth-in-people.” Many historians of Africa have discussed the importance for precolonial states in controlling people, not territory; however, as Assan Sarr points out, it is impossible to separate the idea of controlling people from controlling land, as the ability to distribute land allowed a polity to bring people under its jurisdiction.39 Within territories, populations in southern Senegambia often exhibited “serial sedentism.”40 Serial sedentism was characterized by “shifting towns,” which moved short distances over spans ranging from one to several generations.41 Much of our knowledge of early African history comes from archaeology, and archaeological studies “tend to present landscapes as still pictures, sets of fixed nodes, networks, and boundaries. Yet, in practice, landscapes are constituted by highly dynamic structures, organisations, processes and practices, in which movement is not a transitional phase between still moments, but an intrinsic part of their articulation.”42 As the first chapter of this dissertation demonstrates, populations in southern Senegambia exhibited a range of mobilities before the period of French rule. While some pastoralists exhibited nomadic behavior, others tended toward mobile towns and shifting sedentism. Movement occurred not just inside and out of a particular polity, but within these polities as well, as individuals, families, and communities searched for better farm and pastureland as ecological conditions changed. Denis Retaillé and Olivier Walther use the term “mobile space” to describe how mobility refers not just to people and goods, but the mobility of places themselves. Ideas of mobile places and spaces were key to much of the West African Sahel, where circulation and movement produced space.43 On the other hand, 39 Assan Sarr, Islam, Power, and Dependency in the Gambia River Basin: The Politics of Land Control, 1790–1940 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2016). Sarr has an excellent summary of these debates in his introduction. 40 Amy Lawson, “Megaliths and Mande states: Sociopolitical change in the Gambia Valley over the past two millennia” (PhD Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2003), 17-18. 41 Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns.” 42 Ibid, 46. 43 Denis Retaillé and Olivier Walther, “Spaces of uncertainty: A model of mobile space in the Sahel,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 32, no. 1 (2011), 85–86. 15 coastal Balanta communities in Guinea-Bissau farmed the same rice paddies for generations, creating an attachment to land less present among pastoralists and other more mobile communities. Fears of enslavement led Balanta into compact villages and eventually into communal harvesting of rice through large-scale production.44 Ideas of places, regions, and mobility need to be defined spatially and historically. Doreen Massey has argued, “What gives a place its specificity is not some long internalized history but the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus.”45 While Massey is right to point out the importance of social relations in defining the specificity of a particular place, those relations must also be defined historically. African historians like Allen Howard, Richard Shain, and Paul Nugent have demonstrated the importance of a spatial perspective over long historical spans.46 Most of these historical studies tend to focus on the precolonial period, or the shift in geographical perspectives from the precolonial to the colonial period.47 Rather than just looking at boundaries or borders, these studies look at networks and movements to trace a long history of interactions between individual communities, polities, and regions. For the Asante Kingdom, Ivor Wilks has demonstrated how roads linking the capital Kumasi with outlying regions created the idea of an 44 Hawthorne, Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves. 45 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 154. 46 Allen M. Howard and Richard M. Shain (eds.), The Spatial Factor in African History: The Relationship of the Social, Material, and Perceptual (Boston: Brill, 2005), and Ulf Engel and Paul Nugent (eds.), Respacing Africa (Boston: Brill, 2010). 47 For example, see Christopher Gray, Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa: Southern Gabon, ca. 1850– 1940 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2002), Allen M. Howard, “Re-Marking on the Past: Spatial Structures and Dynamics in the Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain, 1860s–1920s,” in The Spatial Factor in African History, 291–348, and Andrew Hubbell, “A View of the Slave Trade from the Margin: Souroudougou in the Late Nineteenth-Century Slave Trade of the Niger Bend,” Journal of African History 42, no. 1 (2001), 25–47. For studies that bridge the precolonial and postcolonial, see Paul Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019); and William F. S. Miles, Hausaland Divided: Colonialism and Independence in Nigeria and Niger (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). 16 Asante “nation.”48 In doing so, they demonstrate how notions of territoriality structured economic, political, and social life over historical epochs. These networks have been particularly important in Islamic areas of West Africa like the ones discussed here.49 Territoriality, defined by Robert Sack as “a spatial strategy to control people and things by controlling areas,” is a concept crucial to understanding how southern Senegambians experienced precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial power.50 Mbembe describes precolonial territoriality across the African continent as “itinerant,” and “operating by thrusts, detachments, and scissions.”51 In southern Senegambia, as mentioned above, concepts of territoriality were fluid, and changed depending on political and military considerations. The shift to colonial rule and colonial boundaries Both precolonial and colonial kingdoms in southern Senegambia shared a key feature: neither provided much for the majority of their citizens, creating little allegiance to particular regions or rulers. While individuals or families might be rooted to particular villages, they typically had little attachment to larger territories. In a society where mobility was the norm rather than the exception, the idea of moving to escape a particular policy or for economic gain was commonplace. Precolonial southern Senegambia was a space of shifting boundaries and flexible territorial structures; however, with the coming of colonial rule, the geographic bounds of particular polities became circumscribed and no longer fluid. Nonetheless, the concept of mobility remained paramount and fluid. While migration was common in precolonial southern Senegambia, colonial movement brought more regularized patterns of movement as the uncertainty of a geographically 48 Ivor Wilks, “On Mentally Mapping Greater Asante: A Study of Time and Motion,” Journal of African History 33, no. 2 (1992), 175–90. 49 Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 268–69. 50 Robert David Sack, Human territoriality: Its theory and history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 5. For more on territoriality, see Sack’s Homo geographicus: A framework for action, awareness, and moral concern (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 51 Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 263. 17 unstable space no longer factored into population migrations. This more regular movement created an interconnected cross-border region where regional networks grew alongside regular incentives for migration. Not all areas of greater Senegambia were like this. In colonial Portuguese Guinea, Fulbe and Mandinka communities moved across borders, while other communities tended to move within the territory, creating more of an allegiance to the geographic territory of the colony.52 Understanding ideas of territoriality in southern Senegambia explains why southern Senegambians generally chose to ignore colonial and postcolonial conceptions of borders and border management. As Jonathan Goodhand has argued, “There is a tendency in border studies to emphasize the spatial over the historical […] Processes of territorialization and deterritorialization cannot be abstracted from their historical context. Taking history seriously exposes the limitations of a teleological perspective on state formation, borderlands and frontiers.”53 By focusing on the historical context, we can see how precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial borders were contested, accepted, or ignored. While colonial ideas of territoriality were different than those of precolonial rulers, in many contexts colonial governments were unable to impose these ideas on subject populations.54 In the context of the colonial Lesotho-South Africa border, communities along the border formed “interior worlds” that “were, effectively, autonomous nodes of power, trade, and kinship.”55 The idea of interior or “indigenous worlds” comes out of research on indigenous communities and polities in the American West. Through these interior worlds, communities continued to operate much as they previously had, and indigenous logics took precedence over 52 António Carreira and Artur Martins de Meireles, “Notas sobre os movimentos migratorios da população natural da Guiné Portuguesa,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa (BCGP) 14, no. 53 (1959), 9. 53 Jonathan Goodhand, “Epilogue: The View from the Border,” in Benedikt Korf and Timothy Raeymaekers (eds.), Violence on the Margins: States Conflict, and Borderlands (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 258. 54 Gray, Colonial Rule and Crisis in Equatorial Africa. 55 Rachel King and Sam Challis, “The ‘Interior World’ of the Nineteenth-Century Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains,” Journal of African History 58, no. 2 (2017), 216. 18 American, Spanish, and French ones.56 Even following the arrival of settler colonies, a “Native New World” developed in the Great Lakes.57 Juliana Barr argues that modern cartographic descriptions obscure the contested nature of sovereignty in North America well into the nineteenth century, an observation that would certainly hold throughout much of Africa as well.58 In southern Senegambia, the maps produced following the drawing of colonial boundaries suggest a reality unrepresentative of conditions on the ground. The clear boundary lines present in cartographic representations of space conceal a complicated and murky contestation over sovereign space.59 The interior worlds of indigenous North Americans were more centralized than those found in southern Senegambia’s borderlands, but the model of a large number of autonomous nodes is instructive. Throughout the colonial period, governments attempted to restrict uncontrolled movement and channel migration through the regular movement of laborers, but these efforts paled in comparison to Fulbe networks based on trade, social relations, and escaping political strife. However, in certain contexts colonial regimes did shape labor migration effectively. Colonial governments channeled mass migration of cocoa farmers and others from French Sudan (Mali) and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) into Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.60 Following Portuguese colonial networks, migrants went from Angola to São Tomé to work on plantations, and migrants from 56 For information on changes in indigenous borderlands, Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in between in North American History,” American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (1999), 814–41, and Karl S. Hele (ed.), Lines Drawn Upon the Water: First Nations and the Great Lakes Borders and Borderlands (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008). On “interior” or “indigenous worlds,” among others, Natale A. Zappia, Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540–1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014), and Pekka Hämäläinen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 9–25. 57 Michael Witgen, An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World shaped Early North America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 58 Juliana Barr, “Borders and Borderlands,” in Susan Sleeper-Smith et al. (eds.), Why You Can’t Teach United States History without American Indians (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 9–25. 59 In colonial Kenya, Luyia communities used cartography to articulate their own identities. Julie MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination: Mapping Community in Colonial Kenya (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017). 60 Daouda Gary-Tounkara, Migrants soudanais/maliens et conscience ivoirienne : les étrangers en Côte d’Ivoire (1903–1980) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008). 19 Angola, Rwanda and Belgian Congo went to the Copperbelt to produce copper for export. Workers left British colonies as well as Mozambique to work in a variety of mines in South Africa.61 Laborers made choices about where to work, but those decisions were often restricted by the machinations of colonial governments.62 Colonial governments sought to encourage temporary labor migration so that migrants would return to their home territories. They classified certain movements as legitimate, and thus mobility that went against colonial interest was illicit. In southern Senegambia, seasonal economic labor was crucial to colonial economies, who sought to regulate the movement of workers producing peanuts and cotton. But labor mobility was important in a variety of colonial contexts, and migrant laborers built railroads, gained new social capital and skills, and earned income to purchase goods often unavailable at home.63 The most common form of migrant labor in colonial southern Senegambia was seasonal peanut farming, more prevalent in central Senegal and the Gambia, but also in southern Senegal as well. Young male migrants regularly came from the Senegal River Valley, French Sudan, and French and Portuguese Guinea to work to earn cash that could be used to buy new goods, pay bride-prices, or earn money to support their families at home.64 Initially most of these seasonal farmers were Soninke or others from the Upper Senegal River Valley and western French Sudan, but that shifted 61 For a longer summary of colonial labor migration, see David Newman Glovsky, “A Brief History of African Migration,” in Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies, ed. Steven J. Gold and Stephanie J. Nawyn, 2nd edition (New York: Routledge, 2019), 73–85. 62 Zachary Guthrie, Bound for Work: Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Central Mozambique, 1940–1965 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2018). 63 For a good overview of labor mobility in Africa, see Zachary Kagan Guthrie, “Introduction: Histories of Mobility, Histories of Labor, Histories of Africa,” African Economic History 44, no. 1 (2016), 1–17. For more colonial- focused studies, Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), and Guthrie, Bound for Work. 64 The literature on “Strange Farming” (as it was called in Gambia) or the navétenat (as it was known in Senegal) is extensive, but most notably Philippe David, Les navétanes: histoires des migrants saisonniers de l’arachide en Sénégambie des origins à nos jours (Dakar: Nouvelles éditions africaines, 1980); and Kenneth Swindell and Alieu Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834-1934 (Boston: Brill, 2006). 20 over the course of the colonial period toward Fulbe migrants from French and Portuguese Guinea and southern Senegal.65 William Miles has argued, “Colonialism entailed ‘respatialization,’ not only with respect to border lines and land use but also in deeper perceptions of place for the colonized.”66 In some ways, this is true of southern Senegambians. During the colonial period and after, Fulbe people have understood and accepted what territory belongs to Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, or Guinea. However, this “respatialization” was incomplete, and cross-border space was still seen as part of one larger territory, which made movement across borders seem quotidian and simultaneously both meaningful and meaningless. As Penny Edwards argues in the case of Cambodia, colonial rule “did not bring about a universal, homogenizing compression of time and space. Instead, it introduced a parallel realm with its own sense of time, its own lines of authority, and its own skein of power relations.”67 Fulbe in southern Senegambia recognized colonial rule around it, while also understanding that the presence of colonial administrators in far-off district capitals did little to restrict cross-border movement or change many aspects of borderland life. In order to understand how borderland societies functioned during the colonial period, we must first recognize that the transition from the precolonial to the colonial period was not necessarily a sharp one. Colonial rule did not exist “as a distinctive and total experience in which administrative 65 François Manchuelle, Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997). The transition toward Fulbe seasonal farmers is discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 4. 66 William F. S. Miles, Scars of Partition: Postcolonial Legacies in French and British Borderlands (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014), 14. 67 Penny Edwards, Cambodge: The Cultivation of a Nation, 1860–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007), 248. 21 discourses and visions seeped into every facet of social life.”68 Instead, certain aspects of life shifted rapidly, others gradually, but many parts of everyday life changed not at all.69 Colonial governments sought to create bounded containers where populations were legible and contained by borders. However, the reality on the ground was quite different. As Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen point out, “The expansion of European spatiality and the logics of the territorial state did not eradicate alternative visions of boundary and spatial order but were negotiated into complex hybrid borderscapes.”70 Different colonial powers treated these borderscapes differently. Bayart argues that in general, French colonial rule was more territorial, while British rule focused more on culture.71 Fulbe populations on the ground were and continue to be conscious of how their borders were created, and while accepting borders as geographical markers, have often acted as if those borders are illegitimate in structuring everyday activity. As such, they have actively rejected what William Connolly has referred to as the “politics of forgetting.”72 Many borders globally function through the idea that in order to legitimize territorial borders, one must forget or ignore the violence and undemocratic origins of most state boundaries.73 Most Fulbe people have rejected these borders as outside impositions, and thus as unworthy of affecting everyday life. 68 Sean Hanretta, Islam and Social Change in French West Africa: History of an Emancipatory Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 69 As Jean Allman and Victoria Tashjian point out, women’s lives in early colonial Asante were more about continuity than change. Allman and Tashjian, “I Will Not Eat Stone”: A Women’s History of Colonial Asante (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2000), 1. 70 Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, “Theorizing Borders in a ‘Borderless World’: Globalization, Territory and Identity,” Geography Compass 3, no. 3 (2009), 1205. 71 Jean-François Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly, 2nd edition, translated by Mary Harper (Cambridge: Polity, 2009 [1993]), 51. 72 William E. Connolly, “Democracy and Territoriality,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 20, no. 3 (1991), 465. 73 Connecting borders to the “politics of forgetting,” James Anderson and Liam O’Dowd, “Borders, Border Regions and Territoriality: Contradictory Meanings, Changing Significance,” Regional Studies 33, no. 7 (1999), 596. 22 Within Senegal, the French colonial government created internal boundaries to differentiate different subject populations. Much of the early research on colonial Senegal focused on the Four Communes of Saint-Louis, Dakar, Rufisque, and Gorée where French rule had the longest history. After 1848, those born in the Four Communes were theoretically given French citizenship, although in practice that citizenship was often restricted.74 Rights to political participation were also restricted in the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, and generally limited to a small set of elites located in and around the colonial capitals of Bathurst (today Banjul) and Bolama/Bissau. Because populations on the rural peripheries of colonies often saw little benefit in claiming the rights of colonial subjects, identity became more focused on a larger cross-border space than on any particular colonial affiliation. Only after World War II did the French attempt to extend any sort of political rights to the hinterland, leaving just fifteen years for these rights to take root until the achievement of Senegalese independence.75 For Fulbe in areas like the Central River and Upper River Regions of the eastern Gambia, Kolda in southern Senegal, Bafatá and Gabu in eastern Portuguese Guinea, or the Futa Jallon of northwestern Guinea, borders were fictions that needed to be made real by colonial and later postcolonial governments.76 In many ways, these bordering processes were not all that different than those France undertook in establishing its own sovereignty over its peripheral regions, with 74 The literature on the Four Communes is vast, but includes G. Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1971), Michael Crowder, Senegal: A Study of French Assimilation Policy (London: Methuen, 1965), and on Saint-Louis specifically, Hilary Jones, The Métis of Senegal: Urban Life and Politics in French West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). For a more targeted look at citizenship rights and the Four Communes, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Nationalité et citoyenneté en Afrique occidentale français: Originaires et citoyens dans le Sénégal colonial,” Journal of African History 42, no. 2, 285–305, and Larissa Kopytoff, “French Citizens and Muslim Law: The Tensions of Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century Senegal,” in Richard Marback and Marc W. Kruman (eds), The Meaning of Citizenship (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015), 320–37. For a larger look at citizenship across the French Empire, Lorelle Semley, To Be Free and French: Citizenship in France’s Atlantic Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 75 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 70. 76 A. I. Asiwaju (ed.), Artificial Boundaries (Lagos: Lagos University Press, 1984). 23 the very notable difference that populations at France’s periphery were treated as French citizens.77 While populations on the French and Spanish border “conceptualized the differences of French and Spanish territory and nationality long before these differences became apparent to the two states,” in southern Senegambia differences between Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea mattered most to those educated in colonial schools, living in colonial centers of power, or working directly with the colonial government.78 Borderland residents were often the last to feel Senegalese, Gambian, Bissau-Guinean, or Guinean, if they did so at all. Across Africa, Anthony Asiwaju has argued, “From the viewpoint of border society life in many parts of Africa, the Partition can hardly be said to have taken place.”79 The inability of colonial and postcolonial governments to establish clear barriers between their populations is not a failure, but a recognition that the challenge of limiting movement far exceeds the possible benefits. Colonial governments saw uncontrolled borders as a threat of sovereignty yet did not spend the large sums of money necessary to guard or patrol borders.80 Nomadic populations were particularly troubling for colonial governments, who used maps and censuses in an attempt to delineate firm boundaries both over land and populations.81 77 On the explicit comparison between West African and French boundaries, Lefebvre, Frontières de sable, 158-9. On the making of the French-Spanish border, Peter Sahlins, Boundaries: The Making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 78 The quote is from Sahlins, Boundaries, 286. On the neglect of the Upper Casamance (Kolda) of Senegal politically, see Mouhamadou Moustapha Sow, “Mutations politiques et sociales au Fuladu: la chefferie locale à l'épreuve du pouvoir colonial, 1867–1958” (PhD Dissertation, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, 2011), Parts 3–5. For Gambia, Arnold Hughes and David Perfect, A Political History of The Gambia, 1816–1994 (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2006). 79 A. I. Asiwaju (ed.), Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africa’s International Boundaries, 1884–1984 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 4. 80 Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony translated by A. M. Berrett et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 13. Keren Weitzberg makes a similar point about the Kenya-Somalia border. Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017), 36– 38. 81 Bedouin populations in the Middle East and Fulbe populations across West Africa were particularly challenging for colonial governments. Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 11. On the struggles of nomadic Fulbe, Victor Azarya, Nomads and the State in Africa: The Political Roots of Marginality (Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), 66–67. On the importance of mapping in colonial knowledge, Matthew H. Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical 24 Discussing Niger, Camille Lefebvre argues, “Borders are only what men make or will make of them.”82 Relatedly, the specifications of border control, or the absence of such controls, is a choice governments have made and continue to make in assessing whether the cost of monitoring and patrolling borders is worth the benefit of controlling the movement of people and goods. Colonial states operated with a limited set of resources and tended to focus their personnel and money on spaces where they believed they would gain the greatest benefit. As a result, colonial mobility resulted in “cleavages between coastal societies and those in the hinterland.”83 In Senegal, the entire Casamance region (the section of Senegal south of the Gambia) was marginalized through the actions of colonial and postcolonial governments, politically and culturally. This marginalization furthered the region’s ties to the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau, both of which were geographically closer than Senegal’s own capital of Dakar.84 However, this separation was not due primarily to colonial governments making choices about life on their geographic and economic peripheries. The actions of Fulbe pastoralists, farmers, and traders subverted colonial efforts to profit economically from border regions, giving colonial governments less incentive to invest in developing these rural regions. By creating borders, states have invited transgressive behavior.85 The partitioning of territory offers advantages to those who are willing and able to cross the boundaries between particular spaces. This is particularly true for smuggling, which throughout the world was intimately linked to the creation of colonial boundaries. As Eric Tagliocozzo points out, Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). Mapping was key in states confronted by colonial rule on their margins as well. Thongchai, Siam Mapped. However, colonial populations imagined their own cartographies as well. MacArthur, Cartography and the Political Imagination. 82 Lefebvre, Frontières de sable, 420. 83 Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 282–83. 84 Aboubakr Tandia, “When Civil Wars Hibernate in Borderlands: The Challenges of the Casamance’s ‘Forgotten Civil War’ to Cross-Border Peace and Security,” in Violence on the Margins, 220–22. 85 Jevgenia Viktorova, “Bridging identity and alterity: an apologia for boundaries,” in Eiki Berg and Henk van Houtum (eds.), Routing Borders Between Territories, Discourses and Practices (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 141-60. 25 “Contraband could be just about anything […] so long as colonial governments in the region decided it was in their interest to call it that.”86 Along the Cameroon-Chad border, residents have drawn a distinction between illegal and illicit cross-border economic transactions, a division that holds true in southern Senegambia.87 These unlawful but accepted transactions are a large part of what Janet MacGaffey has referred to as “the second economy.”88 As in these other locations, during both the colonial and postcolonial periods Fulbe people perceived a difference between actions deemed illegal by the state and those that they themselves deemed immoral. In colonial Senegambia, the ability to farm, graze cattle, and to buy and sell products across borders provided opportunities for Fulbe to profit economically from different colonial policies and geographies. These actions were sometimes discouraged but at other times encouraged by colonial governments. Farming or selling peanuts near the Gambia River or in central Senegal meant that these products could be sold easily and shipped to the coast, while other parts of southern Senegambia had limited access to coastal markets. Borders not only created the conditions for “transgressive” behavior but created strong incentives for movement. Despite colonial governments’ stated concern with borders, they often ignored them, instead choosing to focus on economic centers and coastal trading ports. This made many African colonies sites of intense mobility and migration, with borders serving as incentives 86 Eric Tagliocozzo, Secret Trade, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States along a Southeast Asian Frontier, 1865– 1915 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 3, 16–17. 87 Janet Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 5, 21. Donna Flynn prefers not to use the word smuggling for actions like this “because it inadequately portrays the nature of these trade movements from the point of view of border residents.” Flynn, “‘We Are the Border’: Identity, Exchange, and the State along the Bénin-Nigeria Border,” American Ethnologist 24, no. 2 (1997), 324. 88 Janet MacGaffey, “How to Survive and Become Rich Amidst Devastation: The Second Economy in Zaire,” African Affairs 82, no. 328 (1983), 351–66, and MacGaffey, Entrepreneurs and Parasites: The Struggle for Indigenous Capitalism in Zaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 26 for migration more than barriers.89 Again, the disparity between how states perceived cross-border migration and how southern Senegambians saw these movements is instructive. As Abdelmalek Sayad argues, the ways in which immigration discussions are framed revolves around a vision produced by states.90 When mobility and migration are viewed from the point of view of borderland residents themselves, the perspective shifts. If each government was seen by Fulbe and other southern Senegambians as illegitimate, then the decision to cross the border for political, economic, or social reasons was logical, and while against the law, was by no means immoral. If as Tania Li states, colonial rule was based on the idea of “permanent deferral,” and that colonial subjects could never, in the eyes of their governments, be seen as truly modern or equal, then mobility was a tool to make the most of a challenging political and economic situation.91 Despite the minimal acceptance of most forms of border security, in some cases cross- border movement has produced and reproduced the border in the eyes of borderland residents. In the case of the Ghana-Togo border, “contraband training has helped to render the border more legitimate, not less so,” by inculcating a sense of national identity.92 Pushing back on the idea of Africans as “victims of a peculiarly European obsession with fixed boundaries,” Nugent argues that borderland residents profited from their location, and by doing so, actively participated in the separation of French and British Togoland.93 In the case of Niger and Nigeria, the permeability of the border made its acceptance easier. As Miles asks, “If the boundary is so porous, why actively oppose it?”94 Communities living near borders transformed the fixed lines of Europeans into 89 Dereje Feyissa and Markus Virgil Hoehne (eds.), Borders and Borderlands as Resources in the Horn of Africa (Rochester: James Currey, 2010). 90 Abdelmalek Sayad, The Suffering of the Immigrant, translated by David Macey (Malden: Polity, 2004). 91 Tania Murray Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 15. 92 Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists & Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: The Life of the Borderlands since 1914 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002), 7. 93 Nugent, Smugglers, 78. Today British Togoland is the easternmost part of Ghana. 94 Miles, Hausaland Divided, 305. 27 recognizable concepts. In the case of the Ghana-Burkina Faso border, borderland populations saw the border for the first few decades not “as a continuous line separating two sovereign territories but interpreted in terms of familiar local concepts of a buffer and contact zone between two different networks of power.” 95 Like in southern Senegambia, borderland residents used the border to escape forced labor, taxation, military conscription, and other colonial demands. The ability to move was a source of power for borderland residents in the face of governments trying to impose policies that would make life more difficult.96 Colonial Power and the Formation of Anti-Colonial Space Colonial governments made conscious decisions about where and when to exercise their limited resources, and borderland regions—especially in southern Senegambia—were not typically seen as worthy of investment. The ability of Fulbe and others to cross into neighboring colonies when they chose to do so contributed to the colonial dismissal of these regions as marginal. Military conflict was a crucial aspect of establishing military and political dominance during the last two decades of the nineteenth century; or if not to establish dominance, then to eliminate all challengers to French, British, and Portuguese control over these regions. Musa Molo’s self-imposed exile to the Gambia in 1903 removed the last major threat to European rule in the region. Thereafter, resistance would primarily be through subterfuge and border crossing.97 In the context of Guinea, Mike McGovern discusses what he refers to as “forms of weak agency,” how people attempt to build better futures when their agency is restricted or shaped “[i]n situations of ambient violence, state repression, and great degrees of structural inequality.”98 Drawing on 95 Carola Lentz, Land, Mobiility and Belonging in West Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 140. 96 Dennis Cordell, “The Myth of Inevitability and Invincibility: Resistance to Slavers and the Slave Trade in Central Africa, 1850-1910,” in Sylviane A. Diouf (ed.), Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003), 31–49. 97 Christian Roche, Histoire de la Casamance: conquête et résistance, 1850-1920 (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 302. 98 Mike McGovern, A Socialist Peace? Explaining the Absence of War in an African Country (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 27. 28 Begoña Aretxaga’s concept of “choiceless decisions,” he explains how in conditions of war and peace, the decision to demonize (or not) particular groups is a choice people make within the range of possible strategies they have available.99 While armed resistance against colonial regimes was a quixotic strategy, simply crossing the border or finding a location with less oppressive colonial governance was more feasible for most in colonial southern Senegambia, especially men. This is what Allen Isaacman refers to as “hidden forms of protest.”100 This was rarely an organized strategy, but an organic movement of individuals, families, and communities in the face of colonial rule. Tax evasion was a common occurrence throughout Africa, as borderland residents often moved to other colonies during the period of tax collection.101 Asiwaju refers to this as “migration as revolt,” but it can be considered as more quotidian as well.102 The movement of Fulbe and other southern Senegambians represented a desire for greater autonomy in the face of colonial efforts to control economic and political conditions. Similarly, McGovern describes the communities of the Forest Region of southeastern Guinea as “societies formed out of a commitment to carving tiny islands of autonomy out of an encompassing environment of violence and depredation.”103 This search for and desire for autonomy is similar to 99 Begoña Aretxaga, Shattering Silence: Women, Nationalism, and Political Subjectivity in Northern Ireland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). While James Scott deals with a postcolonial situation, the actions of Fulbe people resemble in some ways the Malay peasants described in James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 100 Allen F. Isaacman, Cotton is the Mother of Poverty: Peasants, Work, and Rural Struggle in Colonial Mozambique, 1938–1961 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996), 9. 101 For example, Allen and Barbara Isaacman, “Resistance and Collaboration in Southern and Central Africa, c. 1850–1920,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, no. 1 (1977), 31–62, Bawuro M. Barkindo, “The Mandara astride the Nigeria-Cameroon Boundary,” in Aswiaju, Partitioned Africans, 29–50, and S. H. Phiri, “National Integration, Rural Development and Frontier Communities: The case of the Chewa and the Ngoni astride Zambian boundaries with Malawi and Mozambique,” in Partitioned Africans, 105–26. This happened in southern Senegal as well. In addition to Chapters 2–4, see Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 118, 164. 102 A. I. Asiwaju, “Migrations as Revolt: The Example of the Ivory Coast and the Upper Volta before 1945,” Journal of African History 17, no. 4 (1976), 577–94. Asiwaju cites a colonial report from Côte d’Ivoire that observes, “Exodus is the weapon of the weak.” 103 McGovern, Unmasking the State: Making Guinea Modern (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 16. 29 highland communities across much of Southeast Asia.104 Because Fulbe areas of southern Senegambia tended to be further from colonial centers of power, Haalpulaar communities from the Senegal River Valley moved south in search of better pastureland in a place where colonial exactions were less prevalent.105 During the colonial period, they moved between Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea depending on the conditions at any given time.106 Across southern Senegambia, the peak of colonial-era mobility came during World War I, when the population of the eastern Gambia rose by sixty-six percent in three years due to people fleeing military conscription from French territories.107 This was common throughout French West Africa, as many colonies saw large numbers leaving for British territories.108 Colonial mobility was a gendered process, with young men much more likely and able to move to new communities on their own than women. These male migrants at times brought their wives and children, but also created connections to their new communities through marriage or maintained ties to their previous homes through marriage. Marriages connected communities across southern Senegambia, and these connections took on greater salience following the imposition of colonial governments. While marriage is not often thought of as a migratory process, the movement of women into their husbands’ villages certainly qualifies as an important and commonplace form of mobility. Women 104 James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 105 Haalpulaar refers to Fulbe of the Senegal River Valley, but literally translates as “speakers of Pulaar.” Sometimes these Fulbe are referred to as Tukulor. 106 Kane, “Les frontières,” 1207–9. 107 Archives Nationales du Sénégal (ANS) 1F13, “Mouvement d’émigration des populations du Sénégal et du Soudan vers la Gambie,” Ministre des Colonies au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., October 2, 1918. As discussed in Chapter 2, many southern Senegambians went to Portuguese Guinea as well, although censuses there were less common. 108 Myron Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts: The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1991), 71. Portuguese Guinea also saw many arrive fleeing military conscription. ANS Versement 14, 2F3, “Déserters et insoumis,” Vice-Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Governeur Général de l’A.O.F., November 19, 1918. 30 who migrated into new communities brought their existing networks with them, which served as a useful tool for economic, political, and social gain. Historical writing about colonial rule tends to focus on areas where colonial power was strongest. In his comparative study of African colonial rule, Crawford Young refers to the colonial state as Bula Matari, the “crusher of rocks.” He contends, “African societies were to encounter a colonial master equipped with doctrines of domination and capacities for the exercise of ruler that went far beyond those available in earlier times and other places.”109 Mahmood Mamdani emphasizes the strength of colonial political power, defining apartheid as the “generic form of the colonial state.”110 While in some cases this accurately described colonial governance, in much of colonial Africa the ability to dominate subject populations was limited, because resources themselves were limited. Pushing back against Foucualt’s description of power as “capillary,” Frederick Cooper argues, “Power in colonial societies was more arterial than capillary— concentrated spatially and socially, not very nourishing beyond such domains, and in need of a pump to push it from place to place.”111 Southern Senegambia was this sort of “unnourished” place, where colonial states built power structures in particular places, but for the most part were unable to exercise power given the territorial networks of Fulbe people. It is important, rather than discussing colonies as exhibiting “direct” or “indirect rule,” to understand that particular regions within each colony experienced colonial rule quite differently. Although there were general tendencies, colonial rule and colonial administrators adapted to different local conditions and 109 Crawford Young, The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 75. 110 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 8. 111 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978), 95–96. Cooper discusses this in Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994), 1533. Cooper develops this point more in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 31 populations. As Bayart points out, throughout Africa social institutions, not colonial bureaucracies, mediated colonial relationships. As a result, he contends, “The continuity of African formations over the long term has thus been hidden, while the episodes of European penetration have taken over clear outlines.”112 Though social formations featured a great deal of continuity, the creation of borders incentivized a shifting of migratory and economic patterns. While the French presence along the coast of Senegal was already over two centuries old, it was only in the nineteenth century when the colonial project truly began. French commercial interests quickly turned into arguments for territorial sovereignty. By the mid-nineteenth century, conquest in the interior was in many ways inevitable. However, it was only in 1882 that Senegal was reorganized as a colony rather than just “a coastal enclave.”113 Despite its status as a colony, French rule did not extend very far at the close of the nineteenth century.114 While conquest north of the Gambia was accomplished before the last quarter of the nineteenth century, in areas to the south conquest was a much more difficult process. In the Lower Casamance—the coastal rice- growing region of southwestern Senegal—there was no real French colonial presence until 1860.115 Colonial administration was not established until the period until well after 1890, and arguably not solidified until World War Two.116 “Pacification”—generally considered the prerequisite for colonialism—was not a completed process until the beginning of twentieth century. Until this time, French colonialism in southern Senegal had been informal and situational.117 However, even after pacification, complete control over territory was far from 112 Bayart, The State in Africa, xlvii, 5. 113 Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal, 31. 114 Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), viii. 115 Martin A. Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal, viii. 116 Mark, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History, 93. 117 Frances Anne Leary, “Islam, Politics, and Colonialism: A Political History of Islam in the Casamance Region of Senegal (1850–1914)” (PhD Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1970), 241. 32 assured. Despite French claims to sovereignty in the Lower Casamance, French officials could not travel safely until the 1920s.118 When the French arrived in the Upper Casamance in the first decade of the twentieth century, they were confronted by their inability to control colonial borders and the challenge of pastoralist mobility.119 Often the last regions conquered were the hardest to govern. This summary of colonial rule in Senegal indicates that French governance was more adaptive, reactive and complex than general descriptions would indicate. The same was true of the Gambia. For almost the entirety of the nineteenth century, there was little effort to gain territorial sovereignty in the interior. Unlike Senegal, where military operations started in the Senegal River Valley by the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, operations in the Gambia were much slower. Like Senegal, the Gambia was split in two between the Colony—the small crown- controlled areas in and around the capital of Bathurst—and the Protectorate, which held the vast majority of the colony’s land and people. The focus was not on formal colonization, but on a colony that could financially support itself.120 British rule had varying impacts on different spheres of life. The British shifted economic life in favor of the cash crop production of peanuts, supporting seasonal migrant farmers in the colony who arrived from French and Portuguese colonies. Peanuts were crucial throughout West Africa, and of even greater importance in Senegambia. Senegalese groundnuts made up half of all the exports from French West Africa.121 Economic changes were of great importance as colonial economies encouraged—in an often-coercive way—their subjects to grow cash crops and participate in the cash economy. 118 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Elizabeth Edwards, and Andrew Roberts, “French Black Africa,” in Andrew Roberts (ed.), The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 335. 119 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 157. 120 Donald R. Wright, The World and a Very Small Place in Africa: A History of Globalization in Niumi, The Gambia (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 2004), 166. 121 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Edwards, and Roberts, “French Black Africa,” 342. 33 Unlike Senegal and the Gambia, neighboring Portuguese Guinea featured an immense shift in governing institutions throughout much—but not all—of its territory, most notably in coastal regions with a lack of hierarchical structures. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Portuguese administrators began to make alliances with Fulbe chiefs and during the first half of the twentieth century “turned to the Fulbe to carry out their ‘dirty work’ at the local level.”122 Fulbe chiefs were sent to other parts of the colony to rule over populations that had less centralized political control. This had the effect of stirring up resentment toward Fulbe in other parts of Portuguese Guinea, a dynamic which would have lasting effects during the war for independence and after.123 Like in other parts of West Africa, colonial governments showed a great deal of flexibility over space and time.124 Richard Roberts argues that colonialism was “sinuous” but not hegemonic. He argues that we should think of colonialism “as a fog, flowing over a highly variegated landscape. The fog lies deepest in the areas that open themselves most to its influence. The fog covers other zones thinly and bypasses some outcroppings altogether.”125 In most of southern Senegambia, there was little fog, and through their movement Fulbe and others tried to avoid the places where the fog had settled. Colonial investment was spatially diffuse and distinct. Capitals and their hinterlands often gained much of the development focus, in addition to other strategic locations. Outside of district or regional capitals, which may have seen some development, resources tended to develop an elite class, educated in colonial schools, who were tied closely to the colonial system. Postcolonial states inherited this structure, and while they attempted to provide greater resources to far-flung 122 Joye Bowman Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau: Fulbe Expansion and Its Impact, 1850-1900” (PhD Dissertation, UCLA, 1980), 184. 123 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 185. 124 Moses E. Ochonu, Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt Consciousness in Nigeria (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). 125 Richard L. Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton: Colonialism and the Regional Economy in the French Soudan, 1800- 1946 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 16. 34 areas, these resources were often met with diminishing returns. In the early years after independence, there was a direct relationship between political and economic power, with most of the profits going to those with a close relationship to the state.126 As a result, just as during the colonial period, governance was not just through state structures, but through a range of both state and non-state actors.127 Because colonial power was diffuse but still damaging to populations across Africa, organic religious movements rose across the continent preaching an end to colonial rule. These religious movements included a variety of preexisting African religions, millenarian Christian movements, and Islamic communities. Including the Chilembwe uprising in Nyasaland (Malawi), Watchtower followers in Katanga (part of the Belgian Congo), the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa (Tanzania), and Aline Sitoe Diatta’s Jola revolt in southwestern Senegal, these movements used spiritual power in an effort to overthrow the hardships of colonial rule.128 In Fulbe areas of southern Senegambia, this type of armed resistance did not occur. However, Muslim clerics were able to create meaningful autonomy from colonial rule. Drawing on a precolonial tradition of autonomous clerical towns, Muslim clerics in Senegal like Amadou Bamba and 126 Georges Balandier, Political Anthropology, translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith (Penguin: Baltimore, 1972 [1970]), 168. 127 Louisa Lombard, State of Rebellion: Violence and Intervention in the Central African Republic (London: Zed Books, 2016), 63. 128 On Chilembwe, see Karen Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), and Jane and Ian Linden, “John Chilembwe and the New Jerusalem,” Journal of African History 12, no. 4 (1971), 629–51. On the watchtower in Katanga (and neighboring colonies to the south), John Higginson, “Liberating the Captives: Independent Watchtower as an Avatar of Colonial Revolt in Southern Africa and Katanga, 1908-1941,” Journal of Social History 26, no. 1 (1992), 55–80. The Kimbangists (followers of Simon Kimbangu) were also very active in the Belgian Congo. Jean-Luc Vellut (ed.), Simon Kimbangu. 1921: de la predication à la deportation: les sources (Brussels: Académie Royale des Sciences d’Outre-Mer, 2005). On Maji Maji, John Iliffe, “The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion,” Journal of African History 8, no. 3 (1967), 495– 512. On Aline Sitoué Diatta, Robert M. Baum, West Africa’s Women of God: Alinesitoué and the Diola Prophetic Tradition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016). 35 Mamadou Saidou Ba created spaces free from the corrupting influence of French colonialism.129 However, Bamba— founder of the Muridiyya brotherhood and its holy city of Touba—and Ba, founder of the city of Medina Gounass in southern Senegal, were treated quite differently by the French colonial government. Bamba was exiled twice, and ultimately placed under house arrest in Diourbel, and spent the rest of his life away from Touba, which maintained its autonomy under French colonial rule while its founder lived outside of his holy city. Medina Gounass, on the other hand, existed virtually outside the colonial state from its founding in 1935.130 Although explicitly anti-colonial, Ba and his followers in Medina Gounass did not attempt to overthrow the colonial order. However, they did live outside of it, a bargain accepted by the French colonial government in order to avoid angering and scaring off its residents and Ba’s other followers in Senegal into neighboring territories. In contrast to the “paths of accommodation” taken by other marabouts in Senegal and Mauritania, Ba was able to leverage his borderland location to create autonomy from colonial and postcolonial governments.131 Medina Gounass is located at a crossroads in southern Senegal with easy access to the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea, and its leaders have been able to leverage governmental fears of emigration and resistance in order to sustain their autonomy from the Senegalese state. In addition to the city’s important location as a space outside of colonial rule, it also served as an important physical location of spiritual power. The relationship between physical location and spiritual power had roots in pre-Islamic religious shrines in southern Senegal as well 129 Eric Ross, “From Marabout Republics to Autonomous Rural Communities: Autonomous Muslim Towns in Senegal,” in Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola (eds.), African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2010 [2005]), 243–65. 130 The life of Amadou Bamba is catalogued in great depth in Cheikh Anta Mbacké Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad: Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853-1913 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007). On Medina Gounass’ founding, see Part III of N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout. The history of Medina Gounass is the subject of Chapter 6. 131 David Robinson, Paths of Accommodation: Muslim Societies and French Colonial Authorities in Senegal and Mauritania (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2000). 36 as territorial cults found elsewhere in Africa.132 The city represents the establishment of an alternative structure of space and governance in southern Senegambia, a geographic space centered on religious belief and practice.133 This is similar to Touba, today Senegal’s second-largest city. In Medina Gounass, Ba was able to attract followers because he followed in the tradition of traveling clerics who proselytized across southern Senegambia, moving between parts of Senegal, Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea.134 The weakness of colonial rule in the region allowed these clerics to move relatively unencumbered throughout the region, spreading Islam through deep “translocal social processes.”135 Traveling clerics, Muslim seasonal workers, and others expanded the reach of Islam through their movement, whether temporary—for example, through traveling clerics—or through permanent settlement. Alternative Futures—Rethinking the Nation-State at the Colonial Margins In the decades leading up to independence, political leaders and intellectuals throughout the colonial world began to rethink the nation-state. As Gary Wilder argues, intellectuals like Leopold Senghor (the first president of Senegal) and Aimé Césaire “not only criticized colonialism from the standpoint of constitutional democracy and self-government; they also criticized colonialism from the standpoint of decentralized, interdependent, plural, and transnational features of imperialism itself.”136 These intellectuals argued for “legal pluralism, disaggregated 132 On pre-Islamic shrines and the importance of particular spaces to these shrines, Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns,” 123–29. On territorial cults in central Africa, see J. M. Schoffeleers (ed.), Guardians of the Land: Essays on Central African Territorial Cults (Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1979), and Terence Ranger, “Territorial Cults in the History of Central Africa,” Journal of African History 14, no. 4 (1973), 581–97. 133 In many ways religious spaces function like a nation as pointed out by Edward A. Tiryakian. Tiryakian, “The Missing Religious Factor in Imagined Communities,” American Behavioral Scientist 55, no. 10, 1394–1414. 134 This tradition is discussed throughout the dissertation, including Ba’s movements in Chapter 6. 135 Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 167–8. There were a few exceptions, like the case of Naian Balde discussed in Chapter 2. The idea of “translocal social processes” and the spread of Islam comes from Brian James Peterson, Islamization from Below: The Making of Muslim Communities in Rural French Sudan, 1880-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 2. 136 Wilder, Freedom Time, 2. 37 sovereignty, and territorial disjuncture,” breaking apart “the presumptive unity of culture, nationality, and citizenship.” They argued for this diversity of political forms because they believed it was impossible to know in advance which configurations would serve the population best going forward.137 Throughout West Africa, political leaders argued for sovereignty as “plural and divisible.”138 This period, in the aftermath of World War II, featured calls like Senghor and Césaire’s for democratic federalism in West Africa and the Caribbean, but also Hannah Arendt’s arguments for federalism as an antidote to nationalism.139 These ideas finally lost out due to political rivalries, resulting in bounded nation-states across the region. Yarimar Bonilla describes decolonization “as part of a larger project that sought to naturalize the idea of nation-states as discrete and necessary units of political and economic organization, while silencing and foreclosing other forms of alignments.”140 However, not everyone accepted the naturalization of the nation-state. Somali peoples across borders in East Africa also articulated their own “diverse political futures, which were not always sovereign, territorial, or secular in scope or predicated on ethnic homogeneity.”141 But what would a non-sovereign future look like? Many of these visions tried to disassociate peoples from particular territories, hoping that mobility would be seen as an asset, not a problem in need of solving. These ideas are often thought of as unrealized futures, idealistic visions lost in the debates over power and sovereignty that came to define much of postcolonial Africa and indeed, the world. Federations like French West Africa and French Indochina collapsed, while the decentralized 137 Wilder, Freedom Time, 2. 138 Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, 10. 139 These debates are put into historical context in Samuel Moyn, “Fantasies of Federalism,” Dissent 62, no. 1 (2015), available online at: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/fantasies-of-federalism (last accessed February 9, 2019). 140 Yarimar Bonilla, Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 11. 141 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 10. 38 Dutch East Indies became Indonesia, but as a standard state with a national language.142 In the runup to independence in South Sudan, many in southern Sudan articulated varying ideas that lost out to the formal state that followed.143 I argue that a view from the colonial periphery demonstrates that these ideas were not just espoused by elite intellectuals operating in the French Parliament and in African colonial legislatures. Through their movement and the stitching together of communities across colonies, Fulbe and others in southern Senegambia demonstrated the contingency of sovereignty, nationalism, and territory. Decolonization offered little room for people who saw themselves as living in more than one state, who imagined communities that crossed international boundaries and political rights that extended alongside their movement.144 In order to fight for national independence, a nation had to already exist. This is what Akhil Gupta calls “the discursive availability of the imagined geography of the nation,” that the nation’s existence must be preordained for anti-colonial nationalism to exist.145 For mobile groups, especially those across borders, these imagined geographies did not match their own, which put them at odds with the growing of consensus of new national elites. The existence of mobile or nomadic groups was a challenge not just to colonial but to postcolonial states, who saw these groups as a threat to territorial nationalism and sovereignty. Nomadic communities have often been difficult to make legible, and as such, have been misunderstood. Deleuze and Guattari argue, “History is always written from the sedentary point 142 On the failed federation of Indochina, Christopher E. Goscha, Going Indochinese: Contesting Concepts of Space and Place in French Indochina (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012). For a comparison of Indochina and Indonesia, David E. F. Henley, “Ethnogeographic Integration and Exclusion in Anticolonial Nationalism: Indonesia and Indochina,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 37, no. 2 (1995), 286–324. 143 Nicki Kindersley, “Revolutionary political thought in South Sudan,” Africa’s a Country, March 7, 2019, available online at: https://africasacountry.com/2019/03/revolutionary-political-thought-in-south-sudan (last accessed March 26, 2020). 144 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 117. 145 Akhil Gupta, “The Song of the Nonaligned World: Transnational Identities and the Reinscription of Space in Late Capitalism,” in Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 190. 39 of view and in the name of a unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology, the opposite of a history.”146 While this dissertation is not “the opposite of a history,” I do assert that mobility—nomadic or otherwise—must be viewed similarly to sedentarism, and that taking movement seriously destabilizes national histories and the concept of individuals and communities as being rooted in particular states. The idea of a nomadology forces us to decouple the ties between individuals and states, and to take the concept of living in between states and geographies as seriously as sedentary histories. Establishing Nations and (Nation-)States: The Challenge of Borderland Peoples The four states whose territories are discussed here all became independent at different times: Guinea in 1958, Senegal in 1960, the Gambia in 1965, and lastly Guinea-Bissau in 1974, following a violent war for independence. Both in the runup to independence and its aftermath, governments struggled to define which borderland citizens belonged to which state. This is what Liisa Malkki refers to as “the national order of things.” She argues that refugees “occupy a problematic, liminal position” in this order, but other groups—like mobile border-dwellers, also occupy a position in-between multiple states.147 Malkki describes “displacement and deterritorialization in the contemporary order of nations” as presenting at least two possibilities. The first is turning inward and making the community a “nation.” The second is to reject categorization entirely. While refugees in camps imagined themselves as their own nation, those living in towns developed an identity that was “perhaps more subversive: they dissolved national categories in the course of everyday life and produced more cosmopolitan forms of identity 146 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 23. 147 Liisa Helena Malkki, Purity and Exile: Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among Hutu Refugees in Tanzania (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 1–2. 40 instead.”148 In the borderlands of southern Senegambia, Fulbe people have produced these “more cosmopolitan forms of identity” since the initial border agreements of the 1880s. They have recognized that living across states has created challenges, but has held potentially greater benefits, as Fulbe have been able to put forth claims of citizenship and belonging in multiple states. Postcolonial states inherited a colonial legacy of classifying and determining citizenship based on descent and ancestry. Every individual came from a particular lineage that associated them with a specific state. Throughout much of Africa, those who lived outside of the state from which their parents and/or grandparents came were effectively stateless, at least in terms of citizenship rights.149 As Gupta and James Ferguson describe, there is a need to challenge the “implicit mapping of the world as a series of discrete, territorialized cultures.” Since the relation between particular places and peoples is a historical and social construction, they can be deconstructed and complicated.150 The result of this mapping of peoples and places leads to what Malkki refers to as the “metaphysics of sedentarism,” the idea that all peoples have a homeland rooted in a particular geographic space.151 In a visit to Cambodia in 1993, Amitav Ghosh noted that the United Nations’ Transitional Authority in Cambodia had made it their mission to investigate whether any Vietnamese were in Cambodia, and if so, to send them back to Vietnam. In an article in Cultural Anthropology the next year, he asked the important question: why should the UN be involved in defining the ethnic boundaries of a country?152 As Talal Asad points out, 148 Malkki, Purity and Exile, 4. 149 This varied according to colony/country, and these distinctions are enshrined in the constitutions of many African countries. Manby, Struggles for Citizenship; and Dorman, Hammett, and Nugent (eds), Making Nations, Creating Strangers. 150 Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era,” in Gupta and Ferguson (eds.), Culture, Power, Place, 3–4. 151 Liisa Helena Malkki, “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees,” Cultural Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1992), 31. 152 Amitav Ghosh, “The Global Reservation: Notes toward an Ethnography of International Peacekeeping,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994), 417–21. 41 the idea of “local peoples” rooted to a particular area is based on a colonial idea that ignores that people are often—but not always—mobile.153 The difficulty of deconstructing these ideas is a political and social problem. Most research into these questions falls into what John Agnew refers to as “the territorial trap.” He cites three geographical assumptions that lead to “the privileging of a territorial conception of the state.” First, territories are “fixed units of sovereign space,” with no other actors exercising sovereignty within the bounds of a geographic space. Second, there is a clear distinction between the domestic and the foreign sphere, without much blurring. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, that the boundaries of a state and a society are one and the same.154 In order to escape this trap, we must view cross-border Fulbe communities as a geographic space worth interrogating, and one of similar value as the boundaries of a state. The limits of a particular state or states must no longer be our unit of analysis in understanding the bounds of a particular community. In southern Senegambia, Fulbe and others moved between independent Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea to visit family, buy and sell goods, work short- or long-term, or for long-term or permanent settlement in a new country. They relied on networks of family or friends who had previous migrated, stitching communities across borders into a larger Fulbe space. All of these Fulbe claimed access to citizenship rights in at least one country, but often in two, or 153 Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 7–10. 154 John Agnew, “The Territorial Trap: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory,” Review of International Political Economy 1, no. 1 (1994), 59. In 2015, Agnew expanded on how the territorial trap had continued to be a challenge. Agnew, “Revisiting the territorial trap,” Nordia Geographical Publications 44, no. 4 (2015), 43-48. See also David Newman, “Territory, Compartments and Borders: Avoiding the Trap of the Territorial Trap,” Geopolitics 15, no. 4 (2010): 773–78; Simon Reid-Henry, “The Territorial Trap Fifteen Years On,” Geopolitics 15, no. 4 (2010), 752–56; and Nisha Shah, “The Territorial Trap of the Territorial Trap: Global Transformation and the Problem of the State’s Two Territories,” International Political Sociology 6, no. 1 (2012), 57–76. 42 in extreme cases, three or four. Many did not have paperwork that marked them as belonging to a particular country, and even if they did, they could claim otherwise and acquire citizenship paperwork in a new country.155 Rather than being stateless, these cross-border citizens can be defined as “state-full,” having the ability to move between multiple states. Similar to Somali across borders in East Africa, Fulbe people conceptualized “alternative kinds of imagined communities.”156 Throughout the postcolonial period, the idea of being Senegalese, Gambian, Bissau-Guinean, or Guinean became increasingly salient; however, fluid cross-border ideas of belonging remained important in Fulbe imaginations. Nationalist movements in exile have provided an alternative vision: groups so rooted to particular territories that they are willing to leave to fight for the independence of their land.157 In the case of Togo, the separation of British and French Togoland was challenged by activists rejecting the inclusion of British Togoland in independent Ghana, which led to 5,700 political refugees leaving Ghana for Togo between 1958 and 1961.158 In Portuguese Guinea, much of the early liberation struggle was undertaken in exile, whether in Guinea or Senegal.159 Fulbe inside 155 Lucie Gallistel Colvin, “Senegal,” in Lucie Gallistel Colvin et al. (eds.) The Uprooted of the Western Sahel, 100; Interviews with Fatoumata Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016; Saliou Seydi, Amadou Seydi, and Sounkarou Kande, Thiara, Senegal, January 20, 2017; Fatoumata Jallow, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017; and Mambie Sabali, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 156 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 13. 157 Among others, Christian A. Williams, National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: An Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Alice Wilson, Sovereignty in Exile: A Saharan Liberation Movement Governs (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Joanna Tague, Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania: Refugee Power, Mobility, Education, and Rural Development (New York: Routledge, 2019). There is also a great deal of literature on the ANC in exile in South Africa. Among others, Stephen Ellis, External Mission: The ANC in Exile, 1960–1990 (London: Hurst, 2012). 158 Kate Skinner, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland: Literacy, Politics and Nationalism, 1914–2014 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 170. 159 Some of the early literature on the war includes Carlos Lopes, Etnia, estado e reláções de poder na Guiné-Bissau (Lisboa: Edições 70, 1982); Basil Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky: The Liberation of Guinea- Bissau and Cape Verde, 1963-74 (London: Zed Books, 2017 [1981]); Stephanie Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979); and Gérard Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa: With the Guerillas in “Portuguese” Guinea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). See also Mustafah Dhada, Warriors at Work: How Guinea Was Really Set Free (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993). Very little focuses explicitly on liberation fighters in exile. An exception is Aliou Ly, “Amilcar Cabral and the Bissau Revolution in Exile: Women and the Salvation of the Nationalist Organization in Guinea, 1959-1962,” in 43 the colony often sided with the Portuguese, although others either sat the war out, fled into neighboring Senegal or Guinea, or actively supported the Partido Africano da Indepência da Guiné e Cabo Verde160 (PAIGC), who led the independence movement. Fulbe who had fled to Senegal, or those living in Senegal (who often had roots in Portuguese Guinea) were more likely to help the liberation movement, as they had less to lose from an open association with the PAIGC. After the war, about half who had fled into Senegal or Guinea returned to independent Guinea- Bissau.161 State-making in the postcolonial period operated differently across the states of southern Senegambia. In Senegal and the Gambia, it was relatively easy for Fulbe moving across borders to integrate into new communities and lay claim to the rights of citizens. In Guinea-Bissau and most intensely in Guinea, Fulbe saw their place in these new nations questioned. Victoria Bernal has developed the term “sacrificial citizenship” to explain Eritrean political culture, “with its boundless demands upon citizens, particularly its insistence on their willingness to die for the nation.”162 In post-independence Guinea, Sékou Touré’s Parti Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) argued that Fulbe mobility and emigration disqualified them from full citizenship in the emerging Guinean nation. The forced modernization programs of the 1960s and 1970s required sacrifice, Touré argued, and thus anyone who left the country during this important period was a traitor.163 However, it was not just Fulbe who left Guinea, as one-third of the country was living abroad by Nathan Riley Carpenter and Benjamin N. Lawrance (eds.), Africans in Exile: Mobility, Law, and Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 153–66. 160 African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cabo Verde. 161 Dhada, Warriors at Work, 265. These numbers were similar in Fulbe areas. Interviews with Kanta Diao, Coumbarou Balde, Oumar Balde, Dombel Balde, and Demba Boiro, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; and with Ousmane Ba, Thierno Bocar Kande, and Aliou Balde, Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, February 20, 2017. 162 Victoria Bernal, Nation as Network: Diaspora, Cyberspace & Citizenship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 27. 163 John Frederick Straussberger III, “The ‘Particular Situation’ in the Futa Jallon: Ethnicity, Region, and Nation in Twentieth-Century Guinea” (PhD Dissertation, Columbia, 2015). For elsewhere in Guinea, McGovern, Unmasking the State. 44 the 1980s.164 Despite the overall flight of Guineans outside the country’s borders, only Fulbe served as national scapegoats. Similar dynamics of nation-building were at work in neighboring Mali, where the Malian government attempted to inculcate people with ideas of belonging in an effort to funnel labor into the project of state-building. Alongside this notion was the creation of a simultaneous idea of the idea of “foreigners” in the new Malian nation.165 What both the Guinean and Malian governments ignored is that the region had been characterized by mobility for generations, and political attempts to radically change a culture of mobility had little chance of success.166 In Guinea-Bissau, the idea of sacrificial citizenship arrived at a similar time as in Guinea, but in a very different context. The war for independence required even more sacrifice than Touré’s socialist modernization projects, and Fulbe did not participate at the same levels as the Balanta or others. They were more likely to support the Portuguese and serve as Portuguese soldiers, even if many did support the PAIGC.167 The question of Fulbe participation in the war is taken up in Chapter 5, but it is instructive to look at Fulbe ambivalence about the war through the perspective of sacrificial citizenship. While Fulbe had developed roots in particular communities or provinces of Portuguese Guinea, their cross-border ties meant they had equal if not greater attachment to neighboring areas of Senegal and Guinea than they did to the rest of the colony. The number of Fulbe who fought in the war—on either side—was far smaller than the number who fled the colony 164 McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 6. 165 Gregory Mann, From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: The Road to Nongovernmentality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 136, 159. 166 Mann makes this point in the case of Mali. From Empires to NGOs, 167. 167 Lopes, Etnia, estado e reláções de poder and Guinea-Bissau: From Liberation Struggle to Independent Statehood (London, Zed Books, 1987). Joshua Forrest disputes that ethnic identity played a determining factor in participation in the liberation war. Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility: Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003). 45 entirely. Relying on social, religious, and economic networks, Fulbe left Portuguese Guinea in large numbers during the war, many of whom would return after independence had been won. From the point of view of the Guinean government and the PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea, the relative lack of Fulbe participation in these sacrificial projects made them suspect members of these new nations. But given the relatively short period of colonial rule and the inability of colonial governments to create any sense of territorial belonging, why would Fulbe feel their primary attachment was not across the border, but to the rest of the colony/state? Throughout Portuguese Guinea/Guinea-Bissau, the strength of civil society and the weakness of colonial and postcolonial governments meant that national attachment and belonging continued to be weak.168 In Senegal and the Gambia, cross-border attachment was seen as less of a threat, and as such flexible ideas of citizenship and sovereignty were usually tacitly accepted. Throughout Africa, the inability of colonial governments to invest in rural areas meant that postcolonial governments “received states that were appropriate to the way they had conducted their politics: primarily urban, with few links to the surrounding countryside where most of the population lived.”169 The challenge, which most states struggled to meet, was to create a sense of attachment between rural areas and their capitals/governments while simultaneously building the state (infrastructurally) and the nation. Border communities had a unique position at the literal edges of states. Groups whose networks crossed borders had opportunities to escape danger and profit economically from their location, but these actions often marginalized them in the views of their states and nations. Of course, there were those who left Fulbe areas without crossing international borders, and in doing so felt a growing attachment to postcolonial states. 168 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility. 169 Herbst, States and Power in Africa, 17–18. 46 Alternative Geographies and a Failure of Imagination Louisa Lombard argues that in the Central African Republic (CAR), actors cling to a Weberian state ideal, while ignoring and suffocating any alternative organic state-making initiatives.170 She argues that instead of attempting to transition from the idea of an “ideal-type state” to something feasible given empirical reality, people remain fixated on ideal state forms. In doing so, the Weberian state “is a kind of phantom limb, albeit one the patient never had in the first place.”171 As such, the range of possible solutions to problems are restricted to those that fit into an “ideal-type state,” one with a national government that provides for its citizens, and has firm borders with delineated boundaries—both territorial and juridical—between citizens and foreigners. While the CAR represents an extreme case of the failures of state-making, the failure to identify alternative forms of state-making and space-making have limited our view of how communities on the margins of states have created decentralized networks across borders. While citizens in southern Senegambia have made claims on their governments, they have often lived in between them. This was not just a relic of a colonial period where governments did not represent their subjects. It was—and is—a strategy to gain autonomy, profit economically, and serve as cross-border brokers within one larger shared cultural space. Fulbe borderland regions of southern Senegambia have constantly changed as national governments have created a civic and cultural nationalism that increasingly ties citizens along the border to Dakar, Banjul, Bissau, and Conakry. Between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, most border management today is not done exclusively by state agencies, but negotiated between “traditional nobilities” (chiefs, religious leaders, other traditional structures), civil society, and local officials. In general, everyday disputes are typically dealt with informally and without engaging larger structures. In fact, the less active 170 Lombard, State of Rebellion, 2. 171 Ibid, 41. 47 the state, the more effective civil society is in solving these problems.172 As Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan argue, “The absence of the state does not mean that a void exists in its place.”173 Border management and mobility in southern Senegambia has primarily not been the purview of state management since the drawing of colonial borders at the end of the nineteenth century. A variety of borderland actors have structured mobility through communities and families. These movements connected Fulbe communities across borders together in a way that had not previously existed. The “dynamics of mobility” created ties between Fulbe groups that may otherwise have seen themselves as different.”174 Introducing his landmark history of greater Senegambia to 1900, Boubacar Barry issued a challenge: to break free from the constraints of sovereignty that have limited the actions of modern states. At the same time that Europeans politically divided and parceled out greater Senegambia, he argued, the peoples of the region were coming closer together. Barry wrote that only by understanding these regional dynamics could people “break free of the futureless political and economic straitjackets into which our nation-states have double-locked the Senegambian people behind artificial frontiers.”175 Despite this call for understanding greater Senegambia as a broader region, few studies look at these regional dynamics throughout the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.176 By doing so here, I hope to demonstrate the complex relationship between citizenship, territory, and national belonging that has served to limit regional political cohesiveness 172 Aboubakr Tandia, “Borders and Borderlands Identities: A Comparative Perspective of Cross-Border Governance in the Neighbourhoods of Senegal, the Gambia and Guinea Bissau,” African Nebula 2 (2010), 31–32. 173 Thomas Bierschenk and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, “Local Powers and a Distant State in Rural Central African Republic,” Journal of Modern African Studies 35, no. 3 (1997), 441. 174 Lombard, State of Rebellion, 87. 175 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, xii. 176 Nugent’s recently-published Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, which looks at the western edge of the Lower Casamance-Gambia (but not Guinea-Bissau) and as the southern Ghana-Togo borders, is an exception. 48 for over a century, and the ways southern Senegambians have pushed back against rigid ideas of national belonging and autochthony by putting forward ideas of fluid and flexible citizenship. Sources The project of recreating borderland life and movement is a challenging one. Colonial documentation on borders and border mobility in Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea is, of course, incomplete. Population censuses within particular regions of each colony give an indication of whether populations rose or shrunk but were manipulated by the actions described in this dissertation. Colonial officials were aware of these manipulations, and often included disclaimers when reporting population numbers. The benefit of studying borderland movement is that despite their relative weakness in border regions, colonial governments were obsessed with understanding borderland movements. Stopping the flow of agricultural products and firearms was the subject of constant debate, with colonial governments often criticizing each other for a lack of shared interest. While immigration was usually welcomed by colonial governments, emigration was not so supported, and so many colonial records note the movement of people for motives deemed both reasonable and unreasonable. At times, the stories of individuals show up in colonial documentation, especially when depositions or reports came directly from reports given by those individuals. These individual accounts are rare but are invaluable in recreating aspects of borderland life. No twentieth century African history project would be complete without the use of oral sources.177 Of course, all oral histories and traditions are subject to limitations. When I began this 177 David Henige, “Oral Tradition as a Means of Reconstructing the Past,” in John Edward Philips (ed.), Writing African History (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2005), 169–90, Luise White, Stephan F. Meischer, and David William Cohen (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001) and Barbara M. Cooper, “Oral Sources and the Challenge of African History,” in Writing African History, 191–215. 49 project in 2013, I feared the dictatorial presidency of the Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh would limit my ability to collect accurate information about cross-border dynamics and life in the Gambia. As a result, I waited to conduct interviews until after the December 2016 election that removed Jammeh from power. Of course, conducting interviews after a political awakening meant that the opinions of those I interviewed came at a time of optimism and hope. In an effort to avoid the biases of particular villages, districts, or even countries, I conducted 220 interviews with 361 individuals in 103 communities in Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau (see Figure 4 below).178 Typically, when I arrived in communities I was steered towards older men, and I had to push back to interview older women. As a result, nearly 75 percent of my interviews were with men, and thus focused on male rather than female mobility. Moreover, while women migrate extensively for marriage, culturally these movements are not viewed as migration by either gender. My interviews were conducted with the help of two research assistants, Falaye Danfakha and Mady Camara. I led and facilitated the interviews in Pulaar, with Falaye and Mady’s assistance when necessary. Falaye and Mady translated interviews conducted in Wolof, with my occasional interjection. Lastly, interviews in Mandinka were translated entirely by Falaye and Mady.179 Because I was able to speak more directly to individuals who we interviewed in Pulaar, Pulaar- speakers (whether Fulbe or otherwise) seemed less reticent to discuss their past with us. In terms of direct experience, these interviews could only go back to the 1940s, but most of those I spoke with only had direct knowledge of the 1950s or later. Had I been able to conduct this research a generation earlier, oral histories would become more specific further back in time. 178 Map created by the author using CARTO. 179 My linguistic ability in Pulaar allowed me to conduct interviews with little difficulty. However, my Wolof proficiency (or lack thereof) necessitated a facilitator who could lead the interviews, translate, and allow me to interject sporadically. My minimal Mandinka meant that I relied on my research assistants completely for these translations. 50 In order to understand earlier migration patterns, I used family histories that traced the movements of parents, grandparents, and other extended family to understand how and why people migrated. These stories rarely had approximate dates, and as such are used to fill in the gaps of archival documentation rather than indicate the movements of a particular year. As a result, while oral sources are used to a certain degree in Chapters 1 to 3, they become crucially important for Chapters 4 and 5, which cover the period from roughly 1945 to 1980, as well as the Conclusion, which looks at recent decades. Chapter 1 also uses collected oral histories from the Gambian Oral History Archive at the National Center for Arts and Culture (NCAC) in suburban Banjul, along with published oral histories and archival documentation. Figure 4. Research interview locations 51 After independence, the archival trail becomes increasingly difficult throughout southern Senegambia. Newspapers, magazines, and other journals provided perspective on some of the dynamics at play throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as did the rare official government report or publication I was able to view. Social scientists and their contemporary research also provided valuable information about mobility and migration after independence. Chapter 6, which discusses the history of Medina Gounass, would have been impossible without the work of the geographer Cheikh Ba, who conducted an ethnographic survey in the town in the early 1960s.180 For post- independence Guinea, scholars of the Sékou Touré regime and its actions provided chronological dating that could be combined with oral interviews of Guinean migrants, newspaper and magazine reports, and official statements by the Touré government to trace the particular dynamics of borderland Fulbe.181 Guinean migrants in Dakar have been the subject of much academic research, but those in southern Senegal were often ignored.182 Portuguese documentation about cross-border movement during the war for liberation allowed me to recreate, at least in part, borderland dynamics at place in southern Senegal and northwestern Guinea. Because the war in Portuguese Guinea continued until early 1974, the Portuguese documented extensively the actions just outside their colony. While this information needs to be analyzed critically, the Portuguese also did extensive cataloguing on outside radio and print coverage of their war, which when combined with oral interviews and existing information 180 M. Cheikh Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière en Haute-Casamance (Sénégal): Madina-Gonasse” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Paris, 1964). 181 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation’”; McGovern, Unmasking the State and A Socialist Peace?; Susanna Fioratta, “States of Insecurity: Migration, Remittances and Islamic Reform in Guinea, West Africa” (PhD Dissertation, Yale University, 2013); and Mama Saliou Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine: l’immigration des guinéens au Sénégal,” in Jean-Loup Amselle (ed.), Les migration africaines: réseaux et processus migratoires (Paris: François Maspero, 1976), 63–98. 182 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation’”; Papa Ibrahima Diallo, Les Guinéens de Dakar: migration et integration en Afrique de l’Ouest (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” is the exception. 52 about the war for independence, can be synthesized into a larger discussion of borderland dynamics. Cabral’s own writings and interviews with contemporary chroniclers provided information on the internal political dynamics of Guinean society. The dissertation of José Manuel de Braga Dias on sociocultural changes in Portuguese Guinea during the war of independence needs to be understood as produced with the assistance of Portuguese troops, who helped protect him during his research but also shaped his opinions on Bissau-Guinean society; but when corroborated with other information, his research becomes an invaluable source of contemporary ethnographic information.183 In addition to oral sources and published materials, I conducted archival research across West Africa and in European colonial archives. Most of the documentation in this dissertation comes from the National Archives of Senegal in Dakar, the National Records Service in Banjul, and a series of archives in Lisbon, including the Portuguese Diplomatic Archives, the Military Archives, the Geography Society of Lisbon, the National Archives, and the Overseas Archives. I also consulted unpublished colonial research at the Geography Society and the Higher Institute of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Lisbon,184 formerly the Colonial School, where students conducted research on Portugal’s overseas colonies. I conducted substantial amounts of research as well at the French colonial archives in Aix-en-Provence, and additional archives in the above-mentioned countries, Guinea-Bissau, and the United Kingdom. A list of all archives consulted is featured in the concluding bibliography. The resources from the 1960s and early 1970s available in Portuguese archives are voluminous and are slowly being declassified and will surely serve as invaluable resources for future scholars of this period in Guinea-Bissau’s history. 183 José Manuel de Braga Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural na Guiné portuguesa” (Dissertation, ISCSP Ultramarina, 1974). 184 The Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Politicas da Universidade de Lisboa, more commonly known as ISCSP. 53 As Michel-Ralph Trouillot reminds us, Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).185 This dissertation is, of course, full of silences. However, I have attempted to blend different types of sources, archives, and narratives to best mitigate these silences. This dissertation could not have been as thorough without the incredible scholarly production of the Department of History at l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar. In particular, the work of Mouhamadou Moustapha Sow and Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé allowed me the freedom to focus on borderland dynamics rather than recreate the work of describing the internal historical political dynamics of southern Senegal.186 This dissertation is the culmination of nearly a decade attempting to understand the borderland dynamics of southern Senegal, which began on my first visit to Kolda as a Peace Corps Trainee in April 2010. Structure This dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter One covers the precolonial period. The first half of the chapter demonstrates the settlement patterns that emerged in southern Senegambia during the era of the Federation of Kaabu, which ruled the region for almost 500 years. It argues that territorial organization in Kaabu was flexible and thus challenging to map onto contemporary ideas of bounded, fixed territory. Kaabu’s limits constantly expanded and contracted, and sovereignty was often fluid and overlapping. The second half of the chapter covers the period of the Kingdom of Fuladu, which ruled much of southern Senegambia from roughly 1867 to 1903. It tracks the growth of Fulbe power and French, British, and Portuguese conquest during this period, 185 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015 [1995]), 37. 186 Sow, “Mutations politiques,” and among N’Gaïdé’s many works, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout. 54 arguing that these actions represent competing claims to territorial sovereignty. From the early 1880s until his exile to the Gambia in 1903, Fuladu’s king, Musa Molo, ruled over a territory divided between the French, British, and Portuguese, and attempted to exercise cross-border sovereignty over his kingdom. Chapters Two through Four cover the colonial period, discussing shifting strategies of migration and territoriality during the period of colonial rule. Chapter Two covers the period through World War I, when colonial states began their project to establish dominion over their newly acquired territories with little success. It explores how the emergence of colonial economies and military conscription gave rise to migration as a tactic of avoidance, and how the weakness of colonial states in southern Senegambia facilitated movement. Chapter Three analyzes the expansion of colonial rule during the interwar years, showing that despite this growth, Fulbe people developed an alternative, territorial sense of community and belonging centered around cross-border ties. During the interwar years, Fulbe networks in the borderlands of southern Senegambia expanded further to the south and southeast, as Futa Jallon became increasingly tied to Fulbe groups to the north, northwest, and west. Chapter Four argues that this cross-border sense of community continued through the end of colonial rule, despite the growth of independence movements and intracolonial economies designed to attract people to participation within each colony. Their borderland location allowed Fulbe to profit from economic and political differences and establish cross-border ties that could serve as a source of support and mitigate challenges. These chapters chart the growing encroachment of colonial states, and the ways in which nationalist dialogues and discussions penetrated differentially in each colony. Chapter Five discusses the first decades after independence in Guinea and Senegal, as well as peaceful decolonization in the Gambia and bloody decolonization in Portuguese Guinea. It 55 demonstrates how southern Senegambians used cross-border networks to escape political persecution and economic hardship in Guinea and a violent war of independence in Portuguese Guinea. It demonstrates that colonial-era migration networks served as a crucial resource at a time of immense struggle. It also traces postcolonial efforts to monitor and control cross-border movement, and more quotidian aspects of nation- and state-building in relatively quieter conditions in Senegal and the Gambia. Chapter Six straddles the colonial and postcolonial periods, describing the history of Medina Gounass, a transnational religious community centered in southern Senegal. It argues that Medina Gounass’ autonomy is an extreme example of the cross-border forms of belonging that exist elsewhere in southern Senegal. It represents another form of alternative belonging, just like the communities featured in the first five chapters. Lastly, the Conclusion discusses southern Senegambia since 1980, discussing the creation of large weekly markets along borders, structural adjustment, the failed Senegambia Confederation, Guinea-Bissau’s adoption of the West African franc (CFA), and other changes designed to encourage transnational connections. This new attitude shows an acceptance by governments in the region of this regional geographic vision and of cross-border movement while still favoring limited political integration. It offers an alternative vision of citizenship and state- making in postcolonial Africa, where struggles for autochthony and citizenship have too often marginalized vulnerable populations. The decades since 1980 demonstrate the enduring vision of fluid ideas of citizenship in southern Senegambia’s borderlands, where Fulbe and other southern Senegambians have challenged ideas of national rootedness and belonging. 56 Chapter 1: The Development of Territorial Organization in Southern Senegambia to 1903 In 1903, Musa Molo, the last king of Fuladu, fled French-held Senegal across its recently established border with the Gambia. This event represented the last gasp of local ideas of formal political territorial organization in southern Senegambia, ideas that had developed over centuries of Mande rule. On one level, Musa was moving from the French to the British sphere of influence; but on another, his flight occurred entirely within his own territory. Beginning in the 1880s, French, British, and Portuguese colonization had split Musa’s kingdom into three parts, yet he continued to exercise control over local populations in Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea. His cross-border reign was emblematic of an enduring system of decentralized federalism, which in terms of the levels of autonomy exercised by its various regions was similar to contemporary federal systems: with individual states responsible to larger kingdoms but holding and exercising most of the political authority within their respective territories. For several centuries before its collapse in the 1860s, the primary political unit in southern Senegambia had been the Mandinka-led Kaabu, which stretched from the banks of the Gambia River southward into most of what is today Guinea-Bissau (see Figure 5).1 Though the proximate cause of Kaabu’s fall was its protracted war against neighboring Futa Jallon, internal dissension had also played a major role. Territorial organization in both Kaabu and its successor kingdom, Fuladu, was fluid and flexible, characterized by shifting political boundaries and the limited reach of centralized power. Historians of other parts of the Mande world have advanced the concept of an oscillating frontier, 1 Adapted from Édouard Charton, Le Tour du monde: nouveau journal des voyages / publié sous la direction de M. Édouard Charton et illustré par nos plus célèbres artistes (Paris: 1868). From BNF: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k34392v/f11/. The inexact nature of the boundaries between kingdoms is instructive, as is the inclusion of constituent kingdoms like Mana. 57 whereby the state expands and contracts based on prevailing conditions. In times of prosperity, the state would expand, bringing in new followers and increasing its economic might. Eventually, however, it would overextend and be forced to return to its core territory. Richard Roberts, for example, contends that the “flexible” boundaries of the Segu Kingdom would push outward and retreat inward as necessary, in a “cycle of centralization and decomposition.”2 Other nineteenth- century Fulbe and Mande states, such as those led by Umar Tal and Samori Ture, featured a similar territorial flexibility. Borno, in contrast, exercised firmer territorial control, and engaged in various border disputes with its neighbors.3 Figure 5. Kaabu’s (“Khabou or Ngabou”) rough location as of the mid-nineteenth century 2 Roberts, Warriors, Merchants and Slaves, 39. 3 Hiribarren, A History of Borno. 58 Of colonial boundaries across West Africa, Nugent writes, “Whereas Europeans thought of political space as a kind of chequer-board in which every state shared borders with others of its kind, the West African map looked more like a raisin bun with centres of political power interspersed between no man’s lands and scatterings of decentralized polities.”4 Even within particular states, the exercise of power often dissipated the further from the core one went, making power relations appear as a series of concentric circles.5 Moreover, certain people “could be under the control of several sovereign powers at once” because of “the plurality of forms of territoriality” that existed before colonization, when “the attachment to the territory and to the land was entirely relative.”6 In short, the territorial flexibility described above was crucially dependent on the lack of a critical mass of highly centralized states; and when European boundary-drawing threatened the existence of no man’s lands, the status quo framework of expanding and contracting polities was fatally damaged. In discussing the precolonial landscape of the Upper Casamance, Donnay writes of the failure of modern cartographic maps to properly represent precolonial polities: One of the reasons why states are often presented as static polygons, rather than as the dynamic networks they are, is because their sources of power are often also conceived of as fixed. Kaabu and Fulaadu provide a useful counterbalance to these rigid notions, as both states relied on a variety of sources of power, both material and symbolic, fixed and mobile.7 If we accept this analysis that the mobility of power was an important part of the equation, then it stands to reason that the mobility of people was also. While individuals’ movement between precolonial West African polities was circumscribed by various factors—not least, enslavement— many could and did migrate to escape oppressive rulers. This phenomenon became increasingly 4 Paul Nugent, “Arbitrary Lines and the People’s Minds,” 39. 5 Ibid. 6 Achille Mbembe, “At the Edge of the World,” 261. For evidence of overlapping sovereignty elsewhere, see Thonchai, Siam Mapped. 7 Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns,” 372. 59 important over the course of the nineteenth century, and arguably reached its apex in the last years of Musa Molo’s reign. Individuals, families, and even whole communities sometimes moved due to political, religious, or economic considerations; and for the region’s many nomadic or semi- nomadic herders, remaining within a defined territory was in any case impracticable. After the final defeat of Kaabu’s army by Futa Jallon at the Battle of Kansala, Fulbe rule in Fuladu and, farther south, in Forriá (now in eastern Guinea-Bissau) filled the power vacuum. The first ruler of Fuladu was Alfa Molo, a descendant of enslaved people who had likely been from the eastern Senegal River Valley in Bundu. The long succession struggle that followed Alfa’s death concluded with his son, Musa, in charge. The reigns of both Molos were marked by the consolidation and expansion of the territories under their control; but in the last decade of the nineteenth century, these gains were reversed as Musa dealt with several internal rebellions and formed shifting alliances with the European powers seeking to impose their control over various parts of his territory. Such alliances, especially with the French, succeeded in bolstering his power in the region in the short term, but eventually they became a major factor in his downfall. Fuladu, despite its internal political problems, was much more of a coherent state than anything that existed in Forriá:8 a region of unstable alliances and constant competition among the Biafada, who had preceded the Fulbe there, and a variety of Fulbe groups, including the kingdoms of Fuladu and Futa Jallon and local jiyaabe (“enslaved” Fulbe) and rimbe (“free” or “noble” Fulbe). While the Portuguese tried at various times to exercise control via the personal allegiance of local leaders, this approach did not have any lasting impact, apart from a state of chaos born of their lack of any more consistent policy. That is, various Fulbe or Biafada groups tried to use the Portuguese as they 8 Now in southeastern Guinea-Bissau. 60 would local allies, forming temporary coalitions to exercise power over one another, but alliance with the Portuguese was far from a guarantee of success and often led to greater subjugation. Kaabu’s policy of allowing its individual states to exercise control within their own territories, which allowed it to survive for several centuries in one form or another, would have seemed confusing to European travelers who considered the mansa or king of Kaabu to be the most powerful leader in the region.9 After Kaabu’s fall, Alfa and Musa attempted to construct a more centralized state while European colonial enterprises in their part of West Africa were attempting to do the same. This meant that the territoriality of Fuladu had to compete against the territorial claims being put forth by the region’s new French, Portuguese, and British colonial governments. Thus, while Musa was initially able to expand his kingdom with the help of these colonial regimes, his cross-border state ultimately collapsed as the French capacity to resist him grew. And while his expansionary policy knit the various parts of greater Fuladu more closely together, it also led many people to flee his kingdom, especially Mande who found themselves increasingly out of favor after centuries of dominating the Fulbe within their territory. Fulbe and others on the ground explicitly refused to recognize the initial colonial borders that were delimited in the 1880s and would continue to ignore or actively resist them in the decades that followed. While colonial officials expressed frustration with the lack of recognition of these boundaries, they soon came to accept that exerting meaningful border control would be a slow and painful process. 9 Because European travelers were unaware of this flexibility, they did not need to fit it into their worldview, centered on European ideas of statecraft. 61 Understanding Kaabu and its Political Organization Historians of greater Senegambia have given extensive consideration to Kaabu over the past fifty years. In 1981, the journal Éthiopiques devoted an entire issue to questions of Kaabu’s history. D. T. Niane and Carlos Lopes, among others, have tackled major aspects of political, economic, and cultural life during the period of Kaabu’s existence;10 and Toby Green has linked the Mande world, including Kaabu, to the wider context of changes in the Atlantic World during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.11 For brevity’s sake, however, I will limit my discussion of Kaabu’s history to those elements of state power, territoriality, and cultural hybridization that are key to understanding precolonial West Africa’s territorial landscape. Oral traditions stress Kaabu’s connection to the kingdom of Mali, particularly through Tiramakhan Traoré, who led the military forces of the Malian emperor Sunjata. Some of these traditions emphasize Tiramakhan’s thirteenth-century conquest of southern Senegambia, but Green argues that Kaabu was more likely to have formed through “a gradual spread of influence through the formation of alliances.”12 In his view, successive waves of Mandinka migrants leveraged their growing connections to local lineages to form the federation of states that became Kaabu.13 Archaeological evidence shows “substantial material change” during the thirteenth century, which can be taken as confirming the arrival of Mandinka, but not necessarily as demonstrating conquest.14 Likewise, historians who rely primarily on oral traditions suggest that the Mandinka migration to Kaabu was gradual, and that Tiramakhan’s story served as a sort of connective tissue binding Kaabu to the accomplishments of Mali, rather than being definitive 10 Djibril Tamsir Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest: le royaume du Gabou (Paris: Karthala, 1989). Carlos Lopes, Kaabunké: Espaço, territorio e poder na Guiné-Bissau, Gâmbia e Casamance pré-coloniais (Lisbon: Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, 1999). 11 Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. 12 Ibid, 49. 13 Ibid, 50. 14 Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns,” 368. 62 historical evidence in its own right.15 For instance, Mamadou Mané and the Portuguese colonial official and historian Avelino Teixeira da Mota both concluded that Mande influence on local populations was already growing before Tiramakhan’s expedition.16 Mande expansion into southern Senegambia even led to the decline of local populations like the Bainunk and Pajadinka— though aspects of their cultural traditions were retained, leading the Mandinka culture found in southern Senegambia to take on its own distinctive features.17 Thus, in many ways, the region’s history during the Kaabu period is defined by local and regional mobility as well as by cultural hybridity.18 After the fall of Kaabu, Fulbe people came to rule southern Senegambia, and continue to make up the majority of the region’s population today. But in the era of Tiramakhan, according to Niane, they did not yet have any such political or demographic dominance, and were marginal in the new Mande confederation.19 Moreover, to speak of a unified Fulbe population within the region makes little sense, since—as Sow writes—“The Fulbe do not form a truly homogenous ethnic group,” and also “present a remarkable heterogeneity” in environmental, geographic, political, and social terms.20 Additionally, Sow differentiates between two major movements of Fulbe into southern Senegambia: the first from the east, alongside Mande settlers, during the thirteenth and 15 Bakary Sidibé, A Brief History of Kaabu and Fuladu: 1300-1930: A Narrative Based on Some Oral Traditions of the Senegambia, West Africa (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia, 2004), 16. 16 Mamadou Mané, “Les origins et la formation de Kaabu,” Éthiopiques 28 (1981). Avelino Teixeira da Mota, “Les Relations de l’Ancien Gabou avec Quelques Etats Voisins,” Éthiopiques 28 (1981). He even mapped out the territory where this mandinguização was most prevalent. Teixeira da Mota, Guiné Portuguesa (Lisbon: Agencia Geral do Ultramar, 1954), 143 17 Lopes, Kaabunké, 20; Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest, 43; Ralphina A. Phillott-Almeida, A Succinct History of the Kingdom of Pachesi in the Empire of Kaabu: Drawn from Oral Traditions (Banjul: University of the Gambia, 2011), 11; and Sékéne Mody Cissoko, “Introduction à l’histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest,” Éthiopiques 28 (1981). 18 Donnay, “Territories, fortresses, and shifting towns,” 19. 19 Niane, 11. Lopes argues that Fulbe arrived after Mandinka. Lopes, Kaabunké, 68. 20 Sow, “Mutations Politiques,” Chapters 2-3. 63 fourteenth centuries; and the second, during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century heyday of the Fulbe conqueror Koli Tengella.21 Beginning in the late seventeenth century, a series of revolutions and counterrevolutions occurred across much of West Africa, including Fulbe-led movements in Futa Jallon, Bundu, Futa Toro, and Macina, all of which had historical ties to southern Senegambia (see Figure 6 below).22 This political turmoil provoked substantial movement across the region, including of Fulbe pastoralists to southern Senegambia. After the Islamic revolution in Futa Jallon in the late- eighteenth century, many non-Muslim Fulbe preferred the option of fleeing to the northwest over remaining in a theocratic state.23 Many of these refugees ended up in the regions of Gabú and Oio, in what is now northern Guinea-Bissau.24 Most saw the Upper Casamance as a zone of refuge, as indicated by the name of the province of Firdu, from the Pulaar verb ferde, meaning to migrate or go into exile.25 The new arrivals found readily available pastoral land, no imposition of the Islamic faith, and—in the early stages—substantially lower taxes.26 Migrants who came to southern Senegambia from the Muslim areas of Futa Toro, Bundu, and Macina during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tended to be Muslim.27 However, Frances Leary’s work suggests that few Fulbe in Upper Casamance were Muslim before the mid nineteenth century’s wave of refugees from the wars of Umar Tal.28 The quantity of Muslim in- 21 Sow, “Mutations Politiques,” 43. Sow dates these movements within the fifteenth century, while Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé believes they occurred early in the sixteenth century. N’Gaïdé, “Identités ethniques et territorialisation en Casamance,” 44. 22 From Wikimedia Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Fula_jihad_states_map_general_c1830.png. The map was produced by the scholar of West Africa Tommy Miles. 23 Sow, “Mutations Politiques,” 44-5. 24 Frances Anne Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism: A Political History of Islam in the Casamance Region of Senegal (1850-1914),” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Northwestern University, 1972), 66. 25 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 98. 26 Antonio Carreira dates the arrival of Fulbe and their herds to the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Carreira, Os Portuguêses Nos Rios de Guiné (1500-1900) (Lisbon, 1984), 80. 27 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 77. 28 Leary, “Islam, Politics, and Colonialism,” 98. 64 migration differed across provinces within Kaabu: with areas farther to the south, in what is today eastern Guinea-Bissau, seeing much more than those in present-day Senegal and the Gambia. Figure 6. Map of the Fulbe Islamic revolutions across West Africa According to oral traditions, the first Fulbe settlers treated their Mandinka hosts “as their parents,” adopting Mandinka names and becoming a core part of the Mandinka state.29 However, when far greater numbers of Fulbe arrived during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the relationship between Fulbe and Mandinka became tenser, not merely due to the sheer number of new arrivals, but because Mandinka demands on them became more stringent. Similarly, Christian Roche assigns the rise to prominence of the Fulbe within Kaabu to the mid-nineteenth century.30 Many of the same century’s new Muslim arrivals in what is now eastern Guinea-Bissau were rimbe from eastern regions like Bundu,31 who continued to migrate into Kaabu despite its incessant 29 Interview cited in Cornelia Giesing and Valentin Vydrine, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini (Guinée-Bissau): La mémoire des Mandinka et des Sòoninkee du Kaabu (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 210-1. 30 Christian Roche, Histoire de la Casamance: conquête et résistance, 1850-1920 (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 63. 31 José Mendes Moreira, Fulas do Gabú (Bissau: Centro de estudos da Guiné Portuguesa, 1948), 78. 65 warfare with Fulbe-led Futa Jallon.32 Later, after Kaabu fell, large numbers of Fulbe Muslims came to spread Islam in the Upper Casamance, creating Muslim villages and centers of Islamic learning there.33 Kaabu’s wealth was in part built on the facilitation of long-distance trade: its mansa collected taxes from merchants in exchange for ensuring the physical safety of their goods and themselves.34 Kaabu’s leadership also kept Europeans out of its internal trade, which was run by juula (merchant) families with outposts across and the kingdom and beyond.35 In general, Europeans had very little knowledge of the internal dynamics of Kaabu, with most of it being derived at second- or third-hand by observers based on the coast. Nevertheless, the nonexistence of other available contemporary written documentation means that such commentaries are still valuable to historians of Kaabu. Many of the early accounts hint vaguely at the existence of an important regional power named Kaabu. The fifteenth-century voyage of Diogo Gomes yielded reports of a powerful king known as “Bormelli,” meaning the king of Mali.36 Early in the following century, Duarte Pacheco Pereira noted that the Gambia River was called “Guabuu” in Mandinka.37 Others, including André Álvares d’Almada, discussed the powerful king of “Cabo,” who was a “king of kings.”38 32 Giesing and Vydrine, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini, 109. 33 Sow, “Mutations Politiques,” 46-7. 34 Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouvelle Rélation de l’Afrique Occidentale, Tome V (Paris: Guillaume Cavalier, 1728), 233. 35 Phillot-Almeida, “An outline history of Pachesi drawn from oral traditions,” Paper presented at The First International Kaabu Colloquium, Dakar, 1980, 3-4; and Bakary Sidibe, “The story of Kaabu: its extent,” Proceedings of the Conference on Manding Studies (London: SOAS, 1972), 13. 36 Diogo Gomes, “The Voyages of Diogo Gomes,” in G.R. Crone, The voyages of Cadamosto and other documents on Western Africa in the second half of the fifteenth century (London: Hakluyt Society, 1937). Bor (or Bour) means king in Wolof, with Melli referring to Mali. 37 Duarte de Pacheco Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis (Lisbon: Imprensea nacional, 1892 [1506-08]), 50. 38 André Alvares d’Almada, Tratado breve dos rios de Guiné do Cabo Verde dês do Rio Sanagá até os baixos de Santa Ana de todas as naçoes de negros que há na dita costa e de seus costumes, armas, trajos, juramentos, guerras (Lisbon: Editorial L.I.A.M., 1654 [1594]), 70. 66 In the 1720s, Jean-Baptiste Labat wrote of an important king named Biram Mansaté, who kept 6,000 soldiers nearby and sold 600 enslaved people annually to the Portuguese, in addition to those he sold to other Europeans.39 Throughout the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century, slaving proved lucrative for the aristocracy of Kaabu. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, Kaabu’s leaders struggled to respond to the loss of the revenue previously provided by the overseas slave trade, and in the event overtaxed their population, provoking both internal revolts and external attacks. These events fractured the already decentralized kingdom into its constituent parts.40 When the French resident for the Atlantic island of Carabane visited the region in 1851, he noted that “a war of religion has been raised in the Upper Casamance since 1840,” with its most enthusiastic participants being Fulbe Futa (Fulbe from Futa Jallon); and that every village had been fortified due to fears of invasion.41 The Political Geography of Kaabu Donnay argues that the term “kingdom” is useful for describing both Kaabu and Fuladu, because Mandinka and Fulbe conceptions of political power and space centered around individual rulers of particular territories. However, despite the use of similar terms for these two polities, the concepts of bounded territory and borders within Kaabu and Fuladu varied considerably.42 Importantly, while territorial control was an integral part of a given kingdom’s existence in both the Mandinka and Fulbe cases, the idea of a fixed border was alien, and could change drastically at any time based on the waxing and waning political power of individual states and of the larger federation of Kaabu. In part this was because a state or kingdom’s reach was based not only on the 39 Labat, Nouvelle Relation de L’Afrique Occidentale, 234. 40 Lopes, Kaabunké. 41 Emmanuel Bertrand-Bocandé, “Extrait d’une letter de M. Bertrand Bocandé, resident français à Carabanne (Cazamance), à M. Ferdinand-Denis, 2 février 1851,” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie (Paris) (1851), 414-6. 42 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 41. 67 land per se, but on the population from which a ruler could obtain taxes and other state exactions, including military service. When a polity was no longer able to exercise these types of authority over its outlying areas, they simply ceased to be a part of it, instead opting for independence, confederation with other hinterland areas, or domination by a different large polity. The center of any territory was the tata, a fortification within which its ruler usually lived.43 By the 1850s, as mentioned above, nearly every town of note had its own tata to protect the local ruler and his allies from attack. Kaabu, both under Mandinka rule and afterwards, exhibited a “martial territoriality,” meaning that the organization of territory centered around the use of these and other types of fortifications, which as well as fulfilling their practical function served as important symbols of strength.44 Places without tata were viewed as void of state control and thus free to raid.45 At the time of Hyacinthe Hecquard’s visit to the important town of Kankelefa, in 1850, only the king and those directly in his service lived inside the tata, consisting of roughly a hundred huts. However, in times of war, people would abandon their nearby villages, and those not directly involved in the fighting would seek refuge with their herds inside the tata.46 Historians of Kaabu disagree about what its political organization should be called. Donnay, as noted above, uses the term kingdom, on the grounds that Kaabu was a state or confederation, and explicitly not an empire. At the time of the Portuguese arrival, she argues, Mandinka communities “had already established a vast, if only superficially centralised, confederation of states.”47 Mamadou Mané, on the other hand, argues that Kaabu could not have 43 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 370. 44 Ibid, 118. The Fulbe did not use tata before overthrowing the kingdom of Kaabu but retained them subsequently. 45 Michel Benoit, “Espaces francs et espaces étatisés en Afrique occidentale : remarques sur quelques processus de territorialisation et leurs fondements idéologiques en Haute Casamance et Haute Gambie,” Cahiers des sciences humaines 24, no. 4 (1988), 503-19. 46 Hyacinthe Hecquard, Voyage sur la côte et dans l’intérier de l’Afrique occidentale (Paris: Bénard, 1853), 188, 204-5. 47 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 40, 127. 68 been a mere kingdom, on the grounds that it was “an empire grouping up to thirty-two kingdoms.”48 Whichever term they prefer, however, historians generally agree that Kaabu was decentralized, and more like a family of states than an empire as traditionally conceived.49 The provinces of Kaabu selected their own rulers, who had to swear allegiance to the emperor. If the whole of Kaabu went to war, each province would contribute troops.50 And as N’Gaïdé argues, “In the internal organization of the Gaabunke [Kaabu] space, the territorial network of sanctuaries seems much more decisive than the subdivision into provinces of relatively vague status and shifting boundaries”—also noting that Kaabu had a limited ability to restrict the movement of its nomadic “floating populations.”51 Indeed, Kaabu’s “remarkable decentralisation” meant that its population was not accountable to its leaders, but rather to their own local authority figures.52 A primary consequence of this structure was that Fulbe and other populations became accustomed to moving from province to province within Kaabu in search of better treatment. The mansaba, the ruler of all of Kaabu, was treated with mystical reverence but had limited power, militarily as well as politically.53 Nevertheless, Lopes argues that the creation of Kaabu was a drastic change from the prior political organization in the region, as it led to an increased centralization of social and political functions, around the mansaba as the chief of chiefs.54 48 Mamadou Mané, Contribution à l'histoire du Kaabu: des origines au XIXe siècle (Dakar: IFAN, 1979), 28. 49 The idea of an empire necessarily being centralized is flawed, but the term does typically connote a degree of territorial hierarchy not applicable in the case of Kaabu. 50 Mané, Contribution à l'histoire du Kaabu, 30-2. 51 N’Gaïdé, “Identités ethniques et territorialisation en Casamance,” 44. 52 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 71. 53 Winifred Galloway, “A listing of some Kaabu states and associated areas: signposts towards state-by-state research in Kaabu,” Paper presented at The First International Kaabu Colloquium, (Dakar, 1980), 17; Cissoko, “La royauté (Mansaya) chez les Mandingues occidentaux, d’après leurs traditions orales,” Bulletin de l’I.F.A.N 31, no. 2 (1969), 338; and Francisco Grandão, “Uma peça histórica,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa 2, no. 6 (1947), 450. Mansa is the Mandinka term for a king, while mansaba refers to the king of kings, in this case, the person who rules over the provincial kings. 54 Lopes, Kaabunké, 166. 69 Kaabu’s territorial extent changed constantly as individual territories expanded and contracted, and others split, reformed, and gained and lost territory through conquest.55 It had three core nyanco provinces where the ruling families came from: Pachana, Sama, and Jimara. Three other provinces—Kantor, Tumana, and Mana—served as vassals to the nyanco ones.56 The rest of the provinces had differing levels of autonomy that was inversely proportional to the strength of their connections to the six core provinces and the degree of Mandinkization they had undergone.57 Provincial governments organized themselves in whatever way they found functioned best, a practice that in some ways paralleled the diverse approaches used by colonial regimes of the twentieth century.58 Even within individual provinces, local rule was fluid and diverse. The mid- nineteenth century traveler Hyacinthe Hecquard described Tumana as divided into many small regions, or fractions of territory, who form a sort of confederation. Each one of them has its particular leader, whose power, absolute of the rest, is transmitted in a collateral line [brother succeeding brother…]. If a foreign state attacks them, they unite their forces, which then become considerable enough for them to be respected by all their neighbors.59 Such flexibility was common throughout the Mande world. David Conrad has suggested that the centers of Mande power should be known as mansadugu (kings’ towns) instead of capitals, because power was not vested permanently in specific locations, but resided wherever the king happened to live.60 Lopes concedes that the flexibility of power in Kaabu makes it challenging to comprehend: “It is difficult to admit that a strong state has been governed from villages, without vestiges of an administration.”61 However, this characterization also holds for Kaabu’s successor 55 Niane, Histoires des Mandingues de l’Ouest, 53-4. 56 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 115-6. 57 Mané, “O Kaabu: uma das grandes entidades do Património Histórico Senegambiano,” Soronda 17 (1990), 26. 58 For descriptions of how this functioned in practice, Cissoko,“La royauté (Mansaya) chez les Mandingues occidentaux,” features descriptions of Baddibu and Wuli. 59 Hecquard, Voyage sur la côte et dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique occidentale, 187. 60 David Conrad, “A town called Dakajalan: the Sunjata tradition and the question of ancient Mali’s capital,” Journal of African History 35 (1994), 365. 61 Lopes, Kaabunké, 229. 70 state Fuladu, which likewise had multiple capitals whose power fluctuated depending on whether the king was present. Within individual villages, Mandinka generally built their homes closer together than Fulbe did. Upon visiting Mandinka villages, Francis Moore noted, “If you ask them why they build their Houses farther from one another, they tell you that their Ancestors did not, that they endeavour’d to imitate them, for they were wiser than they are now.”62 Fulbe houses, in contrast, were “built in a very regular Method, a good Way distant from each other, to avoid Fire.”63 Hecquard noted similar patterns at work, stating, This foulacunda [village of Fulbe], a village of pastoral Fulbe, like all those of Toumané, is very clean. It consists of a wide street on which open the homes, which have a perfect alignment. Behind this main street, there are smaller ones, but in which the thatch huts are arranged so as to leave between them a space large enough so that fire cannot spread from one to the other.64 Figure 7: Engraving of a Fulbe Town from Moore’s Travels into the inland parts of Africa 62 Francis Moore, Travels into the inland parts of Africa… (London: E. Cave, 1738), 109. 63 Moore, Travels into the inland parts of Africa…, 35. The image below comes from the same source. 64 Hecquard, Voyage sur la côte et dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique occidentale, 185-6. 71 Village sites were chosen because of their strategic merits and ability to provide security at limited notice. As the French colonial official Laurent Jean Baptiste Bérenger-Féraud wrote, “In their capacity as armed invaders the Mandinka are generally careful to surround their villages with a palisade called tata […] In lowland countries, Mandinka villages are usually against a forest, a provision that aims to allow women and children to escape to safety in case of attack.”65 Thus, in times of instability, the need for security also tended to contribute to the fluidity of villages’ and regions’ territorial structures, as well as the mobility of their populations. Mobility in Kaabu Most of Kaabu’s inhabitants were non-nomadic, and mobility was used as “a problem- solving mechanism.”66 Archaeological evidence suggests that as of the early 1800s, and likely much earlier, two phenomena were at work in the Upper Casamance: “an ephemeral settlement landscape characterised by the continuous creation and abandonment of minor villages […] and a permanent set of stable yet shifting historical towns.”67 Mobility typically peaked during periods of war or struggle, with Fulbe and others seeking out the nearest peaceful region.68 Based on his visit to the region in 1849, Bertrand-Bocandé noted that the Fulbe “stay on the land lent to them so long as they find suitable hospitality; they are always ready to go. If they dread some exactions, they desert in a moment, and settle elsewhere with their flocks, taking away all that belongs to them; they abandon only their feeble straw huts.”69 While people were often mobile, however, their spiritual sites typically were not. For non-Muslims (and indeed for Muslims who continued to integrate non-Islamic practices into their religion), sacred shrines called jalan centered on 65 Laurent Jean Baptiste Bérenger-Féraud, Les peuplades de la Sénégambie: Histoires, ethnographie, mœurs et coutumes, légendes, etc. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1879), 203. 66 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 357. 67 Ibid, 369. 68 Hecquard, Voyage sur la côte et dans l’intérieur de l’Afrique occidentale, 188. 69 Bertrand-Bocandé, “Notes sur la Guinée portugaise ou Sénégambie méridionale (Suite de la IIe Partie: Peuples et villages),” Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 12 (1849), 58. 72 particular forests, trees, caves, or stones, caves could not be moved, and so migration called for new spiritual geographies to be created.70 The high mobility of the Fulbe was noted in some of the earliest European accounts of southern Senegambia. Richard Jobson, who visited the Gambia River in 1620–21, said of the Fulbe that their location depended on the “following of their Cattle.” If necessary, he wrote, Fulbe people would “remove whole Townes [sic] together.”71 Precolonial Fulbe mobility peaked in the nineteenth century because of the same instability in Kaabu that would result in its collapse in the 1860s. To avoid conscription and the requisitioning of their cattle during the period’s aforementioned wars between Kaabu and Futa Jallon, many Fulbe fled north within Kaabu, out of what is now Guinea-Bissau, to Fuladu in the Upper Casamance. There, they found readily available land and weaker governments unable to exact too much from their populations.72 In the twilight years of Kaabu, relations between the Mandinka rulers of its states and their Fulbe subjects began to break down. Around 1850, Fulbe began to flee from Kaabu southward into Forriá because of the harsh treatment they faced under Mandinka rule.73 As the Mandinka griot Bamba Suso put it, “If there was any Fula [Fulbe] who displeased them,/ They came and tied thatching grass all over him,/ And then set fire to it, shouting/ […] Till the fire made him fall to the ground and he died.”74 While this is likely an exaggeration, it reflects the feelings of Fulbe people living under Mandinka hegemony, and helps explain their reasons for migration into territory controlled by the Biafada, who tolerated them as long as they agreed to pay taxes.75 Most 70 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 123; Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 22. 71 Richard Jobson, The golden trade: or, A discovery of the river Gambra, and the golden trade of the Aethiopians (London: Nicholas Okes, 1623), 36-7. 72 Leary, “Islam, Politics, and Colonialism,” 97. 73 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” xii-xiii, 109. 74 Gordon Innes, Kaabu and Fuladu: Historical Narratives of the Gambian Mandinka (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1976), 113. 75 Alberto Xavier Teixeira de Barros, Breves apontamentos sobre a história política do Forriá (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1896), 5. 73 of the Fulbe who came to settle in Forriá were so-called “free” Fulbe (or in Portuguese, fulas forros), who brought with them enslaved people (fulas pretos or fulas djon) and cattle.76 Within two decades, these settlers would overthrow the Biafada and rule Forriá in their place. The enslaved made up a large portion of Kaabu’s population. Slaving served as “one of the main elements of accumulation”, and for many long-distance traders, the “principal commodity.”77 Walter Rodney argues that most of the wars fought in Upper Guinea during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries revolved around the acquisition of enslaved people, rather than territory or political mastery.78 Like communities along the lower Gambia River, owning enslaved persons in and of itself was important, but the true value of the enslaved related to the land they worked.79 As such, the enslaved had substantially less mobility than the rest of the population of Kaabu. Nevertheless, slavery played a key role in movement and displacement, as many people were taken from their communities through slave raiding, while others fled to avoid regions where raiding was frequent. Mandinka-Fulbe Relations In the mid-1700s, Francis Moore described the Fulbe as “Strangers” in Kaabu, but claimed that the Mandinka considered their presence a “Blessing,” because “as far as their Ability goes,” the Fulbe “assist the Wants of the Mundingoes [Mandinka], great Numbers of whom they have maintain’d in Famines.”80 A century later, Bertrand-Bocandé observed, “It is in proportion to the 76 The Portuguese called Fulbe of enslaved descent fula preto. This ties into colonial discourses about Fulbe as potentially North African and thus “black Fulbe” were the result of the incorporation of non-Fulbe enslaved persons into Fulbe communities. In Pulaar, this distinction is rendered as jiyaabe (of enslaved descent) or rimbe (free or noble), which has less of a racial overtone but still connotes a caste (and sometimes racial) distinction. The Pulaar word for an enslaved person is maccudo (pl. maccube). 77 Lopes, “Relações de poder numa sociedade malinké,” 22. 78 Walter Rodney, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast (New York Monthly Review Press, 1980), 110. 79 Assan Sarr, “Land, Power, and Dependency along the Gambia River, Late Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Century,” African Studies Review 57, no. 3 (2014): 101-121. 80 Moore, Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa…, 32-3. 74 number of Fulbe established on his territory that the chief of a Mandinka village owes the strength, power, wealth, and consideration which he enjoys; for they continually make presents to him.” He further claimed that the Fulbe “even like to be necessary; they escape and will remain elsewhere when they are no longer asked for anything, and they think that the Mandinka chief no longer needs them.” Chiefs that controlled many Fulbe, he said, received cattle each day, and “always eat fresh meat with their rice or millet”: an important marker of their wealth and prestige.81 However, oral histories and traditions demonstrate a different perspective: that Fulbe suffered under the demands of their Mandinka rulers.82 Bamba Suso recounted the Mandinka’s justification for taxing the Fulbe as follows: “The ground is ours, and the things which grow from the earth are eaten by your animals, therefore you must give us something […] as compensation.”83 As Kaabu’s economy declined over the course of the nineteenth century, its rulers increasingly turned to Fulbe pastoralists to supply taxes, cattle, and soldiers, and even seized Fulbe women.84 Hecquard noted that pastoral Fulbe in the province of Mana had once “raised chickens and sheep, but […] had to give it up, because the Mandinka took away these animals as soon as they were good to eat.”85 In 1862, in Pakao in the Middle Casamance, Kaabu’s army attempted to enslave Fulbe pastoralists and take their herds.86 The Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini, an Arabic and Mandinka text from the village of Bijini in eastern Guinea-Bissau, states that Futa Jallon began to attack 81 Bertrand-Bocandé, “Notes sur la Guinée portugaise ou Sénégambie méridionale (Suite de la IIe Partie: Peuples et villages),” 58. 82 Innes, Kaabu and Fuladu, 113. The above quotes also could indicate an exploitative relationship if read in a particular way. 83 Ibid, 77. 84 Mané, Contribution à l'histoire du Kaabu, 67. On the seizure of women, interview with Boubacar Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016; and with Lamin Sabaly and Mamadou N'jie, Mandina Samba Jawo, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 85 Hecquard, Voyage sur la côte et dans l’intérier de l’Afrique occidentale, 209. 86 Nathan Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier: The Creation of the Guinea-Senegal Border, 1850-1920” (PhD Dissertation, University of California, Davis, 2012), 41-2. 75 Kaabu because of the latter’s mistreatment of its Fulbe population.87 While this analysis of the war’s origin is questionable, it is clear that Fulbe people within Kaabu were asked to sacrifice more for the kingdom than their Mandinka counterparts were. And as the nineteenth century progressed, Fulbe resentment of Mandinka domination over Kaabu grew. As Bakary Sidibe writes, Mandinka-Fula relationships had been a festering sore for the Fulas for many generations, even centuries. The Fulas had entered peacefully into the area, and over the years had worked out an arrangement with the Mandinkas by which the Fulas would pay an annual tax of one bull per head in order to be allowed to live in peace. But after Kaabu was firmly established, the Mandinka […] sometimes collected up to ten bulls per herd, and this was not all. Nyanchos occasionally burned Fula coos [millet] to obtain ashes for curing their tobacco, and they punished Fulas who did not “know their place” by setting them on fire and watching them dance in agony.88 In a historical report compiled in 1904, primarily from oral accounts, the colonial official Charles de la Roncière wrote, “Enclosed in their tatas, the Mandinka came out only to oppress the Fulbe and to live at their expense. Oxen, millet, women, everything was taken from them to satisfy the passions of these rapacious and hedonist Muslims.” 89 While this report likely overstates conditions on the ground, it does provide access to collective memories of Mandinka oppression in Fuladu, as such memories stood at the dawn of the twentieth century. By the 1860s, in any case, the oppression and/or sense of oppression of Fulbe within Kaabu prompted them to aid the Fulbe Futa in their fight to end that kingdom’s existence.90 Within Kaabu, Fulbe often lived in separate settlements from Mandinka, as they had a lower status by virtue of their ethnicity.91 Ethnicity was often a fluid concept, however, and many “Mandinka” or “Fulbe” transcended the differing ethnicities of their parents or grandparents. Alfa 87 Vydrine and Giesing, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini 106-7. 88 Bakary Sidibe, A Brief History of Kaabu and Fuladu: 1300-1930: A Narrative Based on Some Oral Traditions of the Senegambia (West Africa) (Torino: L’Harmattan Italia, 2004), 28. 89 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d'hivernage: Historique du Fouladou, Ancien Territoire de Moussa Molo” (1904), 1. 90 Sidibe, A Brief History, 33. 91 Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest, 92–3. 76 Molo, the Fulbe founder of Fuladu, was himself descended from Mande speakers from the Upper Senegal River Valley.92 Bertrand-Bocandé noted that “all the peoples in contact with the Mandinka gradually adopt their customs and language, and eventually become confused with them.”93 Lopes argues for a prominent Mandinka influence on the Fulbe populations of Kaabu, citing claims that 24.5 percent of Fulbe in Guinea-Bissau today have Mandinka surnames, whereas only 2.3 percent of Mandinka have Fulbe ones.94 However, this is merely one piece of evidence of a complex web of cultural processes whereby Mandinka and Fulbe groups influenced one another. The Fall of Kaabu Long before Kaabu’s collapse, the rulers of some of its provinces had begun contesting one another’s territory militarily, in a situation amounting to civil war.95 Though most historians view the conflict between Kaabu and Futa Jallon as an ethnic one, Barry argues that this is a questionable conclusion, rooted in excessive reliance on oral traditions that too often flatten complex conflicts.96 Instead, he suggests that the coalition that defeated Kaabu was primarily a class- and religious- based one. Newly converted Fulbe, particularly the enslaved, formerly enslaved, and other marginalized groups, united with Muslim Fulbe in Futa Jallon to take down the oppressive, non- Muslim Kaabu aristocracy.97 The internal Fulbe revolt was led by Alfa Molo (also known as Molo 92 NRS CSO 3/119, South Bank Province, Monthly Diary, July 1929, 1. On the fluidity of precolonial ethnicity, Donald R. Wright, “‘What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?’: Thoughts on Boundaries—And Related Matters—In Precolonial Africa,” History in Africa 26 (1999): 409–26; and on Fulbe-Mande ethnicity, Jean- Loup Amselle, Logiques métisses : anthropologie de l'identité en Afrique et ailleurs (Paris: Payot, 1990), Chapter 3. 93 Bertrand-Bocandé, “Extrait d’une letter de M. Bertrand Bocandé,” 416. 94 Lopes, Kaabunké, 151. 95 N’Gaïdé, “Identités ethniques et territorialisation en Casamance,” 45–46. 96 Including Mané, Contribution à l’histoire du Kaabu; and Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction and Changes in Guinea- Bissau.” 97 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 170–71; This view is supported by the commandant of Geba in Portuguese Guinea, Lieutenant Francisco António Marques Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza: Communicação à Sociedade de Geographia sobre esta província e suas condições actuaes,” in Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa (BSGL) 7, no. 8 (1887), 473. 77 Egge), who was descended from enslaved people (jiyaabe). According to his son Musa, Alfa fought because These Sonninkays [non-Muslim Mandinka] made it their custom to penetrate in the town of Sulla Bally [Alfa Molo’s town], & made ravages about, —caught hold of any cattles [sic] that come across their way, and ransacking the whole town. Besides, at night they usually commit immorality by compulsion; threatening all the women, —young and old, with severe punishments upon their declining the immoral practice. Such actions could not have been tolerated by the inhabitants of Sulla Bally; and to put an end to such immoral actions & advantages incurred by the said Sonninkays, my father resolved to drive these people away & check them from doing further danger & mischiefs.98 Regardless of the reasons for the war, the kingdom of Kaabu ceased to exist after the Battle of Kansala, held most likely in 1867,99 which became known as turuban: annihilation.100 Janke Wali, the last king of Kaabu, blew himself up in his tata rather than surrender to the forces of Futa Jallon.101 Reports from French officials in Guinea noted that Futa Jallon’s triumphant army subsequently returned having enslaved 15,000.102 As one oral tradition recounted: When Futa destroyed Kansala Kaabu’s powers began to diminish. Alifa [sic] Molo also waged war, Musa’s father. Bokari Sada then told Alifa that, what he preferred was that, “Anyone who spoke Mandinka, between here and the salt land [Kaabu]; they should not drink from here. We Futa, anyone who says ‘mbini’ (speaks Fula or is Fulbe) they will rule.”103 98 NRS CSO 3/119, South Bank Province, Monthly Diary, June 1929, 1. 99 Many different dates are listed for the Battle of Kansala. Leary and Phillot-Almeida list the battle as occurring in 1865, the Portuguese colonial Jorge Velez Caroço gives an 1866 date, and D.T. Niane, Bakary Sidibe, and Christian Roche all use 1867. Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 5; Phillott-Almeida, A Succinct History, 32; Caroço, Monjur: o Gabú e a sua história (Bissau: Centro des Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa, 1948), 121; Sidibe, “The story of Kaabu”; Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest, 64; Roche, Histoire de la Casamance, 127. 100 Sidibe, “The story of Kaabu.” 101 Carreira, Mandingas da Guiné Portuguesa (Lisbon: Centro des Estudos da Guiné Portuguesa, 1947), 30–31; Niane, Histoires des Mandingues de l’ouest, 193. 102 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 47. 103 National Center for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Banjul, 132B, “Marabouts of the Senegambia: Kaabu and Fuladu,” recorded April 5, 1972. “Mbini” means “I say” in Pulaar. 78 The Beginnings of Fulbe Rule Fuladu, the name given to the Fulbe kingdom founded by Alfa Molo after the fall of Kaabu, is a combination of Fula, the Mandinka term for the Fulbe people, and the Mandinka suffix -du, meaning state or territory.104 For most people, the transition from Kaabu to Fuladu was not dramatic. Alfa Molo installed his subordinates as the heads of Kaabu’s former provinces, and they engaged in a decentralized form of rule that was broadly similar to what had taken place before.105 Following the founding of Fuladu, many Fulbe moved north: in present-day terms, from eastern Guinea-Bissau to southern Senegal.106 While the transition in the Upper Casamance was fairly smooth, however, the situation in Forriá was a great deal more fraught, with extensive fighting between different factions. And far from helping to stabilize the region, Portuguese interference in Forriá’s internal affairs mostly exacerbated the challenges of state-building there.107 Many premodern states are better understood as networks than as “homogenous territorial entities”; and those networks, by their nature, are constantly changing. Specifically, states expand “when they create new networks and when they take over networks created by others”, and collapse “when their networks of interaction are broken.”108 In the case of the transition from Kaabu to Fuladu, the latter took over most—but crucially, not all—of the former’s networks; and restructured power so as to encourage a sense of kingdom-wide Fulbe identity.109 During the first several years of his reign, Alfa also conquered and consolidated control over several provinces that had once been part of Kaabu, but which had been independent at the time of the Battle of 104 Ngaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 59. 105 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 80. 106 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 33. 107 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” Chapter 3. 108 Monica L. Smith, “Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95, no. 4 (2005), 832–49. 109 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 26. 79 Kansala.110 This territorial expansion was more than just political, insofar as Fulbe settlers moved into these new regions and occupied former Mandinka communities and their fortifications. As such, Fuladu’s power network grew rapidly beyond the small province of Firdu, where Alfa resided, into a larger leydi Fuladu (land/state of Fuladu), “with a connotation of state, of independence, and of territoriality, at once radiant and more sedentary.”111 Simultaneously, Alfa Molo “ethnicized” his power by supporting the spread of the Pulaar language, along with other aspects of Fulbe cultural and social life, into newly conquered territories.112 Importantly, when Futa Jallon attempted to extract tribute from its new Fulbe-ruled neighbor, Alfa refused to allow any to be paid.113 Alfa Molo consolidated his forty-eight small territories into five major provinces, placing four of them under the control of chiefs who had proved loyal to him, and directly ruling over the fifth, Firdu.114 Like Kaabu’s, these provinces were semi-autonomous, with Alfa delegating most governance to the various chiefs within each region.115 He retired to a new home in Ndorna around 1874, but was unable to find the respite he had sought there, due to raids by three Mandinka chiefs from the west.116 Alfa’s enslaved origins had played a crucial role in his rise to prominence, but also emerged as important to the political challenges he and his son would face while in power. The above-noted social distinctions between “free” and “enslaved” in Fulbe society were clear and strong in this 110 René Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” La Géographie: Bulletin de la Société de Géographie 35 (1912), 250. 111 N’Gaïdé, “Identités ethniques et territorialisation en Casamance,” 47. 112 Ibid. 113 Bakary Sidibe, “The story of Kaabu: Kaabu’s relationship with the Gambia States,” Proceedings of the Conference on Manding Studies (London: SOAS, 1972), 16. 114 Bakary Sidibe, The Balde Family of Fulaadu (Banjul: Gambia Cultural Archives, 1984), 8. 115 Jean-Louis Boutillier, Extrait du Rapport de Monsieur Jean-Louis Boutillier (Dakar: Université Cheikh Anta Diop, 2011), 11. The original report by Boutillier dates from 1959. 116 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d'hivernage: Historique du Fouladou, Ancien Territoire de Moussa Molo” (1904), 4. 80 period, and many noble Fulbe rimbe refused to support Alfa for this reason.117 Musa Molo would claim that his lineage included noble Tilibunko-Bambara families from the Senegal River Valley, but this was disputed by most free Fulbe.118 However, the great majority of the Fulbe population of Fuladu was of enslaved ancestry. In Fulbe parts of Portuguese Guinea in the late 1880s, officials estimated that enslaved Fulbe (known as fulas pretos, or “black Fulbe”) outnumbered free Fulbe (fulas forros) by 4:1.119 Fuladu’s Expansion Alfa Molo died around 1880, leaving to his heirs “a country poorly organized economically and socially.”120 These heirs were two of his sons, Musa and Dikory Kumba, though Alfa’s brother Bakary Demba was placed in charge of the military. However, Musa was clearly in charge: the commandant of Geba in Portuguese Guinea writing that while Bakary Demba was king in name, “Musa is the one who makes and breaks.”121 Soon after Alfa’s death, several provinces in the south of Fuladu revolted, led by chiefs of rimbe origin, and Musa responded with astonishing brutality, imposing his power “by violence and military terror.”122 Musa followed up his elimination of his rivals by “enslaving their families, followers, and whoever else had tried to support them. Women and children captured during his military campaigns were distributed among his following or 117 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d'hivernage: Historique du Fouladou, Ancien Territoire de Moussa Molo” (1904), 5–6. This has been a popular topic in the literature on Fuladu. See Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 50; Sidibe, The Balde Family of Fulaadu, 10; N’Gaïdé, “Conquête de la liberté, mutations politiques, sociales et religieuses en Haute Casamance: Les anciens maccube du Fuladu (Region de Kolda, Senegal),” in Roger Botte, Jean Boutrais, and Jean Schmitz (eds.), Figures Peules (Paris: Karthala, 1999), 141–64. 118 NRS CSO 3/119, South Bank Province, Monthly Diary, July 1929, 1. Oral histories do tie Alfa Molo’s origins to the Koulibaly families of the Upper Senegal. Interview with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 119 Joaquim da Graçca Correia e Lança, Relatorio da Provincia da Guiné Portugueza, referido ao anno económico de 1888–1889 (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1890), 52. 120 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 99. 121 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 473. 122 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 101–6. 81 became part of his personal entourage.”123 He then turned on the family members with whom he was meant to be sharing power, defeated them with French help, and consolidated his rule around his capital in Ndorna.124 The subservient administrative hierarchy that Musa built there represented an explicit rejection of the decentralized power structure he had inherited from his father and, indirectly, from Kaabu.125 An 1883 treaty he signed with the French describes him as king of Firdu and ruler of thirty-one other provinces stretching from the Gambia River into eastern Portuguese Guinea.126 There were limits, however, to how far power could be centralized. Weak communication and transportation networks meant that even areas under Musa’s personal control retained some level of autonomy, albeit less than they had enjoyed under Alfa; and some regions of Fuladu only really associated themselves with Musa’s kingship when they needed military assistance.127 Fuladu’s early expansion had focused on Mandinka areas to the west. After 1875, however, the focus shifted to conquest in the east and south.128 In 1879, Musa invaded Kantora, which in modern terms straddled the southeastern part of the Gambia and the adjoining area of Senegal to the south. This campaign was assisted by the king of Bundu and Alfa Ibrahima, the almami of Labé. The British Administrator of the Gambia, Valesius Skipton Gouldsbury, visited Kantora in early 1881, where he heard about the violence of this attack: “By this host its villages and farms 123 Alice Bellagamba, “Entrustment and Its Changing Political Meanings in Fuladu, the Gambia (1880–1994),” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 74, no. 3 (2004), 388. In Sare Tala, the Gambia, I was told the story of Coumba Touray being taken by Musa. Interview with Tacko Jawo and Mamadou Baldeh, Sare Tala, The Gambia, July 18, 2017. 124 Jean Girard, “Note sur l’histoire locale du fouladou,” Journal des Africanistes 34, no. 2 (1964): 302–6. 125 Charlotte A. Quinn, “A Nineteenth Century Fulbe State,” Journal of African History 12, no. 3 (1971), 432. 126 ANOM MI/131MIOM/2, Rivières du Sud, Traité avec le Firdou (Hte Casamance), 3 novembre 1883, Ratifié par décrit du 23 mai 1889. It is unclear whether this represents a territorial loss to the 47 provinces over which Alfa Molo ruled. Most historians understand Musa to have conquered new territories, so the decreased number of territories could simply represent a territorial reorganization. 127 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 192. Interview with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017. 128 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 129. 82 were laid waste, many of its people were carried into slavery, and the remainder were dispersed to seek refuge wherever it could be found.”129 Some had since returned and rebuilt, but because the king of Kantora had died during the invasion, there was a power vacuum. In 1884, Musa attacked the Mandinka village of Bijini in Portuguese Guinea, burning it to the ground.130 An oral tradition holds that Musa sent the village a message in advance, claiming that he would destroy it because its people had done nothing to help him in his wars.131 Musa consistently sought to expand his territory as much as possible. By 1884, when a French military officer named Lenoir visited Fuladu, Musa was again at war with Kantora. Lenoir noted that Fuladu was “no longer the small country indicated on the map”, and instead extended north to the Gambia River; west to the Mandinka polities of the Middle Casamance; south across the Cacheu River north of Farim, continuing to the Geba River above the Portuguese post of the same name; and then east to Mande territories on the fringes of the Upper Casamance (see Figure 8, below).132 While Musa’s father had fought against the oppression of marginalized Fulbe at the hands of their Mandinka rulers, Musa had by 1887 become an oppressor himself. The commandant at Geba, Francisco António Marques Geraldes, noted that Musa, “with the influence and power he has acquired in recent years, has turned into a despot, beginning to overload the fulas pretos and other peoples with onerous taxes, asking or requiring tribute on farms and money from the 129 Valesius Skipton Gouldsbury, Correspondence relating to the recent expedition to the Upper Gambia under administration V.S. Gouldsbury (London: Eyres and Spottiswoode, 1881), 19. The attack on Kantora is also mentioned in NCAC 132B, “Marabouts of the Senegambia: Kaabu and Fuladu.” 130 For the most complete description of this, see Giesing and Valentin Vydrine, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini. 131 NCAC 357B: History of Alfa Molo. Informant: Alagu Ebrima Baye, Bijini, Guinea-Bissau. Collector: Bakary Sidibe. 132 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/11e, Capitaine Lenoir, “Rapport du Capitaine Lenoir sur la mission d’exploration de la Casamance, de la Gambie & de la Falémé supérieur,” December 22, 1884, 8–10; Musa Molo had continual conflict with Kantora in the 1890s as well. ANOM FM/SG/SEN/XII/88, Mission Bourrel, Rapport sur une mission dans la Casamance confiée au chef du service télégraphique (Toulouse: Imprimerie Douladoure-Privat, 1894), 15. He even attacked Kantora in 1895. ANS 2G1/88, V. Legou, “Situation politique du Firdou,” August 1, 1895, 1. Figure 8 was made by the author using CARTO. 83 merchants of Farim and Geba.”133 Even among Musa’s descendants, his government has been remembered as having “no law and no peace.”134 Geraldes described Musa as “the colossus who subjugated so many peoples, to establish his power in the interior between the Geba, Farim (S. Domingos), and Gambia rivers, in such a way that his name was heard with respect throughout all of Senegambia, including the Portuguese, French, and English possessions.”135 Unsurprisingly, Musa’s territorial expansion would put him at odds with the three colonial powers. Figure 8. Rough boundaries of Fuladu at its greatest extent 133 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 473. 134 Interview with Bakary Demba Baldeh, Sankuli Kunda, The Gambia, July 23, 2017. Bakary Demba Baldeh is the grandson of Musa Molo and the nephew of Musa’s son, the colonial district chief Cherno Baldeh. 135 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 472. 84 Fulbe Rule in Forriá At the same time Alfa Molo was expanding the boundaries of Fuladu, another Fulbe state was forming to its south in Forriá. In the two decades prior to Kaabu’s fall, as noted above, many Fulbe had moved to Forriá from Kaabu and paid taxes to their Biafada rulers. These Fulbe migrants comprised both noble rimbe and enslaved jiyaabe.136 Fulbe from Futa Jallon also migrated to Forriá, though those from Kaabu outnumbered them.137 As these Fulbe groups grew, they began taking Biafada land. This caused concern among Forriá’s Biafada rulers, who began to make demands of their Fulbe populations that were similar to those of the Mandinka rulers of Kaabu. Hence, fearing that they were being forced to resume their former servile status, the Fulbe of Forriá became profoundly disaffected from their host government.138 Around 1868, Fulbe community leaders in Forriá called upon Alfa Ibrahima of Labé to help them defeat the Biafada and establish their own state.139 Notionally, this Fulbe breakaway state was founded almost immediately, but amid strong opposition from the Biafada it took ten years to consolidate.140 Importantly, the Fulbe rimbe and Fulbe jiyaabe set aside their class differences and fought side by side during the decade- long conflict to “expel the Biafadas from their territory and settle themselves independently in Forriá.”141 However, after the consolidation of the Fulbe state in Forriá around 1878, this intra-Fulbe consensus unraveled almost immediately. The rimbe attempted to return the jiyaabe to a condition of servitude, even though they had been critically important to the Fulbe’s successful power 136 Teixeira de Barros, Breves apontamentos, 339. 137 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 170. 138 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 110. 139 Teixeira de Barros, Breves apontamentos, 6. 140 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 115. 141 Correia e Lança, Relatorio da Provincia Da Guiné Portugueza, 54. 85 grab.142 Eventually, the jiyaabe would rebel against their masters in Forriá.143 However, the jiyaabe were not the only people in the region who were reduced to servitude, as the rimbe often fought and enslaved other non-Fulbe. In October 1879, Mamade Paté Bolola, the rimbe leader of Forriá, attacked the ponta Regina on the Rio Grande of Buba in southern Guinea-Bissau, to recover 27 or 28 enslaved Mandinka who had taken refuge there.144 A year and a half later, the rimbe attacked the Portuguese facilities at the port of Buba, again looking for enslaved runaways.145 In the 1880s, the fighting in Forriá was primarily between the Fulbe jiyaabe on one side, and the rimbe and their Fulbe Futa allies on the other. The hostility between the rimbe and the jiyaabe was long established. As a traveler through Guinea-Bissau, E. J. da Costa Oliveira, noted in 1888, “the Fula-pretos buckled under the weight of the slavery of the Fula-forros” and fled this tyranny for the banner of the Portuguese at Buba.146 This internecine conflict had a disastrous effect on Forriá’s economy, especially agricultural output, and thus limited its people’s food supplies as well as the economic value of the Portuguese coastal outposts. In particular, drastic falls in peanut exports from Buba crushed that trading post’s economy.147 The fighting also wreaked havoc at the mouth of the Rio Geba, causing the ruin of the presidio of Geba and its abandonment by the Portuguese government.148 In 1889, the Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa argued that the Portuguese needed to intervene in the Fulbe wars, because not doing so would be disastrous not only for Portuguese interests but for Portugal’s good name.149 142 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 116. 143 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 175. 144 René Pélissier, Naissance de la Guiné: Portugais et Africains en Sénégambie, 1841–1936 (Orgeval: Pélissier, 1989), 140. 145 Ibid, 145. 146 E. J. da Costa Oliveira, Viagem á Guiné portugueza (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1890), 78–83. 147 Ibid, 146–47. 148 BSGL 4a série, no. 2 (1883), 98. 149 BSGL 8a série, no. 1 & 2 (1888–89), 301. 86 Migration within and around Fuladu Mobility and migration were crucial aspects of life in precolonial Fuladu, just as they had been in Kaabu. Government demands for forced labor and other forms of taxation led many to migrate to areas where such requirements might be less onerous. During Musa Molo’s despotic and harsh rule, many people left small villages for larger towns, seeking security in numbers, and this phenomenon accelerated alongside Musa’s military successes.150 Geraldes noted in 1887, “The villages of the Fulbe are almost as mobile [as the people]. It is not uncommon to see a number of families move from one moment to the next, already in search of better land to cultivate, because they are near dangerous places where they fear to suffer any aggression.”151 De la Roncière, the French resident in Musa’s home village of Hamdallaye, noted that new villages were constantly being founded as Fulbe searched for better farmland and pastureland.152 And the rimbe, upon finding themselves governed by those they had formerly enslaved, would move and form new settlements to segregate themselves from fellow Fulbe whom they saw as impure.153 Similarly, the formerly enslaved often sought to physically distance themselves from their old masters. According to the Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini, many Mandinka had fled north into Firdu, which would become the core province of Fuladu, as early as 1851 following Kaabu’s military defeat at Berekelon.154 Even more went north after Kansala, to escape death or enslavement at the hands of the victorious Islamic army of Futa Jallon. The creation of the Fulbe kingdom of Fuladu in southern Senegambia, meanwhile, was both a cause and an effect of the increasing political and economic power of the Fulbe of the region, and provoked many Mandinka to migrate, both 150 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 32. 151 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 477. 152 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d'hivernage: Historique du Fouladou, Ancien Territoire de Moussa Molo” (1904) 153 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 477. 154 Now in northern Guinea-Bissau. Vydrine and Giesing, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini, 146. 87 northward and southward. In keeping with its name, Fuladu rapidly became the land of the Fulbe, with the proportion of Mandinka in its population dropping markedly before the end of the 1860s.155 Other Mandinka fled west to the Middle and Lower Casamance.156 Lenoir reported in 1884 from the Fulbe village of Diamara that it had formerly been populated by Mandinka whom Musa Molo “hunted” from their territory.157 Many of these Mandinka eventually returned to Fulbe- controlled territory, but others stayed away.158 Some movements occurred primarily for economic reasons. Oral traditions mention groups of traveling Mandinka blacksmiths, who settled where Fulbe rulers offered them protection in exchange for providing their services to their new communities.159 As such examples indicate, Fuladu remained a multi-ethnic state, ruled mostly by Fulbe but not defined as an ethnically Fulbe polity.160 Even the warlike Musa appointed a mixture of Fulbe and Mandinka chiefs to rule over his population.161 However, he did attempt to impose Fulbe culture in reaction to the previous Mandinka hegemony. In 1894, a French officer named Baures reported that Musa had “tried, but in vain, to impose […] the Pulaar language, which he would like to hear spoken throughout his territory.”162 In any case, Fulbe culture in the region was deeply intermixed with those of the Mandinka and other groups, to the point that notions of Fulbe identity constantly fluctuated based on both internal and external conditions.163 155 Vydrine and Giesing, Ta:rikh Mandinka de Bijini, 130; Caroço, Monjur, 85. 156 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 96. 157 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/11e, Capitaine Lenoir, “Rapport du Capitaine Lenoir sur la mission d’exploration de la Casamance, de la Gambie & de la Falémé supérieur,” December 22, 1884. 158 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 114. 159 Ibid, 114. 160 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 50; Quinn, “A Nineteenth Century Fulbe States,” 433. 161 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 191. 162 ANOM FM/MIS/19, Capitaine Baures, “Mission du Firdou,” August 3, 1894, 4. 163 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 98-9. 88 Just as Fuladu was a multi-ethnic state, flight from Musa Molo’s exactions was a multi- ethnic phenomenon. Due especially to his kingdom’s high tax burden and arbitrary legal judgments, many whole villages of various ethnicities moved into outlying areas of the Gambia or Portuguese Guinea to seek a measure of protection from those areas’ European colonizers.164 Thus, the initial establishment of trading posts and governance offered opportunities for southern Senegambians to choose the regime that would be least exacting. In the period when the French began to impose themselves on Fuladu, Musa “frequently […] tried to prevent the French from learning of these emigrations by imposing double taxes on remaining villages, a policy which eventually forced the remaining ones to revolt or to emigrate.”165 He arrested those who could not pay taxes, or forced them to work for him without pay.166 While Alfa Molo had been relatively accommodating to his subjects, Musa saw himself as both judge and jury to those who lived in his territory. In the first years of the twentieth century, believing that his authority was under threat, Musa became even more tyrannical, and in the space of just two years, more than thirty villages emigrated from Senegal to the Gambia as a result.167 He cut off people’s limbs if they angered him, and forcibly enslaved people whenever he could;168 and oral histories suggest that he meted out particularly harsh treatment to the region’s remaining Mandinka.169 Many people now living in areas formerly controlled by Fuladu believe that Musa’s reign was more difficult for his subjects than the colonial governments that followed, at least insofar as the latter did not exercise power as efficiently as he had.170 164 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 192. 165 Ibid, 192-3. 166 Interview with El Hadji Ibrahima Cissé, Contuboel, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 167 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/131, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française à Monsieur le Ministre des Colonies, “A.S. de la fuite de Moussa Molo en Gambie Anglaise,” June 22, 1903. 168 Interview with Dikory Balde, Gundo Balde, and Tako Sane, Nemataba, Senegal, February 14, 2017. 169 Interview with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 170 Interview with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017; and with Souleymane Saidy, Alassan Mbaye, and Doro Sy, Sare Bojo Medina Mbaye, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 89 Slavery, as briefly noted above, also involved the forcible removal of numerous people from one part of Fuladu to another, most often moving people from newly conquered provinces into the core areas of the kingdom. Whenever Musa defeated rivals for power and enslaved their allies, retinues and families, he distributed these newly enslaved people to his loyal followers, or put them to use at his court or on the giant groundnut plantations that he operated as a source of both food and specie.171 Some of these captives lived in Musa’s two capitals, Ndorna—where Alfa Molo had lived—and Hamdallaye. He also sent captives to defend Fuladu’s border villages, and some subsequently founded villages of their own. As the abolition of slavery extended deeper into Fuladu in the late nineteenth century, many newly emancipated people left the villages of their former masters and also created newer villages where their origins would be less stigmatizing.172 Additionally, Musa sold some of his captives into neighboring regions.173 Throughout southern Senegambia, the risk of enslavement was constant. Though the Portuguese saw themselves as the liberators of the jiyaabe, slavery still continued in the interior of Portuguese Guinea.174 In part, this was because political and economic stability trumped abolition as Portugal’s fundamental policy goal for the area; and slave raiding and selling by the small kingdom of Coniagui in northern Guinea-Bissau continued into the twentieth century.175 Musa’s campaigns in Geba focused more on enslavement than on the occupation of territory.176 But it was not just Musa’s forces that waged war to enslave nearby peoples. During the fighting in the bush around Geba in 1890 and 1891, slave and cattle raiding formed “the common motive” of 171 Bellagamba, “Entrustment and Its Changing Political Meanings in Fuladu,” 388; Interviews with Dikory Balde, Gundo Balde, and Tako Sane, Nemataba, Senegal, February 14, 2017; and with Mawnde Sabaly, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017. 172 Sylvie Fanchette, “Migration, intégration spatiale et formation d’une société peule dans le Fouladou (haute Casamance, Sénégal),” in Figures Peules, 170. 173 Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns,” 114. 174 Oliveira, Viagem á Guiné Portugueza, 78. 175 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 83. 176 Pélissier, Naissance de la Guiné, 170. 90 the combatants.177 Geraldes claimed that the jiyaabe in Portuguese Guinea who had come to enslave others had more difficulty selling them in that colony than in Senegal or the Gambia, a comment that could have been made to paint the Portuguese colony as more enlightened and evolved than its British and French counterparts. But in any case, ownership of enslaved persons remained “a major component of wealth” for both the rimbe and the jiyaabe there as of 1887.178 The expansion of Fuladu’s rule into areas already occupied by Fulbe rimbe tended to intensify the existing tensions between jiyaabe and rimbe in those places.179 The rimbe tended to unite against Musa because of his enslaved origins and his (largely theoretical) belief in upending traditional hierarchies. This eventually sparked rimbe-led independence movements in the regions of Kolla, Sankolla, and Ganadu in northern Portuguese Guinea, which Musa strove to suppress.180 The leaders of all three of these states were members of the Embaló family, who emerged as rulers of Gabú in Portuguese Guinea due to their alliance with the Portuguese against Musa, as well as their demonstrated ability to establish order in the easternmost part of the colony, whose independence they had secured in the first place by refusing to pay taxes to Alfa Yaya of Labé.181 The region of Bafatá to the west of Gabú, in contrast, was primarily controlled by the Molos’ auxiliaries.182 European Cooperation and Competition Up until the 1880s, the French, Portuguese, and British tended to stay close to their coastal bases and had neither the desire nor the capability to exercise meaningful political control over 177 Pélissier, Naissance de la Guiné, 195. Musa Molo was noted for seizing cattle for military campaigns. Interview with Samba Jamanka, Sare Njobo, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 178 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 477-8. 179 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 3. 180 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 87. 181 The history of the Embaló (or Mballo) family is laid out in Caroço, Monjur; and interview with Amadu Tidjani Balde, Pitche, Guinea-Bissau, April 4, 2017. 182 Moreira, Fulas do Gabú, 83. 91 southern Senegambia’s interior. However, all three colonial governments wanted economic access to the interior and to the trade routes that passed through particular kingdoms.183 In 1880, the British government began meeting with Musa and exchanging gifts with him; and the French and Portuguese decided they needed to claim their own spheres of influence in his kingdom. This was the immediate context of Lenoir’s 1883 visit to Musa; and as that French officer wrote to the Governor of Senegal, he felt compelled to sign a treaty with Fuladu without delay, “because of the actions of the English of the Gambia.” He went on to describe the kingdom as “vast, populous, and […] [with] many magnificent herds; in saying magnificent, I exaggerate nothing, for the king Musa, to whom I had brought a few small gifts […] gave me fifteen oxen, each of which gave me 200 kilograms” of meat.184 Importantly, the treaty he concluded with Lenoir did not substantially curtail Musa’s exercise of control over his territory, which remained undivided in practice even as the French, Portuguese, and British drew borders through it. In other words, Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea, on the one hand, and the kingdom of Fuladu, on the other, represented two distinct types of territorial claims that—at least for the time being—could be more accurately described as “irreconcilable” than as “competing.” Musa worked with these nascent European colonial entities to conquer his rivals, while they used him to increase their influence. Eventually, this dynamic would lead to his downfall; but in the meantime, it allowed him to extend his influence into places that had previously escaped it. By the end of the 1880s, Fulbe control over the interior of southern Senegambia was unquestioned. Geraldes referred to the Fulbe as “the dominating tribe in almost all the interior of 183 ANS 1G75, Mission Liotard: Campagne 87–88, “Mission dans le Fouladougou, le Niani & le Kalonkadougou, Liotard, Pharmacien de 2ème department de la Marine.” 184 ANS 10D1/0066, “Correspondance relative au traité signé entre la France et le roi du Firdou, Moussa Molo”; Lettre no. 23, au Gouverneur du Sénégal, November 12, 1883. 92 Geba [in Portuguese Guinea] until near the Gambia and Sedhiou.”185 Colonial regimes’ treaty- based claims to territorial control of the same areas were as yet largely theoretical. At this point, the primary threat to Musa did not consist of the colonial governments on the coast, but other kingdoms nearer to home. South of Musa’s territory, in what is today the Gabú region of Guinea- Bissau, the aforementioned rimbe Embaló family ruled over several former provinces of Kaabu, with the support of Futa Jallon. One of these Embaló rulers of Gabú, Sellu Coiada, viewed Musa as a slave who needed to be put in his place, and told him that “no matter what, a slave was always inferior to a noble.”186 He went on to insult him further by saying that his horse was named after Musa’s mother.187 By this time, Sellu Coiada was supported by the Portuguese, and Musa had the backing of the French. Musa believed that the French had the best ability to protect him in the region, since the Portuguese had trouble simply keeping the peace in the areas they had laid claim to, while the British had no troops in his territory at all.188 For Musa Molo and Sellu Coiada, collaborating with particular European states was not a means of acquiring new power within embryonic colonial structures, but of increasing their power over new parts of southern Senegambia or reinforcing their rule in the face of local and foreign enemies. In 1892, Musa attempted to bribe the French into assisting him with a war by sending thirty head of cattle to the commandant of the Casamance in Sedhiou.189 Other Fulbe groups befriended the Portuguese only to turn on them when they were no longer needed. In 1887, for instance, Geraldes noted that jiyaabe had supported the Portuguese at Geba while they battled their enemies for control of its 185 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 472. Sedhiou was the center of the colonial Middle Casamance. 186 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 56. Also Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 249. 187 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 252; Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea- Bissau,” 249. 188 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 251–52. 189 ANS 13G467, “Au sujet de la correspondence entre Moussa Molo et le Gouverneur, janvier 1892,” Moussa Molo au Capitaine Commandant Sedhiou, Casamance. 93 hinterland, but after defeating their rivals and gaining control of both banks of the Geba River, they threatened the Portuguese by trying to divert rural commerce away from the area, convinced that the colonizers would be forced to abandon it if they lacked market access.190 The Europeans, for their part, made alliances with local kings including Musa Molo and Sellu Coiada in the hope that doing so would increase economic output and exports, and perhaps lead to a more meaningful European political presence in the region at some point in the future. In southern Senegal, Musa served as a “shield” against the encroachment of the British and Portuguese, while simultaneously opening up the Upper Casamance to the French.191 Even after the 1883 treaty gave the French “sovereignty” over Fuladu, multiple maps made by the French in 1884 revealed that they had no actual presence east of the Middle Casamance;192 and for decades, Musa was generally able to ignore the demands of European powers, giving in only on smaller questions. As of 1892, he still ruled substantial territory in the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese Guinea, notwithstanding the colonial governments’ border delimitations. In an effort to blunt the effectiveness of Musa’s continued sovereignty, the French sent a resident to Hamdallaye in late 1892.193 Soon after this, Musa and his brother Dikory Kumba fought each other, the outcome being that the latter took refuge in the Gambia. Both the French and the British worried that this would cause “considerable trouble and disturbance” along their new border.194 In 1895, facing dissent and rebellion in his farthest-flung provinces, Musa signed a further treaty with the French. In 190 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 473. 191 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 27. 192 ANOM CP/AF/1099, Carte politique, Lieutenant-Governeur, Jean Bayol, March 7, 1884. Bayol’s map shows limited sovereignty over the Middle Casamance as well. Lenoir’s map also showed no French, Portuguese, or British control over the region. ANOM CP/AF/1096, “Itinéraire suivi par la mission du Capitaine Lenoir sur la Casamance, la Gambie et la Falémé supérieures du 21 juin au 3 octobre 1884.” 193 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/108, Gouveneur du Sénégal, “Instructions pour Monsieur le Lieutenant Bertrandon, du régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais, chargé de mission dans le Fouladougou,” October 17, 1892. 194 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/106, Le Marquis de Dufferin, Ambassadeur d’Angleterre à Paris, au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, December 7, 1893. 94 exchange for military assistance against the kingdom of Pachesi, Musa gave the French the right to half the taxes he collected, and the right to restrict his actions.195 The Slow Colonial Expansion into Fulbe Territory As of 1837, the French had no permanent presence in the Casamance, and the Portuguese had only “the small trading post of Ziguinchor.” After 1850, the French attempted to extend their presence into the Middle Casamance, but the Upper Casamance remained largely unknown before the 1890s.196 French conquest was slowed by the difficulty of navigating the region’s thick forests and the Casamance River, which becomes impassable to boats as one approaches the Upper Casamance; the French preoccupation with conquering the Senegal River Valley and fighting Umar Tal and other warring marabouts; the difficulties they experienced in pacifying the Lower Casamance; and their focus on creating a peanut-dominated agricultural sector in central Senegal.197 In the 1850s and 1860s, the French targeted the Middle Casamance as a potentially important zone for trade, but Mandinka attacked French traders who entered it. There was little the French could do to rectify the situation, given the limited resources at hand.198 After they concluded their initial bargain with Musa in 1883, the French continued to make treaties with other kingdoms on the fringes of Fuladu. In December 1888, Louis Archinard, who was then in charge of French Sudan (Mali), signed a treaty with Kouta Mandou, the chief of Kantora, that made the 195 Akandijack Bassène, Histoire authentique de la Casamance: le pays ajamaat,influences adventives, entraves des institutions traditionnelles et manifestation de l’État dans la colonie française du Sénégal, c. 1500–c. 1947 (Angeville: La Brochure, 2011), 188–92; Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 21–22. 196 Roche, Histoire de la Casamance, 84; Roche, Conquête et résistance des peoples de Casamance: 1850–1920 (Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions Afriaines, 1976), 123–31. 197 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon, et le marabout, 111. 198 ANOM FM/SG/GOREE/IV/2, V. Dep. au Commandant de la Station à Monsieur le Directeur des Colonies, September 11, 1855; FM/SG/SEN/IV/51, “Carabane (Basse Casamance,” November 9, 1859; and Le commandant du cercle de Séhdhiou au Commandant, September 1, 1872. 95 territory a French protectorate.199 However, this did nothing to stop Musa Molo from attacking Kantora several years later. The 1883 treaty demonstrated Musa’s ability to dictate terms. In it, his territory was listed as extending to Bakel on the Senegal River, hundreds of miles past where his effective governance ended.200 The treaty placed “all the countries he commands under the suzerainty and protectorate of France, and [Musa] undertakes to never cede any part of its sovereignty without the consent of the French government.” The treaty also gave preference to French merchants; forbade Musa from interfering in trade; and committed him to bringing a railroad to the Upper Casamance.201 In practice, however, these stipulations had scant effect. As the French began their slow expansion into the Casamance, the British commenced an even slower expansion eastward into the Gambia. The British acquired MacCarthy Island in 1823 in exchange for an annual payment to its chief, and as of 1840, their trading post there was doing a steady business in animal skins, wax, and ivory.202 Upriver from the island, however, trade was difficult and formal territorial control nonexistent.203 Throughout the 1850s and 1860s, the British focused primarily on signing treaties with and subjugating Mandinka states along the mouth of the Gambia River. The 1870s were a period of stagnation for the British in Gambian affairs, and only in the following decade did they attempt to exert some level of influence upriver.204 This reluctance to engage was related to discussions about ceding the Gambia to France in exchange for French 199 ANOM MI/131MIOM/1, Traité conclu avec Kouta Mandou, chef du Kantora (23 décembre 1888). 200 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/106, Gouverneur au Ministre “Envoi d’un traité signé dans la Haute Casamance,” décembre 1883. The attached treaty was signed November 3, 1883. 201 ANOM MI/131MIOM/2, Rivières du Sud, Traité avec le Firdou (Hte Casamance), 3 novembre 1883, Ratifié par décrit du 23 mai 1889. The railroad was never built. 202 John Milner Gray, A History of the Gambia (London: Frank Cass, 1966), 336. 203 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/IV/17, Extrait de Notes Remisesale: Direction des colonies en Septembre 1840 pour le Bouit, Lieutenant de Vaisseau, “La Gambie.” 204 Charlotte Quinn, Mandingo Kingdoms of the Senegambia: Traditionalism, Islam, and European Expansion (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 178. 96 possessions elsewhere, which occurred regularly from the mid-1860s until the late 1880s: with the French trying to convince the British to accept more marginal colonies like Côte d’Ivoire and Gabon, and the British angling for the “Southern Rivers” that would later become the coastline of French Guinea.205 As of 1880, MacCarthy Island’s population of 1,263 included just one European.206 As late as 1898, the Travelling Commissioner of MacCarthy Island, Percy Nainewright, wrote of the easternmost districts of the Gambia, “Little has been done there with the exception of keeping the Chiefs together and encouraging agriculture.”207 The next year, a French report on the Gambia noted the challenges Travelling Commissioners faced in visiting interior regions, including the difficulties of movement by land during the rainy season, and of navigating the Upper Gambia at any time. Of the MacCarthy Island Division, which made up the eastern half of the colony, a French officer claimed that “British authority still makes little impression,” in part because Musa Molo was still in charge of the region.208 The British sent Musa gifts each year, and, “It is understood that the ‘Travelling Commissioner’ will not interfere in the administration of Musa’s country in that he will not take a penny of tax there; without deducing from these facts that the British are afraid of Musa, we can suppose that they let him believe so.”209 Thus, as the twentieth century began, it is clear that Musa Molo still ruled over British, in addition to French, Fuladu. In some ways, this was to Britain’s benefit: as of 1898, border-crossers from Senegal had erected at least fifteen new villages in British territory, considerably increasing the tax base that the British in the Gambia could draw on.210 205 The Côte d’Ivoire discussions were particularly prevalent in the earlier period. See the entirety of files in ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/11, as well as ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/15, ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/16, and ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/52. 206 NRS CSO 13/45, Blue Book, 1880, 132. 207 NRS ARP 30/3, Travelling Commissioner Report, MacCarthy Island, July 2, 1898, 20–21. 208 ANS 1F22, Mission Adam: Étude sur la Gambie Anglaise par G. Adam, 1898–99, 40. 209 ANS 1F22, Mission Adam: Étude sur la Gambie Anglaise par G. Adam, 1898–99, 43–44. 210 NRS ARP 30/3, Travelling Commissioner Report, MacCarthy Island, July 2, 1898, 19. 97 The Portuguese presence in coastal Portuguese Guinea was centuries longer than that of either the French in the Casamance or the British in the Gambia. From its beginnings, however, there had been little focus on the hinterland, where the Portuguese relied on local leaders whose loyalty to them varied, and who had little reason to listen to their demands.211 As of June 1878, the traders of Buba paid the Fulbe king of Forriá 8000 reis a year to maintain good relations.212 Moreover, until the 1878 military “disaster” at Bolor in northwestern Portuguese Guinea, the colony was governed in tandem with Cabo Verde, as an effectively maritime polity that by its nature further limited its administrators’ motivation to expand into the African interior.213 By the same token, the separation of Guinea from Cabo Verde in 1879 made Guinea’s “tiny staff of military-administrative appointees […] especially determined to push forward with their quest for political sovereignty, with a view to achieving de facto control over the interior” and not just the coast.214 However, this quest for political sovereignty in the interior was still mediated by the old system of paying local rulers large sums of money for maintaining their allegiance.215 This led the Governor of Portuguese Guinea at the time to comment that his country exercised “a simulation of sovereignty” in the colony.216 Over the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Portuguese made a series of treaties and military interventions in the interior of the colony.217 In January 1880, they signed a treaty 211 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 44-8. 212 Governador Cabral Vieira ao Governador de Cabo Verde, junho 1878, in Ramos da Silva, “Subsidios para a história military e da ocupação da província da Guiné,” BSGL 33, no. 9–10 (1915), 334. 213 Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Guiné Portuguesa, Vol. 2 (Lisboa: Agência Geral do Ultramar, Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1954), 32. 214 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 73. 215 Ramos da Silva, “Subsidios,” 334. 216 Ibid, 334. 217 Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa (SGL), João Jose de Melo Migueis, Apontamentos por ordem cronológica relativos às campanhas para a pacificação da Guiné, desde 1834 a 1924 (1925). 98 with Alfa Molo, who did not abide by its conditions in any way.218 As noted above, they also intervened in the conflict in Forriá, with devastatingly poor results. Specifically, they first offered protection to the jiyaabe, who were allied with Fuladu, mostly to limit the intensity of the war and return trade to eastern Portuguese Guinea,219 but also based on an argument that—from an abolitionist standpoint—the jiyaabe were the only side deserving of support.220 Yet, by 1882, the Portuguese had switched to supporting the rimbe, on the theory that doing so would put an end to the raiding of local trading posts and farms.221 Then, some three years later, Governor Barboza decided the Portuguese should back the jiyaabe again, and supplied them with weapons, but that policy too was short-lived: for the Portuguese signed a treaty in 1886 with the rimbe chief Umbucu, in which they agreed to support him against the jiyaabe.222 By 1888, allegiances had switched yet again, with Fulbe rimbe and Fulbe Futa allied against Portugal because of Portuguese support for the jiyaabe.223 As one might expect, this haphazard strategy of constantly switching sides only served to prolong the conflict and drive the people of Forriá further into economic ruin. It may have resulted from the rapid turnover of colonial officials in Portuguese Guinea, which had at least seven different governors between 1879 and 1889.224 The indecision continued: by 1892, the governor was reporting, “The cause of the Fula Pretos is sympathetic: They want at all costs their emancipation like free men, smashing the chain links that linked them to their masters, the Forros.”225 The Portuguese mistakenly believed that when the war ended, commerce from further 218 Pélissier argues that only Alfa Molo’s subordinate in Ganadu abided by the treaty. Pélissier, Naissance de la Guiné, 144. 219 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 73. 220 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 172. 221 BSGL 1882, 3a série, no. 1, 494. 222 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 73–76. 223 Oliveira, Viagem á Guiné Portugueza, 79. 224 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 251. 225 Pedro Inacio Gouveia, “Relatório do Governador de Provincia da Guiné Portugueza, 1882,” 251. 99 inland would return to Forriá because it was a shorter route to the ocean than going north to the Gambia or Casamance Rivers or south toward the Southern Rivers of French Guinea.226 The Portuguese were not the only outside influence in Forriá, however, and may not have been the most important one. Certainly, Futa Jallon was another key player, whose backing was important politically as well as militarily. And Musa Molo hoped to leverage Forriá’s chaos to expand his own kingdom and used the French—still willing to work on his behalf if it would help them gain a foothold in the region—to this end. In 1894, he attacked the small kingdom of Pachesi with a multi-ethnic force that included tiralleurs sent by the French as well as Mandinka, Haalpulaar, southern Senegambian Fulbe, and Wolof soldiers.227 However, Fuladu’s French alliance should also be seen against the background of its previous intrigues with Portugal. In 1882, Musa’s uncle, Bakary Demba, signed a treaty with the Portuguese at Geba pledging his “obedience.”228 The next year, Musa accompanied a Portuguese official during a journey into the interior of Portuguese Guinea, and declared that “in any circumstances that the Portuguese governor lacked his services, that he could count on him and all of his people, whose force is more than 6,000 men.”229 And until about 1885, the king of Fuladu was given free reign over Geba.230 The general goal of Portuguese treaties was not political dominance. Rather, those like the one made with Forriá in 1884 were focused on shepherding trade through Portuguese ports and creating economic opportunities for Portuguese merchants.231 Unsurprisingly, having been designed almost exclusively to fulfill Portugal’s economic needs, they were often ignored by the 226 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, 251. 227 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 94. 228 Pelissier, Naissance de la Guiné, 174. 229 Pedro Inacio de Gouveia, “Guiné Portugueza: De Geba ao Indornal: Documentos Officios” in BSGL 1887, 3 a série, no. 12, 692. 230 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 75. 231 The relevant text of the treaty is cited in Oliveira, Viagem á Guiné Portugueza, 48. 100 Senegambian rulers who signed them. Nevertheless, the Portuguese persisted in regarding them as binding contracts that both sides would abide by.232 It seems unlikely their Senegambian counterparts believed anything of the kind, not least because—at least when it came to military alliances—the endless succession of Portuguese administrators seemed to break and remake treaties almost at whim. Moreover, these administrators’ standard response to the threats posed to them by the Fulbe, Biafada, and other local groups was to request an expansion of the Portuguese military presence and send in gunboats and artillery. In 1887, Geraldes argued that “[t]he political error we committed in letting the Fulbe seize all the lands contiguous to Geba and Farim was great.”233 In an effort to remedy it, the Portuguese began supporting Musa’s enemies, and Musa unsuccessfully lobbied the French to help him fight the Portuguese.234 Taken as a whole, then, Portuguese officials’ approach not only worsened the conflicts of the 1880s and 1890s, but also made it more difficult for them to establish sovereignty over the territories they claimed.235 In Fuladu, as well as in neighboring parts of Futa Jallon to the southeast, Musa Molo and the almami of Labé, Alfa Yaya, built alliances with the French pragmatically in an attempt to secure their own political and economic success.236 The French first communicated with Musa’s father Alfa in 1872, when they worked with him to attack Sandiniery in the Middle Casamance.237 These arrangements functioned well enough, but only until colonial governments were ready to exercise control over borders, at which point Fulbe rulers actively contested them.238 While colonies passively allowed obscure individual migrants and traders to violate their boundaries, 232 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 177–78. 233 Geraldes, “Guiné Portugueza,” 473. 234 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/107, Le Gouverneur du Sénégal et Dépendances à Moussa Molo fils de Alpha roi du Firdou, April 21, 1888. For background on Musa’s struggles with the Portuguese, ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/67, “Demande d’appui fournée par Moussa Molo, chef du Firdou,” June 8, 1888. 235 BSGL 1888-89, 8a série, no. 6, E.J. da Costa Oliveira, “Guiné Portugueza, Esboço Cartographico,” 301. 236 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 62. 237 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/51, Commandant du cercle de Sédhiou au Commandant, December 1, 1872. 238 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 63. 101 African leaders were not afforded the same freedom, especially in the final years of the nineteenth century. The situation was further complicated by British and French competition over Futa Jallon. In 1873, a British mission reached Futa Jallon, whose almami then signed a treaty with the British Governor of Sierra Leone;239 and in 1881, the Administrator of the Gambia signed a treaty reaffirming this relationship.240 Two years after that, Portuguese reports stated that the British were paying the almami of Futa Jallon 3,000 pesos annually to favor British commerce.241 In 1888, the French met with almami Amadou, and signed a stricter treaty with him that deemed Futa Jallon to be under French control.242 The Portuguese also met with the almami in an attempt to direct commerce from Futa Jallon through Portuguese ports.243 Musa Molo’s Faustian Bargain Musa Molo was the most powerful leader of late nineteenth century southern Senegambia, yet his control over much of the region was limited. In an effort to increase his territory, as we have seen, Musa allied with the French against neighboring regions. In 1885, for example, his forces fought alongside the French to defeat Mamadu Lamin in the Gambian region of Niani, a territory that Musa then brought under his control.244 He then joined the French in the conquest of Pachesi, a territory divided between French Senegal and Portuguese Guinea, but success in this enterprise came with a price: the installation of a French resident in Hamdallaye, one of Musa’s 239 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/66, “Treaty of peace and Friendship between the Governor of Sierra Leone and the King of Futa Jallon dated February 5, 1873.” 240 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/66, “Treaty between Valesius Shipton Gouldsbury, Companion of the most distinguished order of St. Michael and St. George, and administrator of her Majesty’s Settlement on the Gambia for and behalf of Her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Empress of India, etc., etc., and Alimami Ibrahima, King of Futa Jallon” (1881). 241 Aleixo Justiniano Socrates da Costa, “Provincia da Guiné Portugueza,” BSGL 1883, 4a série, no. 2, 107. 242 The British took issue with these French claims for reasons of trade. ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/66, Ambassadeur à l’Angleterre à Paris au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, June 17, 1888. 243 BSGL 1882, 3a série, no. 1, 493–94. 244 Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 250. 102 two capitals.245 Thus, while Musa used the French to gain power over his rivals, the French used him to gain sovereignty over Fuladu.246 Musa seems to have believed the French wanted economic, but not political or judicial control, and therefore granted them their economic wishes, apparently without foreseeing the long-term consequences of his actions.247 In 1891, he used French military support to attack Bakary Demba’s village of Korop, conquering this center of his uncle’s power and chasing his rival into the Gambia.248 And with the help of a French officer named Bertrandon, Musa attacked his brother Dikory, and eventually killed him.249 He also succeeded in getting the French captain Baures to agree that Musa would control Kantora.250 For their help against Mamadu Lamin, Fode Kaba, and others, Musa granted the French the right to collect half his taxes and “to control the legitimacy of his acts.”251 While French military support gave Musa the ability to expand his territory rapidly, it came at the cost of a partial loss of sovereignty. As well as being aided by the French, Musa’s attack on Bijini in 1884 was sanctioned by the Portuguese, who at the time wanted Musa’s support to increase trade and Portuguese political control in the interior.252 By the early 1890s, however, he was in open conflict against the Portuguese. In 1891, Musa invaded Ganadu in Portuguese territory. Powerless to resist this attack, Portuguese officials wrote to the French asking for assistance against the king of Fuladu.253 The 245 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 94–95. 246 Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 254–55. 247 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 137. 248 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/XII/88, Mission Bourrel, “Rapport sur une mission dans la Casamance confiée au chef du service télégraphique (1894).” 249 Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 250. 250 ANS 2G1/88, V. Legou, “Rapport du Sous Lieutenant Legou Commandant le poste d’Hammdalahi sur la situation politique du Firdou à la fin de septembre,” October 1, 1895. By 1895, French administrators questioned Baures’ decision and sought to overturn it. 251 Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 251. 252 Augusto de Barros, “A invasão fula na Circunscrição de Bafatá,” Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa (henceforth BCGP) II, no. 7 (1947), 740. 253 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/91, M. d’Artes, Ministre de Portugal à Paris, à M. Ribot, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, June 5, 1891. Attacks in this area are still discussed today. Interview with Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte, and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017. 103 French responded that, because they had no permanent political presence in Fuladu, they could not tell whether Musa’s actions were justified, and they doubted that the Portuguese had any firsthand knowledge of what was occurring in the interior either.254 By the following year, however, French frustrations with Musa had boiled over. They had yet to exert control over Musa’s territory, and became increasingly unwilling to accept Musa’s supreme influence over what they believed was their territory.255 In 1898, the French complained that Musa was not passing along the taxes in kind that he collected, particularly those in livestock, and reported that he was also undercounting his population in a further effort to deprive France of its rightful share of the region’s taxes.256 However, though Musa’s continued to exercise cross-border sovereignty, the significance of colonial boundary lines was increasing. In 1893, for example, Saada Amady from Bundu in French Senegal escaped to Kantora in British territory in an effort to escape the French: a clear sign that colonial borders had gained legal significance.257 By 1898, the French had begun to prepare for Musa Molo’s ultimate departure. As a report from the French resident of Hamdallaye argued, “We may have needed him to oppose the growing power of the almamis of Timbo and More Yaya [Alfa Yaya]. But today? The situation has changed. Futa Jallon is in our hands. Is it still necessary to preserve this extraordinary prestige of Musa? This is not my opinion.”258 The same resident estimated that within five years, Musa would have ceased to rule Fuladu, a prediction that proved accurate—though the French continued to send him to collect taxes in regions that were refusing to pay them. Perhaps the most damning statement in the same report from the resident was a quote passed along from a Fulbe person themselves, who 254 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/108, de Lamothe au Administrateur, July 12, 1891. 255 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/108, Gouverneur du Sénégal, “Instructions pour Monsieur le Lieutenant Bertrandon, du régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais, chargé de mission dans le Fouladougou,” October 17, 1892. 256 ANS 2G1/67, Rapports mensuels du Firdou, février 1898, February 28, 1898. 257 Ibid. 258 ANS 2G1/68, Rapport 1er trimestre 1898, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Firdou, Résident du Firdou au Administrateur Supérieur du district de la Casamance, March 31, 1898. 104 reportedly said, “Formerly Musa Molo was a king. But now he is no more than a juula [trader].”259 A roughly similar sentiment was expressed in an official report of 1900: “The king has become a ‘gentleman-farmer.’”260 However, even as Musa’s power declined in the French part of Fuladu, he continued to exercise it effectively in the Gambia, and British administrators of the 1890s continued to regard him as chief of the British part of Fuladu. But cracks were starting to appear there, too. In 1896, they asked Musa to come meet them at MacCarthy, but he replied he was no longer able to do so because his movements out of Senegal needed to be cleared with the French administrator in Sedhiou. The British complained that the French were changing the rules, since previously both had allowed Musa to cross their borders at will, provided only that he remained within his own kingdom.261 More significantly, in a process that began in 1894 and was completed by 1901, Musa ceded to Britain the parts of Fuladu within British territory, in exchange for an annual pension from the British equivalent to 12,000 francs.262 Even after this, however, the French remained unhappy with his level of cross-border influence: “Although this native chief resides with us and most of his country is in our possessions, we cannot prevent him from dealing with our neighbors for the Firdu [Fuladu] region included in the Gambia. His territories are indeed straddling the border and thus it is at the same time protected French and British territory.”263 And the British indeed still deferred to Musa, since they had a minimal capability to exert power in the Gambia’s 259 ANS 2G1/68, Rapport 1er trimestre 1898, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Firdou, Résident du Firdou au Administrateur Supérieur du district de la Casamance, March 31, 1898. 260 ANS 2G1/76, Rapport politique, commercial et Agricole, troisième trimestre 1900, Résidence d’Hamdallahi. 261 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/128, Gouverneur Générale de l’Afrique occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, “Plainte du Gouvernement Anglais contre Moussa Molo,” September 17, 1896. 262 Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 251. 263 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/128, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, October 3, 1901. 105 interior without his help. In 1898, for example, they had to delay tax collection because “several of the English speaking people were up in the interior trading.”264 Figure 9. 1906 map of the Gambia, Portuguese Guinea and the Casamance Musa Molo had more difficulty with the Portuguese in the 1890s than he had with the French or British.265 In April 1893, he attempted to expand his territory further south within Portuguese Guinea, and the Portuguese wrote angrily to the French to demand help in containing him, as they were once again unable to do anything about his incursion themselves. However, the 264 NRS ARP 30/3, Travelling Commissioner Reports, MacCarthy Island, July 2, 1898. 265 Note Fuladu (Fouladougou). Map from A travers le monde, n° 3, 20 janvier 1906, p. 17, available online at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF): http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k34469m/) 106 French responded that, as far as they could tell, Musa had not entered Portuguese territory in a year.266 These discussions between the Portuguese and French followed an 1892 war between the Portuguese and some of Musa’s subordinates, including one of his cousins who had attacked a village four kilometers from Geba. This cousin claimed Musa was coming to his aid and would help him seek revenge against the Portuguese. While Musa did not actually do so, fear of an external invasion paralyzed the commerce around Geba.267 Musa, for his part, was obsessed with the loss of his former territory. He first blamed the French for allowing the Portuguese to establish themselves on his lands, and then the Portuguese, for turning the people of his former territories against him.268 It appears Musa was never able to return to Portuguese Guinea, as evidenced by a request he made to the Portuguese to visit his father’s burial site in 1898.269 While it was relatively easy to restrict the movements of rulers, however, it was quite difficult to contain the movements of individuals and families, who continued to move throughout the space of Fuladu despite the imposition of colonial borders. Border Delimitation Until 1890, the British and French made no effort to define, let alone actually survey, the boundary that separated their possessions in the Gambia and Senegal. A rough agreement on the subject was reached in January 1888, and a summit meeting scheduled for August 1889 in Paris. This summit opted to draft a treaty defining the borders, on the reasoning that competition was arising from the two colonies’ “proximity and the absence of any determination of boundaries. 266 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/107, Sous-Secrétaire de l’Etat au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, “Incident de frontière à la Guinée Portugaise,” April 6, 1893; “Incidents de frontière à la Guinée Portugaise,” June 11, 1893; and “Incident de frontière à la Guinée portugaise,” May 25, 1893. 267 E. Bonvalet, “Sur le Rio Cachéo,” 411. 268 ANOM FM/MIS/19, Capitaine Baures, “Sénégal et Dépendances: Mission du Firdou,” August 3, 1894, 5. 269 ANS 2G1/68, Rapport 1er trimestre 1898, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Firdou, Résident du Firdou au Administrateur Supérieur du district de la Casamance, March 31, 1898. 107 […] [L]ocal agents had come, competing zealously, to encroach […] on each of the two countries.”270 The treaty specified particular places where the boundary lay in the more accessible areas, but upriver, merely defined it as being 10 kilometers from the river.271 The treaty did not answer every question, however, and the actual boundary would still need to be surveyed. Importantly, the king of Kantora had signed a treaty making his kingdom a part of France, even though it straddled the boundary line; and it was unclear whether this arrangement, made in December 1888, superseded either the January 1888 agreement between Britain and France, or the subsequent Paris treaty.272 A joint Anglo-French Boundary Commission set out in 1891 to survey the border, but was unable to complete its work, leaving “the exact position of a number of villages still undetermined.”273 Following this failure, the British and French met again in 1894, and organized a second expedition that set out in June of 1895. During the survey expedition itself, the new border emerged as a location people could exploit, with the French members characterizing the Gambian village of Soucounda as “a nest of looters coming to commit their misdeeds on French territory.”274 But such comments merely reflected the wider reality that, while villages could be deemed “Senegalese” or “Gambian” by European states, there were few mechanisms for stopping villagers from doing whatever they pleased on the opposite side of the border. 270 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/82, “Rapport au Président de la République Française, suivi d’un décret portant publication et approbation de l’arrangement signé à Paris le 10 août 1889, entre le Gouvernement de la République française et le Gouvernement de S. M. la Reine du Royaume-Uni de la Grande Bretagne et d'Irlande,” March 12, 1890. 271 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/82, “Décret portant publication et approbation de l’arrangement signé à Paris le 10 août 1889 entre le Gouvernement de la République française et le Gouvernement de S. M. la Reine du Royaume-Uni de la Grande-Bretagne et d’Irlande,” August 10, 1889. 272 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/90, Sous-Secrétaire d’État au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, “Affaires de la Gambie,” September 2, 1891. 273 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/124, Ministre au Ministre de la Marine, “Delimitations franco-anglaise de la Gambie,” May 20, 1895, and “Operations la delimitation de la Gambie,” October 31, 1895. 274 ANS 2G1/88, V. Legou, “Situation politique du Firdou,” August 1, 1895. 108 This second boundary survey cleared up some discrepancies, but left others unanswered. In 1897, when the British and French discussed sending a third expedition, the British Administrator of the Gambia, Robert Baxter Llewelyn, expressed “an apprehension that the proposed delimitation may probably lead to trouble with the Chief Moussa Mollo, as the Anglo- French frontier will pass for one hundred miles through territory under his control.” For this reason, Llewelyn recommended postponing the third survey for another year.275 As the British Ambassador to France noted, “it would seem indeed only fair to him [Musa] that an opportunity should be taken of explaining what would be the result of dividing his territory, before the commissioners are sent there for that purpose.” The ambassador added that they could still agree to a clarification of the border’s position in the meantime, but only in the form of “lists of villages on the South Bank of the Gambia with regard to the position of which the local authorities entertain doubts.”276 In the event, the next effort at delimitation occurred in 1898–99 through the Adam Mission. The Anglo-French Boundary Commission met at Koina in the extreme east of the Gambia on December 10, 1898 and adopted a set of principles for their work, including that the border would not bisect any existing village, and that any villages whose nationality changed as a result of the survey would be given six months to accept or reject their new one. If they rejected it, they would be required to move across the border.277 This exercise was finally “finished” in 1899, but with 275 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/141, Ambassadeur d’Angleterre à Paris au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, October 11, 1897. 276 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/141, Ambassadeur d’Angleterre à Paris au Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, March 6, 1897. 277 ANS 1F22, “Official Report of the general conditions adopted by the Anglo-French Boundary Commission at a meeting held at Koina on the 10th of December 1898,” December 10, 1898. 109 two issues still to be resolved, one of which was the nationality of the important village of Gambissara.278 Senegal’s border with Portuguese Guinea, meanwhile, would be part of a larger discussion that also included the border between Portuguese and French Guinea, convened in Paris in May 1886.279 This led to an agreement that the Senegal-Portuguese Guinea border was the mid-point between the Casamance and Cacheu Rivers inland to a point near Farim, where it became a straight line stretching to the border with French Guinea. The border between the two Guineas, on the other hand, was determined in part by the French interpretation of the limits of Futa Jallon’s sovereignty at the time.280 The first survey mission, in 1887–88, led by the French military officer and cartographer Henri François Brosselard-Faidherbe, focused on the border between French and Portuguese Guinea, and ignored the latter’s border with Senegal.281 But by the close of the nineteenth century, the poorly-defined boundary between Senegal and Portuguese Guinea had become a problem for the French, who saw the Portuguese as “not the masters in their own home.”282 As the French resident in Hamdallaye wrote to his superiors, “I must insist strongly on the necessity of the establishment of the Demarcative Line between the two colonies; only this will prevent the return 278 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/157, “Délimitation de la Gambie,” November 24, 1899; and “Achievement de travaux de la commission de délimitation de la Gambie,” November 24, 1899. The border would be altered several more times, most recently in the late 1970s. 279 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/VI/53, “Convention Relative à la Délimitation des Possessions Françaises et Portugaises dans l’Afrique Occidentale,” May 12, 1886. They also discussed the border between French Congo (today Congo-Brazzaville) and Cabinda. The text of the agreement can be found both in French (pp. 577-81) and Portuguese (pp. 582–86) in Francis Phillipe Walsh, “An Inquiry into the Boundary of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau (1886–1895)” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, 1996). 280 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 118–19. 281 Ibid, 119. Brosselard-Faidherbe was an admirer of the former Governor of Senegal, Louis Faidherbe, as well as his son-in-law. 282 ANS 2G1/74, Cercle de la Haute Casamance, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport Politique, Commercial, Agricole: Quatrième Trimestre 1899. 110 of any incident.”283 Nevertheless, the second Franco-Portuguese boundary survey, led by R. Payn in 1900, again focused on the boundary between French and Portuguese Guinea;284 and it was only with the third mission, led by the French doctor Charles Maclaud in 1902–3, that the Senegal- Portuguese Guinea boundary was at last surveyed.285 This border was altered almost immediately, however, when the French gave up much of the region of Pachesi to the Portuguese in the “final” delimitation of 1904.286 The Flight of Musa Molo As the above narrative implies, the French and British competed over Musa Molo’s services until the beginning of the twentieth century. As late as November 1902, the French resident at Hamdallaye was convinced that Musa had the power to restrict goods from Fuladu and Futa Jallon from entering the Gambia, and to direct them toward the Senegalese coast instead.287 Yet, Musa continued to operate more or less as he pleased. As the Governor-General of French West Africa put it, Musa “hardly accepted our control […]. Residents placed at his side had little or no influence, and he maintained outside relations with the Gambian Government.”288 Finally, in receipt of numerous complaints from the peoples of the region, and fed up with him themselves, the French summoned Musa to Sedhiou to reprimand him. But rather than face the French colonial officials, he set off for the Gambia on May 14, 1903, burning his remaining possessions—as well as several villages along his route, in an effort to swell his entourage.289 Musa arrived in the 283 ANS 2G1/74, Cercle de la Haute Casamance, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport Politique, Commercial, Agricole: Quatrième Trimestre 1899. 284 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 122–23. 285 For information on the Maclaud mission, which also surveyed the border between the two Guineas, see ANS 2F16. 286 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 144. 287 ANS 2G2/23, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport politique mensuel, novembre 1902, December 1, 1902. 288 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/131, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, “A.S. de la fuite de Moussa Molo en Gambie Anglaise,” June 22, 1903. 289 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/131, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, “A.S. de la fuite de Moussa Molo en Gambie Anglaise,” June 22, 1903; and ANS 1F9, Gouverneur Général au 111 Gambia with somewhere near 3,000 people. A number of those who arrived with Musa were enslaved persons who came involuntarily, particularly women whom Musa had captured through war and slave-raiding.290 Many descendants of this migration, especially its non-enslaved members, still live in the Gambia today.291 Musa had met secretly with the British resident on MacCarthy Island to plan this move. One month after the king’s departure, French officials wrote that the population was relieved at “having been delivered from their oppressor,” and happily noted that most of those who fled with Musa had since returned to French territory. Additionally, they believed most of those Senegalese who had previously fled to the Gambia to escape Musa’s rule had already returned to French territory and assumed that the rest would follow during the coming year. Many of the women Musa had forcibly brought across the border escaped and fled to MacCarthy Island to ask the British for their freedom, and once this was granted, they returned to Senegal.292 News of Musa’s flight also prompted considerable numbers of people to return to Senegal from Portuguese Guinea.293 Despite his poor reputation among both the people of Senegal and their French rulers, however, the British welcomed Musa Molo to their territory, believing he could bring some order to a region they had Administrateur Supérieur Sédhiou, May 15, 1903. Carpenter tells the story of how oral traditions suggest that Musa Molo cut the telegraph line base in Hamdallaye, but French colonial documents suggest that the telegraph operator, Biram, N’Diay, was complicit in Musa’s flight and the line was actually never cut. Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 138–39. Visiting Hamdallaye in April 2017, I was told that the telegraph line was burned. Interview with Demba Sabaly and Yero Balde, Hamdallaye, Senegal, April 24, 2017. Other information about Musa’s flight is available in Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 251 and ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 72. One of the villages burned to the ground was his mother’s home of Soulibaly. The resident’s home in Hamdallaye still stands today, although it is mostly overgrown with vegetation, at least it was in 2017 when I visited. One corner of Musa’s home remains in Hamdallaye, where the village was rebuilt decades later. On the motivation behind Musa’s burning of the villages, ANS13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 7. 290 ANS 11D1/285, Résident du Firdou au Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, May 18, 1903, and NRS CSO 2/45, Travelling Commissioner, Upper River District, July 2, 1903. 291 Interview with Samba Mballow, Sare Bojo Gamana, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 292 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/131, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, “A.S. de la fuite de Moussa Molo en Gambie Anglaise,” June 22, 1903. This was also mentioned by those living in the region today. Interview with Lamin Sabaly and Mamadou N'jie, Mandina Samba Jawo, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 293 Roche, Histoire de la Casamance, 298. 112 struggled to control; and when the French demanded his extradition, the British refused.294 Musa’s flight to the Gambia in 1903 marked the end of an era for the region, and represented the fall of the last precolonial leader capable of exercising territorial control there in the face of European opposition. Greater Fuladu in 1903 Musa Molo’s flight can be seen as marking the end of the precolonial period in southern Senegambia: the point after which colonial governments were able to build true political control. It is noteworthy, however, that despite their region’s newly drawn borders, the peoples of southern Senegambia were more interconnected in 1903 than they had been forty years previously. Musa Molo’s exactions spread Fulbe people into outlying regions, but these individuals remained connected to their homelands. The decline in warfare in the last years of the nineteenth century also allowed individuals to travel throughout the region more safely than before, and movement for economic gain became increasingly prevalent. The growing European presence on the coast created new opportunities for trading in goods that could be brought to the Gambia River or the rivers of Portuguese Guinea; and colonial boundaries were weakly policed, allowing people and goods to move across them with relative impunity. While the French, British, and Portuguese saw their colonies as inviolable, bounded spaces, Fulbe people saw these borders as infringing on a larger Fulbe cultural space, and thus as invalid encroachments on their social networks. The 1880s and 1890s also saw Fuladu brought into closer communication with the northwestern portion of Futa Jallon, due to the ruler of this area, Alfa Yaya, distancing himself from the old power centers of Futa Jallon and reorienting his relationships toward the west and 294 ANS 1F9, Governor of the Gambia George Denton, October 11, 1903. 113 northwest.295 But it was not only political leaders who determined these currents. By 1899, Fulbe came annually to plant groundnuts in the Gambia, and exchanged their harvested nuts for cash or alcohol before heading to Futa Jallon to buy cattle.296 Nearly all the groundnuts grown in southern Senegal were brought north to Gambian ports—against French wishes—from whence they could more easily be conveyed to the coast.297 The colonial governments of southern Senegambia in 1903 thus faced a difficult challenge: ruling, in theory, over a region that they knew little about in practice. The increasing depth and breadth of economic, social, and cultural connections across the borders of Senegal, the Gambia, Portuguese Guinea, and (to a lesser extent) French Guinea would exacerbate the already profound challenges of colonial governance. Conclusion The precolonial political landscape in southern Senegambia was diverse, but generally revolved around a particularly local form of rulership. “Kings” like the mansaba of Kaabu or Alfa and Musa Molo of Fuladu could exercise fairly strict control over their own regions of origin but struggled to control outlying provinces. As such, precolonial rule was generally decentralized, and communities lacked the regional identities and attachments to specific larger polities on which colonial governments hoped to build as they extended their own grip on the region. Moreover, the fact that the kingdom of Fuladu extended across multiple colonial borders manifested a competing idea of territorial organization: one in which European borders existed but did not function as fixed containers of colonial space. Rather, this alternative idea of territoriality centered around fluidity, flexibility and population mobility. Fulbe networks across southern Senegambia constituted an 295 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 52. During this period, Alfa Yaya’s capital of Labé became more important than the previous capital of Timbo. Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 62. Labé is (as of 2018) the largest city in Futa Jallon. 296 ANS 1F22, Mission Adam VI, “Étude sur la Gambie Anglaise par G. Adam, 1898–99,” 49. 297 ANS 2G2/23, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport politique mensuel, novembre 1902, December 1, 1902. 114 “interior world,” an “autonomous node of power, trade, and kinship” that would take on new importance in the colonial period.298 After the fall of Kaabu, the demographics of southern Senegambia changed, but the region’s emphasis on mobility remained. Nascent colonial governments perceived the existence of this interior world and struggled to disrupt it, fearing that it would result in unacceptable reductions in “their” populations. As de la Roncière, the French resident in Hamdallaye, wrote: We do not have to fear in Fuladu that they will resist us by force, but on the other hand if we disturb the habits and customs of the people the population will emigrate to the Portuguese or British who have solicited them for a long time. On the other hand, if we do not offend them we will attract to our territory all who for more than 10 years have taken refuge with our neighbors, and in a short time we will triple the population of Fuladu.299 The flight of Musa Molo from Senegal to the Gambia indeed marked the end of armed resistance in Fuladu;300 but the next fifty-seven years of colonial rule would feature constant unarmed resistance, for within Senegal, Musa had been “the last representative of indigenous kingdoms,” and had left the French with a leadership vacuum they were unable to fill.301 In a preview of what would occur for most of the colonial period, a 1901 census of the Gambia frightened much of its population, who feared it was a precursor to the levying of a head tax. During the census-taking, 15 percent of the Gambia’s population left for Senegal.302 A 1903 report on the Casamance included a statement that could have applied equally well to neighboring Portuguese Guinea and the Gambia: “The political state of these provinces has […] greatly 298 For the concept of an “interior world” in Africa, see King and Challis, “The ‘Interior World.’” The concept of an “interior” or “indigenous” world has been developed over the last decade or so by historians of North America focused on Native American worlds. For example, see Zappia, Traders and Raiders, and Anne F. Hyde, Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (Lincoln: University of Nebrska Press, 2011). Hämäläinen’s The Comanche Empire demonstrates the strength of these networks as well. 299 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d'hivernage: Historique du Fouladou, Ancien Territoire de Moussa Molo” (1904), 22. 300 Roche, Histoire de la Casamance, 302. 301 ANOM FM/SG/SEN/IV/131, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, “A.S. de la fuite de Moussa Molo en Gambie Anglaise,” June 22, 1903. 302 NRS NGR 1/12, Census and Assessment General, Governor Denton (1901). 115 improved; but during the period under consideration [1900-2] we have had no authority in many parts.”303 In particular, it was difficult to stop movement across borders, given that the entirety of the Upper Casamance contained no customs posts, and indeed, that none of the colonial governments of the region devoted any resources to border control.304 The competing conceptions of territoriality held by Fulbe in multiple colonies, on the one hand, and by European colonial governments, on the other, were not resolved by the close of Musa Molo’s reign; nor would they be over the course of the colonial period. The establishment of borders in the region was met with a collective shrug, as they seemed an irrelevant fiction to southern Senegambians: mere suggestions, with no mechanism of enforcement. 303 ANS 2G2/16, Sénégal, Rapport d'ensemble sur la Situation Politique, Économique et Administrative et sur le fonctionnement des divers services pendant les années 1900, 1901 et 1902, 5. 304 Ibid, 47. 116 Chapter 2: Borders without Enforcement in the Early Twentieth Century Musa Molo’s flight to the Gambia in 1903 marked the end of a period when cross-border sovereignty had been accepted, in part because the French, British, and Portuguese presence in the region was still minimal. The French installation of a resident in Musa’s capital, Hamdallaye, to supervise tax collection and keep an eye on his warring and slaving formed part of a wider recognition by colonial governments that if they were to stake serious claims to sovereignty in the region, they would need to eliminate competitors who asserted control of territory across colonial borders.1 Musa arrived in the Gambia with a group estimated by British officials at around 3,000, many of whom were enslaved women brought involuntarily. About 1,000 of these followers returned to Senegal soon afterwards.2 Musa would spend the rest of his life in self-imposed exile in the Gambia, although he often petitioned the French and Portuguese to allow him to return. The French, for their part, celebrated Musa’s departure from the political scene: with one official stating that it had “left us a free land.”3 Nevertheless, they attempted to have him extradited in the hope that those loyal to him would not follow him to the Gambia; and in an effort to maintain French Fuladu’s population, the French resident in Kolda, Charles de la Roncière, declared he would not collect taxes from the burned villages until they had been rebuilt, and that anyone who had left with Musa was welcome to return.4 And unsurprisingly, many of those who had opposed Musa’s 1 See Chapter 1. 2 ANS 11D1/285, “Le Résident du Firdou à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance,” May 18, 1903; and NRS CSO 2/45, “Report by Traveling Commissioner, Upper River District,” July 2, 1903. 3 ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 72. 4 ANS 11D1/285, L’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance au Gouverneur de la Gambie Anglaise, June 11, 1903; Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 139 117 troubled reign and/or been victimized by him did choose to return from the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea once he was no longer in power.5 The contested nature of borderland sovereignty leading into the colonial period meant that these boundaries meant something different for southern Senegambians than they did to colonial governments. The idea of being a French, British, or Portuguese subject, restricted to the borders of a particular colony, did not align to precolonial patterns of mobility and migration. As a result, the borderlands of southern Senegambia remained fluid spaces, brought into even closer relations due to increasing regional mobility. Though some began to think of themselves as living in Senegal, the Gambia, or Portuguese and French Guinea, the ability of southern Senegambians to shape the geographic conditions of their own lives meant that their concepts of regional belonging far surpassed any colonial attempts to structure mobility and territorialize populations along colonial lines. From the earliest days of colonial rule to the immediate aftermath of World War I, political and economic change caused shifts in migration patterns (see Figure 10 below), sending Fulbe and other groups across borders in search of greater opportunity and weaker government. The end of Musa’s tyrannical reign also spurred mobility, as fears of warfare and enslavement gradually declined.6 The borderlands of southern Senegambia were weakly controlled, providing strategic opportunities for people to relocate in pursuit of better conditions. Migration also played a crucial role in the spread of Islam, which many people converted to in this period; and opportunities to study the Koran became more plentiful than during Musa’s reign. Yet, the region’s emergent migration patterns, while new, also reflected continuity in Fulbe ideas of territoriality: as networks divided by government but culturally, socially, religiously and economically unbroken. These 5 Roche, Histoire de la Casamance, 298. 6 Base map created by the author using CARTO. 118 Fulbe networks increasingly pushed southward within Portuguese Guinea, and southeast to the Futa Jallon highlands of French Guinea, where many sought refuge from a particularly harsh form of colonial rule in both French and Portuguese Guinea. The shift to colonial authority was slow, as neither precolonial nor colonial states had the strength to exercise control over much of their territory. As a result, while colonial boundaries became more precise, control over them was still nonexistent. Figure 10. Colonial period migration in southern Senegambia From 1903 to 1920, colonial states attempting to exercise some level of authority often found their options limited by their capabilities on the ground, and especially by the ease with which the region’s borders could be crossed by migrants seeking better lives, in many ways 119 paralleling the bordering processing occurring at a similar period in the United States.7 While borders restricted colonial governments from tracking populations leaving colonies, the same borders did not impede southern Senegambians in any meaningful way. This migration spiked during World War I, as Fulbe and others fleeing military conscription abandoned the region of Kolda in southern Senegal. Colonial governments in the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea were happy to see them arrive, seeing opportunities to grow their own populations, tax bases, and pools of labor for colonial infrastructure projects. Although French, British, and Portuguese colonial governments were successful in ending formal political rule across colonial borders, they were unable to separate the populations of former trans-colonial territories. Indeed, border regions became increasingly intertwined, to the point that they emerged as an imagined community, operating as an alternative to the Senegalese state.8 Southern Senegambians living in borderlands created “interior worlds” that existed in many ways outside of colonial control.9 These worlds existed alongside the boundaries of the colonial state, and at times these two worlds interacted. Over the course of the colonial period, the colonial governments of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea increasingly attempted to restrict these interior worlds, but their resources were limited. Colonial efforts to re- spatialize the networks of Fulbe and other southern Senegambians were often incomplete, as borderland residents began increasingly to see this cross-border space as one larger territory. Just as competing geographic spaces existed simultaneously, many other aspects of colonial rule 7 For example, see Rachel C. St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); and Katherine Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009). 8 While Benedict Anderson conceives of the nation as an imagined community, there is no reason that other territorial identities, even ones dramatically misaligned with modern state boundaries, cannot be considered as an alternative imagined community. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006 [1983]). 9 King and Challis, “The ‘Interior World.’” The idea of “interior worlds” is discussed more in the introduction. 120 operated in an almost “parallel realm” alongside Fulbe ideas.10 This chapter, along with the following two that discuss the colonial period, will explore what Alexander Diener and Joshua Hagen refer to as the “complex hybrid borderscapes” of colonial spaces.11 These borderscapes saw fluid ideas of belonging, citizenship, and mobility existing simultaneously to colonial ideas of bounded ethnic groups, colonies, and territorial identities. Southern Senegambia at the Beginning of Colonial Rule Greater Fuladu, stretching from deep inside Portuguese Guinea northward to the Gambia River, had been a primarily Fulbe area since the fall of the Kaabu Empire in the late 1860s. However, it had a substantial Mandinka minority, especially on its fringes, where Mandinka often outnumbered Fulbe. Despite the decline of slavery, social differences between those of enslaved and free descent continued into the colonial period; and caste differences continued to matter socially, though to a lesser degree.12 Partition—particularly by diminishing the power of the monarch, warlord, and slaver Musa Molo—brought peace and a high degree of stability to this part of southern Senegambia.13 The Casamance, the region of southern Senegal separated from the rest of the country by British Gambia, was a colonial geographic oddity; and its more inland portion, known as the Upper Casamance, was even more removed from political centers of colonial power. Neighboring areas of the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea found themselves marginal within their colonies as well. In southern Senegal, the French attempted to create administrative divisions that corresponded with ethnic ones, but their limits were not typically very clear. As of the mid- nineteenth century, the area had traditionally been associated with the Mandinka, but by 1911, 10 Edwards, Cambodge, 248. 11 Diener and Hagen, “Theorizing Borders in a ‘Borderless World,’” 1205. 12 ANS13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 5. 13 Alice Bellagamba, Ethnographie, histoire, et colonialisme en Gambie (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 62. 121 Kolda was identified as a Fulbe region, with that ethnic group comprising almost 73 percent of its population. However, at 20 percent, the Mandinka population remained significant, and the Soninke (which like the Mandinka, were part of the larger Mande language family) made up another 5 percent.14 In the neighboring areas of the Gambia, Mandinka and Soninke outnumbered Fulbe, while in Portuguese Guinea, Fulbe were the majority, but less overwhelmingly than in Senegal, and early twentieth century observers wrote that contact between Fulbe and Mandinka there was “more intimate” than in Senegal to the north.15 Fulbe in the former kingdom of Fuladu had adjusted to living under Fulbe chiefs during the rule of the Molos, but most Fulbe in the Gambia lived under the rule of Mandinka or Soninke ones. Until the late nineteenth century, the Mandinka influenced the language and customs of the Fulbe in the region, but this was complicated by Musa Molo’s effort to “Fulanize” the Mandinka beginning in the 1880s. The net result of this long historical process was a close and often contentious relationship between the two ethnic groups, especially involving the Fulakunda Fulbe whose presence dates back to the era of Kaabu.16 Fulbe in southern Senegambia adopted Mandinka institutions, modes of life and food, meaning that their way of life was different than Haalpulaar of northern Senegal or Fulbe Futa from the Futa Jallon highlands of French Guinea.17 One Portuguese official went so far as to say that wars had brought about exogamous relations that had resulted in the “degeneration of the [Fulbe] 14 ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 1911, 7, 182–83; René Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 252. Soninke (also known as Sarahule in the Gambia) migration was due in part to seasonal migration. See Manchuelle, Willing Migrants, and Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate. Soninke and Mandinka are not mutually intelligible but are related languages. 15 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, Rapport mensuel, janvier 1904, C. Maclaud, Président de la Commission française de délimitation de la Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, ANS 13G379, Robert Arnaud, “Mission Robert Arnaud en Casamance: Études des questions musulmanes,” July 1, 1908, 2–5. 16 Fulakunda is a Mandinka term meaning “Fulbe place/area/country,” from the Mandinka Fula (for Fulbe) and kunda (home, area, place, or country). 17 Chapter 1 has more information about the cultural hybridity between Fulbe and Mandinka in the region. 122 race.”18 This “degeneration” is more accurately described as a representation of the fluid and flexible nature of ethnicity in southern Senegambia, as exogamous relations and the incorporation of strangers was an integral part of life in the region. Despite this intermixture, Fulbe people were still primarily semi-nomadic pastoralists, with a very dispersed population. The French estimated in 1908 that Fulbe in the Upper Casamance controlled herds of nearly 250,000 cattle in a region whose human population did not even reach 40,000.19 While this could have been an exaggeration, cattle certainly substantially outnumbered people. Initially, the Fulbe’s way of life complemented that of the Mandinka, who were generally settled agriculturalists; but the former group slowly became sedentarized over time, and by the close of World War I, some officials were saying that they had given themselves over to agriculture.20 Nevertheless, and even after the creation of a Fulbe kingdom in the late nineteenth century, most Fulbe “feared government” and chose to live as far from centers of power as they could.21 All three colonial powers in the region struggled to delimit borders in a region where migration was the norm rather than the exception: a tool to escape state control, and a way of life. As a Gambian official wrote in 1907, “All Fullahs [Fulbe] lead a somewhat nomadic life. It is rare for a village to stop in the same place for more than fifteen years. Most villages move every eight 18 NRS NGR 1/31, W.B. Stanley, Travelling Commissioner, “Notes on the Physical Distribution of the Country, and Political Organisation of the Fullahs of the Gambia, Their Customs, Laws, etc.,” 1907. Soninke ruled over Fulbe in the eastern Gambian region of Kantora; interview with Abdrachman Baldeh, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. On Fulbe-Mandinka cultural mixing, N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 95–96, and Bellagamba, Ethnographie, 53. The idea of degeneration was put forward by the Portuguese administrator Vasco de Souza Calvet de Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, Província da Guiné: Relatório apresentado pelo Administrator Vasco de Souza Calvet de Magalhães em 1914 (Porto: Tipografia progresso de Domingos Augusto da Silva, 1916), 80. 19 ANS 13G379, Arnaud, “Mission Robert Arnaud en Casmance: Études des questions musulmanes,” July 1, 1908, 2. 20 ANS 2G10/41, Kolda, Rapport mensuel, janvier 1910, 15; ANS 2F8, “Utilité de la ligne,” 1914. Cattle also well outnumbered people in Futa Jallon, see ANS 2G5/1, Rapport Politique mensuel, février 1905. 21 Interview with Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. The Pulaar expression, “Fulbe suusa laamu” implies a moderate level of fear. Suusa is the negative of suusude, meaning “to dare.” 123 or ten years. Certain Fullahs known as Lorobos are rather more nomadic, moving every five or six years.”22 Colonization tended to encourage the stabilization of village populations, especially as many movements had been flights from the exactions of Musa Molo.23 Nevertheless, mobility remained crucial to Fulbe life, and as a result, the concept of property ownership among Fulbe in southern Senegambia in the early twentieth century was generally limited to movable property. In Portuguese Guinea, officials argued that taking a census was impractical, because the “floating population” was “enormous.”24 Futa Jallon in French Guinea was no better, and in 1909, a French official noted, “Fulbe pastoralists […] are generally little attached to the soil and move from one country to another with extreme ease.”25 The early colonial period also saw increased mobility due to the emancipation of enslaved persons, who often wanted to return to what they saw as a nomadic past, far from their former masters.26 Power in precolonial Africa was constrained by the “technology of reach.”27 States could not exercise their authority as efficiently on the margins as they could in the center, and this lent autonomy to far-flung regions.28 But these limitations also extended well into colonial times, when states relied extensively on precolonial structures to establish themselves, and were often unable to control actions on their own frontiers, either at the level of the colony or the 22 NRS NGR 1/31, W.B. Stanley, “Notes on the Physical Distribution of the Country, and Political Organisation of the Fullahs of the Gambia, Their Customs, Laws, etc.,” 1907. This was a feature of Fulbe society for hundreds of years. For nineteenth century archaeological research, see Donnay, “Territories, Fortresses, and Shifting Towns.” The Lorobe or Dorobe (written above as Lorobos, an incorrect pluralizing of the singular Lorobo), are a branch of the Fulbe noted for being particular nomadic. They are common in the eastern Gambia. 23 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 33. 24 Vasco de Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 14 25 ANS 2G9/13, Guinée, Rapport politique, 1er trimester 1909, April 15, 1909. 26 NRS NGR 1/31, W.B. Stanley, “Notes on the Physical Distribution of the Country, and Political Organisation of the Fullahs of the Gambia, Their Customs, Laws, etc.,” 1907; ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, “Migration des Peulhs,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, March 31, 1908. 27 Igor Kopytoff, “The Internal African Frontier: The Making of African Political Culture,” in Igor Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 33. 28 Interviews indicate that this was true in Fuladu. Interview with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017. 124 district/cercle/concelho. In this respect, at least, there was considerable continuity between precolonial and colonial governance; and as rule passed from Fulbe and Mandinka to the French, British, and Portuguese, daily life changed minimally. The residents of southern Senegambia transitioned fairly smoothly from quietly resisting the regimes of Musa Molo and other precolonial rulers, to evading French, British and Portuguese laws and officials. This continuity was only heightened by the colonial powers’ reliance on precolonial political administrative mechanisms in much of the region, even if many of the individual chiefs that the Europeans appointed to positions of authority in the post-Musa period had opposed him. Some provinces were deemed too large and broken up, but for the most part, precolonial political divisions were maintained wherever possible. In southern Senegal, the major colonial change was the creation of a new regional capital, Kolda, located along the seasonal Casamance River.29 The Weakness of Early Colonial States Bakari Demba Baldeh, a descendant of Musa Molo, has said that his ancestor’s government “knew no peace, only war,” and a variety of others have suggested that Musa’s government was in many ways more harmful than those of the Portuguese, French and British.30 The colonial governments of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea indeed had limited resources, and thus were not able to transform everyday life and movement as much as they would have liked. Migration and mobility increased during the early colonial period, as weak colonial states created a degree of stability that had been lacking during Musa’s reign, while remaining 29 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 41. On chiefs, see Sow, “Mutations Politiques,” 108-9. On Kolda’s creation, ANS 1G343: “Monographie de la Casamance,” 93–96. 30 Interviews with Bakari Demba Baldeh, Sankuli Kunda, The Gambia, July 23, 2017; with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017; El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017; Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017; Souleymane Saidy, Alassan Mbaye and Doro Sy, Sare Bojo Medina Mbaye, The Gambia, July 19, 2017; and Samba Jamankah, Sare Njobo, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 125 unable to control borders in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, the colonial powers also enacted their own harsh taxation, forced labor and military conscription policies. The abolition of slavery, long publicly considered crucial to the colonizing mission, did not occur until the twentieth century in large parts of southern Senegambia. A 1900 agreement between Musa and the British outlawed the sale and trafficking of the enslaved, but not their ownership. When Musa arrived in the Gambia in 1903, as noted above, he brought enslaved persons with him—and the authorities there allowed him to keep them.31 De la Roncière wrote in 1905 that he was scared to leave the region, in case “during my absence an event occurs which I cannot ward off.”32 In each colony, very little could be done during the lengthy rainy season, when great swathes of territory became impassable.33 The Gambia was considered by the British a “secondary” colony “without a future”; the implied answer to the question asked of all colonies—“will it pay?”—was a resounding “no.” Its entire eastern half featured only one school. The Travelling Commissioners responsible for the administration of the South Bank and Upper River Provinces were too often away in Bathurst or on home leave to be effective, and even when they were in the provinces in question, they preferred to stay inside their residences.34 The situation was not much different in southern Senegal, where officials wrote of the need to “resolve the problem of the marginality of the Casamance.”35 Further 31 Gambia Annual Report 1901. Many of the descendants of these enslaved persons still live in Gambia. Interview with Tacko Jawo and Mamadou Baldeh, Sare Tala, The Gambia, July 18, 2017. For more on the lack of freedom for the enslaved under colonial rule, see Bellagamba, Ethnographie, 91–92. 32 ANS 13G377, “A.S. de Moussa Molo,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française. 33 ANS 2F7, “Au sujet du Sama,” Le resident du Firdou à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, August 10, 1903. On the rainy season difficulty, ANS 2F19, “Incident sur la Guinée,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, February 1, 1915, 34 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, May 15, 1912; Bellagamba, Ethnographie, 118. 35 ANS 11D1/214, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport mensuel, avril 1912; ANS 2F8, “A.S. du développement de l’influence française en Guinée Bissau,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, January 19, 1915; and ANS 2F8, “Utilité de la ligne,” 1914. 126 south, in Portuguese Guinea, the situation was anarchic throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century.36 By 1915, pacification campaigns allowed officials there “to glimpse” a future in which tax collection would not be arduous; but in the event, the colonizers were too few to stop internal fighting and the exactions of influential chiefs.37 Of neighboring parts of French Guinea, particularly Futa Jallon, French officials wrote, “this country has escaped us completely,” and such power as did exist was consisted of coercion and violence.38 Thus, while colonial powers exercised control in certain aspects of life, for the most part it was restricted to particular times and places. The Powerlessness of Colonial States over Borders In the early twentieth century, colonial states in southern Senegambia exercised very limited control over their peripheries, notably their borders. For those looking to evade the worst impulses and excesses of the colonizers, crossing the border meant entering a space where they were, in a sense, illegible. As colonial governments struggled to recognize who was genuinely under their control, local networks—often revolving around family ties—emerged as a defense mechanism against such efforts. Borders needed to be made real by colonial governments, which would prove challenging in the face of populations that treated them as a mere suggestion. To some extent, controlling borders was a struggle due to simple lack of knowledge of exactly where they were. Three Franco-Portuguese missions between 1887 and 1902 carried out the initial work of surveying and placing pillars along the borders between Portuguese Guinea and the French possessions of Senegal and Guinea.39 These missions all moved these borders by small amounts, although the overall sizes of each colony were generally unaffected. The 1902–3 border 36 ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, “Migration des Peulhs,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, March 31, 1908; ANS 10D4/0015, Senegal, Bureau Politique, Rapport du 2e trimester 1917. 37 ANS 2F8, “Utilité de la ligne,” 1914. 38 ANS 2G5/1, Guinée, Rapport Politique, 1er trimester, 1905, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, April 26, 1906; Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation’ in the Futa Jallon,” 44. 39 For a detailed look at these missions, see Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 119–25. 127 delimitation, for example, awarded 517 square kilometers of Portuguese-held land to the French, and an equal amount of French-held land to the Portuguese.40 Small as they were, however, such shifts often moved villages from one side of a border to the other. Villagers who thus found themselves in a new territory were often given six months to choose whether they wanted to move to return to their original side; and while making this decision, no taxes would be levied on them. A further boundary mission in 1904 resulted in France losing 10 villages to the British, but gaining 11 from the Portuguese; and two years later, an exchange of territory between French and Portuguese Guinea resulted in the French loss of the region of Badiar.41 Traditional leaders often tried to profit from this constant uncertainty regarding borders’ positions. In 1914, for example, a Fulbe chief in Senegal near the Portuguese frontier moved the boundary markers slightly to the south so that rice farms along the border would be subject to his taxation. Eventually, however, this ruse was uncovered, and the chief punished.42 Similar processes were at work across the Senegalese-Gambian border. In 1904, an agreement between the French and British modified the eastern border of the Gambia, allowing the French to acquire the riverine town of Yarboutenda. Although boundary pillars were installed, they were often far apart and difficult to see, leading British and French officials to discuss drawing lines along the border to further clarify it. Seven years later, both colonial powers sent officials to visit all parts of the border under dispute, and this resulted in the French reimbursing the British 40 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, “Travaux de délimitation et d’abonnement des Guinées française et portugaise,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, June 19, 1903 41 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, Proces-Verbal no. 7 constanant les travaux exécutés et la détermination de la frontière dans les 1er, 2ème et 3ème Secteurs; “Compte rendu des travaux de la mission Maclaud en 1904,” Le Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, August 19, 1904; ANS 7G96, Lettre no. 498, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Commandant de cercle de Kadé, October 16, 1906. 42 ANS 2F19, Telegrammes Officiels, Gouverneur de la Guinée portugaise à Governeur Général, June 21, 1914 and May 27, 1914. 128 for taxes they had collected from a village they had wrongly believed was within their territory.43 Unsurprisingly, throughout the early twentieth century, southern Senegambians were—or at least pretended to be—unsure of where the border actually was. In February 1913, a French official visited the town of Koli Kane to tell those living there that they did not live in British Gambia, as they had thought, but in French Senegal. The Governor General of French West Africa then wrote to the Governor of the Gambia asking him to clarify sovereignty over the village. The British governor wrote back to the French, claiming no knowledge of Koli Kane, but asked if they might be referring to a different town, named Gubu Ya, where people had reported being told by French officials that they were in Senegal. The Governor of the Gambia asked the French Governor General, “Can Your Excellency inform me whether the towns of Koli Kane and Gubu Ya are one and the same town?” However, due to “the irregular nature of the country,” the British official who went to survey the area could not obtain a view from pillar to pillar, and as such could form no opinion as to the alignment of the town’s boundaries. That officer therefore intimated to the headman of the town that he should move his town either to one side or to the other side of the boundary, and so remove any doubts as to which territory it was in.44 Commissioners were also told to keep villages away from the border but were not given any means to enforce this policy.45 In 1910, officials in Senegal discovered that the village of Sarré Soulo was about one kilometer inside their territory but had paid taxes for three years to a district chief in the Gambia. While the chief of the village claimed he had originally thought he was in Senegal, a representative of the Gambian chief had “reassured him that the boundary market was misplaced and there was 43 ANS 1F26, Article 5.1 de l’accord franco-anglais du 8 avril 1904; ANS1F25, Governor of Gambia to Governor General of French West Africa, July 31, 1907; ANS1F26, Telegramme official, Governeur-Général à Lieutenant- Gouverneur, May 11, 1911. 44 ANS1F27, Governor of Gambia to the Governor General of French West Africa, February 9, 1913 45 ANS 1F26, Governor of Gambia to the Governor General of French West Africa, January 30, 1911. 129 no need to take it into account.” In fact, an English census taker had already visited the village, as well as two others that were also technically in French territory.46 Given that borders were unclear even to those whose job it was to define them, it is little surprise that they were regularly transgressed. At the center of colonial border policy was an attempt to restructure trade networks to fill governmental coffers. For example, by following precolonial routes, goods from French colonies—notably from Futa Jallon and the Upper Casamance—could travel much more easily to Portuguese Guinea’s ports than to French ones; and the Gambia, with its easy access downriver to the Atlantic Ocean, also provided a crucial outlet for products from the Upper Casamance. For this reason, the French aspired to “definitively liberate the hinterland of French Guinea and the Upper Casamance of all vassalage vis-à-vis Portuguese Guinea” that had arisen due to the latter colony’s superior coastal access.47 Robert Arnaud, a French Islamicist, wrote that the situation in the Casamance was “particularly delicate.” The reason for was that it was “not a natural dependency of Senegal […] but a true French enclave well isolated from the rest of our possessions between two foreign colonies and wild or desert regions; it has no natural boundaries, and although rich, is much less economically endowed than the Gambia and the Portuguese zone.” In contrast to the Gambia and Cacheu Rivers to its north and south respectively, the Casamance River was shallow and barely navigable to Kolda even in the rainiest of rainy seasons. Arnaud described French fears that the Casamance would “depopulate itself for the benefit of neighboring possessions,” but 46 ANS 1F26, Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance au Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal, July 31, 1910. 47 ANS 2F8, “A.S. du développement de l’influence française en Guinée Bissau,” Le Gouverneur Général de de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, January 19, 1915. 130 argued that such fears had proved unfounded because of the lack of available arable land in the Gambia, and political anarchy in Portuguese Guinea.48 The economy of the Upper Casamance, meanwhile, was “almost completely in the hands of the trading posts of English Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, trading posts which are dependent on French companies.”49 Despite colonial efforts to reshape trade routes within colonies, simple geographic logic along with weak border enforcement led to a continuation of trade routes from the Upper Casamance and Futa Jallon to the Portuguese Guinean coast, and from parts of the Upper Casamance north to the Gambia River. And the French failure to build a railroad in the Casamance to connect regions of agricultural production to the coast led to the further marginalization of Upper Casamance within Senegal. In Portuguese Guinea, on the other hand, French economic influence was so dominant that in the Oio Region in 1913, taxes were collected in French francs, not Portuguese currency. In the eastern part of the same colony, rural areas were not connected to coastal urban markets, but through trade across the borders with Senegal and French Guinea.50 Cross-border connections drove further wedges between these outlying regions and their colonial capitals, feeding a vicious cycle of underinvestment in areas deemed less integrated into their colonies. The Social Life of the Borderlands Given the interconnected nature of the broader Fulbe region extending from the Gambia River south toward the rivers of eastern Portuguese Guinea, cross-border family, social and political relationships predated colonial rule. Family relationships further developed during the 48 ANS 13G379, Robert Arnaud, “Mission Robert Arnaud en Casamance: Études des questions musulmanes,” July 1, 1908. 49 Legrand, “Le Fouladou,” 249–50. 50 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 165–67. 131 colonial era, however, as many found it advantageous to participate in trans-colonial activities.51 In other words, migration and mobility were often responses to political and economic conditions within each colony, but also could result from a person’s search for better farm and pastureland, or simply a desire to strike out on his or her own. Particularly in the Gambia, where space was at a premium, many crossed into Senegal to take advantage of the abundance of unoccupied land.52 Mobility was a crucial part of early colonial life, both within and across colonies. Migrants from neighboring Portuguese Guinea and the Gambia who came to Senegal regularly founded villages there in the first two decades of the twentieth century.53 French officials complained that the location of the border was too convenient for the groups who lived alongside it, “because it allows them to pass according to the interest of the moment to one side or the other.” They also claimed that Portuguese Guinea was growing in population because it was “administered according to methods that left the natives [of neighboring colonies] a liberty and an independence that they do not have at home.” Lastly, they said, “By providing the natives the possibility of evading our action by moving a few kilometers, it renders ineffective many measures of general interest in neighboring territories.”54 When asked why all this movement occurred, Amadou Balde replied, “Some people prefer different land, some land is better.”55 Large numbers of people fled Futa Jallon for neighboring colonies: to Senegal in 1905, and in 1907–8 to Portuguese Guinea and Sierra Leone. In this case, migration was a tool to lessen population pressure, as Futa Jallon was comparatively overpopulated 51 Interviews with Alpha Mballo, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017; Moussa Bayo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017; and Keba Tambedo, Sare Abdou, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 52 Interviews with Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 26, 2017; and Cherno Kandeh, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017. 53 ANS 2G4/40, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport politique, avril 1904, 1. 54 ANS 2F10, “Déserters et insoumis,” Administrateur de France en Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, November 19, 1918. 55 Interview with Amadou Balde, Mama Samba Balde and Abdoulaye Diallo, Sare Sandiong, Senegal, January 19, 2017. 132 and the soil was much less fertile than in neighboring colonies.56 In general, migration—in whatever direction—was motivated by the feeling that life could be better on the other side of the border.57 Migration did not just occur within southern Senegambia and Futa Jallon, as many arrived from northern and central Senegal, French Sudan (Mali), or even Mauritania.58 While migration could, and did, proceed in any number of different directions, some of its currents were stronger than others. The Futa Jallon highlands, a place not only of poor soil and overpopulation, but also the home to a particularly unforgiving system of colonial rule, saw very few arrive, while large numbers of Fulbe left it for other colonies to the north, west, and south.59 Religion was another important, if often overlooked, reason for people to migrate across borders. The early twentieth century saw large-scale migration from Portuguese Guinea to southern Senegal, notably including a growing religious community at Nioro founded by the cleric Cherif Bekkai, who had previously operated in the Gambia for a considerable time.60 While most people in the region were not yet Muslim, Islamic networks extended across borders, connecting members of that religious community across the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese and French Guinea. In the Gambia as a whole, the population increased by 62 percent between 1901 and 1911, for the most part due to migration. Most of the incomers came from Senegal, although others arrived from Portuguese and French Guinea and French Sudan. The sharpest rise occurred on the 56 ANS 7G60, Guinée française, Cercle de Labé, Rapport politique du mois de septembre 1905, “Exode d’habitants”; ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, “Guinée française: Exode des indigenes,” L’Inspecteur des Finances, July 4, 1907, Ministre des Colonies au Gouverneur General de l’A.O.F., January 31, 1908; ANS 2G19/6, Guinée, Rapport politique, 2ème trimester 1919. 57 ANS 2G19/6, Guinée, Rapport politique, 4ème trimester, 1919; Interview with Bakary Cissoko, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017. 58 Interviews with Ibrahima Diaby, Timindalla, Senegal, March 1, 2017; Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017; Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017; Bakari Djana, Gêba, Guinea-Bissau, April 22, 2017; Alhaji Gumanneh, Kessemah Samoreh and Abdoulie Gumanneh, Koina, The Gambia, July 13, 2017; Modou Sao, Sinchu Alagi, The Gambia, July 22, 2017; Alet Mballow, Tacko Mballow, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017; Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 26, 2017; and Cherno Kandeh, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017. 59 Interview with El Hadji Saikou Bah, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 60 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, janvier 1913, 1. 133 Gambia’s eastern edge, in the Upper River Province, whose population increased by 109 percent, from 13,232 to 27,604, over the same period.61 Yet, it was not only in the Gambia that officials actively fomented suitable conditions for immigration, on the assumption that doing so would broaden their tax base. With mixed success, colonial regimes at times attempted to entice migrants to farm in particular areas by offering them land and peanut seeds.62 De la Roncière argued that by not disturbing the people of the region, they could grow the population threefold.63 By contrast, in Koumbia in northwestern French Guinea, the population declined by 22 percent between 1912 and 1919, as migration to Portuguese Guinea and Senegal became increasingly common.64 While such statistics can provide the broad outlines of permanent migrations, however, they fail to capture how mobility across borders was an integral part of daily life, even or perhaps especially for people whose homes remained within one colony. Borderland residents who lived close to a border used the other side for a variety of everyday uses. For instance, Senegal’s Kantora district, in the northeast of Kolda, was isolated from any Senegalese market, but close to important British-controlled ones along the Gambia River. And for parts of Senegal and French Guinea near the intersection of both colonies’ borders with Portuguese Guinea, isolation from the rest of their own colonies’ economic networks was counterbalanced by fairly close integration into commercial markets in Portuguese territory.65 For some, it was the need for herds that led to border-crossing. In 1911, a herder named Boidu Ka ran into some trouble crossing the Gambia-Senegal border with his cattle, and filed a complaint with the French, alleging that there was “a right of grazing, required by means of 61 ANS 1F12, Rapport Consulaire sur la Gambia Anglaise, partie confidentielle, May 16, 1912. 62 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel, avril 1913, 1. 63 ANS 1G295, Charles de la Roncière, “Travail d’hivernage, Historique du Fouladou”, 1904. 64 ANS 2G19/6, Guinée, Rapport politique, 3ème trimester, 1919 65 ANS 11D1/214, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport mensuel, avril 1914; ANS 2F8, “A.S. du développement de l’influence française en Guinée Bissau,” Le Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, January 19, 1915. 134 reciprocity, for the residents of the British Gambia whose herds stay in French territory.” The Governor General of French West Africa, William Ponty, wrote to the relevant regional official to confirm that this reciprocal right to cross the border in search of pastureland indeed applied to all of southern Senegal, but made sure to point out that individuals who availed themselves of that right should pay taxes on their herds, like residents of Senegal did.66 Opportunities for Freedom Enslavement and emancipation were also cross-border processes. In June 1909, a man named Sara Ba crossed into Senegal from the Gambia, along with his wife, child, and four others. A French official wrote that all of them “are former captives who left the English territory to free themselves from the servitude to which they were subjected.” Sara Ba had been enslaved by Demba Jabbu Bah for 25 years, and after Demba’s death, he demanded to be freed. But Sara, along with his family, became the property of Demba’s son, at which point they came to know the four others with whom they would later flee the Gambia.67 In French Guinea, where slavery was particularly common and distinctions between the status of “free” and “enslaved” peoples were more marked than elsewhere, many sought to emigrate as a means of improving their lot in life. Many masters sought to restrict the movement of those they had formerly enslaved, but as one report shows, this did not work: Unfortunately, the claims of the Fulbe, who tried to preserve and exercise all their old rights, have created in many ways acute conflicts that lead to the flight of servants. This is only somewhat bad when the servants go, like those of the cercle of Timbo, towards Ouassoulou, Sankaran, Kouranko. But those of the cercles of Kadé, Labé, Yambéring, almost all originally from Gabú [in Portuguese Guinea], have a tendency to emigrate to British Gambia or Portuguese Guinea.68 66 ANS 1F26, Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Résident du Niani-Ouli, June 1, 1911. 67 ANS 1F14, Administrateur du cercle du Sine-Saloum au Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal, September 22, 1909. 68 ANS 2G9/13, Guinée, Rapport Politique, 2ème trimester, 1909, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, July 30, 1909. For unknown reasons, this section was cut out of the report sent from the Governor General of French West Africa to the Minister of Colonies in Paris. 135 The departure of the formerly enslaved was not just a problem of sheer population numbers, but also of skills: the enslaved had driven agricultural production in precolonial Futa Jallon, and French officials feared that food production would be decimated upon their departure. As such, they hoped to find some strategy to induce formerly enslaved persons to farm in Futa Jallon.69 Freedom was a relative concept, as many who had been enslaved found themselves continuing in relations of dependency.70 There was a difference between the end of slavery as a legal category and as a social one.71 In the aftermath of abolition, many took advantage of increased mobility or used colonial structures like courts to search for greater autonomy in place where their status would prove less burdensome. Enslaved individuals who were able to reach other colonies, including other French ones such as Senegal, could establish their independence both legally and practically. After Musa Molo took those he had enslaved to the Gambia, 600 of them ran away and made it back to Senegal within one year.72 To many who were enslaved, the idea of freedom took on increasing importance with crossing the border representing liberation.73 The French Guinean chief Alfa Yaya, former ruler of the Labé province of Futa Jallon, fled to Portuguese territory in late 1905 after falling out with the French, bringing with him a vast retinue of people. Three months later, 12,000 people formerly enslaved by Alfa Yaya appealed to the French for protection upon returning from Portuguese Guinea, fearing that Alfa Yaya’s underlings would prey upon them. However, crossing the border did not necessarily always mean one could not be sent back. In 1916, a district chief 69 ANS 2G9/13, Guinée, Rapport Politique, 2ème trimester, 1909, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, July 30, 1909. 70 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Context of African Abolition,” in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 499. 71 Miers and Roberts, The End of Slavery in Africa, 48. 72 ANS 2G4/40, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport politique mensuel, avril 1904, 1. 73 This is in many ways similar to the boundary crossing of enslaved individuals in the United States during the decades leading up to and during the Civil War. 136 (chef de canton) in Kolda, Daba Baldé, sent back enslaved persons who had fled from the Gambia to Senegal in exchange for payment. Others who were enslaved did not seek mere legal emancipation, but true independence from their former masters, having seen many who were emancipated end up trapped in relationships of dependency that closely resembled their previous circumstances. As a result, many formerly enslaved persons left not just for other colonies, but for rural areas far from centers of power.74 The abolition of slavery did not always mean legal or even practical emancipation, and thus mobility was a crucial tool for the formerly enslaved.75 Former masters migrated as well. In the Koumbia district in the northwestern corner of French Guinea, many formerly enslaved crossed borders looking for land and other new opportunities; but their Fulbe rimbe former enslavers, “deprived not only of their manpower but of a part of their cultivable lands,” did the same, leaving for Portuguese Guinea or southern Senegal in search of better living conditions.76 This phenomenon was particularly common in Futa Jallon, where hierarchies had been strongest and changed drastically. As one French report from 1907 explained, “Little by little, groups of Fulbe or Malinkes, seeing themselves no longer masters of their property, leave the country, approaching the borders and passing to Sierra Leone or Portuguese Guinea.”77 For many Fulbe rimbe, French rule had radically changed their former way of life, which revolved in large part around slavery and social hierarchy. Colonialism created a world of new opportunities for marginalized populations, while at the same time reducing the Fulbe rimbe’s scope for exploiting them.78 Slavery in Futa Jallon had restricted the mobility of 74 ANS 2G30/87, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1930; ANS 7G87, “Rapport de tournée sur la situation politiques des cercles de Matou, Ditinn, Labe, Pita, Telimele, Boke, Boffa et Dubreka,” 1911. 75 Miers and Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa; Suzanne Miers and Martin A. Klein (eds.), Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa (Portland: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999); and Klein, Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa (on the importance of mobility, Chapter 10 on the Banamba exodus is particular important). 76 ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, Le Commissaire du Gouvernement près la Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale au Ministre des Colonies, November 19, 1907. 77 Ibid. 78 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 105. 137 large numbers of people, who in the early twentieth century began to move north and west, incorporating themselves into new communities and asserting control over where they chose to live. Formerly enslaved men and women and Fulbe women more broadly used the rhetoric of colonial rule to demand better conditions for themselves, to gain autonomy both in their work and at home.79 However, poorly policed colonial boundaries also facilitated slave trading between colonies. In one case, two formerly enslaved men from Futa Jallon went to Senegal and returned with certificates acknowledging their freedom, at which point they began buying and selling people themselves, kidnapping or buying individuals in Portuguese Guinea and southern Senegal and returning to French Guinea to sell them. Therefore, while freeing oneself had immense personal value, it did not always correspond with the idea that all people should be free. Borders could be used to gain one’s freedom but could also be used to sell people into slavery on the other side of the border. Cases of slave dealing across both the Senegalese-Gambian and Senegalese- Portuguese Guinean borders were reported as late as 1913.80 Women at times used the border to gain freedom from a variety of circumstances they were unhappy with. In one example, the wife of Tamba Sané, from the village of Kokoum, fled Senegal for the Gambia to live with another man, Balandin Sagna, and brought the five children from her marriage to Sané. Soon after, the French reported, Tamba Sané and the notables of Kokoum presented themselves at Balandin’s place to demand the family in question; but he [Balandin] has categorically refused to return them […] Tamba Sané offered to leave her with him, on the condition that his children be returned; Balandin also refused this second proposal.81 79 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 106–7, 110. Straussberger points out that some women gained greater degree of independence in markets and at home, a fact lamented in recorded Pulaar poetry of the time. 80 ANS 7G60, Guiné, Cercle de Touba, Rapport politique no. 7, juillet 1905, August 18, 1905. 81 ANS 1F27, “Compte-Rendu au sujet des reclamations des indigenes habitant le territoire francais contre des chefs de province anglais,” L’Administrateur Supérieur, June 9, 1914. Tamba Sané’s wife was unnamed in these letters, perhaps reflecting the feelings of colonial officers on the place of women in the household. 138 Though it is unclear how many women were able to take advantage of strategies like this, borders represented tools for those striving for greater autonomy and freedom in a period where social relations were shifting. The imposition of borders did not create those ideas, as many moved within colonies as well. However, borders represented an important tool that many could use to change their circumstances. This also applied to those accused of crimes. On September 10, 1905, a Fulbe man of noble descent, Demba Ba, then living in Senegal, was accused of having committed adultery in Portuguese Guinea with “an old captive with white hair,” a mother of four. He went to the nearby town of Panambo, capital of the Sankolla district, to deny the charge, but was jailed in chains without trial at the home of the chief of Sankolla. Six days later, a guard pointed out to the chief that “Demba Ba’s legs are swollen immeasurably and that he could die if he was kept in chains.” Demba Ba was then released from his shackles, which made it easy for him to run away and return to Senegal.82 Accused thieves are also known to have crossed the region’s borders to avoid justice.83 Colonial regimes believed their lack of border control threatened their sovereignty, but they were not willing to expend the resources necessary to restrict or control movement.84 Political Rivalries and Migration Despite colonial aspirations to full control, local chiefs found themselves with relatively high levels of autonomy, and the methods they used to manage their territory exhibited considerable continuity with precolonial practices. Commonplace rivalries—as between the followers of the chief of Portuguese Sama and those across the border in French Senegal, or the dynastic wars between Monjur of Portuguese Gabú and his cousin Alarba—also simply 82 ANS 2F18, Le Résident du Firdou à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, October 19, 1905. 83 ANS 13G377, “A.S. des exactions commisses par Fanta chef de la province du Guimara,” L’Administrateur du Cercle de Kolda à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, November 23, 1914. 84 Mbembe, On the Postcolony, 13. 139 continued.85 However, these rivalries and conflicts were only tolerated if they did not greatly upset the balance sheets of colonial states. In August 1907, an important chief in the east of Portuguese Guinea, Falli Sanko, burned the village of Bassoum and killed its chief. The Portuguese commandant in the region, based in Bafatá, recruited an army to capture Falli Sanko. Sanko then defeated the Portuguese forces and drove all the Europeans out of the town of Bambadinca, which he then burned, including the home of the Portuguese resident, leaving only the guarded trading houses intact. Several months later, the Lieutenant Governor of French Guinea wrote to his superior in Dakar that every chief in the neighboring Portuguese colony was “in open revolt.” By November, only two chiefs remained loyal to the Portuguese, and many crossed the border from French Guinea to support Falli Sanko’s cause. Monjur, who ruled all of Gabú, sent some men to assist the Portuguese, and eventually Falli Sanko was defeated.86 The Guinean Fulbe chief Alfa Yaya held territory in what was to become both French and Portuguese Guinea, and his ensuing cross-border territorial control resembled that of Musa Molo. However, he surrendered this transnational status when he allied himself closely with the French and not with the Portuguese. But this did not stop the French from stripping him of his title as administrator of Labé, the largest province of French Guinea’s Futa Jallon region, in 1905—at which point he tried to set up a meeting with the commander in Geba, Portuguese Guinea.87 Alfa Yaya was also upset because the French were about to hand a part of his territory over to the 85 ANS 2F18, Le Gouverneur de la Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, December 2, 1906; ANS 2G10/41, Résidence de Kolda, Rapports mensuel, mars 1910, 1. 86 ANS 2G7/12, Rapport politique, 4ème trimestre, 1907, Guinée à A.O.F., Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, January 20, 1908, Lettre adressées de Kadé à l’Agent de la COFCA à Boké, December 1, 1907 and November 1, 1907. 87 ANS 7G96, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française à Alfa-Yaya Chef du Diwal de Labé, March 25, 1905; Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur-Général, “Envoi de l’original du procès-verbal d’échange des territoires à la frontière franco-portugaise,” No. 1154A, October 24, 1905; Lettre no. 498, Lieutenant- Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Commandant de cercle de Kadé, October 16, 1906; Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur-Général, “A.S. des chefs du Labé et du Massi,” October 25, 1905. 140 Portuguese. Hearing of these dalliances, the Lieutenant Governor of Guinea wrote that Alfa Yaya needed to be punished for “having one last time tried to bond with Portuguese interests against us.” The very next day, Alfa Yaya crossed the border along with a part of his herd and a number of followers. Although the Lieutenant Governor conceded that some people loyal to the departing chief would “leave our colony to take refuge in Portuguese Guinea,” he said was not bothered by this, because they “press the populations and ruin them to the detriment of our interests.” While Alfa Yaya sought to use borders for his own purposes, his success in this area was not strong, and in he was eventually deported to Benin, staying there until 1910.88 Even after Musa Molo fled to the Gambia, his family retained considerable influence in Senegal, and he himself continued to make marriage alliances with former followers in French territory. He had a bad relationship with his oldest son, stemming in large part from the fact that Musa had sold his mother, who was enslaved, to someone who took her to the part of Senegal north of the Gambia. This son later fled to the Gambia in 1915, fearing arrest. Both the French and the Portuguese feared the former king’s return, believing he would destabilize their rule. Before eventually being deported to Sierra Leone in 1919, Musa continued many of his old tricks in the Gambia. One Senegalese chief, Paté Cotto, left for the Gambia because the French were monitoring his behavior, but came back to Senegal a month later after he “had to suffer many insults from Musa Molo.”89 Political life in the borderlands was fluid, not least because Musa had 88 ANS 7G96, “Envoi de l’original du procès-verbal d’échange des territoires à la frontière franco-portugaise,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur-Général, October 24, 1905; “A.S. des chefs du Labé et du Massi,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur-Général, October 25, 1905. On Alfa Yaya’s deportation, Carpenter notes that while in Dahomey, he received an annual stipend from the Guinean government and “received a warm welcome from Muslim communities throughout the colony.” Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 64. 89 ANS13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 7. French and Portuguese fears are discussed in ANS 1F27, “Rapport Politique du Senegal, 1er trimestre 1914,” May 9, 1914. Sow discusses marriages alliances, Sow, 122. Musa would return to the Gambia in 1923. See Alice Bellagamba, “‘Such a Generous Chief, Even Vultures Would Follow Him’: Colonial Rule and Political Traditions along the River 141 spent much of the late nineteenth century playing the French, British and Portuguese against each other; and borders became tools for those unhappy with the political currents of the moment. One unsuccessful candidate for chief of the town of Dabo left for the Gambia, so upset was he about this loss.90 On the other hand, some of the political leaders in Senegal who had come from Portuguese Gabú to support Musa, and been installed at the head of provinces, continued to rule under the French after Musa’s departure.91 Unlike the Lower Casamance in the southwest corner of Senegal, the Upper Casamance (Fuladu) exhibited what Bayart has referred to as the “exit option”, as–through their migrations– Fulbe people attempted to limit their interactions with colonial states.92 In the Upper Casamance, unlike Lower Casamance where the revolts against colonial authority had been the most violent, the tactic was quite different. The strategy of defiance […] was not expressed by an armed uprising against the colonial authority; it was made by a boycott of tax payments and by emigration. Local leaders sometimes played on the rivalries between the English, French and Portuguese authorities.93 The weakness of colonial regimes, especially in borderlands far from centers of colonial power, made this defiance possible. In many cases, the early period of colonial rule was marked by its impotence. To all the colonizers’ requests for services from Futa Jallon, one official wrote in 1906, “the exasperated population responded by force of inertia or by a formal refusal of obedience: refusal to supply workers for the railway; refusal to provide porters for caravans; refusal to sell oxen; refusal to create rubber reserves.”94 Despite this ability by people to mitigate some aspects of their new lives as colonial subjects, the early period of colonial rule was, for many, just as cruel Gambia,” Mande Studies 3 (2001): 201–24. On Musa and Paté Cotto, ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, août 1913, 1. 90 ANS 11D1/214, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport mensuel, mai 1912. 91 ANS 2F7, “A.S. de Yero Ding de Sama,” Le Résident du Firdou à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, July 26, 1903. 92 Bayart, The State in Africa, 256–59 93 Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 118. 94 ANS 7G85, “A.S. de la situation politique du Fouta Djallon,” July 10, 1906, 12. 142 and exploitative as the precolonial era. The primary difference was that populations in the region were better equipped to evade the gaze of colonial states than that of rulers like Musa Molo and Alfa Yaya. In Futa Jallon, both French and Fulbe rule “emphasized excessive exploitation and violence.”95 In 1906, more than 10,000 people left just one French Guinean district, the cercle of Timbo, for Portuguese Guinea and British Sierra Leone to avoid paying taxes. However, this led to higher taxation of those who had stayed behind in Timbo, given that the tax amount the French demanded from it was fixed, and based on its full pre-emigration population. This proved so disastrous that the Commissioner of the Bank of West Africa speculated that a large part of the cercle “is ruined for ten years.” The sheer amount of tax was only part of the problem, however; one of the primary complaints of the people of French Guinea was that, while monetary taxation there was similar to that in Portuguese Guinea, forced labor was used year round, and “under threat of prison.”96 Colonial governments constantly needed to balance their demands against the need to attract and retain populations, but often it was the demands that won out, since there was little value in a larger population if taxes were low and labor demands minimal. The British in the Gambia, with minimal personnel, a small population, and a precarious geographic position, tended to focus on population-attraction more than other colonial regimes did. A British report pointed out in 1901 that, in the wake of the recent imposition of British rule in the eastern part of the colony, The difficult question will be that of labour […] [but] many people will be tempted to come when they find out that under British protection they are not required to pay exorbitant taxes, are subject only to humane and just punishments for any offences they may commit, and are allowed to reap the full benefit of their labours.97 95 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 69. 96 ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, “Extrait du Rapport du 19 juin du Commissaire du Gouvernement près la banque de l’Afrique occidentale sur la situation et les opérations de la Banque,” May 10, 1907. 97 Gambia Annual Report 1901, 30. 143 Though this sentiment was exaggerated, colonial governance tended to be less exacting in the Gambia. Toward the end of World War I, the chief of Portuguese Kolla sent his nephew across the border to Senegal, to explain to the indigènes of French territory that they could safely pass to Portuguese Guinea, that there would be no recruitment and that the authorities would work to facilitate their installation. Arfan Kandé [the chief’s nephew] has even threatened to arrest anyone who comes to Portuguese territory in order to bring back the defectors.98 Due to Kandé’s efforts, about 150 people moved to French territory.99 These border dynamics and negotiations were constantly at the center of efforts by local chiefs and colonial regimes to increase their populations. The naming of new chiefs could also lead to flight, and as a result, local opinion was often courted before such appointments were made. The administrator Vasco de Sousa Calvert de Magalhães explained that “[i]n small territories there is no difficulty in appointing the rulers, but in an important territory like Gabú […] the appointment of a ruler that is not the will of the people will bring serious complications and the flight of many people of the territory.” There was also inherent danger in naming a chief of a different ethnicity than the people of the region, as many did move in response.100 The grandparents of Sadiou Cissé left Senegal for Portuguese Guinea along with many others from their community because of problems with their chief. A few years later, finding themselves in new difficulties involving their new chief, they returned to Senegal, but settled in a different district than before.101 The decision to migrate for political reasons was not an easy one, but it was often facilitated by physical proximity to the border: the easier it was 98 ANS 2F10, No. 265, Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance au Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal, May 20, 1918. 99 Ibid. 100 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 81–82.; ANS 2G9/13, Rapport politique, 4ème trimestre 1909, January 28, 1910. 101 Interview with Sadiou Cissé, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017. 144 for them to move, the more likely people were to display their discontent by crossing into another district or colony. In 1905–6 in Timbo, animosity toward local chiefs led to migration out of the district. As one French official noted, “the causes of discontent must be very deep,” because people vacated their villages in large numbers, taking their herds with them and abandoning their regular fields. This exodus was so comprehensive that “some districts, depopulated for several years, were abandoned without cultivation, [and] fell back to the wild.”102 People often went to neighboring districts, but many others left the colony entirely, heading to the Gambia, Senegal, Portuguese Guinea, or even Sierra Leone. Even today, people throughout the region remember stories of their parents and grandparents moving between districts to escape noteworthy chiefs.103 For some, however, it was the loss of power of their own chiefs that led to movement: as when, after Alfa Yaya fled from French Guinea to Portuguese Guinea, he brought thousands of his followers with him. Almost a decade later, the administrator of Geba remarked, “All the important men of Futa, or at least the majority, are today in Portuguese Guinea.” However, many of the “less important” men, women and children continued to return to their former villages, a few at a time, from Portuguese Guinea in the years that followed.104 While as we have seen, some colonies or districts were known for demanding less of their residents than others, migration occurred in all directions. Many preferred to live in the Gambia rather than Senegal, as in the former, military recruitment was non-existent and forced-labor projects—especially in the early 1900s—were rarer. Taxation also tended to be lower in the 102 ANS 7G85, “A.S. de la situation politique du Fouta Djallon,” July 10, 1906, 3. 103 On movement between districts and different colonies due to political reasons, see ANS 2G7/12, Guinée Française, Rapport politique, 3ème trimester, 1907, October 12, 1907, as well as interviews with Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017; and El Hadji Saikou Bah, Basse Santa Su, Gambia, July 17, 2017. 104 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 81; ANS 7G96, “A.S. des serviteurs de l’ancien chef du Labé,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., January 24, 1906. 145 Gambia, in part because British officials knew that huge swathes of their population could easily decamp to Senegal if this were to change. French and Portuguese Guinea were both known for particularly cruel and unpredictable regimes, which often demanded large amounts of labor or burdensome taxes at short notice. Nevertheless, French Guinea, along with Senegal, often benefitted from the lack of political control in Portuguese Guinea, where both colonial administrators and local chiefs struggled to manage the population peacefully.105 Rule in Portuguese Guinea was decentralized and frequently relied on the strength of individual chiefs; and until the completion of military pacification in the 1910s, the colony remained under the control of local chiefs with little loyalty to the Portuguese.106 As one official in French Guinea pointed out in 1908, “We are beginning to benefit to a large extent from the state of anarchy in which Portuguese Guinea is struggling, and which encourages many of the inhabitants of frontier districts to pass into our neighboring districts, principally those of Boké and Kadé.”107 Given the often-large movements out of French Guinea, officials were pleased to see people arriving in the colony, and local administrators were given instructions to promote this movement alongside other immigration. Meanwhile, Portuguese Guinea’s “state of anarchy” was in part caused by its status as a place of refuge for all sorts of troublemakers from nearby French colonies.108 In Senegal, where colonial rule was stronger and more effective at exacting labor and taxation from the population, many looked to the Gambia as an easily accessible place of refuge. A 1913 French report touched on the difficulties this created: “The small territory of the Gambia, 105 ANS 10D4/0015, Senegal, Bureau Politique, Rapport du 2e trimester 1917. 106 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 102–23. 107 ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, “Migration des Peulhs,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, March 31, 1908. 108 ANS 2F10, “Déserteurs et insoumis,” Vice-Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Gouveneur Général. de l’A.O.F., November 19, 1918. 146 landlocked in our possessions, is in the eyes of our native citizens a sort of place of asylum in which they hope to escape the administrative or judicial pursuits against them”; or, as Sow succinctly put it, “the refuge of agitators.”109 The French were particularly upset that the British refused to extradite Musa Molo, and that he was “even invested with a small command.”110 In reality, however, the Gambia was not a refuge merely for agitators, but for anyone who found the political situation in Senegal unappealing. Evading Forced Labor and Taxation Given the limited administrative staffs and budgets of most colonial governments, any building projects needed to be accomplished with through forced labor, known in French since medieval times as the corvée. The French, Portuguese and British presented such labor as being for the greater good, as it would bring about better roads, schools, and health facilities for all. Irrespective of their presumed positive socioeconomic purposes, however, calls to do unpaid work were typically poorly received by local populations, especially when they were not given food or shelter, and forced to work far from home on backbreaking road building projects.111 Indeed, escaping forced labor was an important reason that many people migrated, whether just for the period of labor recruitment or a longer span of time.112 Nevertheless, French officials rejected such claims, saying, “The noise […] of an emigration of farmers caused by ‘excessive corvée’ is unfounded. No corvée was imposed on the natives, no more in Kolda than in the other districts of 109 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/IV/70, “Considerations sur un échange éventuel des droits de la France aux Nouvelles Hébrides contre la cession de la Gambie Anglaise,” 1913; Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 123. 110 ANOM FM/SG/AFRIQUE/IV/70, “Considerations sur un échange éventuel des droits de la France aux Nouvelles Hébrides contre la cession de la Gambie Anglaise,” 1913 111 For a perspective on forced labor in colonial Portuguese Guinea that starts at the end of this period, Philip Havik, “Estradas sem fim: o trabalho forçado e a ‘política indígena’ na Guiné (1915–1945),” in Centro de Estudos Africanos da Universidade do Porto, Trabalho forçado africano – experiências coloniais comparadas (Porto: Campo das Letra, 2006): 229–47. For forced labor in Senegal, Babacar Fall, Le travail forcé en Afrique-Occidentale française, 1900–1946 (Paris: Karthala, 1993); and Romain Tiguet, Travail force et mobilisation de la main-d’oeuvre au Sénégal, années 1920–1960 (Rennes: Presses universitaire de Rennes, 2019). 112 Interview with Abdulai Ba and Armando Abdulai Balde, Canhamina, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 147 Casamance. The few natives who emigrated at the time of recruitment operations have almost all returned to their villages.”113 In 1907, Fulbe from Timbo in French Guinea fled to Sierra Leone or neighboring districts to avoid forced labor on a railroad through the region. The French were not worried that this exodus was permanent, however, believing that as soon as the railroad was finished, “it is certain that […] a large number of natives, if not all, will return to their country of origin, attracted by faster routes of communication [and] new transport facilities, and the towns will reform with the commercial centers created along the railway line.”114 Yet, despite French hopes, young men of working age continued to leave the colony, and requisitioning 3,000 workers was a challenge. The French request arrived at a particularly difficult moment, as the government had issued a recent decree regulating slavery and, for the most part, freeing the enslaved.115 Enslaved populations had previously provided most of the necessary labor for projects in Futa Jallon, and this made them easy targets for chiefs in the period after abolition. As a result, Fulbe of enslaved descent had even more incentive to move than other Fulbe did, knowing that they would be the first in line to do unpaid work on behalf of the French. Much like forced labor, taxation was an important driver of migration during the early colonial period. In 1904, the Portuguese quadrupled the hut tax, from 2.50 to 10 francs per person. Many complained about this increase and threatened to cross the border to Senegal if it was enacted.116 Taxation was an important part of the precolonial landscape, and traditional rulers in the region had long collected taxes. However, their taxes were collected not in cash, but in goods. 113 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, novembre 1913, 30. 114 ANS 2G7/12, Rapport politique, 3ème trimestre, September 25, 1907, Guinée à A.O.F., Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, 115 ANOM FM/SG/GIN/VII/6, Commissaire du Gouvernement près la Banque de l’Afrique Occidentale au Ministre des Colonies, November 19, 1907. Enslaved persons or those of enslaved descent were also much more likely to end up conscripted into the military in French West Africa during World War I. See Andrew F. Clark, “‘The Ties that Bind’: Servility and Dependency among the Fulbe of Bundu (Senegambia), c. 1930s to 1980s,” in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, 91–108. 116 ANS 2G4/40, Résidence d’Hamdallahi, Rapport politique mensuel, septembre 1904. 148 In much of what would become Portuguese Guinea, for instance, precolonial taxes were typically paid with a locally produced fabric known as leppi; and elsewhere in that colony and in French Guinea, taxpayers were required to provide a certain quantity of rubber.117 Taxes in Senegal led to migration to the Gambia, while taxes in French Guinea led to migration to Portuguese Guinea and Senegal. Near Senegal’s border with Portuguese Guinea, colonial officials fretted about the raising of taxes, believing it might slow immigration. Often, taxes were so high that people had to sell livestock to pay them, making them especially unpopular in societies with large proportions of herders.118 The founding of new villages near borders led to challenges in tax collection. During a visit to the border with the Gambia in 1910, the Administrator of Kolda noticed many villages just inside Senegal that people had moved to years before to avoid paying taxes in the Gambia. In 1907 and 1908, the Gambian district of Jalaba saw part of its population cross the border and construct two new villages (although one household remained in Gambian territory). The French were furious with the district chief, Paté Cotto, who they said had neglected his duties by not visiting the villages of his region. This debacle led the administrator of the entire Casamance to opine, It seems unacceptable that natives originally from Fuladu, installed on our territory, escape our authority any longer. As it stands, they are free of our tax and pay only two schillings per hut. Their situation protects them from possible abuses by foreign chiefs; flight is, if need be, easy, and moreover, they take advantage of the vast pasturelands which make [French] Fuladu preferable to English territory to the Fulbe race.119 117 Interview with Umar Cande and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. There is an extensive body of literature that discusses the shift in taxation from physical goods to cash. Later in this chapter, the importance of cash taxation to the development of seasonal migrant farming will be discussed. 118 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” May 15, 1912; on French to Portuguese Guinea, interview with Alfa Djalo, Sare Bakary, Guinea-Bissau, April 26, 2017; on Portuguese Guinea to Senegal, ANS 2G10/41, Kolda, Rapport mensuel, août 1910, 1. 119 ANS 1F26, Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance au Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal, July 31, 1910. Emphasis my own. 149 In other words, the people of these migratory villages had managed to take advantage of the best of both colonies by avoiding higher French taxes but enjoying the better lands of French territory. Tax collection was always a test of colonial strength. Lakou Bandé, former chief of Portuguese Sankolla along the Senegalese-Portuguese Guinean border, but now resident in Senegal, encouraged people in French Mamboua to refuse taxation in 1915. When the French administrator of Kolda sent some soldiers to make sure the taxes were paid, Bandé fled across the border along with ten of his followers. Eight months later, the French noticed a decline of 235 in the number of taxable individuals in Mamboua, due to people following Bandé.120 In a border village in Portuguese Guinea, negotiations around tax collection were tense, and one official noted that if the situation had not been resolved satisfactorily, everyone there “would have fled to French territory […] [A]ll its inhabitants, especially the women, already had their small loads and luggage ready and tied up outside the village, to escape at the first opportunity.”121 Households and whole communities saw flight as a worthwhile option because the penalties for not paying taxes could be devastating: one commandant in Portuguese Guinea burned a village to the ground in 1913 for refusing to pay colonial taxes.122 Crossing international boundaries was not the only technique used to circumvent colonial exactions. In southern Senegal, borderland residents often refused to submit to the demands of the French and found creative ways to exempt themselves from them. Taxation policy there featured a clause that exempted newly formed villages, and so some communities in the Upper Casamance regularly moved short distances, reforming as “new” villages, and thus managing to escape the harsh taxation policies in place locally without ever crossing the border.123 In Portuguese Guinea, 120 ANS 2G15/41 Casamance, Rapports mensuels d’ensemble, mars 1915 et novembre 1915. 121 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 31–32 122 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, mars 1913, 1. 123 Carpenter, “Sovereignty along a West African Frontier,” 139. 150 the Administrator of Geba expressed a desire to shift taxation from a per-hut to a per-head basis, because the prevailing system “causes the native to avoid constructing the number of huts that he really needs […] which results in gathering in a single hut a number of natives greater than what would be natural.” The Mandinka were noted for being particularly good at this and could fit up to twenty people in one hut.124 In short, migration was merely one of a range of strategies that borderland residents used to mitigate the impact of colonial taxation policies. Military Conscription Military conscription was a common fear for the residents of French Senegal, French Guinea, and Portuguese Guinea. It was an important tool for colonial powers in their attempts to dominate and control the political and economic landscapes of their respective colonies, where metropolitan troops were rarely deployed. The best-known example of an African-raised force was the French tiralleurs sénégalais, formed in the mid-nineteenth century and used in campaigns across Africa and in French colonies elsewhere to conquer difficult territory and quell rebellions and revolts. Despite this unit’s name, however, its members came not just from Senegal, but from throughout French West Africa.125 From 1900 to 1914, the tiralleurs underwent drastic growth due to France’s need for soldiers for their rapid expansion eastward across West Africa; and for this reason, the French began partial military conscription in 1912.126 In Portuguese Guinea, military conscription was a vital way to recruit the soldiers needed for the “pacification” campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Portuguese military officer João Teixeira Pinto brought in local soldiers and gave them an open 124 Vasco de Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 25. 125 The literature on the tiralleurs sénégalais is extensive, but among others, see Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts; Gregory Mann, Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the Twentieth Century (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); and Sarah Jean Zimmerman, “Living Beyond Boundaries: West African Servicemen in French Colonial Conflicts, 1908–1962,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2011). 126 Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 25–27. 151 license to brutally conquer the “unpacified” parts of the colony. Some of those responsible for this campaign of “unbridled state terror” were Fulbe recruited from the eastern part of the colony.127 Fulbe recruited from the Bafatá Region and led by a Portuguese commander seized a key Soninke town in 1913.128 The Portuguese undertook much of this conscription with the help of Abdul Njai, a mercenary originally from Senegal who used the Portuguese to become wealthy before eventually turning on them. Many of the soldiers Njai employed were Senegalese, and the Portuguese supplied boats to bring them to Portuguese Guinea.129 In terms of the eastern part of the colony, the most important campaign was again Oio, which served as an important stopping point on trade routes from Portuguese Guinea and the Upper Casamance. After conquering Oio in 1913, Njai was given political authority over the region.130 Within Portuguese Guinea, Njai primarily recruited soldiers from Fulbe regions in the east to conquer non-Fulbe communities to the west.131 In Balanta communities, Fulbe were synonymous with Portuguese military participation.132 Many Fulbe soldiers used their role in conquering Balanta communities to be placed in charge of them following “pacification.”133 While many served voluntarily in these colonial military enterprises, either at home or abroad, at least as many were reluctant to participate for various reasons. Fears of military conscription in Senegal led many to flee to the Gambia in 1911, particularly from the districts of Pata and Guimara. The next year, the French Consul in the Gambian capital, Bathurst, wrote to his superior in London that upriver immigration “is very strong 127 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 106. 128 Ibid, 108. 129 For more on Abdul Njai, Joye L. Bowman, “Abdul Njai: Ally and Enemy of the Portuguese in Guinea-Bissau, 1895-1919,” Journal of African History 27, no. 3 (1986), 463–79. 130 Ibid, 468-9. 131 Walter Hawthorne, “The Interior Past of an Acephalous Society: Institutional Change among the Balanta of Guinea-Bissau, c. 1400 – c. 1950” (PhD Dissertation, Stanford University, 1998), 284–85. 132 Ibid, 290–91. 133 Ibid, 302. 152 because of military conscription.”134 In 1913, a rumor that the French were going to conscript soldiers and send them to Morocco, supposedly started by juula traders, spread across southern Senegal. Though false, it resulted in the movement of villages to both the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea; and almost the entire population of the important Senegalese trading town of Manda, adjacent to the border, moved to the Gambia, leaving behind only its chief, who was safe from conscription due to his position. Several households from two nearby villages crossed the border as well. The French blamed their former official in Velingara in eastern Kolda, who they said used his knowledge of the Pulaar language to regularly insult the people of the region. Just two months later, many more households left Senegal for the Gambia.135 In Portuguese Guinea, officials happily reported that “the population grows significantly with the constant immigration of the natives of French Guinea and Senegal to our colony, by virtue of the successive works to which the French administration subjects them, and above all else because of the military census.”136 Military conscription, whether for domestic or overseas service, was indeed a source of constant fear among the male populations of both French colonies. In French Guinea, however, the administration was already stretched thin, making the avoidance of conscription relatively easy. Recruitment tested French resolve throughout the colony, but especially in Futa Jallon.137 Conscription served as another arena in which governments had to strike a balance between the carrot and the stick. If colonial administrators scared too many people away, then their colony could rapidly become underpopulated; but if they were too lenient, troop numbers might fall to unsustainably low levels. 134 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” L’Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, May 15, 1912 135 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, juin 1913, 1. 136 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 25–26. 137 On military conscription in Guinea, see Anne Summers and R.W. Johnson, “World War I Conscription and Social Change in Guinea,” Journal of African History 19, no. 1 (1978): 25–38. On the difficulty in Futa Jallon, ANS 2G12/15, Lieutenant Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F.,” July 30, 1912. 153 Military conscription was also a regular occurrence in Portuguese Guinea, where similar flights occurred as a result. In 1910, its government ordered chiefs to furnish a contingent of soldiers for campaigns elsewhere in the colony; and three years later, the Portuguese resident in Bafatá called for the chiefs of the region to send soldiers for an expedition against the coastal Papel people. The chief of Gabú, Monjur, refused this demand and asked the administrator in Kolda to allow him to come to Senegal. But the government’s requests continued to be made over the following two months, and while some volunteered to serve as soldiers, others were forced to do so. At this point, Monjur abandoned his plan to flee into French territory.138 It was not just Portuguese subjects who were forced into military service in Portuguese Guinea: in November 1913, a Fulbe trader from Futa Jallon left Labé and entered Portuguese territory to trade there, and soon afterwards was arrested and forced to become a soldier. He escaped from the colonial army and went to complain to the administrator, stating that ten others from Senegal and French Guinea were also being forced to serve, contrary to law.139 Each chief was given a target number of men to send to the military, but the first attempt to levy them failed, despite the Portuguese administrator Vasco de Magalhães asserting that “there is no resistance against force.” After this failure, the Portuguese pressed on with a second recruitment campaign, albeit with less violence. However, de Magalhães estimated that the two recruitment campaigns between them brought in not even 15 percent of the quota, “because although this time they were not mistreated, they did not want to be subjected to military life, [instead] escaping to French territory!”140 While many of those who fled had probably only done so temporarily, the location of borders to the north (Senegal) and east (French Guinea) made it problematic for the Portuguese to control migration. 138 ANS 2G10/41, Kolda, Rapport mensuel, septembre 1910, October 4, 1910, 1. 139 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, septembre, octobre, et novembre 1913 140 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 29. 154 The Peak of Military Conscription: World War I Conscription in Senegal during the First World War far surpassed any previous efforts, with more than 140,000 West Africans serving; and recruitment efforts were disproportionately concentrated there, as compared to other French colonies.141 Though every corner of Senegal was affected to some degree, recruitment rates were much lower in the colony’s periphery, where colonial control was weaker. However, in those areas where conscription was most difficult, the French resorted to force; and local chiefs required to fill quotas often did so by pushing the most marginal young men into military service.142 In response, many took flight. The number conscripted and the number who fled the colony to escape the same fate may have been similar, at least in rural areas.143 Thus, though most historians of this period have focused on military service itself, flight—even if often temporary—was at least as common an experience among rural residents of Senegal and French Guinea, including women and children. The French desperately tried to slow recruitment-related flight from their colonies but could do little about it. The Governor General of French West Africa criticized the administration of Senegal for having “systematically neglected to lend us assistance” in this “work of a clear, common interest.”144 Other French colonial officials wrote to the British of their shared interest in the war, asking for their help in returning deserters and other rebellious individuals.145 However, British officials were not always inclined to help their French counterparts. As one pointed out, “refusal to reply to a summons for military service is not an extraditable crime. Similarly, immigration from territory under the French sphere of influence into the British Protectorate is an 141 Joe Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom: A Senegalese Oral History of the First World War (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2008), 1–2. 142 People of enslaved descent and those from lower-class families were most at risk. 143 Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom, 36–37, 40, 43. 144 ANS 1F13, “A.S. des mouvements d’émigration des population du Sénégal et du Soudan vers la Gambie,” Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. au Ministre des Colonies, August 28, 1918. 145 ANS 1F10, “A.S. d’insoumis reside en Gambie anglaise,” August 18, 1915. 155 action […] with which we have no power to interfere.”146 These movements did not just harm France’s recruitment efforts, but also its aim of developing southern Senegal commercially and agriculturally, while spurring further avoidance of colonial taxation.147 The Travelling Commissioner of the Gambia’s South Bank Province, bordering southern Senegal, wrote to his superiors that “[w]here large bodies are determined to enter our territory, it is difficult to see what purely legal measures, capable of enforcement along the protectorate border, could be of much help.”148 Having subsequently been given orders to deport those entering British territory, the Commissioner had accomplished little a year later: “I have only been able to arrest and deport 7 more of these people […] and these only on information received from and after identification by the followers of the French Chief, some of whose people are still with me. Our people will not, (or as they say, ‘cannot’) find these people themselves.”149 In short, without local help, the British would have been unable to stop the flow of those fleeing conscription, even if they had wanted to—and they did not. It should also be noted that there was never any universal or unanimous response to conscription, and reactions to it tended to be less negative in areas where the colonial presence was of longer standing.150 Nevertheless, having little incentive to cooperate with colonial governments, southern Senegambians very frequently chose to cross borders to escape their demands for military service, with minimal risk of punishment or harm. 146 NRS, CSO 4/108, Minute Paper No. 11, October 6, 1915. 147 ANS 1F13, “A.S. des mouvements d’émigration des population du Sénégal et du Soudan vers la Gambie,” Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. au Ministre des Colonies, August 28, 1918. On taxation, Nugent, “Cyclical History in the Gambia/Casamance Borderlands: Refuge, Settlement and Islam from c. 1880 to the Present,” Journal of African History 48, no. 2 (2007), 232. 148 NRS, CSO 3/26, Travelling Commissioner of the South Bank Province to the Colonial Secretary, January 1, 1916. 149 NRS, CSO 3/26, Travelling Commissioner of the South Bank Province to the Colonial Secretary, January 19, 1917. 150 Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom, 36–37. 156 Not only did the British refuse to help the French in their conscription endeavors; they sometimes worked actively against them. In the case of the Gambia, many of those escaping recruitment used their temporary absence from Senegal as a way to gain employment as well, serving as seasonal migrant peanut farmers—referred to as “Strange Farmers” by the British— before returning after the harvest had been collected and recruitment drives had finished. The Governor General of French West Africa noted that the British accepted migrants into the Gambia who were avoiding French recruitment, and used them to increase their workforce and commercial prosperity.151 Internally, the Governor of the Gambia argued that returning deserters was complicated due to the labor they supplied, and “needs very cautious handling, from the point of view of the Colony’s trade interests.”152 Fears of flight were a concern not just in Senegal, but throughout French West Africa; and the French Governor General wrote that identical population movements “have occurred on all the frontiers which separate our colonies from British possessions.”153 And it was not just those near the border who managed to flee to the Gambia. Young men from the cercle of Matam, bordering Mauritania, would initially leave their homes for elsewhere in Senegal, pretending that this movement was to take seasonal farm work or jobs on the Dakar-Bamako railway; but in actuality they moved to near the border of the Gambia, “with the intention of taking refuge there at the slightest signal of a new recruitment.”154 Others fled all the way from French Sudan to Portuguese Guinea to avoid having to fight in the war.155 151 ANS 1F13, “A.S. des mouvements d’émigration des population du Sénégal et du Soudan vers la Gambie,” Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. au Ministre des Colonies, August 28, 1918. 152 Ibid. 153 ANS 1F10, Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. à l’Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst, May 10, 1916. 154 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/597, Bureau Politique, Rapport sur la situation politique et administrative du Sénégal pendant le 3e trimestre 1916. 155 Interview with Moukhtarou Coulibaly, Mampatim, Senegal, December 10, 2016. Moukhtarou’s father left Mali for this reason. 157 Unsurprisingly, migration became commonplace throughout French West Africa during World War I as a means of resisting military conscription.156 Population figures from the time show that this was particularly true in the far eastern portion of the Gambia, where colonial authority was at its weakest, for it was not just proximity to frontiers but distance from colonial centers of power that increased the capacity of West Africans to avoid military recruitment. The easternmost provinces of the Gambia saw their population increase by 66 percent between 1915 and 1918, a period during which the rest of the Gambia saw a population increase of only 13 percent; and despite only containing 16 percent of the Gambia’s population as of 1915, the easternmost provinces contributed almost half of its population increase during this three-year span.157 The first news that the Commissioner of the MacCarthy Island Province received upon returning there from leave in England “was that the refugees from French Territory to avoid their military service were swarming in my Province.” The Commissioner was convinced that Gambian villages were working together to hide French subjects.158 Even when search parties could be made for deserters, another British official noted, “[t]hose that are still here have taken to the bush on both sides of the border.”159 For the most part, local chiefs did not want to be tasked with forcibly returning people to Senegal, and so ignored any demands that they do so.160 In the small village of Nemataba in Senegal, only a couple of kilometers from the southeastern edge of the Gambia, the father of Dikory Balde was conscripted to fight in World War I. The rest of his family fled across 156 Echenberg, Colonial Conscripts, 71. 157 ANS 1F13, “Mouvement d’émigration des populations du Sénégal et du Soudan vers la Gambie,” Ministre des Colonies au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., October 2, 1918. The population in those provinces rose from 24,737 to 41,026. By 1918, these easternmost provinces contained 22 percent of the Gambia’s population. 158 NRS, ARP 30/4, Annual Report on the MacCarthy Island Province, 1917, 9. 159 NRS CSO 3/26, Travelling Commissioner, South Bank Province to Acting Colonial Secretary, December 30, 1916. 160 NRS CSO 4/108, Travelling Commissioner, South Bank Province, to Colonial Secretary, February 25, 1916. 158 the border to the Gambia to dodge any further military recruitment and returned only after the war came to an end.161 Furious that some Senegalese chose to flee rather than fight under the French flag, French officials took to essentially kidnapping people under the guise of “recruitment.” French auxiliaries raided villages in particularly problematic regions to capture young men for this purpose. While forced labor on colonial infrastructure projects was common, Senegalese had never before been asked to travel overseas to go to war for France. Desertion became a common occurrence, especially in Fulbe pastoralist areas, where the French were least able to punish the culprits’ families.162 Those deserters who fled into Portuguese Guinea tended to stay there long after the war, not trusting French officials to treat them fairly upon their return.163 The Portuguese were less effective at taking censuses than the British, but their reports do note rampant migration to the south as well as to the north. Some of those who fled Senegal for Portuguese Guinea ended up being forcibly incorporated into the colonial military there, negating the purpose of their original flight. For the most part, however, those arriving in Portuguese Guinea were treated with “hospitality.”164 By late 1918, the French Vice Consul in Portuguese Guinea estimated that “many thousands” of French subjects, mostly men between 20 and 35, had taken refuge in the colony. There was no overall ethnic profile to characterize those who crossed the border, which included Bambara, Malinke, and Susu; Fulbe from southern Senegal, Guinea, and Futa Toro in northern Senegal; Soninke; and even “Moors” from Mauritania. However, Fulbe formed the majority. Forriá, a Fulbe region in southeastern Portuguese Guinea that bordered French Guinea, saw some 161 Interview with Dikory Balde, Gundo Balde and Tako Sane, Nemataba, Senegal, February 14, 2017. 162 Lunn, Memoirs of the Maelstrom, 40–44. 163 ANS Versement 14, 2F3, “Déserters et insoumis,” Vice-Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Governeur Général de l’A.O.F., November 19, 1918. 164 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/517, “Insoumis et déserteurs Guinée Portugaise,” Ministre des colonies au Resident du Conseil, Ministre de la Guerre, Sous-Secrétariat de la Justice Militaire, July 18, 1919. 159 of the greatest numbers of immigrants.165 Some fled from Senegal to Portuguese Guinea to avoid conscription for the war and returned to Senegal soon after it ended.166 In French Guinea, desertion or refusal of military service was common as well, even if borders were not as proximate. The district of Pita was particularly noted for people fleeing to Portuguese Guinea, and the French recorded that five men who had evaded military service were all taking refuge at the same house in Bafatá, Portuguese Guinea. Their host, Abal Gassirou, had himself escaped into Portuguese Guinea several years before, after being charged with several crimes on the French side of the border. Koumbia, in the extreme northwest of French Guinea, was well placed for migration at a moment’s notice; and during a 1918 recruitment drive, 4,000 people left the district for Portuguese Guinea. This was just one in a series of movements out of Koumbia, whose population numbered 70,000 taxable individuals in 1912, but fewer than 55,000 by 1919. Recruitment there had “not always been carried out in accordance with the instructions,” and its severity gave a greater than usual impetus to migration.167 Chiefs constantly undermined recruitment efforts, both because they did not want to anger their communities, and because they wanted to keep a supply of labor close at hand.168 Populations also moved south into British Sierra Leone. During the war, the French signed agreements with the British and Portuguese to repatriate deserters and rebellious individuals, but these agreements were rarely applied.169 After the war, 165 ANS Versement 14, 2F3, “Déserters et insoumis,” Vice-Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Governeur Général de l’A.O.F., November 19, 1918. 166 Interview with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 167 ANS 2G10, “Renseignements sur les déserteurs signalés par télégramme no. 68 du 5 Mai du Cercle de Pita réfugiés en Guinée Portugaise,” Administrateur Commandant le Cercle de Pita, May 24, 1917; on Koumbia, ANS 2G19/6, Guinée, Rapport politique, 3ème trimestre 1919, Cercle de Koumbia, 28. 168 Gregory Mann, Native Sons, 26–27. 169 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/517, “Afrique occidentale. Remise réciproque des déserteurs et insoumis,” M. Paul Cambon, Ambassadeur de la République française à Londres à M. S. Pichon, Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, June 13, 1919; Declaration Franco-Portugaise Relative à la Remise Réciproque des Déserteurs & Insoumis, December 23, 1916. 160 the British Foreign Office stated that a wartime ordinance restricting migration would cease to be law now that peace had been restored, declaring, “His Majesty’s Government will have no power to prevent French natives taking up their residence in British territory if they so desire.”170 As we have seen, some parts of British territory had experienced explosive population growth during the war, ordinances or no ordinances, and British officials were in no rush to see those arrivals depart simply because the war had come to a close. In the event, large numbers of Senegalese remained in eastern areas of the Gambia until the early 1920s, when it became clear that conscription in Senegal was not likely to resume.171 “Strange Farmers,” or Les Navétanes Increases in the production of cash crops over the course of the nineteenth century would not have been possible without a reserve of seasonal laborers. To produce such crops, most notably peanuts, migrants were recruited from less developed or less fertile areas of the interior. The British referred to these seasonal workers as “strange farmers” to denote their “foreign” origin, while the French called them navétanes, from the Wolof word nawet, signifying the rainy season. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most such migrants into the Gambia were Soninke (typically referred to as Sarahule in the Gambia). Portuguese Guinea had seen various failed attempts at peanut production during the nineteenth century, so by the period covered by this chapter, migrant farmers tended to head north to find seasonal work. Many from Portuguese Guinea and southern Senegal alike headed to the peanut basin of central Senegal, north of the Gambia, or stopped within the Gambia’s borders. Others came to the Gambia and central Senegal from the eastern edge of Senegal and from French Sudan. Lastly, French Guinea served as an 170 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/517, Foreign Office, April 28, 1919. 171 See Chapter 3. 161 additional labor reserve for seasonal farming, in part as an excuse for escaping the relatively harsh French labor and taxation demands.172 The establishment of colonial boundaries in the late nineteenth century altered the position of seasonal farmers. Differences in the economic and political landscapes of different colonies created incentives to move, while most southern Senegambians believed borders were meant only to keep Europeans in the right colony, and did not infringe on their own right to move.173 Early seasonal-farming networks were based around Islam as a shared framework for guest migrant farmers and their hosts.174 In the first decade of the twentieth century, Fulbe from Portuguese Guinea were passing through the Upper Casamance, some stopping in the Gambia, and others continuing north of the Gambia into central Senegal. Often it was hard for colonial states to differentiate between seasonal farmers and migrants leaving for other reasons, and thus the phenomenon provided cover for many young men escaping other obligations.175 In exchange for food and shelter, seasonal farmers would work part-time for their hosts, and part-time for themselves. Individual arrangements varied, but often Saturday to Wednesday mornings were reserved for working for one’s hosts, and the afternoons as well as Thursdays and Fridays devoted to personal production. In some Gambian districts, seasonal farmers needed to pay rent to the colonial government or local chiefs.176 The position of seasonal migrant farmers within households 172 The literature on seasonal farming is extensive. On the Gambia, Swindell and Jeng’s Migrants, Credit and Climate remains the definitive resource, at least for the period until 1934. For Senegal, David, Les navétanes. On failed efforts to grow peanuts in nineteenth century Portuguese Guinea, see Joye Bowman, “‘Legitimate Commerce’ and Peanut Production in Portuguese Guinea, 1840s-1880s,” Journal of African History 28, no. 1 (1987): 87–106. 173 Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate, xxx. 174 Ibid, 55. 175 ANS 2F7, “A.S. de Yero Ding de Sama,” Le Résident du Firdou à l’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, July 26, 1903. 176 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, May 15, 1912; and NGR 1/31, W.B. Stanley, Travelling Commissioner, “Notes on the Physical Distribution of the Country, and Political Organisation of the Fullahs of the Gambia, Their Customs, Laws, etc.,” 1907. 162 was in some ways similar to those of enslaved domestics, who were also required to work a certain percentage of the week for their owners, but given time to produce for themselves on a limited basis.177 Be that as it may, these farmers were deemed to be members of the household they worked for, but not equal to its other members, as they lacked the deep ties that would have been necessary for full integration into their host communities. Nevertheless, many seasonal migrant farmers were eventually able to build such connections and made their migrations permanent, settling in their host communities and marrying women there. Migrant farming was common among many groups in southern Senegambia, including Fulbe, Mandinka, and further to the west, Manjaco. The British actively promoted seasonal migrant farming because the Gambia’s population was not large enough to produce the desired quantity of peanuts. Since everything within the Gambia’s borders was near the river, which is navigable throughout the entire country, it was easy to transport peanuts from its many riverine ports to the coast, where they were shipped overseas. By contrast, southern Senegal and the Fulbe areas of French Guinea were far from any large rivers that were navigable to the coast. The aforementioned failure of the French to build a railroad in Upper Casamance, coupled with the same area’s lack of roads, led to an ever-growing northward flood of seasonal farmers during the 1910s.178 A French study of the utility of a railroad in the Casamance determined that not only would one prevent the departure of seasonal farmers to the north, but would encourage the migration of seasonal farmers into the area from Portuguese and French Guinea. The flows in question were significant: as of 1914, the French estimated that more 177 Bellagamba, Ethnographie, 99–100. 178 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, May 15, 1912; Colonie Anglaise de Gambie: Etat comparative des principaux articles d’importation et d’exportation en 1912 et 1913. 163 than 12,000 men from Senegal and French Sudan went to farm in the Gambia each year, alongside others from French and Portuguese Guinea.179 Part of the impetus for seasonal migration was the increasing collection of taxes in cash, which prompted many households to search for ways to come up with the money, as failure to do so could lead to various punishments.180 At the same time, the commercialization of peanut cultivation injected ever larger amounts of cash into colonial economies, allowing seasonal farmers not only to pay taxes, but also to buy goods that were unavailable in their places of origin.181 It should be noted, however, that seasonal farming was not limited to peanuts, with many from border villages in Portuguese Guinea coming to Senegal to farm rice seasonally, and paying taxes to the French while there.182 Fulbe from French Guinea were particularly attracted to the Gambia, given the limited availability of cash in Futa Jallon, whose soil was not appropriate to the development of large-scale cash cropping.183 Seasonal farmers’ numbers continued to increase due to a variety of factors, including the steady decline of slavery and the loss of the labor enslaved persons had provided; higher export duties in Senegal; and eventually, during the First World War, French military conscription.184 Trade Across Borders Just as the economic shifts present in southern Senegambia during the early twentieth century promoted the movement of seasonal migrant farmers, they also promoted trade throughout the wider region. Colonial governments attempted to shape and restrict these movements to best produce their desired goals, but often failed due to the lack of border control. Goods produced in 179 ANS 2F8, “Utilité de la ligne,” 1914. 180 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon, et le marabout, 140. 181 Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate, 171. 182 ANS 2F19, Rapport Politique du Senegal, 1er trimestre 1914, May 9, 1914. 183 Interview with Modou Sao, Sinchu Alagi, The Gambia, July 22, 2017; Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 50. 184 Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate, 152. 164 Senegal and Futa Jallon were transported to Portuguese Guinea, which was full of rivers down which they could be moved to the coast.185 The primary economic products of the Gambia in the early twentieth century were peanuts, palm kernels, hides, and wax.186 Peanuts were almost never sent through French territory, even when they were produced in Senegal, because of the ease of transporting them along the Gambia River. Peanuts were produced primarily for export, with peanut oil and soap both being in high demand abroad.187 Donkeys were used to bring peanuts from the French side of the Gambian border to the British side, where they would then be sold to British traders. French commercial firms in the Gambia complained that this put them at a disadvantage, as when they brought peanuts across the border, they needed to pay a customs fee; but this was merely one symptom of a wider problem for those parts of Senegal near the Gambian border, which were “inaccessible to French commerce” due to their poor infrastructure.188 When French firms offered prices to Senegalese producers that were “excessively low”, many simply sent their wares across the border instead.189 In 1915, a French official recommended that people in Senegal be allowed to sell seeds in the Gambia, because “[t]he selling price is not even enough, indeed, to pay the price of their transport” to Kolda, despite that town being “the only trading point in French territory.” Moreover, he argued, banning the export of seeds would cause damage to the people of the region and “result in the total loss of this year’s crop.” Lastly, he pointed out that the money gained from selling peanuts and seeds in the Gambia resulted in more available cash to pay colonial taxes.190 185 ANS 2F8, “A.S. du développement de l’influence française en Guinée Bissau,” Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française au Ministre des Colonies, January 19, 1915. 186 ANS 1F12, “Rapport consulaire sur la colonie anglaise de Gambie,” Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, May 15, 1912. 187 ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 1911, 147, 168; ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, “l’Islam au Sénégal: l’Islam dans les coutumes sociales,” 1915, 52. 188 ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, mars 1913, 31. 189 ANS 2G15/41 Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, février 1915, 31. 190 ANS 2G15/41, Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, mars 1915, 31. 165 As many Fulbe were cattle herders, the sale of cattle was an option when it was necessary to pay colonial taxes or buy newly available goods. When cattle prices varied sharply between one colony and another, herds would be brought across borders to be sold. In the first years of the twentieth century, cattle from Senegal were exported to MacCarthy Island, the center of the British presence in the interior of the Gambia; and Fulbe herders exported cattle from French Guinea to Portuguese Guinea and Sierra Leone, where prices were much higher. In general, the prices realized in French colonies were lower, and in Senegal, were often as little as half those paid in Portuguese Guinea and the Gambia.191 According to French reports, people only came to Senegal to acquire French money, which was generally accepted by traders in the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea.192 Portuguese Guinea’s weak control of its borders with neighboring French colonies also helped create excellent trading conditions. French reports estimated that most of the important traders in Portuguese Guinea had moved there from French colonies, and contributed “largely by their ingenuity and their commercial aptitude […] to the general prosperity of the country.”193 The descendants of many of these economic migrants still live today in the borderlands between Senegal and Portuguese Guinea’s successor state, Guinea-Bissau. Many Soninke came from the eastern Senegal River Valley in Senegal and French Sudan to take advantage of the better commercial conditions around Portuguese Guinea’s border.194 This is not to say, however, that 191 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, Rapport mensuel, février 1904, Administrateur des Colonies C. Maclaud, Président de la Commission française de délimitation de la Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, March 2, 1904. 192 On French Guinea, ANS 2G5/1, Guinée, Rapport trimestriel, 2ème trimestre 1905, July 11, 1905. On Senegal, ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, Rapport mensuel, février 1904, March 2, 1904. 193 ANS 2F10, “Déserters et insoumis,” Administrateur de France en Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, November 19, 1918. 194 Interview with Moussa Bayo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017. 166 such conditions were ideal; people often sold their products in makeshift markets under trees, “which barely sheltered them from the sun, much less from the rain.”195 Though the French wanted to control the border between Senegal and the Gambia, it proved impossible to restrict the interchange of either people or goods between the two colonies. The length of the border made enforcement impractical and expensive, and French businesses in the Gambia relied on products from Senegal. French money circulated widely in the Gambia, and Gambians also brought their goods to Senegalese markets to sell. Access to the river led many people to sell their products in the Gambia, or to move there permanently. 196 Migrants also left French Guinea to settle in the Upper Casamance and southeastern Senegal (present-day Kedougou) in search of better farmland. And immigration from French Guinea to Portuguese Guinea and Senegal increased dramatically toward the end of 1917, especially due to pressure caused by the increasing population density of Futa Jallon.197 During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the strategies used by Fulbe and other groups in southern Senegambia changed alongside the growth of exports by European firms and governments and the shift to a more cash-based economy. The people of southern Senegambia profited from their borderland location, while colonial efforts to restrict movement proved ineffective. Economic migrations, whether temporary or permanent, demonstrated the persistence and usefulness of precolonial networks in the new, colonial context. 195 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 43. 196 ANS 1F12, Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Consul Général de France à Londres, 1909; “A.S. de la riculation des monnaies françaises en Gambie,” November 25, 1910; Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F. à l’Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst, April 28, 1911; ANS 2G11/48, Résidence du Fouladu, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, janvier 1911. 197 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/597, “Rapport sur la situation politique et administrative au Sénégal pendant le 1er trimestre 1917,” July 6, 1917; “Rapport sur la situation politique & administrative du Senegal pendant le 4e trimestre 1917,” March 22, 1918. 167 The Growth of Islam: Religious Interconnectivity in Southern Senegambia In the first decades of colonial rule, Islam’s spread was limited in southern Senegambia, and particularly weak among the Fulbe. While the precolonial kings of Fuladu, Alfa and Musa Molo, had been nominally Muslim, their religious beliefs had not spread to the masses. In 1904, Dr. Charles Maclaud, who led the boundary delimitation efforts between Senegal, French Guinea, and Portuguese Guinea, described the religious landscape as one in which “Islam is not widespread and the inhabitants indulge in drunkenness (millet/sorghum beer and palm wine).”198 As of 1911, the French estimated the percentage of Muslims in the Upper Casamance at around 17 percent, and the proportion of “fetishists” as vastly greater. But in the middle Casamance, just to the west, the Muslim population was estimated at 68 percent.199 Paul Marty, the French Islamicist, characterized the Fulbe of the Upper Casamance as “weakly Islamized,” especially as compared to their fellow Fulbe in the Senegal River Valley, French Sudan, French Guinea, or northern Nigeria. For the most part, Fulbe still drank, continued to follow ancestral religious practices, were “attached to cultural law,” and ignored “all Islamic culture.”200 The Travelling Commissioner of the Gambia’s Upper River Province believed that about 90 percent of Fulbe there were not Muslim.201 An important social and cultural divide nevertheless existed between Muslims and non- Muslims, for although Muslim men would marry non-Muslim women, pious Muslims would not give their daughters to non-Muslim men.202 This was often a source of conflict, but also incentivized conversion in places where Islamic power was strong. 198 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, Rapport mensuel, janvier 1904, Administrateur des Colonies C. Maclaud, Président de la Commission française de délimitation de la Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. 199 ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 1911, 200 ANS 2G10/41, Kolda, Rapport mensuel, septembre 1910, October 4, 1910, 1. 201 NRS NGR 1/31, W.B. Stanley, Travelling Commissioner, “Notes on the Physical Distribution of the Country, and Political Organisation of the Fullahs of the Gambia, Their Customs, Laws, etc.,” 1907. 202 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, “l’Islam au Sénégal: l’Islam dans institutions juridiques,” 1915, 41. This was also a common refrain in the way the period is remembered in oral histories. Interview with Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kane Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kan Diallo, and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Senegal, February 27, 2017. 168 During the nineteenth century, when Mandinka clerics had attempted to Islamize Jola and Balanta to the west, they usually left the Fulbe of the Upper Casamance alone.203 The kings of Fuladu can also be said to have played a part in the growth of Islam in the region, though that process had barely begun by the end of Musa Molo’s reign in 1903.204 The reasons for this relatively slow spread of Islamization are not entirely clear, but may relate to the history of the Upper Casamance as a zone of refuge, outside traditionally Muslim space.205 Religious wars in the Futa Jallon highlands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had driven out many Fulbe unwilling to convert to Islam. According to Robert Arnaud, these Fulbe came to the Upper Casamance “fleeing the intolerance and looting of Sudanese fanatics”, the winners of those conflicts. Upon arriving in the Upper Casamance, the Fulbe settlers accepted the sovereignty of the Mandinka kingdom of Kaabu, preferring to be ruled by others than by the Fulbe, but Islamic, state of Futa Jallon.206 Despite the weakness of Islam in the region, the primary form of education in the Upper Casamance in the early twentieth century was Koranic schooling, though it was still absent from most communities. The growing presence of Islam in the Upper Casamance can thus, in some ways, be compared to the growing French presence: though Islam had yet to reach most of the population, it had much deeper roots in the region and much stronger supporters than did the French colonial presence. And while the Islamic missionary and French colonial enterprises did not generally compete head-to-head in the Upper Casamance, they did so in the sphere of 203 ANS 13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: élément islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 15. The reluctance of the Mandinka to convert the Fulbe of the Upper Casamance likely stems from the complicated political landscape of the Kaabu-Futa Jallon struggles of the nineteenth century, and the complicated relationship between Futa Jallon and the Upper Casamance after the fall of Kaabu and the creation of the state of Fuladu. 204 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 197. 205 Firdu, the name of the core province of Fuladu (the Upper Casamance), literally refers to a zone of refuge in Pulaar (from ferde, to exile/migrate). N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 98. 206 ANS 13G379, Robert Arnaud, “Mission Robert Arnaud en Casamance: Études des questions musulmanes,” July 1, 1908, 2. The Fulbe populating of the Upper Casamance is discussed at length in Chapter 1. 169 education. The largest recorded Koranic school in the region, that of Cherif Bekkai of Nioro, had just 40 students, but this was still much larger than any French school in the area.207 Within the Upper Casamance, the strength of Islam was defined spatially. There were core areas within the region of Kolda that were noted for the strength of their Islamic presence, whereas the Patiana region, near Senegal’s borders with both Portuguese and French Guinea, was noted for the weakness of Islam, despite its relative proximity to the Islamic stronghold of Futa Jallon in French Guinea.208 In Patiana, as in much of the wider region, the most important marabouts (Muslim clerics) were not southern Senegambian Fulbe, but Haalpulaar originally from Futa Toro.209 In Portuguese Guinea, Fulbe and Mandinka mixed with one another more regularly, and this resulted in the much earlier spread of Islam among the Gaabunke Fulbe of that colony.210 In an effort to spread Islam through peaceful conversions, clerics from Futa Jallon and Futa Toro came to the Gambia, southern Senegal and Portuguese Guinea, established schools, and settled with their own Muslim families, increasing the prominence of Islam throughout the region. Since the fall of the kingdom of Kaabu, Fulbe clerics had also come from Futa Jallon to the Upper Casamance, and their numbers continued to increase in the early twentieth century.211 During the early colonial period, both Fulbe Futa and Mandinka served as Koranic teachers to interested Fulbe, spreading the religion slowly. The resources necessary for serious Koranic study did not 207 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, Paul Marty, “Rapport au Gouverneur Général sur les écoles coraniques du Sénégal,” November 20, 1913. 208 ANS 1G343, “Monographie de la Casamance,” 1911, 180. 209 ANS 13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: élément islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 17. 210 Interviews with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hadji, Senegal, February 20, 2017; and Souleymane Kande, Aliou Kande, Bocar Mballo, Biaye Balde, Pathe Balde and Mama Samba Mballo, Medina El Hadji, Senegal, February 20, 2017. For more on the relationship between the Gaabunke and Islam, see Fanchette, Aux pays des Peuls and N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout. The Gaabunke are named for the kingdom of Kaabu (Gaabu in Pulaar) and the easternmost region of Guinea-Bissau (Gabú) where most Gaabunke came from. 211 Interviews with El Hadji Moustapha Galle Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 10, 2016, Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017, and Moreira Dauda Embalo, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 17, 2017. 170 exist in Fuladu, and so advanced students would move to Futa Jallon to continue their studies there, though this was not a regular occurrence.212 When conversion did occur, it often brought about a tension between ancestral Fulbe beliefs and new Islamic ones.213 The greatest barrier to Fulbe conversion was the question of lineage. Alfa and Musa Molo, two men of enslaved descent, had led the kingdom of Fuladu during its decades of independence. Because of their suspect lineage, many “noble” Fulbe considered the Molos incapable of converting them due to their higher status. Individuals of enslaved descent had led the revolt against the kingdom of Kaabu, and thus its successor kingdom, Fuladu, was associated with Islam, despite the level of religiosity among its leaders being relatively weak.214 Many free Fulbe ongoingly associated Islam with the stain of enslaved descent, and as a result refused to convert. Conversely, for many of enslaved descent, conversion to Islam was a marker of their growing freedom from the control of the free Fulbe and the traditional aristocracy.215 As Paul Marty put it, “To embrace Islam, for a free Fula, is to be reduced to the rank of his slaves or servants.”216 Gaabunke marabouts, many of whom had come directly from Futa Toro or were descended from families there, played a crucial role in promoting Islamic practices to those of enslaved descent: transforming the stigma of their ancestry into a new badge of honor and a clean break from the past.217 In Futa Jallon, on the other hand, a key factor upholding social hierarchies was the close linkage between Islam and the Fulbe aristocracy, who justified their rule over non- 212 Interviews with Alfa Djalo, Sare Bakary, Guinea-Bissau, April 26, 2017, and Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Musa Baldeh and Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, The Gambia, July 20, 2017. Some also went to Futa Toro. 213 Magalhães, Administração da Circunscrição Civil de Geba, 71. 214 Fanchette, Aux pays des Peuls, 23. Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 165. 215 ANS 13G379, Robert Arnaud, “Mission Robert Arnaud en Casamance: Études des questions musulmanes,” July 1, 1908, 4–5. 216 ANS 13G67, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 15. 217 Fanchette, Aux pays des Peuls, 37. In French Sudan, enslaved persons also played a crucial role in the spread of Islam and the growth of Islamic communities. Peterson, Islamization from Below, 87. 171 free peoples in terms of the latter’s lack of Islamic knowledge and belief.218 The role of Islam was thus highly context-dependent, and with regard to preexisting social hierarchies could be either liberating or oppressive. Traveling Marabouts Across the Gambia, southern Senegal, and Portuguese and French Guinea, traveling marabouts connected Islamic communities and promoted Islamic learning. Colonial governments feared the influence of these seemingly rootless clerics, who moved wherever the climate was friendliest, and often attempted to restrict their movements. In 1914, the administrator of Kolda gave orders to provincial and village chiefs, and even heads of households, to send any marabout who entered the region to Kolda.219 A common complaint was that marabouts “extorted money from the natives” and became “rich at the expense of the people” in part because the “naturally shy” Fulbe did not dare to refuse them alms.220 It seems doubtful that these marabouts were actually extortionists, but they certainly were reliant on local people to fund their operations; and it was for this purported reason that the Portuguese arrested the marabout Naian Balde in 1917 and exiled him to Sao Tomé.221 For the most part, however, colonial governments were more concerned with monitoring traveling preachers than arresting them. Many of these marabouts operated networks across borders, and some moved to find more favorable terrain for missionizing. Cherif Bekkai, an important cleric of “Moorish origin” in the Upper Casamance, was the son of a man who had left Mauritania “to seek fortune in the countries of the blacks” around 1855. The father founded a 218 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 73–74. 219 ANS 13G67, “Extrait du rapport mensuel du Cercle de Kolda (Casamance) de Décembre 1914,” December 20, 1914, 2. 220 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/597, “Situation politique et administrative du Sénégal, 1er trimestre 1916,” Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. au Ministre des Colonies, June 10, 1916. 221 ANS 2F9, “La question musulmane en Guinée portugaise,” Vice-Consul de France au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, November 29, 1917. 172 village in what would become the Gambia before moving to Bijini in Portuguese Guinea, where Bekkai was born to a local Mandinka woman. As a child, his father took Bekkai to Labé in Futa Jallon to finish his studies. Bekkai arrived in the Upper Casamance during Musa Molo’s reign, and subsequently followed him to the Gambia. But after difficulties with a chief there, he returned to French territory in 1913, founding his own religious community in Nioro along with 139 of his followers. The population of his village soon grew to more than 300; and despite being based in Senegal, he had many followers in Portuguese Guinea and the Gambia.222 Similarly, Cherif Sidi was born in Gabú in Portuguese Guinea around 1870, but his father had fled Mauritania and lived in the Gambia and the Upper Casamance before opening a Koranic school in Portuguese Guinea. Sidi eventually taught in the Middle Casamance but had followers from Portuguese Guinea as well.223 There were many other marabouts with comparable stories. Cherif Yunus was originally from Ouadai in present-day Chad. Around the age of 14, he headed west, passing through several kingdoms before arriving in Lagos, Nigeria. By ship, he went to Accra, Cape Coast, and Sierra Leone before arriving in Bathurst, the Gambia, and settling in the Rip region of central Senegal. After the arrival of the French, Yunus headed south to the Middle Casamance, where he would stay for the next twenty-five years, but also lived in Portuguese Guinea for three years after running into political trouble in Senegal.224 He traveled regularly between the Casamance, the Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea, and had a “business relationship with all the Casamance and Portuguese 222 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, Paul Marty, “De l’influence religieuse des Cheikhs Maures au Sénégal,” May 1, 1915, 22-23; ANS 2G13/53, Territoires Casamance, Rapport mensuel d’ensemble, janvier 1913, 1. 223 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, Paul Marty, “De l’influence religieuse des Cheikhs Maures au Sénégal,” May 1, 1915, 23–25. 224 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, Paul Marty, “Cherif Iounous de Casamance,” May 31, 1915. 173 Guinean firms,” extending his influence beyond the religious sphere.225 Many other important marabouts crossed colonial boundaries, including Cherif Mahfoudz and Fode Kadiali.226 None of the marabouts discussed above other than Naian Baldea were Fulbe, and most had closer ties to the Mandinka, although they certainly preached to Fulbe as well. However, Fulbe Futa marabouts from Futa Jallon did come to Kolda to teach. Their students came from not just Kolda, but also from the Gambia, Portuguese and French Guinea, and as far away as northern Senegal. There were also Haalpulaar marabouts who, after a lengthy period of coming south to teach, settled in the region to spread the message of Islam.227 Naian Balde, whose exile to São Tomé was discussed above, had angered the Portuguese by referring to himself as the Mahdi (or so French officials said) and making war against two villages in Portuguese Guinea, killing several people. After this, he crossed into the Upper Casamance. When the French confronted him there, he fled north, but ten of his followers were jailed in Kolda. By 1917, the British had chased him out of the Gambia, and he “had only one resource: to attempt a bold stroke to Kolda” which, if successful, would have “given him the prestige sufficient to rally […] a larger number of devotees.” Naian Balde eventually hid out in the village of Sare Yoro Bouka, where he built a mosque and began to seek converts, but the French arrested him in May 1917, just one month after his arrival there.228 225 ANS 13G67, Paul Marty, “Cherif Ionous de Casamance,” May 31, 1915. 226 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1433, Paul Marty, Rapport à Monsieur le Gouverneur Général sur les écoles coraniques du Sénégal, November 20, 1913; ANS13G67, Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 13–14. Nugent has a lengthy discussion of Mahfoudz’s work in the Lower Casamance. Nugent, Boundaries, Community and State-Making in West Africa, 277–84. 227 ANS Paul Marty, “Les Mandingues: element islamisé de Casamance,” May 31, 1915, 7. 228 ANS 13G382, Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance au Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal, May 19, 1917; “À l’arrestation Amadou Dia,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur du Sénégal au Gouverneur-Général de l’A.O.F., April 26, 1917; ANS 2F9, “La question musulmane en Guinée portugaise,” Vice-Consul de France au Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, November 29, 1917. 174 Through the work of these marabouts, along with other less formal methods of proselytization, Islam began to make inroads in Kolda over the first two decades of the twentieth century. As early as 1905, it was making “rapid progress” there, for a variety of reasons including that region’s connections to Futa Jallon and Futa Toro, which were amplified by migration from Futa Jallon to the Gambia, Senegal and Portuguese Guinea.229 The Gaabunke of eastern Portuguese Guinea were converted in large part by Soninke and by Fulbe Futa from Futa Jallon; and in turn, many Gaabunke went north to the Upper Casamance and helped convert Fulakunda there.230 Leary has credited the French pacification of the region with opening “new roads to the Mandingues [Mandinka] for proselytization and conversion of peoples whom they had been unable to conquer militarily.” Unlike among the Jola of the lower Casamance, Fulbe conversions were “facilitated and expedited by […] hierarchical political organization and social structure.”231 European colonialism also assisted the spread of Islam in the region by making it simultaneously safer and politically weaker. While migration had certainly occurred during the era of the kingdom of Fuladu, possibilities for peaceful movement had been circumscribed by warfare and enslavement, resulting in large part from the actions of Musa Molo. The peacefulness of the early colonial period, paired with the inability of colonial states to control their borders, not only allowed marabouts to circulate, but also enabled migrants from across the region to come into contact with Muslims in new places, gradually increasing the overall level of knowledge of and interest in Islam, and thus laying the groundwork for conversion. Islam also increasingly provided a sense of 229 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/1030, C. Maclaud, Président de la Commission française de délimitation de la Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, May 2, 1905. 230 Interviews with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017; Billay Tunkara and Intha Danguru, Gambissara Lamoi, The Gambia, February 2, 2017; Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea- Bissau, April 1, 2017; and Far Sarjo Sanyang, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. 231 Leary, “Islam, Politics and Colonialism,” 155, 227, 245 and 259. 175 regional continuity in the face of the changes brought about by colonial rule, facilitating ties between different ethnicities and creating a shared framework for civil society. Conclusion: The Relative Weakness of Early Colonial States and the Building of a Cross- Border Community During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Fulbe, Mandinka, and others in southern Senegambia used their cross-border ties to take advantage of these new boundaries and extend their networks. Fulbe networks extended from the Gambia River deep into eastern Portuguese Guinea, and to a lesser degree into the Futa Jallon highlands of French Guinea. While these networks built upon a precolonial tradition of mobility and connections across the wider Fulbe region, they also took advantage of the relative peacefulness of the early years of colonial rule. This period featured the first serious efforts by colonial states to impose new administrative and economic systems on Fulbe populations, but generally, those efforts proved unsuccessful. The French, British and Portuguese began to collect taxes, conscript laborers to work on infrastructure projects, and encourage or demand military service. However, the colonizers’ inability to monitor and control colonial borders meant that the residents of southern Senegambia were often able to avoid their impositions simply by moving to whichever colony suited them best. Such mobility was not merely a response to colonial policies, however; it was also driven by economic and religious factors. Despite repeated efforts to fix colonies’ boundaries, the borderlands of southern Senegambia remained a dynamic region in which Fulbe connections took precedence. The scarcity of colonial officials in Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea meant that, while the Fulbe of southern Senegambia certainly lived in colonial states in a political and legal sense, in practice they operated independently of them. 176 This marked ability of borderland residents to escape so much of the colonial project made colonial governments skeptical of investing in their regions, thus further marginalizing them, distancing them from their new colonial capitals, and stitching their communities across southern Senegambia into a dense web of social, economic, and (increasingly) religious connections. The early twentieth century in southern Senegambia was characterized by a growing belief that this cross-border space was in fact a single territory, the peoples of which were connected even if their governments were not. In short, colonial borders were a European construction, and even if they could be used advantageously at times by local populations, they were often simply ignored. However, in part because of these borders, individuals and communities created deeper ties across southern Senegambia. Rather than view borderland life as defined by colonial conceptions of space and geography, we can view southern Senegambia through the prism of a “sovereigntyscape,” defined by James Sidaway as a place where “different and multiform sovereign visions” exist simultaneously. He points out that this “offers a productive subversion of the understanding of states as ‘containers.’”232 In colonial southern Senegambia, social, economic, and political life operated through a variety of contexts, all impacted to some degree by the creation of colonial space, but existing in part outside of colonial control. These competing visions of sovereignty offer a different perspective about life during the colonial period, where Fulbe movement, ideas of a larger territorial community, and rejection of borders existed simultaneously with colonial desires to control these new boundaries. For the most part, Fulbe conceptions of boundaries and space proved durable in the face of colonial efforts to challenge them. 232 J.D. Sidaway, “Sovereign excesses? Portraying postcolonial sovereigntyscapes,” Political Geography 22 (2003), 160-61. 177 Chapter 3: Competing Conceptions of Territory: Power and Migration during the Interwar Years By the end of World War I, colonial governments were ready to stake their claim on the borderlands of southern Senegambia, which divided Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea. As shown in previous chapters, Fulbe people had expanded their geographic networks since the precolonial period by migrating to avoid unfavorable governments, in search of better farm and pastureland, and for trading purposes. Prior to the close of World War I, Fulbe networks expanded further south into Portuguese Guinea and southeast into French Guinea’s Futa Jallon. During World War I, many Fulbe fled the French colonies of Senegal and Guinea for British Gambia and Portuguese Guinea (today Guinea-Bissau) to escape military conscription, leaving the Upper Casamance depopulated after the war.1 During the 1910s, the French and Portuguese began to expand their territorial claims into the interior, particularly in southern Senegambia, while British weakness in the eastern Gambia continued well into the interwar period due to the colony’s small size and economic weakness.2 During both the precolonial period and in the years leading up and during World War I, Fulbe people maintained a territorial identity that typically did not recognize the validity of colonial boundaries, unless of course those boundaries could be used to their advantage. Instead of seeing themselves as subjects of French Senegal and Guinea, British Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea, southern Senegambians saw themselves as part of a larger regional space, with colonial boundaries serving as a minor impediment. During the interwar years, Fulbe identity in southern Senegambia increasingly took on a cross-border territorial identity, one that stood in stark contrast to the territorial vision of colonial governments, who saw their borders as inviolable. 1 See Chapter 2. 2 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 140; Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 127. 178 A particular paradox defines the interwar years in southern Senegambia. Colonial power and border control grew during this period, as did the growth of state infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and roads. Governments cleared up border disagreements, built the first border posts, and more closely supervised local chiefs. They also instituted more onerous forced labor and taxation policies, asking more and more of their subjects as the interwar years went on. However, Fulbe people responded to this growing state encroachment by taking advantage of the places where borders were weakest and moving across borders to mitigate the damage of colonial policies. While Fulbe mobility had a long history, it reached new levels in the interwar period as many migrated to take advantage of trading and employment opportunities, to avoid forced labor and taxation demands, and to avoid unfriendly political regimes. The long history of mobility for better pasture and farmland also continued during this period, particularly away from places where cattle were taxed. In response to the efforts of colonial states to control them, Fulbe people expanded their trans-colonial networks, building social, economic, religious and political connections across colonial borders, allowing them to escape the worst excesses of colonial rule, and in doing so subverted colonial claims to sovereignty and territorial integrity. For the most part, Fulbe people lived in an “interior world” where power was primarily held locally, and not by colonial governments in far-off capitals or colonial officials in nearer regional centers.3 While research on colonial power and borders often focuses on centers of colonial strength or places with large-scale political or military unrest, southern Senegambia offers an alternative perspective.4 A place where colonial power was weak and always contingent, southern Senegambians used borders to establish an alternative territorial framework, one centered around their mobility and the ease through which they moved across colonial borders. The arterial nature 3 King and Challis, “The ‘Interior World,’” 216. 4 See Young, The African Colonial State, and Mamdani, Citizen and Subject. 179 of power in southern Senegambia meant that colonial governments only impacted their populations in particular ways and in particular spaces, even if those ways and spaces were often harsh and taxing. This chapter looks at the influence of borders on the population of southern Senegambia from roughly 1920 until 1945, tracing the large-scale migration of Fulbe across the region, who moved in the search for better farm and pastureland, as well as to avoid colonial exactions like forced labor, taxation, and military conscription. Fulbe did not just migrate between colonies for these reasons, but within them as well. Many southern Senegambians also migrated as seasonal farmers, walking hundreds of miles in search of economic gain and for the funds to pay colonial taxes. Migration also spurred the growth of Islam in southern Senegambia, which occurred rapidly during the interwar years. The religious communities of Medina El Hajj and Medina Gounass represented an extreme version of Fulbe territorial identity, as their marabouts sought to detach themselves from the colonial states of the region. In an effort to push back against this Fulbe geography, the colonial governments of southern Senegambia expanded their monitoring and surveillance of borders and attempted to firm up borders where the exact line of control had been murky. This extension of border control corresponded with a general increase in the structures of colonial states, as the French, British, and Portuguese built schools and roads in an attempt to tie Fulbe people to particular colonies. In response, many Fulbe attempted to detach themselves from these expanding colonial states, tying themselves instead to a larger Fulbe geography that stretched across southern Senegambia. The Influence of Borders in Interwar Southern Senegambia Newly drawn borders were often poorly enforced, and this was particularly true in colonies with large, easily crossed borders, whether by boat, truck, car, bicycle, or on foot. Even after 180 delimitation, borders were contested by people who wanted to find themselves on one side or another.5 Colonial states were only as strong as their ability to control the lives of those within its boundaries. Furthermore, they could only attempt to control the lives of those within their boundaries, meaning that crossing a colonial border allowed southern Senegambians to exist out of a particular colonial state. The border was the limit of colonial sovereignty, however weak it was, and with minimal border control, interaction with the next colonial state did not immediately occur upon entry. The low population densities of much of southern Senegambia meant that there was always available land for migrants, who constantly founded new villages both across and within colonies. Studying the interwar years from the perspective of state disengagement—instead of engagement, as most studies so—reveals that many Fulbe people actively chose in many cases to live in places where the state would least affect their lives, using borders not just as a tool for economic gain, but to rely on their own political, social, and religious structures to continue organizing their lives. While borders certainly did shape Fulbe lives, Fulbe responded to these borders on their own terms, using their own enduring sense of space and community. These ideas of space and community did change during the interwar years, as despite a long history of tension with the Fulbe groups of southern Senegambia, Fulbe from Futa Jallon became increasingly integrated into a larger Fulbe presence reaching from the eastern Gambia to the highlands of Guinea. There were internal societal tensions, as Fulbe in southern Senegambia were made up of a variety of Pulaar- speaking groups with different geographic origins, social statuses based on the legacies of slavery and state-building, and religion. At the same time, people of different classes and origins worked together in creating a larger, trans-colonial Fulbe space, outside of the political sphere enacted by 5 Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists & Loyal Citizens, 37. 181 colonial governments. If, as Crawford Young writes, “The power of the state lies partly in its authority—its capacity to secure habitual obedience and deference through legitimacy, custom, or fear,” then the power of colonial states in southern Senegambia was still limited by the close of World War II, even if it was stronger than it had been in the past.6 The limits of the authority of the state were geographic both within and across colonies, and borders were a key tool in evading state control and influence. Fulbe mobility also led to the spreading of Islam, as religious leaders used their borderland location to create autonomous, transnational religious communities. Clerics, not always Fulbe, moved throughout the region attempting to convert people to Islam and strengthen the beliefs of existing Muslims. The interwar years also saw attempts to use borders as a tool for religious independence, as the founding of the religious community of Medina Gounass highlights. Medina Gounass represents what Bayart terms the “exit option,” as southern Senegambians actively chose to disconnect themselves from colonial spaces, in the case of Medina Gounass creating a “territorial sanctuary.” If as Bayart argues, “Escape […] is still one of the constituent strategies of the production of politics and social relations,” I argue that this strategy is mediated by the territorial strategies and networks of people seeking escape.7 In the case of southern Senegambia, pure territorial sanctuaries like Medina Gounass were rare. Borderland residents sought to stay one step ahead of the state, and circumstances required that they constantly assess where they could find the greatest sanctuary from colonial exactions. Fulbe conceptions of territoriality during the interwar period provided strategies for borderland residents seeking to escape states and emphasized the continuing importance of cross-border civil society as the bedrock of Fulbe geographies in southern Senegambia. While states sought to control “the legitimate ‘means of 6 Young, The African Colonial State, 11, 31. 7 Bayart, The State in Africa, 256–59. 182 movement,’” they were unable to do so in a meaningful capacity. The state apparatuses necessary to restrict movement—things like citizenship papers, identification cards, or passports—were not widespread enough—or at all—in the interwar years to give states the capacity to restrict and structure movement in any meaningful sense.8 However, they were stronger than they had been during the beginnings of colonial rule. General Patterns of Migration Migration was a constant part of life in southern Senegambia during the interwar years. Colonial population densities were low, and in an underpopulated region, acquiring land was not a problem, especially in the eastern Upper Casamance. Good pastureland and farmland was available for anyone who wanted it.9 Fulbe migrated from the Gambia to Senegal “looking for New Farm lands and fresh pasturage for their Cattle.”10 Land in southern Senegal was abundant and of higher quality than in the Gambia, and people settled new villages just across the border in the early 1930s.11 In the opposite direction, Mamadou Lamin Ceesay’s grandparents left Senegal for the Gambia on the advice of a marabout, who told them that they would find better land.12 Eastern Portuguese Guinea was underpopulated as well, particularly near the French Guinea border, where most of the people were Fulbe from Futa Jallon who had immigrated in the early twentieth century.13 While land still remained plentiful, populations did increase substantially, doubling in the eastern Gambia from 1920 to 1946.14 The most important shift in migration 8 John Torpey, “Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate 'Means of Movement,'" Sociological Theory 16, no. 3 (1998), 239–59. 9 NRS ARP 31/6, Report for the U.R.P. for the Quarter Ending 31st March, 1935, 3. 10 NRS ARP 31/6, Annual Report of the U.R.P. for 1935, 6. 11 Interview with Tally Mballo, Diam Weli, Senegal, February 27, 1917. 12 Interview with Mamdou Lamin Ceesay, Brikama Ba, The Gambia, July 25, 2017. 13 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Renseignements sur les colonies étrangères limitrophes, Guinée Portugaise, 2ème trimestre 1934. 14 NRS ARP 31/4, Annual Report, U.R.P., 1928; ARP 31/9, Upper River Division Annual Report for the Year 1946; ARP 34/4, Division Annual Reports, MacCarthy Island Division and Upper River Division. 183 patterns during the interwar years was the lengthening of migration networks from the heart of Futa Jallon into Fulbe networks to the west and north. Migration could be permanent, semi-permanent, or temporary. Between French and Portuguese Guinea, people primarily crossed the border for family relations and commercial transactions.15 Migration flows fluctuated based on economic conditions and forced labor and taxation demands, but also because of the needs of particular individuals and communities. In 1924, the Gambia served as a site of “asylum and refuge” for many from southern Senegal, Mali, and French Guinea, where the lengthy border was easily crossed (see Figure 11). 16 French officials estimated these exoduses at around 35,000 people, most of whom had come from Senegal.17 The very next year, movement continued toward the Gambia but also to Portuguese Guinea, where people moved searching for “economic growth and the certainly of finding a better life and more productive land.”18 However, some of these migrants, like the parents of Bakary Cissoko, found conditions in Portuguese Guinea, not to their liking, and came back soon after.19 Many Gaabunke from Portuguese Guinea came to live in French Senegal. Decisions were made by individuals and communities. The ancestors of Cherno Kandeh of Nyamanar, the Gambia, initially moved toward the Gambia to avoid the expanding French colonial state in Senegal but kept moving after the death of some of their herds left them searching for new land.20 15 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, “Guinée Portugaise,” 3ème trimestre 1937. 16 For Figure 11 below, note the MacCarthy Island and Upper River Provinces in the east. British War Office, 1948. 17 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Rapport politique: considerations sur l’état politique, March 10, 1924. 18 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Rapport Politique du Senegal: Année 1925. 19 On migration from Senegal to Portuguese Guinea during this period, interviews with Bakary Cissoko, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017; and Sadiou Cissé and Kelountan Komma, Thiara, January 23, 2017. 20 Interview with Cherno Kandeh, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 29, 2017. 184 Figure 11. Map of the colonial Gambia, 1948 Migration could flow back and forth, with differing directions of temporary and permanent migration. By 1929, residents of Portuguese Guinea were moving to Senegal “non-stop.”21 During the late 1920s and early 1930s, there was an exodus from eastern Portuguese Guinea toward Senegal. From 1929 to 1933 the number of huts in the predominantly Fulbe Gabú district in Portuguese Guinea dropped by 10,000, which given Portuguese estimates of three people per hut, meant a reduction in the population of about 30,000 people. The 1928 census counted 65,189 Fulbe in Portuguese Guinea, and even if this number likely underrepresents the Fulbe population— temporary migration to avoid censuses was common—a significant portion of the Fulbe population left the colony during these years. These migrations were in large part temporary, and most of the migrants were men. While a 1929 census recorded Portuguese Guinea’s population as 44 percent male, in eastern Portuguese Guinea it was only 32 percent. In the other census zones of Portuguese 21 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/537, Gouvernement Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, Rapport Politique, Année 1929, 42. 185 Guinea, men were a majority of the population.22 While some men from Fulbe areas had gone to work in the colonial center of Bissau, this gap was due primarily to travel to neighboring French colonies, particularly Senegal. It is important to note that in many ways, “male mobility was often predicated upon female immobility.”23 It was men who herded cows across borders and left as seasonal economic migrants, leaving women to lead the households in their absence. This proved to be a challenge for those left behind, as women were then solely in charge of farming and household labor. The population of the Upper Casamance in southern Senegal increased dramatically during the mid-1930s. While the region had just 56,000 people in 1933, it had increased to 72,150 in 1936 just three years, a growth of 28 percent. French officials credited this growth “in large part to a massive exodus from Portuguese Guinea,” with migrants mostly settling near the Portuguese Guinea border.24 Many immediately began farming in large numbers, with the French colonial government providing seeds to encourage a strong harvest.25 Migration in search of better farm and pastureland had a deep history in Fulbe society, and with declining soil in parts of Portuguese Guinea, crossing the border was a minor inconvenience.26 More continued to come throughout the late 1930s, bringing their herds with them. They arrived in the greatest numbers during the rainy season to take advantage of French seed distributions.27 People also left Senegal for the Gambia, including 107 families in the first three months of 1929, soon to be followed by 42 more households.28 In 1932, over 1,000 people arrived from Senegal in the Gambian district of Fulladu 22 Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU) Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933 (Seção Confidencial), 58, 80. 23 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, Chapter 3. 24 ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 11. 25 ANS 2G36/5, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 45–46. 26 AHU Relatório do Governo da Guinée 1933. 27 ANS 2G39/34, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel, 1939, 65. 28 NRS CSO 3/132, Monthly Diary for the Travelling Commissioner of the U.R.P., April 1929, 1–2. 186 East to establish new towns.29 By the late 1930s, conditions had been reversed and people began to leave the Gambia for Senegal. Migrants from the Gambia founded five new villages in the region of Kolda in 1936 because life had become difficult in the Gambia.30 An “intense immigration” followed in 1939 with “entire families coming to French territory” with all of their herds and possessions.31 Given the importance of herding in Fulbe society and the shrinking amount of good pastureland in the Gambia, many herders sought to find better grazing land for their cattle.32 During World War II, migration flows revoked again, and shifted back toward the Gambia, primarily for economic reasons. As a result, between 1940 and 1944 the taxable population of the subdivision of Kolda shrunk by 16 percent.33 Colonial governments sought to “stabilize populations that are too prone to move from one side or the other according to the advantage or whims of the moment.”34 However, to call these migrations “whims” does not do them justice. For people who were reliant on the productivity of land for their well-being, decisions about where to live could be life or death. A productive harvest or sufficient pastureland could be the difference between starvation and a comfortable year. Fulbe people also crossed borders to use better facilities. After a hospital was built in Bansang in the Gambia, many came to the Gambia to seek medical treatment, particularly in villages closest to the border. The closest medical facility for many of these people had been in Kolda, which could be more than 50 miles away.35 Throughout the 1930s and 1940s British officials noted that people came from Senegal, and even as far as Portuguese Guinea for medical 29 NRS ARP 31/4, Annual Report of the U.R.P., 1932, 2. 30 ANS 1F3, Versement 14, Etat des renseignements concernant la Gambie Anglaise, April 1, 1936. 31 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Rapports sur les colonies étrangères limitrophes du Senegal, 1er trimestre 1939. 32 Interviews with Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Musa Baldeh, and Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, The Gambia, July 19, 2017, and Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 25, 2017. 33 ANS 2G44/99, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport mensuel d’août 1944, August 22, 1944, le Chef de Subdivision, 7. ANS 2G44/104, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble, 1944, 1. 34 ANS 2G42/1, Senegal, Rapport politique, année 1942, 47. 35 Interview with Mawnde Kande, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 12, 2017. 187 treatment.36 Facing the impossible task of trying to determine which people were truly local, colonial medical officers just treated all of them.37 The realities of life in a border region meant that Fulbe geographies did not stay within colonies, and many simply used the closest facilities. The biggest change in Fulbe geographic networks during the interwar period was the growing integration of Fulbe from Futa Jallon. While Fulbe people from the extreme northwest of French Guinea had long been integrated into Fulbe networks to the west and north, relationships with Fulbe Futa and other Fulbe groups in southern Senegambia were the source of political tension for long periods of time. While Fulbe Futa assisted other Fulbe during the overthrowing of the Kaabu Empire in the second half of the 1860s, political rivalries led to a weakening of these networks during the last 30 years of the nineteenth century.38 While Fulbe Futa migrated to southern Senegambia during the interwar years, they were not always greeted with open arms. Many Fulakunda, the primary Fulbe group in southern Senegambia, regarded Fulbe Futa as traitors, and refused to marry them.39 Many still recall Fulakunda refusing to marry their daughters to Fulbe Futa, scared of these cultural differences and worried that their children would lose their cultural roots.40 For their part, Fulbe Futa would often refuse Fulakunda proposals of marriage if they were not Muslim.41 Cultural differences between Fulakunda and Fulbe Futa ranged from religion to the organization of huts, and integration was not always smooth.42 Differences in lineage (lenyol) were important for marriage during this time, and nomadic Dorobe would not 36 NRS ARP 30/7, Report on M.I.P. for the Quarter ending 31.12.34, 7; NRS ARP 34/1: Annual Report, M.I.D., 1943, 5. 37 Even today, people still get treated across borders, especially in Bansang. 38 Chapter 1, as well as Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade. 39 Interviews with Boubacar Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016; Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017; and Saidou Diallo, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017. 40 Interview with Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kane Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kan Diallo, and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Senegal, February 27, 2017 41 Interview with El Hadji Mamadou Yaya Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 42 Interview with Ismaila Balde, Sekou Oumar Balde, Ilyao, Senegal, February 24, 2017. 188 marry Fulakunda or Fulbe Futa.43 Of course, not everyone subscribed to these ideas of strict cultural difference, and many did marry across sub-ethnic lines.44 This was particularly true among migrants, who often needed to set down roots in their new communities. The northwestern-most region of French Guinea—originally named Koumbia and later renamed Gaoual—was closely tied historically to migration networks in the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese Guinea. In 1920, an official in French Guinea reported that 25,000 people had left the region of Koumbia in the previous ten years, leaving only 85,000 remaining. Those migrants went to both Portuguese Guinea and Senegal.45 The following year there was another large exodus, as colonial officials claimed the population was “rather nomadic.”46 Officials in French Guinea claimed that many Fulbe who had migrated to Portuguese Guinea wanted to return, but hesitated because they were treated well by chiefs there.47 As in the case of other borders, Fulbe crossed regularly for “the necessities of transhumance,” including 300 people from French to Portuguese Guinea in 1933.48 In 1934, 219 people came back from Portuguese to French Guinea after a reduction of taxes in the latter’s border regions.49 The Futa Jallon—a massive highland region in northwestern Guinea—grew increasingly connected to migration networks west, northwest, and north, although those networks were more unidirectional than others. Many parts of the Futa Jallon were not close to colonial borders, and so migration occurred over longer distances than elsewhere. Colonialism in the Futa Jallon was 43 Interview with Mady Sow, Tenkoli, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 44 Interview with Mamadou Boyi Jawo, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 45 ANS 2G20/8, Guinée, Rapport politique, 2ème trimestre 1920, September 18, 1920. 46 ANS 2G21/11, Guinée, Rapport politique, 2ème trimestre 1921, September 21, 1921, Lieutenant-Gouverneur Poiret, 16. 47 ANS 2G21/11, Guinée, Rapport politique, 4ème trimestre 1921, January 28, 1922, Lieutenant-Gouverneur Poiret, 9. 48 ANS 2G33/10, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1933, 21. 49 ANS 2G34/8, Guinée, Rapport sur la situation politique de la Guinée Française en 1934, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française, A. Vadier, May 20, 1935, 83. 189 particularly rough, and many Fulbe today refer to the colonial government in Guinea as laamu poore—the government of rubber—due to the harsh rubber collection demands placed on colonial populations.50 Governance up to World War II in the Futa Jallon was through “the maintenance of authority through the exercise of a particularly ‘hard’ form of power.”51 Fulbe Futa moved to southern and southeastern Senegal, to eastern Portuguese Guinea and to eastern Gambia. They came for many reasons, including better land and soil, easier labor conditions and better quality of life.52 They came to escape “the feudal and theocratic system of the missidé”—which consisted of a central town of elites and their servants, surrounded by enslaved and lower-class villages. Despite the end of slavery, systems of dependency continued in the Futa Jallon.53 A desire to break free of these dependencies and of enslaved ancestry led many, especially young men, to move far from home in order to build new lives for themselves. Mobility and freedom were important to these migrants, and while class hierarchies were still common in southern Senegambia, they were much more flexible than those of Futa Jallon. In general, Fulbe left French Guinea in large numbers. The subdivision of Dabola saw its population decline by 19 percent between 1932 and 1936 as people left for Sierra Leone, Portuguese Guinea, and Senegal. Virtually all who left were taxable individuals, subject to harsh 50 This showed up in dozens of interviews, including with Hadji Diallo, Sinthian Hadji, Senegal, February 14, 2017; Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kane Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kane Diallo and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Senegal, February 27, 2017; El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea- Bissau, April 11, 2017; and El Haji Mamadou Yaya Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 51 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 44. 52 ANS 2G44/20, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel, 1944, 45–46. Futa Jallon had poor soil due to erosion, which precluded cash crop agriculture. Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 50. 53 ANS 2G44/20, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel, 1944, 52. On the continuation of dependency systems in the Futa Jallon see Roger Botte, “Stigmates sociaux et discriminations religieuses: l’ancienne classe servile au Fuuta Jaloo,” Cahiers d’études africaines 34, no. 133/135 (1994), 109–36; Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” Chapters 1 and 2. William Derman, Serfs, Peasants, and Socialists: A Former Serf Village in the Republic of Guinea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). 190 colonial policies.54 While many Fulbe Futa who left for Senegal came to the Upper Casamance, Kedougou in southeastern Senegal was even more popular. By 1943, more than 8,000 people had left the French Guinean subdivision of Mali for Kedougou, causing grave economic harm.55 The population of Kedougou swelled during the 1930s and 1940s, rising from 21,429 in 1934 to 37,739 in 1943, and colonial officials credited immigration from Futa Jallon as the only significant factor in this increase. Fulbe came searching for productive, vacant land, and told officials that the hierarchical, theocratic society they left back in French Guinea was not to their liking.56 Some who left Futa Jallon went to Portuguese Guinea, finding money more available. Sometimes Portuguese colonial officials would pay women to cook, clean, or wash clothes, providing another source of income.57 While life under the colonial government in Portuguese Guinea was also harsh, many migrants came in the hopes that life would be easier than it was in French Guinea.58 They also came to the Gambia, where although the distance was greater, opportunities were more plentiful and taxes and forced labor demands lighter. Migrants would often find wives upon arrival, helping them integrate into their new communities.59 While colonial governments sought to extend political and economic control over their subjects, they needed to balance the desire to extract as much as possible from the population with the reality that borders were easily crossed if they attempted to extract too much. This made them, at times, responsive to the demands of southern Senegambians. While during the first two decades 54 ANS 21G62 (H), Exode du Canton de Dinguiraye, Rapport de l’inspecteur des Affaires Administratives P. Cheruy au sujet des émigrations du canton de Dinguiraye, des cultures de Bissikrima et des voies de fait auxquelles se serait livre M. l’Administrateur, Commandant le cercle de Dabola, November 13, 1936. 55 ANS 2G43/19, Guinée, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1943, 30. 56 ANS 2G43/16, Senegal, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1943, 38–39. 57 Interview with Aissatu Camara, Lamarana Djalo, Djabu Djamanka, and Hamina Camara, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017. 58 Interviews with Mouminatou Diallo, Ramatou Balde, and Aliou Barry, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017, and with Pété Camara and Amadu Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017. 59 Interviews with Abdrachman Baldeh, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017, and with Saidou Diallo, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017. 191 of the twentieth century, colonial governments hesitated to enact overly burdensome policies in southern Senegambia, that balance shifted in the years leading up to World War II as colonial governments had a greater ability to find their subjects for taxes and forced labor. On the other hand, officials needed to account for the threat of migration, particularly in terms of promoting local chiefs. Colonial officials attempted to promote chiefs who could retain people within their borders, but these chiefs were also subject to European demands. Chiefs, particularly those tied to precolonial leaders, held a lot of sway. In the three decades between Musa Molo’s exile to the Gambia and his death, many of his supporters migrated to be closer to him.60 Musa’s son Cherno Baldeh became a Gambian district chief in the late 1920s,61 and upon the death of a canton chief in Senegal in 1930, the French sought to name a new chief quickly for fear that people would migrate to live under Baldeh in the Gambia.62 Upon Musa Molo’s death in 1931, the French expressed cautious optimism those who had left almost thirty years before would return to the land of their birth.63 The death of the influential chief Monjur Emballo in 1936, whose family had ruled in Gabú from the late nineteenth century, sent many from Portuguese Guinea across the border to Senegal.64 Chiefs who provoked emigration tended to be replaced as quickly as possible. These reasons could be due to abuse of power, or because the chief was of enslaved origin, as happened in the Senegalese canton of Kamako in 1932.65 The rule of Abdoul Diallo, canton chief of Firdu- Sud and Patim-Kibo in Senegal, led many to leave for British Gambia and Portuguese Guinea.66 60 ANS 2G32/102, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1932, 5. 61 For more on Cherno Baldeh, see Alice Bellagamba, “‘Such a generous chief, even cultures would follow him: Colonial rule and political traditions along the River Gambia,” Mande Studies 3 (2001), 201–24. 62 ANS 2G30/87, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1930, 6. 63 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, Décès Moussa Molo ancient roi du Fouladou, September 17, 1931. 64 ANS 2G36/5, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 45-46. 65 ANS 2G28/60, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1928, 5; 2G32/102, Kolda, rapport politique annuel, 1932, 11; Interview with Alfa Bah, Kusalang, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. Enslaved origin was controversial for chiefs in French Guinea as well. Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 88–89. 66 N’Gaidé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 160; Sow, “Mutations politques,” 162. 192 A district chief of a different ethnicity could raise problems as well.67 On the other hand, a notably good chief could bring people from French to British territory, or vice versa.68 Colonial governments often sought to offer inducements for borderland residents to move or stay inside their territory. In 1925, the Commissioner of the MacCarthy Island Province noted that residents were emigrating to Senegal due to “an unsatisfactory water supply.” He concluded, The only remedy is the construction of suitable wells. […] In order to attract settlers to the Gambia, nay more, in order to retain our present population, it is necessary to make the Gambia more attractive. […] This can largely be done by an expenditure of money. The villages in Senegal have for the greater part been supplied with concrete wells. Naturally the natives prefer to cross the border to a village so provided to remaining in villages where they have to dig and maintain wells under difficulties.69 For their part, the French recognized this, and the administrator of Kolda wrote in 1933, “In order to attract the natives and fix them definitively in Upper Casamance [Kolda], a line of wells along the two borders of the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea should be established for those who wish to settle nearby. They would be foolproof centers of attraction.”70 Colonial governments also distributed seeds in order to encourage farmers to arrive in their territory, both in the Gambia and Senegal.71 In French Guinea, the colonial official and Fulbe ethnographer Gilbert Vieilliard argued that taxation rates needed to be reduced in border zones to avoid exoduses to neighboring colonies.72 In underpopulated areas, European officials sought to attract populations. British officials in the Gambia discussed the idea of giving land to seasonal farmers to bring their families into the 67 NRS CSO 3/86, Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P. to Acting Colonial Secretary, December 12, 1924. 68 NRS ARP 30/7, Report on M.I.P. for the Quarter ending 30th June, 1935, 3. 69 NRS ARP 30/6, Annual Report, M.I.P., 1925, January 31, 1926. 70 ANS 2G33/74, Kolda, Rapport économique annuel, 1933, 5. 71 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, Rapport sur la Colonie de Gambie Anglaise, 2e trimestre 1937; ANS 21G36, Versement 17, Office d’Inspection et de Conditionnement des Produits naturels du Sénégal, Extrait du Bulletin de Statistiques et d’Informations, Campagne 1934/1935, Mai 1935. 72 ANS 21G62 (H), Le Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. à Monsieur le Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française, “Exodes vers le Sierra-Léone,” February 4, 1937, 3. 193 colony, and exempting them from taxation for the first year.73 French officials in southern Senegal built processing factories in Velingara to persuade people to farm and sell peanuts there instead of in the Gambia.74 In Kolda, colonial officials hesitated to use “brutal force,” not because it was cruel, but because it “would provoke, unfailingly, emigration to Portuguese Guinea.”75 In French Guinea, colonial officials considered sanctioning seasonal migrants who missed their required forced labor, but decided that if they did so, seasonal migrants would stay permanently in other colonies, and likely bring their families as well.76 As compared to French Guinea, Portuguese Guinea had “irregular and often non-existent” tax requirements, and French officials believed that it was intentionally so to attract French subjects. They were hopeful, however, that a planned reduction in taxes in border regions would diminish these emigrations and encourage those who had left to return.77 In 1933, Portuguese officials promised that immigrants would be exempt from all taxes and forced labor demands but removed this incentive by 1935. The Portuguese also installed commercial houses near the border with French Guinea in an effort to encourage products to flow through Portuguese Guinea.78 While colonial regimes in southern Senegambia could be brutal colonizers, they constantly reckoned with the tenuousness of their power given cross-border networks and the ease of movement. Although they needed to consider this less by the end of the interwar years than the beginning, it was still often a part of the decision-making process. Migration was often a tool to escape the steadily growing influence of colonial governments. However, this was not the only or even the primary reason people moved. During 73 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., April 1924, 4. 74 Ibid, 3. 75 ANS 2G44/104, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble, 1944, 5. 76 ANS 2G28/11, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1928, 62. 77 ANS 2G34/8, Rapport sur la situation politique de la Guinée Française en 1934, A. Vadier, Lieutenant- Gouverneur de la Guinée Française, May 20, 1935; AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933; ANS 2F5, Versement 14, Annexes: La Guinée Portugaise, June 1, 1939. 78 ANS 2G38/27, Guinée, Rapport politique, Année 1938, 43. 194 the interwar years, migrants moved to escape social hierarchies, in search of better land, and to avoid unpopular Fulbe political leadership. They increasingly left French Guinea for areas to the north and west, where population densities were lower and opportunities more plentiful. While migration flows from Senegal and the Gambia often reversed depending on the year, migration from Portuguese Guinea to Senegal tended to be more common than from Senegal to Portuguese Guinea. Despite these migrations, migrants stayed closely tied to friends and family on the other side of the border, returning frequently to visit. Avoiding Forced Labor, Taxation, and Military Conscription Migration was an individual, family, or community decision. Decisions to migrate were personal and based on a weighing of factors.79 Where was land available? How difficult would migration be? Would border patrols catch you? If so, what would the punishment be? How onerous were colonial demands, and how much lighter could they be elsewhere? Since so many people migrated, it is clear that for many there was sufficient reason to move. While Fulbe relied on family networks and an extended Fulbe geography, that only mitigated the challenges of migration and integration into new communities, regions, and colonies. One of the drivers of migration during the colonial period was the avoidance of exactions, including forced labor, taxation, and a multitude of others. These exactions became much heavier during the interwar years, as colonial governments used the need for increased revenues to impose heavy taxation and forced labor demands upon subject populations.80 Central to the idea of any hegemonic colonial state was the ability to effectively collect taxes and regulate labor to build colonial infrastructure projects. Although the colonial governments of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea 79 As Carola Lentz notes, while a “culture of migration” is important, “we should not ignore the relevance of individual decision making and agency.” Lentz, Land, Mobility, and Belonging, 81. 80 In Guinea-Bissau, examples of this can be seen in Havik, “Estradas sem fim,” and Havik, “Tributos e impostos: a crise mundial, o Estado Novo e a política fiscal na Guiné,” Economia e Sociologia 85 (2008), 29–55. 195 became more effective in governing colonial subjects during the interwar years, migration across borders allowed borderland residents to disengage as best they could from colonial governments. These migrations were the most extreme representations of the colonial state, whose day-to-day impact on most individuals was relatively limited. Notwithstanding the psychological and emotional barriers to migration, crossing colonial borders was itself an easy process. Colonial officials claimed, It is a perpetual going and coming between Portuguese Guinea, the Gambia and Senegal where the inhabitants have only a few steps to take in order to evade, in passing from one territory to another, the obligations that they dread or that bother them. Such displacements are inevitable and there is scarcely any measure likely to put an end to it, given the extreme instability of the habitat of these people.81 Fulbe and others in southern Senegambia moved back and forth, switching colonies if they did not like their government. While temporary movement was primary male, oftentimes it was entire families or even communities who moved based on where life was better. It was in part because of colonial exactions, but also based on land availability and quality.82 Fulbe people had a history of migration to avoid state control, as many in the region were descended from those who had moved from other regions to avoid the excesses of precolonial states. They used these preexisting strategies of migration in order to escape colonial impositions as best they could, migrating to avoid tax collection and recruitment in each colony. The low population densities of much of southern Senegambia (less than eight people per square mile for the Upper Casamance) led to high labor demands in order to build infrastructure to connect far- flung villages and towns. The extremity of labor demands led to migration away, thus lowering the number of available recruits for colonial projects and increasing of labor demands on thus who remained.83 But low population densities also allowed for easier migration, as land was plentiful 81 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1928, 20. 82 Interview with Ousmane Ba and Thierno Bokar Kande, Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, February 20, 2017. 83 ANS 10D4/15, Kolda, Rapport Annuel 1934, L’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, February 18, 1935. 196 for those who needed it, and limited resources for surveillance allowed people to stay off of the radar of governments. Some even moved from colony to colony. More broadly, recruitment “engendered a permanent mobility […] facilitated by the porosity of the borders.”84 Some even migrated several times, in one example leaving Senegal for French Guinea, then Portuguese Guinea, and finally returning to Senegal, finding each government exhausting and demanding.85 They drew on traditions of “migration as social resistance to economic exploitation” which “had for many years been undertaken in Portuguese Guinea by those fleeing the predations of larger kingdoms.”86 Whether precolonial or colonial governments, southern Senegambia had long been a space of migration to avoid economic or social exploitation. Fulbe people proved themselves mobile, even if the movement was temporary. Gambian officials stated, “I do not think any of my people stay in Senegal—the fear of being conscripted being always present in their minds.”87 Many residents of the Gambia would go to Senegal to avoid forced labor demands, and many in southern Senegal would travel to the Gambia or Portuguese Guinea to do the same.88 Some of those who fled to escape labor demands and taxation would return to their homes after a safe period, while others would stay in the places where they had taken refuge.89 Colonial taxation policies were particularly harsh in Portuguese Guinea, and were “pursued with an extreme rigor.”90 Five villages left Portuguese Guinea for Senegal in 1924 to escape taxation and forced labor demands, particularly the building of roads.91 In 1939, 8,000 84 Sow, "Mutations politiques,” 160. 85 Interview with El Hadji Daiwa Balde and Sakho Balde, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 86 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 137. 87 NRS CSO 3/86, Confidential Letter 932, Travelling Commissioner, North Bank Province, to the Colonial Secretary, November 9, 1924. 88 Interview with Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kane Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kane Diallo and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Senegal, February 27, 2017 89 Interview with Saini Djabai, Queita Djabai, Famara Mbuli Cisse, and Ebraima Djabai, Contuba, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017. 90 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, Rapport sur les colonies étrangères limitrophes du Sénégal, April 22, 1931. 91 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Senegal, Rapport politique, Année 1924, 90-2. 197 people crossed into Senegal to avoid Portuguese exactions.92 In Portuguese Guinea, those who could not pay their taxes were sent to jail, another incentive to leave for Senegal.93 The combination of taxation and forced labor sent many to Senegal either temporarily or permanently, as you had to start paying taxes before becoming a teenager.94 Anyone who could not pay taxes was vulnerable to being beaten, and might be forced to farm for the district chief in exchange for the unpaid taxes. Women could also be taken and forced to work for colonial officials if their husbands or fathers had not paid their taxes.95 Many fled to Senegal to avoid being beaten in front of their families.96 Forced labor was a constant threat, and sent people heading to Senegal and Guinea.97 Forced labor was grueling strenuous work. A British official described forced labor in Senegal in 1930, as people were recruited by the Chiefs and work for one month in each year for the Government. This is unpaid labour, but if the natives are taken to a distance of more than five kilometres from their towns they receive food. This work is in the charge of native foremen who flog the natives who, if they can afford it, obtain exemption by giving a present to the chief.98 People cleared grass and trees and broke down rocks to build roads. Many served more than 30 miles from home, carrying their own water with them. Men built bridges and dug trenches for the needs of the Portuguese government. Women were forced to cook and bring water to workers.99 92 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Notice de Renseignements, June 3, 1939. 93 Interview with Salu Balde, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017. People also went back and forth along the borders of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique to evade taxation on both sides. Allen F. Isaacman and Barbara Isaacman, Mozambique: From Colonialism to Revolution, 1900–1982 (Boulder: Westview, 1983), 63. 94 Interview with Mamadu Djaló, Mamadu Barry, and Mama Samba Queita, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017 95 Interviews with Amadu Tidjani "Djallonke" Balde, Pitche, Guinea-Bissau, April 4, 2017; with El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017; and with Sambaru Cande, Indjai Cande, Bantandjan, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 96 Interview with Tcherno Alimu Djalo, Sonaco, Guinea-Bissau, April 3, 2017. 97 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Documentation recueillie sur la Guinée portugaise, n.d. (file from 1934 to 1941). 98 ANS CSO 3/172, Acting Travelling Commissioner, M.I.P., to the Colonial Secretary, November 24, 1930, 4-5. 99 On forced labor, interviews with Oumar Balde and Mbailo Balde, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; El Hadji Tidjani Sané, Mama Ausu Sané, Ebraima Sané, Sadjo Mané, and Samian Sané, Kankelefa, Guinea-Bissau, April 10, 2017; El Hadji Fuma Fati, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017; El Hadji Ibrahima Mané, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017; Saini Djabai, Queita Djabai, Famara Mbuli Cisse and Ebraima Djabai, Contuba, 198 This brutal work, typically done annually but at times more frequently, led many to seek alternatives through migration. Policies could vary and change migration flows. People moved back and forth from the Gambia to Senegal based on the local administration, as certain village or district chiefs were better rulers than others, or required less of their subjects.100 Because of the brutality of some chiefs in collecting taxes in Senegal, entire villages moved to the Gambia in 1932.101 In both Senegal and Portuguese Guinea, some district chiefs would beat people and tie them to trees if they could not fulfill their demands.102 Colonial road building projects required substantial amounts of labor, and in Kolda this amounted to more than 75 percent of the adult male population on an annual basis.103 Gambian officials wrote in 1935, “There is no emigration, strictly speaking, but at the moment of tax collection an exodus restricted to borderland residents who take refuge in Senegal to free themselves from the tax.”104 The village of Gambissara, split in two by colonial boundary drawing, saw an emptying from its French side to its British side due to French taxation.105 The Gambia was seen as less onerous than Senegal for the most part, as taxation and forced labor demands were less arduous.106 The northwestern corner of French Guinea adjacent to both Senegal and Portuguese Guinea saw much of the same back and forth migration. In 1920, a disagreement with a village chief about Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017; Mansara Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017; with Sadjo Sumaré, Gêba, Guinea-Bissau, April 22, 2017; and Bakari Djana, Gêba, Guinea-Bissau, April 22, 2017. 100 Interview with Sadio Balde, Dabo, Senegal, December 14, 2016. 101 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, Rapport d’un Inspecteur indigene des Etablissements Maurel et Prom, J.C. Fox, June 24, 1932. 102 Interviews with Saikou Balde, Pata, Senegal, February 15, 2017; and with El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. 103 ANS 2G29/95: Kolda, Rapport d’ensemble annuel, 1929, 11. 104 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, Renseignements sur la Gambie Anglaise, Réponse à letter N°113 A.I. du 3 Février 1935 demandant des renseignements sur la Gambie Anglaise, March 6, 1935. 105 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., April 26, 1922. 106 Among others, see interview with Pathe Balde and Diadiy Balde, Sare Boki, Senegal, March 1, 2017. This did not remain the case, as the Gambia became more dangerous than Senegal during the Yahya Jammeh era. 199 forced labor demands in the subdivision of Youkounkoun sent 80 people and their cattle into Portuguese Guinea.107 This district was a particularly difficult place to collect taxes and recruit laborers because of the ease of going to Senegal, Portuguese Guinea, and even the Gambia.108 Some colonial officials believed that for this reason it was the most difficult district to govern in all of French Guinea. In fact, there were not even drivable roads to connect it to the rest of the colony.109 People went into Koumbia from other colonies as well, coming from Portuguese Guinea to avoid working on road building projects.110 When the Portuguese began to requisition cattle in 1941, at least 110 people and 300 heads of cattle moved out.111 As the colonial government grew in strength in Guinea during the interwar period, Fulbe began to leave Futa Jallon en masse. The extreme levels of taxation and forced labor demands had deleterious results, and Fulbe migrated out of Futa Jallon to other Fulbe areas, even if their language and culture differed in particular ways. The harsh policies of the colonial government in French Guinea made people leave searching for better luck and conditions elsewhere. Forced labor and taxation exhausted the population, many of whom left seasonally to Senegal and the Gambia in search of economic opportunities to pay their taxes. Many stayed in these other colonies, where colonial exactions were less intense.112 Fulbe Futa emigration reached new highs in the 1930s, and in 1935, the French reported a reduction of Labé’s population of almost 10,000 people in just one year, almost three percent of the district’s population.113 107 ANS 2G20/8, Guinée, Rapport Politique, 2ème trimestre, 1920, September 18, 1920. 108 ANS 2G25/15, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel de l’année 1925, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée française, G. Poiret, au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., March 4, 1926, 37–38. 109 ANS 2G27/14, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel de l’année 1927, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée française, G. Poiret, au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F, February 28, 1927, 72–73. 110 ANS 2G30/8, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel de l’année 1930, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée française, G. Poiret, au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., April 15, 1931. 111 ANS 2G41/21, Guinée, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1941, 100. 112 Interviews with Demba Jallow, Sare Ali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017; Alfa Djaló, Sare Bakary, Guinea-Bissau, April 26, 2017; and with El Hadji Mamadou Yaya Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 113 ANS 2G35/8, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1935, 70. 200 Colonial officials feared a new tax on cattle introduced in 1930 would lead to an exodus of herds, and were pleasantly surprised when only between 400 and 500 heads of cattle left for Senegal and Portuguese Guinea.114 However, by 1935, cattle were either leaving the colony or at the very least being kept away from colonial recordkeepers. In the subdivision of Labé, two different reports mentioned drastic reductions in cattle numbers. One report mentioned that cattle numbers had dropped from in the past twenty years from 100,000 to 20,000. Another estimate reported a reduction from 150,000 heads of cattle in 1932 to 75,000 one year later. The Governor General of French West Africa put the blame directly on the cattle tax.115 Regardless of the accuracy of estimates, there was a clear relationship between colonial policy and migration flows. A French inquiry on the source of Fulbe migration blamed colonial governments, who were asking of the Fulbe demands that “truly exceed their fiscal capacity.” Gilbert Vieillard, the colonial official investigating flight from French Guinea, argued that the only way to prevent migration was “to establish an absolute parity” with neighboring colonies.116 By World War II, in many districts migration had reached disastrous proportions, a flood heading downhill away from the highlands of Futa Jallon. The subdivision of Mali saw its population drop from 111,000 in 1942 to 93,800 in 1944, and French officials expected another departure of 10,000 people in 1945. They left Futa Jallon in all directions, heading west to Portuguese Guinea, and northwest and north to Senegal.117 Fulbe Futa had their own geographic networks that connected them not just to southern Senegambia, but to southeastern Senegal and to Sierra Leone. French officials complained that 114 ANS 2G30/8, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel de l’année 1930, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée française, G. Poiret, au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., 9–10. 115 ANS 21G62 (H), Le Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. à Monsieur le Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée française, “Situation de l’Agriculture et de l’Elevage. Action du Service forestier,” February 18, 1935. 116 ANS 21G62 (H), Le Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. à Monsieur le Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française, “Exodes vers le Sierra-Léone,” February 4, 1937. 117 ANS 2G44/20, Senegal, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1944, 42–44. 201 between Portuguese and French Guinea and Sierra Leone, there was a constant “going and coming of dissatisfied natives,” blaming this primarily on rivalries between chiefs and their own repressive policies.118 People also left the French Guinean subdivision of Mali for Senegal and the French Sudan because of these chiefly rivalries as well.119 Within French Guinea, people migrated to plant new fields, move closer to existing fields, to escape the authority of particular chiefs, and to escape forced labor on colonial infrastructure projects. They did this because, according to colonial officials, “Political authority is always for them an enemy, and they try to limit required demands by concealment or flight.”120 By doing so, they hoped to gain independence, and from the perspective of French officials, “unfortunately, this calculus is not entirely false.” While officials believed this dispersion did not harm the colonial economy, they did believe it posed political and administrative problems.121 Military Conscription In the early 1920s, officials in Senegal waited for the return of populations that had fled during military conscription for the First World War.122 The French consul in Bissau estimated 400,000 French subjects were in Portuguese Guinea, which the Governor General acknowledged was, “without a doubt exaggerated,” but the war brought “an exceptional movement of emigration to neighboring colonies.”123 During World War II, military conscription demands led to increased movement across the border as well. By July 1940, British officials mentioned, “Deserters for the 118 ANS 2G22/12, Guinée, Rapport Politique du 2ème trimestre, 1922, Lieutenant-Gouverneur G. Poiret, July 28, 1922. 119 ANS 2G25/15, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1925, Lieutenant-Gouverneur G. Poiret, March 4, 1926. 120 ANS 21G62 (H), Gilbert Veillard, Administrateur Adjoint de 3ème classe des Colonies, en service à Mamou à Monsieur l’Administrateur, Commandant le Cercle de Matou,” “Exécution lettre no. 336 A.P.I. du 16 Mai 1936,” July 4, 1936. 121 ANS 2G29/11, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1929, 25–26. 122 See Chapter 2. 123 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/536, Gouvernement Général de l’A.O.F., Rapport Politique, Année 1923, 21. 202 French Army are migrating in.”124 French officials demanded the return of Fulbe who had immigrated into the Gambia, but the Commissioner of the Upper River Province disagreed, writing, I examined the great majority of these persons in the Office and in nearly every case they have stated that they were born in Gambia, but had been living until recently in French territory, and have now returned to escape military service. Moreover they brought witnesses which gave their statements a very strong presumption of veracity, unless rebutted by actual evidence from the French side, which was in no case brought.125 It is unclear whether these people were actually born in the Gambia, but even if they were not, they used their connections to avoid military recruitment. Desertion occurred in both directions during World War II. Gambian officials mentioned that deserters from the Gambia fled to Senegal at the same time as deserters from Senegal entered the Gambia.126 Conscription was often forced, and in the Gambia in particular, it was easy to leave during the limited time of military conscription, returning only when safe to do so. One District Commissioner commented, “During the visit of the recruiting party markets were empty and farms stood derelict, but now that the ‘Munshi’ has left the eligible young men have begun to venture timidly forth from the holes in which they were hiding and, having assured themselves that the coast is clear, normal activities prevail.”127 Many who fled just ran into the forest, only to return at night.128 For a time, British officials tried to push off recruitment, contending, It is most desirable from a political point of view […] that a decision to adopt some form of compulsory service should be taken […] only as a last resort. It is no exaggeration to 124 NRS ARP 31/5, Economic Bulletin for Period Ended 26th July,1940, Commissioner U.R.P. to the Colonial Secretary, July 26, 1940. 125 NRS CSO 4/108, Commissioner of the U.R.P. to Colonial Secretary, Deserters from French Territory, April 24, 1940. Underlining in the original. 126 NRS CSO 4/66, Lieutenant-Colonel, A.A. & Q.M.C., Sierra Leone Area, to Colonial Secretaries of Sierra Leone and Gambia, July 5, 1944. 127 NRS CSO 4/66, Commissioner of the M.I.P. to the Colonial Secretary, June 16, 1944. 128 Interviews with Thaymoko Traoré, Mamadou Mballo and Idrissa Diallo, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017; with Tally Mballo, Diam Weli, Senegal, February 27, 2017; Ibrahima Diaby, Timindalla, Senegal, March 1, 2017; Ali Sow, Dikori Sow, Sara Baldeh and Amadou Kandeh, Yoro Beri Kunda, The Gambia, July 22, 2017; and Musa Kouyate, Brikama Ba, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 203 say that one of the principle preferences for British rather than French rule […] is that hitherto there has been no conscription in British West Africa.129 Migration was not just between Senegal and the Gambia, as many crossed into Portuguese Guinea in order to avoid military recruitment as well.130 They also migrated from Portuguese Guinea to Senegal as a result of tension due to Fulbe reluctance to fight in Portuguese campaigns to pacify the island of Canhabaque.131 At the same time as colonial states asked more of their populations through military conscription, many Fulbe used their borderland location in order to escape these demands. Intra-colonial Migration While recognizing that indigenous people have the undeniable right to build their huts as they want, it is necessary to stop this multiplication of villages which constitutes a serious impediment to administrative requisitions, census-taking, recruitment, or demands.132 Before the interwar years, colonial governments were too weak to attempt to regulate the internal movement of their populations. This was particularly true in marginal reasons like the borderlands of southern Senegambia. However, by the interwar years, colonial governments began an attempt to limit internal migration, as the ability to monitor and track their subjects was crucial to exercising absolutely sovereignty over their territories. The above words from the Commandant of the cercle of Kolda highlight that Fulbe mobility was not just across national borders, but within colonies as well. Fulbe used their own mobility to move within colonies in a way that showed the weakness of colonial states and undermined their claims of sovereignty. If particular districts or chiefs were known for being difficult or particularly demanding, many people moved to other regions. In French Guinea, Fulbe people moved constantly between neighboring districts, 129 NRS CSO 4/65, Recruitment in the Gambia, January 22, 1941. 130 Interview with El Hadji Ibrahima Cissé, Contuboel, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 131 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 138. 132 ANS 2G29/95, Kolda, Rapport d’ensemble annuel, 1929, 4. 204 particularly from Labé to the districts of Koumbia and Dinguiraye.133 They also moved to avoid their former masters, to avoid particular chiefs, and at the time of forced labor recruitment.134 In the Gambia, many did not go actually cross borders at the moment of tax collection or military conscription, but just hid in nearby forests.135 In Kolda, particular chiefs led to people leaving one district for another, where they would be less bothered. While in 1934 people came to the canton of Pata to escape maltreatment, by 1945 the soon-to-be deposed canton chief, Samba Sagna, caused many to flee through his exactions. In 1945 alone, the population of Pata dropped from 5,009 to 4,175 in just one year, while neighboring districts saw their populations correspondingly rise.136 These movements were common in Portuguese Guinea as well.137 In French Guinea, many Fulbe migrated to neighboring administrative divisions to avoid recruitment, but also to move their herds in search of good pastureland. Typically, they returned to their home villages each year.138 Fulbe people became creative in lessening taxation burdens. In Gambia, where each “yard” was taxed, the British complained, It is a curious fact that although the population has increased as stated, yet there has been a decrease in the number of yards occupied […] There is therefore a tendency for the people to concentrate more in one yard. Many married sons instead of setting up yards of their own, prefer to remain with their families. It would appear to be a direct result of the system of taxation.139 Many seasonal migrant workers, referred to as “Strange Farmers” in Gambia and navétanes in Senegal, were, according to British officials, “only young Gambian men, not natives from Senegal, who go into other districts as ‘strange farmers.’” The reason for this trickery was that Strange 133 ANS 2G33/10, Guinée, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1933, 27. 134 ANS 2G20/8, Guinée, Rapport politique, 1er trimestre, 1920; 3ème trimestre, 8; 4ème trimestre, 3. 135 Interview with Sila Kumba Sirancho Baldeh and Manjang Mballow, Sare Bojo Sambou, The Gambia, July 18, 2017; NRS CSO 4/66 Commissioner of the M.I.P. to the Colonial Secretary, June 16, 1944. 136 ANS 10D4/15, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport Annuel 1934, Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, February 18, 1935, 13; ANS 2G45/89: Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport Annuel, 1945, 1. 137 Interview with Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 138 ANS 2G20/8, Guinée, Rapport politique du 4ème trimestre, 1920, G. Poiret, April 2, 1921, 4. 139 NRS, ARP 30/6, Annual Report for the MacCarthy Island Province, 1929. 205 Farmers were exempt from government labor demands, were fed for free and were not required to save seeds for the following year.140 In Portuguese Guinea, the hut tax was replaced by a bed tax, since many Mandinka lived in large huts featuring more than 10 beds, which could have as many as 50 people in total. Many found the tax “excessive” and “removed the majority of beds, keeping only a small number per hut. The other people lay on rolled mats during the day and thus escaped this heavy imposition.”141 In order to successfully pull off this façade, people took their beds into the woods, and swept the floor vigorously to make sure that there was no sign that extra beds had previously been there.142 The relationship between Fulbe people and colonial states is best exemplified by a Fulbe proverb: “If an egg falls on a rock, it’s the egg that will break. If a rock falls on an egg, it’s the egg that will break.” According to Susanna Fioratta, “It follows that if the egg never comes into contact with the rock at all, it may remain unbroken indefinitely.” In contemporary Guinea, Fulbe people describe the state as dangerous but also “useless, irrelevant, and easily circumvented.” 143 Though this example focuses on Guinean Fulbe, the proverb holds true for Fulbe throughout southern Senegambia. The maintenance and expansion of alternative geographies during the colonial period allowed many Fulbe to draw on a tradition of migration to avoid being broken by the rock: the governments of the region.144 While these rocks grew bigger and more powerful during the interwar years, Fulbe people became increasingly creative at avoiding egg-breaking activities, doing their best to stay ahead of colonial states. 140 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., July 1925. 141 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Renseignements demandés par le département sur la situation de la Guinée Portugaise, Lieutenant Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., June 10, 1927. 142 Interviews with Mamadu Cande, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017; and Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte, and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017. 143 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 13–14. 144 This proverb actually carries particular poignancy due to its connection to other contexts. Drawing on examples from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Crawford Young represents the colonial state as Bula Matari, or the “crusher of rocks.” Young, The African Colonial State. 206 The “Gold Rush” for “Easy Money” Between Senegal and Portuguese Guinea, the French consul in Bissau believed economic migration to be much more important than political migration.145 The key to much of this economic migration was seasonal movement for peanut farming, the “only exported product” in Senegal. A low price could give “a certain malaise in the commercial and economic life of the country.”146 The value of peanuts was “the only wealth of the major part of the population,” at least in terms of colonial exports.147 Seasonal farmers came from Portuguese and French Guinea and Mali into southern Senegal, the Gambia, and the peanut basin of central Senegal, north of the Gambia. Depending on the arrangement, seasonal peanut farmers worked between two and four days a week for their hosts, and the rest of the time for themselves. In exchange for their labor, seasonal farmers would be given a place to stay and food.148 Colonial officials believed Fulbe and others saw strange farming as a “gold rush” for “easy money.”149 However, Fulbe themselves saw seasonal farming as hard work, but also an opportunity to buy goods not available at home, then return to their home communities in a much stronger economic position than before. These movements were particularly intense in Futa Jallon, where people went to Senegal, the Gambia, and even Portuguese Guinea.150 Seasonal farming allowed people to pay their taxes “without touching their cattle nor their harvest,” a strong incentive in a society where the size of one’s herd determined one’s status 145 ANS 2F3, Versement 14, Rapport de tournées: Immigration, L’Administrateur en chef Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., August 17, 1922, 2. 146 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1930, 1. 147 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1931, 1. 148 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, L’Agent Consulaire de France à Bathurst au Governeur Général de l’A.O.F., Rapport sur la question des navétanes en Gambie, August 28, 1947. 149 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., September 1924, 5 150 ANS 2G29/11, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1929, 24. 207 and wealth.151 For those without money to pay, they would have to sell animals, crops, or whatever else they could to in order to avoid being jailed.152 These migrations were particularly prominent among young men, who saw opportunities to break free from their parents and ordinary village life, and travel to see other regions or colonies. Many used their income to collect money to build their own homes, pay bride prices, buy bicycles, or purchase clothing or fabric for their growing families. Seasonal farming was not easy. It was a challenge to find a host. If you someone agreed to take you in as their “strange farmer,” they would feed you and house you, but otherwise you would need to beg for your food, and sleep outside on the ground.153 Seasonal farming caused challenges in both sending and receiving communities. For most of the year, women took over in many families as temporary heads of household as their husbands headed elsewhere. In addition to their normal responsibilities, they became increasingly responsible for agricultural production for the entire family, which they had previously shared with men.154 In receiving communities, women took over the responsibilities of cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes for seasonal farmers, gathering whatever leaves they could find to make sauce for meals.155 Most men would return home at the end of the farming season, but some would stay, marry women in their host communities, and establish roots. During the interwar period, there was a shift in seasonal farming patterns. Traditionally, most seasonal peanut farmers had come from the colony of French Sudan.156 However, by 1939, 151 ANS 2G30/8, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1930, 31. 152 Interview with El Hadji Tidjani Sané, Mama Ausu Sané, Ebraima Sané, Sadjo Mané and Samian Sané, Kankelefa, Guinea-Bissau, April 10, 2017; and Djarga Sanha and Sadjo Sanha, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017. 153 Interview with Saini Djabai, Queita Djabai, Famara Mbuli Cisse, and Ebraima Djabai, Contuba, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017. 154 Interviews with Aissatu Camara, Lamarana Djalo, Djabu Diamanka, and Hamina Camara, Paunca, Guinea- Bissau, April 9, 2017; and with Mansara Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 155 Interview with Fatoumata Jamankah, Sira Sanneh, Saliff Jallow, Sare Mawundeh, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 156 Statistics for 1923 show the majority of Strange Farmers were from French Sudan (Mali). ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/536, Rapport politique de l’A.O.F., 2ème trimestre 1923, Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. au 208 the number of seasonal farmers coming to Senegal from French Guinea and French Sudan were almost equal.157 Most of these farmers traveled north of the Gambia to farm in the peanut basin, and a British official in the Gambia commented in 1933 that the Bansang ferry was full, and “the number of people returning from [central] Senegal to Futa Jallon […] was remarkable.”158 Given the distance between Futa Jallon and Senegal’s peanut basin, migrants from French Guinea had to leave even earlier in order to walk all the way to central Senegal. Many young and adult men left Futa Jallon in March and April, only returning after the harvest in January. This also had the added benefit of helping them evade forced labor demands in Guinea.159 A significant percentage of French Guinea’s population was involved in peanut production, including in 1932, roughly 10 percent of the cercle of Gaoual.160 Gambian peanut farming was largely dependent on the immigration of farmers from elsewhere, and colonial officials believed migrant farmers worked harder than others because they needed to earn enough money to pay their taxes back at home.161 In an effort to increase production and bring seasonal farmers to one colony versus another, different colonial governments would offer seeds in order to encourage annual movement, as was the case in Senegal in 1935, and in the Gambia most years.162 By the end of the interwar years, French Guinea had replaced French Sudan as the primary supplier of seasonal farmers. Ministre des Colonies, August 8, 1923. For information on these early migrations, Manchuelle, Willing Migrants, and Swindell and Jeng, Migrants, Credit and Climate. Fulbe people actually sabotaged early Portuguese attempts to establish large-scale peanut farming in Portuguese Guinea. Bowman, “‘Legitimate Commerce.’” 157 ANS 21G36, Versement 17, Senegal, nombre des navétanes, Extrait rapport politique Senegal pour 1939. 158 NRS ARP 30/7, Quarterly Report on MacCarthy Island Province for the Quarter ending March 31st 1933, 2. The same was true in 1936, NRS ARP 31/5, Economic Bulletin #9, U.R.P., May 14, 1936. 159 ANS 2G28/11, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1928, 61–62. 160 ANS 2G32/19, Guinée, Rapport Politique, Année 1932, May 11, 1933; population statistics from ANS 2G35/8, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel, 1935, 70. 161 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, L’Agent Consularire de France, Bathurst au Gouverneur-Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française, April 18, 1935; NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., September 1923, 2–3. 162 ANS 21G36, Versement 17, Office d’Inspection et de Conditionnement des Produits naturels du Sénégal, Extrait du Bulletin de Statistiques et d’Informations, Campagne 1934/1935, Mai 1935. 209 In addition to the farmers who crossed borders annually in search of money, peanut farmers in different colonies would cross the border and sell their goods wherever prices were best. While peanuts could be transported across roads to ports to the west or to railroads to the east, the quickest access for most peanuts in the Upper Casamance to coastal trading ports was either north to the Gambia River or south toward the many rivers of Portuguese Guinea. As a result, the French constantly discussed a westward expansion of the railroad that ran through Tambacounda east of the Upper Casamance to allow peanuts and other agricultural products to move quickly to the coast.163 Proximity to the border meant that French firms in Senegal had to be cognizant of prices in the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, and if prices were too low, many brought their peanuts across the border.164 In the border town of Pata, the French opened a buying center in order to prevent the sale of more Senegalese peanuts in Gambia.165 As colonial economies expanded in the interwar years, so did opportunities to transport products between the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese Guinea. The Portuguese complained about the trade in imported tobacco across the border, which they believed prevented the growth of local tobacco production.166 The British proudly boasted that their Upper River Province was “the only outlet for much of the produce of adjoining French territory, and from even so far afield as Portuguese Guinea.”167 Typically millet and other grains came up from Portuguese Guinea to Senegal, and from both Portuguese Guinea and Senegal to the Gambia, where the focus on peanut production often left many short on food.168 Kola nuts came clandestinely from Portuguese Guinea 163 ANOM FM/1TP/22, Travaux-Publics: Question spéciale: Projet de chemin de fer de la Casamance, Rapport fait par M. Muller, Inspecteur Général des Colonies, concernant la vérification de M. Herremans, Ingénieur Principal, Chef du Service des Travaux Publics, January 1, 1928. 164 ANS 2G35/71, Rapport mensuels du cercle sur la Traite, May 1935. 165 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Rapport colonies étrangères, 4ème trimestre 1939. 166 AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933. 167 NRS CSO 3/182, Governor H.R. Palmer to Lord Passfield, Secretary of State for the Colonies, May 7, 1931. 168 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Le Chef de Poste des Douanes, Manda, au Chef de Subdivision de Vélingara, January 17, 1942; NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., March 1924. 210 and Senegal to the Gambia, many of which originated in French Guinea. In the Gambia, there was no use raising import duties on kola nuts, because “the more the import duty is raised the more will be smuggled.”169 Kola nut commerce in Portuguese Guinea was controlled “between the indigenous hands” of traders from French Guinea.170 The result of all of this trade was to economically connect Fulbe across borders in a way that brought them closer together. The interwar years saw an explosion of trade in riverine trading towns and colonial district capitals. From both open and clandestine trade, the size of Basse in the Gambia doubled during the trade season.171 During the trade season, “The signs of the time were seen at Basse where all the itinerant Jula-men [traders], itinerant musicians, [and] itinerant craftsmen of all kinds from neighbouring territories did a flourishing trade.”172 In Bafatá, the largest market in all of Portuguese Guinea, at least six out of every ten people came from French colonies, and people from Senegal and French Guinea attended a variety of markets in eastern Portuguese Guinea.173 The connection of economic networks between the colonies meant that a bad economic situation in the Gambia could lead to “a persistent exodus” to neighboring areas of Senegal, as happened in 1936.174 A variety of goods were traded between colonies, including livestock, cotton, rubber, paddy rice, palm kernels and sugar.175 By 1943, the Commissioner of the Upper River Province noted, “Trans-frontier relations became increasingly bewildering.”176 During the interwar period, 169 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., March 1922, 2; December 1923, 5. 170 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Renseignements, June 9, 1941. 171 NRS CSO 18/1, Fulladu East District: The records of Fuladu East District of the Upper River Province together with a short History, 1933, 11. 172 NRS ARP 31/8, Annual Report of the U.R.P. for the Year 1944, 6. 173 ANS 2F3, Versement 14, “Rapport de tournée, Immigration,” L’Administrateur en chef Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., August 17, 1932; AHU Inspecção Administrativa na Colónia da Guiné, 1944–1945; and AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933. 174 ANS 2G36/5, Senegal, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1936, 45. 175 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., March 1924; ARP 30/6, Annual Report, M.I.P., 1927, 4; ARP 31/5, Economic Bulletin #22, U.R.P., January 2, 1943; ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Guinée Portugaise, November 4, 1943, and Gambie, June 23, 1944; ANS 2G39/2, Guinée, Rapport politique, Année 1939, April 11, 1940, 50; Interview with Ibrahima Diaby, Timindalla, Senegal, March 1, 2017. 176 NRS ARP 31/5, Economic Bulletin #22, U.R.P., January 2, 1943. 211 economic linkages expanded rapidly as goods began to be traded across the Senegal-Portuguese Guinea and Senegal-Gambia borders in larger and larger quantities.177 Expanding the Ummah While today almost all Fulbe in southern Senegambia are Muslim, that was not the case in the early twentieth century. Islam was localized in particular places, strongest among the Fulbe Futa of French Guinea, and among certain subsets of southern Senegambian Fulbe, particularly the Gaabunke of Portuguese Guinea. Fulbe of enslaved descent were much more likely to have converted to Islam before this period, and noble Fulbe were less likely to be Muslim.178 According to French reports, marabouts had yet to gain any sort of significant influence as of 1928.179 Just two years later, the Administrator of Kolda complained of the difficulty of choosing a new chief in the district of Kantora, bordering the Gambia, because non-Muslims did not want a Muslim as chief. According to the Administrator, the population of Kolda was “indifferent to Islam” and “profoundly animist.” Moreover, important marabouts like El Hajji Aali Caam were known more to colonial officials for their agricultural prowess than for their proselytizing.180 Mandinka, Soninke, Jakhanke, and Wolof people were much more likely to be Muslim than Fulbe.181 In contrast, Fulbe Futa were strong Muslims and religious teachers who came and proselytized in southern Senegambia. While colonial officials in southern Senegal estimated that one-fifth of the 177 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 164. 178 See Chapter 1, as well as Sylvie Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 23, and N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 192–93. 179 ANS 2G28/60, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1928, 5. 180 ANS 2G30/87, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1930, 8–13. 181 ANS 2G32/102, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1932, January 18, 1933, 8. These ideas did not just come from colonial reports. Even today, people remember Fulbe as having not converted to Islam at this time; Interviews with Mamadou Gassama, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017; with Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017; and with Fa Sarjo Sanyang, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. 212 population was Muslim in 1934, that rose to one-third ten years later.182 The canton of Badiar in northwestern Guinea was full of both non-Muslim and Muslim Fulbe, with the non-Muslims tending to be Fulakunda, and the Muslims usually Fulbe Futa.183 The interwar period is remembered by southern Senegambians as one where many people had not yet converted, and regularly drank alcohol.184 In 1923, the canton chief Bayero Baldé was removed from power for insubordination and for alcoholism.185 According to Mamadou Konta, Fulbe in Senegal near the border with Portuguese Guinea eventually became ashamed of their drinking, and started to convert during the rule of the canton chief Tobo Balde, who took office in 1932.186 Many Fulbe in the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese Guinea continued to practice their ancestral religious beliefs and most had not converted to Islam. Those who had yet to convert— and even some who had—regularly drank alcohol. People consumed palm wine and other local alcohols produced from corn and millet.187 Conversion came with its own set of societal challenges. When the district chief Mansajang Baldeh converted to Islam in June 1924, British officials commented, “As he has several more than the authorized number of wives [four] he will have to discharge or pension them off – unless he is allowed to retain them as ‘surplus to establishment until absorbed.’”188 Occasionally Fulbe would go to Futa Jallon to study the Koran, but this was not the norm.189 182 ANS 10D4/15, Kolda, Rapport Annuel 1934, L’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, February 18, 1935. This was also a period when many converted in the lower Casamance, to the west of Kolda. Mark, A Cultural, Economic, and Religious History, 110. 183 ANS 2G31/13, Guinée, Rapport Politique, Commandament Indigène, Année 1931, April 1, 1932, 34–35. 184 Interview with Mamadou Wouri Diallo, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 185 Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 142. 186 Interview with Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017. 187 Interviews with Saikou Balde, Pata, Senegal, February 15, 2017; with Aissatu Camara, Lamarana Djalo, Djabu Djamanka and Hamina Camara, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017; with Djarga Sanha and Sadjo Sanha, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017; with El Hadji Ibrahima Cissé, Contuboel, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017; and with Pathe Kandeh and Demo Mballow, Sare Mansali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 188 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., June 1924, 4. 189 Interview with Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Musa Baldeh and Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 213 The practice of Islam was particularly strong among the Gaabunké Fulbe, many of whom arrived in southern Senegal during this period from Portuguese Guinea. Gaabunké migrants from Portuguese Guinea founded two important religious villages: Medina El Hajj in 1918, and Dar al Salam in 1922, both near the Portuguese Guinea border. After conflict with both chiefs and the Portuguese colonial government, who believed that their head marabout, El Hajji Aali Caam, sought political power, many Gaabunké crossed the border in 1916 to create a space outside of European political control.190 This migration was seen as a hijrah, an emigration in the spirit of the prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina.191 These Gaabunké marabouts were from families with roots in Futa Toro in northern Senegal and southern Mauritania, and many followers came directly from Futa Toro to join this community, which began in Portuguese Guinea before moving to Senegal. Others from the Gambia also came to join the thriving Islamic community in Medina El Hajj after its move to Senegal.192 The region of Kolda was “a zone of refuge for marabouts wishing to found religious establishments,” who consciously chose “the isolation of uninhabited plateau forests to the proximity of the pagan life of the animist Fulakunda.” They did not seek just spiritual power, but temporal and economic power as well.193 The French colonial government was scared of the marabouts of Medina El Hajj, and did not require the community to perform forced labor or pay colonial taxes.194 As Medina El Hajj grew in population, dozens of splinter villages were formed in the surrounding area, and these villages were renowned for their piety.195 El Hajji Aali Caam developed a “cult of work,” unlike many of the more violent marabouts of the broader 190 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 45. 191 Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé, “Islam, Charismatic Preachers and Religious Orders in Colonial Upper Casamance: the History of Ceerno Al Hajji Aali Caam,” in Thomas Bierschenk and Georg Stauth (eds.), Islam in Africa: Yearbook of the sociology of Islam 4, (Münster: Lit, 2003), 198. 192 Interview with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hajj, Senegal, February 20, 2017. 193 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 100–7. 194 Interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 195 Interviews with Ousmane Ba, Thierno Bocar Kande and Aliou Balde, Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, February 20, 2017; Ismaila Balde and Sekou Oumar Balde, Ilyao, Senegal, February 24, 2017. 214 region during the late nineteenth century. In his teaching, he highlighted prayer, Koranic learning, agriculture, and respect for authority. He taught that power was the source of violence and injustice, and thus he accepted colonial rule in exchange for Medina El Hajj’s autonomy from the colonial state.196 From the French perspective, El Hajji Aali Caam’s arrival brought to southern Senegal his large number of followers, and equally important given the tradition of Fulbe mobility, these populations were stabilized around their marabout and engaged in sedentary agriculture.197 As Jean Schmitz points out, for many Fulbe marabouts, “It is as if the mobility tied to the quest for Koranic and then Arab-Muslim knowledge should replace pastoral mobility.”198 For colonial governments, religious autonomy was a small price to pay for a sedentarized Fulbe population. The community of Medina El Hajj faced a test following the death of its founder in 1935. As a result of a succession crisis, the community splintered, and many families headed almost 100 miles to the east to the district of Kantora, under the direction of a charismatic young marabout and follower of El Hajji Aali Caam, Mamadou Saidou Ba.199 Kantora was “very vast, but with a very low density,” and the canton chief Yero Sabaly was desperate to grow his population.200 Sabaly welcomed Ba’s followers to Kantora, and gave them land in an unpopulated area of his district far from any significant road or population center. He also exempted this new community from taxation.201 Ba claimed that after the death of Caam, the canton chiefs and marabouts of Kolda convinced the French commandant to chase him away.202 Regardless of the reasons why he fled, by 1945 Medina Gounass was the largest community in the subdivision of Velingara, the 196 N’Gaïdé, L’esclave, le colon et le marabout, 207–9. 197 N’Gaïdé, “Islam, Charismatic Preachers and Religious Orders,” 201. 198 Jean Schmitz, “Préface: II. Joutes de langue et figures de style,” in Figures peules, 27. 199 ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 20. 200 ANS 10D4/15, Kolda, Rapport Annuel 1934, L’Administrateur Supérieur de la Casamance, February 18, 1935, 8. 201 Interview with Idrissa Sow and Mohamadou Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 1, 2017. 202 Yaya Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa ou Le soufisme integral de Madiina Gunaas (Sénégal), Cahiers d’études africaines 14, no. 56 (1974), 680–81. 215 eastern half of the region of Kolda. While the subdivision’s capital, Velingara, had only 592 people, Medina Gounass already had 1,340. Ba was, according to the French, the “only important marabout” in the subdivision, and, “His influence extends from French and Portuguese Guinea to the Gambia and to neighboring subdivisions and cercles.”203 In Medina Gounass, as in Medina El Hajj, there was no French language education. The community was to focus on religion and agriculture, and only Koranic schooling would be allowed.204 Medina Gounass was made up entirely of Fulbe from southern Senegambia and from Futa Toro, although Fulbe Futa were not included early on, despite Medina Gounass’ location near the Senegal-French Guinea border.205 However, the Islamic community of Medina Gounass had a transnational influence throughout southern Senegmabia, even from its earliest days. The examples of Medina El Hajj and Medina Gounass represent an important countervailing narrative to the idea of “accommodation” among marabouts and colonial officials.206 While El Hajji Aali Caam and Mamadou Saidou Ba did accept colonial power, they did so in name only. They exercised total control over their communities, despite living in a French colony. Their accommodation was superficial, as they gave up nothing in order to live in what they believed were proper Islamic communities. Medina Gounass, in particular, was to be a community where Fulbe people threw away their non-Islamic traditions, because as one marabout claimed, outside of Medina Gounass people “have not yet thrown away their customs.”207 Medina Gounass from its beginning was designed to be an institution outside of the colonial state, and its religious networks stretched to the three nearby colonies of the Gambia, Portuguese and French Guinea. 203 ANS 2G45/93, Subdivision de Velingara, Année 1945, Rapport Annuel. 204 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 682. 205 Interviews with El Hadji Daiwa Balde and Sakho Balde, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017; and Saidou Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 206 See Robinson, Paths of Accommodation. 207 Interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 216 Fulbe Futa marabouts and migrants were credited with growing Islam in southern Senegal throughout the twentieth century.208 Many of the sons of these clerics remember their fathers coming from the Futa Jallon to convert people, teaching the Koran and convincing people to give up drinking alcohol.209 Clerics came as well from Portuguese Guinea to proselytize and convert Fulbe and other ethnicities.210 Even those who came just for commerce brought their Islamic faith with them, increasing interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims.211 In the Gambia, the “strange farmers” who migrated to the colony seasonally from Guinea often ended up as Koranic teachers for children, as they were the only ones in their host communities with deep knowledge of Islam.212 Islamization occurred through the work of Mandinka, Soninke, Fulbe Futa, Haalpulaar, and Gaabunke marabouts, occasionally even recently-converted Fulakunda.213 While these marabouts helped spur conversion, ultimately conversion was an individual decision. Sibo Balde of Salikegne converted because he, like many others, was ashamed of his parents, who often passed out drunk. He decried what he called “praying to spirits,” and converted as a child in the early 1940s.214 Many noted a break between themselves and their parents, particularly over the question of drinking. These children had been to Koranic school and had internalized the precepts of Islam in a way their parents, even if they were nominally Muslim, had not. 215 Toranko Bawarrow, of Sare Njobo in Gambia, never drank, but her father, who grew up in a period with little religious education, drank until his death.216 Abdoulie Baldeh drank in his youth because that was all he 208 ANS ANOM/1AFFPOL/598, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1926, 15. 209 Interview with Boubacar Balde, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017. 210 Interview with El Hadji Moustapha Galle Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 10, 2016. 211 Interviews with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hadji, Senegal, February 20, 2017; and with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017. 212 Interview with Mambie Sabali, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 23, 2017. 213 Sow, "Mutations politiques,” 176. 214 Interview with Sibo Balde, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017. 215 Interview with Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017. 216 Interview with Toranko Bawarrow, Sare Njobo, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 217 knew, but became more religious as he got older.217 For others, it was a refusal to eat warthog that marked the difference between them and their parents.218 Those of enslaved descent were much more likely to convert than those from noble families, seeing conversion as a way of liberating themselves from oppressive social structures.219 Islam grew quickly as Fulbe in southern Senegal went to Futa Toro and Futa Jallon to study, returning to spread their knowledge and teach the Koran locally. Many southern Senegambian Fulbe were skeptical of the Fulbe Futa, seeing them as outsiders, but when their family members and neighbors began to come back from studying elsewhere, they were more effective in spreading Islam.220 As in rural Mali, it was deep, “translocal social processes” that spread Islam in southern Senegambia.221 Border Control While Fulbe desires for movement and avoidance of colonial policies helped lead to a great deal of movement, this movement was also facilitated by the porous borders of southern Senegambia. As shown in Chapter 1, the French, British, and Portuguese initially delimited borders in southern Senegambia at the end of the nineteenth century. However, administering the borders themselves was a more difficult challenge. For much of the interwar years, southern Senegambia was full of borders and not much border control. The easternmost region of Portuguese Guinea, Gabú, had 200 kilometers of borders “where every year pass thousands of people” heading to Senegal and the Gambia.222 By 1925, new surveys were needed on the Senegal-Gambia border due to border pillars at “positions and distances so incorrect that both sides saw that a proper survey was absolutely necessary.”223 Border control was infrequent and difficult, although colonial 217 Interview with Abdoulie Baldeh, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 218 Interview with Sannah Baldeh, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 219 Interview with Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017. 220 Interview with Salu Balde, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017. 221 Peterson, Islamization from Below, 2. 222 AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933. 223 NRS ARP 31/3: Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., February 20, 1925. 218 governments got better at it as time went on. As David Collins wrote about the Niger-Nigeria boundary: An international boundary which is largely unpatrolled and unpatrollable, which has little consensual or physical reality at the local level, where its existence is more or less completely blurred by the prevalence of an identical culture area, is probably best conceived not as a barrier but as an inter-state pathway, a conduit, an incentive to movement not only of persons but also of trade goods.224 The great length of borders in southern Senegambia, combined with limited state resources, made these borders incentives for, not against movement and migration. Border challenges were particularly problematic in the Gambia, a colony made up of one long frontier. British officials claimed, “Owing to the limited resources of the Colony and the abnormal length of its land boundary, it is not normally possible for the Gambia Government to provide Customs supervision at any place other than the port of Bathurst.”225 While borderland residents often farmed on the other side of the border from where they lived, by 1923 the French had implemented a “floating tax.”226 The French needed to increase border surveillance, since “many millions” of francs were escaping to British territory.227 Border control grew steadily throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and by 1936, the region of Kolda had six border posts, including two which were newly constructed. Of these six posts, four were at the Gambian border, and one each for Portuguese and French Guinea. Before this point, there were major roads navigable by automobile without any sort of customs surveillance.228 On the other hand, the Portuguese Guinean side of the border had no posts as of 1939, and people could cross the border with little concern.229 224 David Collins, “Partitioned Culture Areas and Smuggling: The Hausa and groundnut trade across the Nigeria- Niger boundary up to the 1970s,” in Asiwaju, Partitioned Africans, 212 (emphasis mine). 225 NRS CSO 3/182, Alex Fiddian to the Under Secretary of State, Foreign Office, August 6, 1931. 226 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., June 18, 1923. 227 ANOM FP/100APOM/549, “Régime douanier de la Casmamance, November 9, 1934. 228 ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 22. 229 ANS 11D1/218, Le Chef du Poste des Douanes à Sare N’Diaye à Monsieur le Chef du Bureau des Douanes à Ziguinchor, 10/16/1939. Interview with Ebraima Sambambe Mballo, Sare Guiro, Senegal, December 13, 2016. 219 While Portuguese officials would patrol the border, residents remember that they would come to important border crossings for a day and then leave for months.230 By the 1930s, in both Senegal and the Gambia, colonial governments hired southern Senegambians to patrol unguarded sections of borders on bicycle.231 By the 1940s, colonial governments had a much stronger capacity to control borders. Controlling borders were crucial in order to retain populations, prevent food shortages, and collect both customs and export taxes. Regulating and monitoring the border was crucial to exercising state control over borders, and thus people. The primary impediment to border control was resources, as colonial governments had neither the money nor the personnel to effectively monitor the lengthy borders of southern Senegambia. However, they could choose the most-traveled roads in order to at least slow the largest cross-border traders. During World War II, Gambian officials feared an even greater famine if agricultural products were to leave the colony.232 They called for a quarantine, banning access to all French subjects, money, and cattle, punishable by three months in prison and a 75 franc fine.233 While one smuggler told borderland residents “to pass into the bush to avoid the customs officers,” they responded, “The customs officers are in the bush.”234 Customs officers had begun to patrol unmarked paths, where most crossing occurred, in an effort to actually slow the movement of people back and forth between Senegal and the Gambia. Although some people were still crossing the border from the Gambia to Senegal, French officials were sure that many more wanted to do 230 Interview with Ousmane Balde, Sare Bakary, Guinea-Bissau, April 26, 2017. 231 NRS ARP 31/5, Special Economic Bulletin No. 0/32; NRS ARP 31/5, U.R.P. Economic Bulletin #6 of 1938, March 28, 1938. 232 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Le Chef de Poste des Douanes, Medina-Yoro, au Capitaine des Douanes à Dakar, November 27, 1941. 233 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Le Chef de Poste des Douanes, Manda, au Chef de Services des Douanes, August 20, 1941. 234 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, “Renseignements sur la Gambie anglaise,” Le Chef de Poste, Badiara, au Directeur des Douanes. 220 so, but were not able to because of British supervision.235 During the interwar years, the British and French also used their expanded administrative presence to slow the practice of untaxed cross- border farming. In 1923, the French began to inform Gambian farmers that they could only farm in Senegal if they paid rent.236 They continued to allow cross-border farming, with those farmers paying a “floating tax,” but in the early 1940s forbid Senegalese farmers from moving to the Gambia, then returning to seasonally farm their old fields.237 By the close of World War II, customs officials, particularly in Senegal and the Gambia, had gained some control over border surveillance, even if it was limited to particular times and places. Border (Re-)Delimitation During this period, there was often confusion about where the border actually was. The road built between Kolda and its neighbor to the east, Tambacounda, may have passed through Gambian territory, and a boundary commission was established to determine whether this was the case.238 Colonial officials struggled to determine whether villages on both sides of Kolda were in the Gambia, Senegal, or Portuguese Guinea.239 The village of Kassou—thought to be in Senegal— was made up of four sections, three of which turned out to be in Portuguese Guinea, and only one in Senegal.240 When a boundary commission found that the border ran directly through the village of Keleman in Gambia, the village moved “to a site well behind the line.”241 Similar border disagreements occurred throughout the Gambia’s southern border in a variety of locations 235 ANS 1F6, Versement 14, Le Chef de Poste des Douanes, Medina-Yoro, au Capitaine des Douanes à Dakar, February 1, 1942. 236 NRS ARP 31/3, Diary of the Travelling Commissioner, U.R.P., June 12, 1923. 237 ANS 2G42/1, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1942, 46–47. 238 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, “Rapport politique: considerations sur l’état politique,” March 10, 1924. 239 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Rapport Politique, Année 1925. 240 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, Rapport Politique, Année 1926, March 15, 1927, 20–21. 241 NRS ARP 30/7, Report on MacCarthy Island Province for the Quarter ending 30th June, 1935,” 3. 221 throughout the 1930s.242 The most significant border dispute took place in 1945, where 16 villages thought to be—and paying taxes—in the Gambia were discovered to actually be in Senegal. The villages were then given the option to stay in their present location and become French subjects, or to move to the other side of the border and “remain” in British territory. Ten of these villages, containing 576 people, opted to stay in place, becoming French subjects, while the other six decided to move to the other side of the border and remain residents of the Gambia. The six villages who moved then requested to continue to farm their former fields in Senegal, but in the hopes that those villages would return permanently to French territory, colonial officials denied their request.243 The Senegal-French Guinea border was also unclear. In January 1924, officials from both French colonies surveyed the border between Kolda and the French Guinean region of Youkounkoun, finding that five Senegalese villages were actually in French Guinea.244 The challenge was particularly problematic in Youkounkoun, where there was no French official from 1923 to 1927, increasing the ability of local people to do whatever they pleased.245 The border between Senegal’s most southeastern region, Kedougou, and French Guinea was the sight of a great deal of negotiation and consternation as the unclear nature of the border led local district chiefs to demand taxes from villages on the other side.246 While most of these were resolved after 242 NRS ARP 31/6, Annual Report of the Upper River Provinces for 1936, 4; Report on the Upper River Province for the Quarter Ended 31st March, 1938, 2–3; Report on the Upper River Province for the Quarter Ended 30th September, 1938,” 2. 243 ANS 2G45/89, Rapport Annuel, Subdividion de Kolda, 1945, 8. 244 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/598, “Rapport politique: considerations sur l’état politique,” March 10, 1924. 245 ANS 2G27/14, Guinée, Rapport politique de l’année 1927, Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., February 28, 1928, 70. 246 ANS 2G26/14, Guinée, “Rapport politique de l’année 1926,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., February 28, 1927, 18. 222 several years, even in 1940, the border was still a source of disagreement between the two French colonies.247 The Growth of Colonial Infrastructure In the early years of colonial rule, schools and roads were rare in the borderlands of southern Senegambia. State efforts to monitor people, promote economic growth, and inculcate language skills and an allegiance to the colonial cause were intimately tied to questions of transportation and education. During the interwar years, colonial governments expanded their reach further outside of regional capitals by building roads and opening schools. While the impact of schooling was still limited by the end of the period, colonial road-building projects allowed colonial officials to visit their populations with less difficulty, goods to move more easily, and created conditions for economic movement between colonies. The limited growth of schooling, on the other hand, meant that Fulbe people were more integrated into their own territorial networks than those of colonial states. As of 1937, there were only two schools in Portuguese Guinea.248 In the Gambia, the Armitage School opened on MacCarthy Island in 1927, a boarding school “for the Mohammedans of the Protectorate” and the first school in the eastern half of the colony. Education spread to the easternmost reaches of Gambia with the creation of an Anglican school in Basse in 1934, followed by a non-denominational school after complaints that the Anglican school had no Muslim students and taught a religious curriculum. Like all education in the interior of Gambia except the Armitage School, this non-denominational school was run by religious clergy: in this case by a Catholic 247 ANS 2G33/10, “Rapport annuel sur la situation politique de la Guinée Française,” 21. ANS 2G40/9, Guinée, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1940, 52. 248 ANS 1F5, Versement 14, “Plan analytique des renseignements à fournir par les colonies sur les colonies ou enclaves étrangères,” July 24, 1937. In Portuguese Guinea, schools were in the capital, Bolama, and the largest city, Bissau. 223 priest. Due to the lack of a religious curriculum, the Catholic school was more popular and had over three times as many students than the Anglican school by 1939. 249 A second Anglican school opened up on the eastern edge of the colony in 1943 near the town of Fatoto, in a makeshift town the missionaries called Kristi Kunda (“Christ’s Home” in Mandinka). However, their proselytization caused problems with nearby Muslim communities.250 As missionaries built schools across the eastern Gambia in the 1930s and 1940s, they struggled to fill the schools themselves. Particularly in Kristi Kunda, parents believed that Christian schools would force their children to convert.251 Whether or not conversion was forced or coerced, many who did attend missionary schools became Christian.252 Parents also worried that schooling would lead to people disrespecting cultural values, and refusing to herd and farm.253 Even when their children wanted to go, parents sometimes hit their children and refused to let them attend school.254 Abdoulie Baldeh of the village of Sare Buti went to a mission school in the town of Fula Bantang, and his grandfather made him come back because he was responsible for the family’s herds. The head of the mission school, Father Maloney, convinced his grandfather to let him return to school, but he dropped out after the school year ended to herd full-time.255 Schooling was still limited to about one percent of children in the easternmost Upper River Division as of 1946.256 249 NRS ARP 30/6: Report of the U.R.P. for the Quarter Ending 31st March, 1934, 1. Report of the U.R.P. for the Quarter Ending 31st March, 1937, 3. Annual Report of the U.R.P. for 1939, 22. 250 NRS ARP 31/8, Annual Report of the U.R.P. for 1943, 1. Annual Report of the U.R.P. for 1944, 6. 251 Interviews with Lamin Sabali and Mamadou N’jie, Mandina Samba Jawo, The Gambia, July 15, 2017; and with Fa Sarjo Sanyang, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. 252 Interviews with Dikori Baldeh, Kusalang, The Gambia, July 19, 2017; and Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. For more information on one such convert, Paul Baldeh, see the historian Hassoum Ceesay’s brief biography in The Point, published November 19, 2015, accessible at http://thepoint.gm/africa/gambia/article/tribute-honourable-pl-baldeh-1937-1968-nationalist-politician-and-minister (last accessed March 26, 2020). 253 Interview with Ali Sow, Dikori Sow, Sara Baldeh, Amadou Kandeh, Yoro Beri Kunda, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 254 Interview with Pathe Kandeh and Demo Mballow, Sare Mansali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 255 Interview with Abdoulie Baldeh, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 256 NRS ARP 31/9, U.R.D., Annual Report for the Year 1946, 17–18. 224 The Upper Casamance had two schools at the beginning of the interwar period, in the subdivision capitals of Kolda and Velingara. By 1932, French officials began to discuss the building of more schools, because the region “is extremely large and only the children who live in the immediate vicinity of schools or who have parents there can frequent them.”257 Schools opened in larger towns throughout the region in the 1930s, but could only serve nearby students, and for people like Dioulde Sy in the town of Badion, school was inaccessible.258 For students like Thiedo Kande, in the town of Dabo, nearly 35 miles east of Kolda, making it to secondary school (collège) meant walking for two days to Kolda and finding a host with whom to live. Even after that, Kande had to drop out of school after the death of his parents.259 If you could somehow make it to high school (lycée), you had to travel through the Gambia to central Senegal. For many, this put an early stop to their schooling. For others, particularly those from ethnic groups like the Soninke that were almost exclusively Muslim, Koranic schooling was more valued. In the border town of Salikegne, where a school was built in the 1930s, some fled to Portuguese Guinea rather than attend French school. People would hide in the forest when school registration would come around, because the colonial government had “no strength” in the woods. Some who attended school had trouble adapting back to normal life, while others did not. Demba Mballo explained that there was a difference between haakil (intelligence) and gandal (knowledge), and that those who attended colonial schooling found themselves in a liminal state between two different worlds, of western education and the knowledge of their community.260 However, some were proud of their schooling, 257 ANS 2G32/102, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1932, 37. 258 Interview with Dioulde Sy, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017. Sy grew up in Badion, and his closest school was in Fafacourou, about 15 miles away, too far for anyone to attend. 259 Interview with Thiedo Kande, Dabo, Senegal, December 13, 2016. 260 Interview with Demba Mballo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017. This is eerily reminiscent of the struggle of Samba Diallo, the Fulbe protagonist of Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s novel about schooling and colonial rule, L’aventure ambiguë (Paris: R. Julliard, 1961). 225 like Sibo Balde of the border town of Salikegne, who proudly boasted over 70 years later of being part of the first generation to attend school in his town.261 By 1927, the two primarily Fulbe regions of eastern Portuguese Guinea had one school (in the town of Bafatá), and it didn’t function regularly.262 However, by 1933, schools had expanded into the towns of Contuboel, Bambadinca, Geba, Gabú, Sonaco, and Kankelefa.263 After primary school, students had to leave for Bissau, where they needed to find hosts until they completed their schooling. Most young people, even if they wanted to study, did not have relatives or others they could stay with in order to attend even primary school.264 Even if they could find hosts, parents were skeptical of the importance of education, and did not want to see their valuable (free) labor depart for larger towns or even the colonial capital of Bissau, where they could not help farm or herd.265 Some elders remember parents believed their children would feel superior to their elders if they received a European education.266 As in Senegal, schooling was restricted to particular towns, and many elders in villages did not know anyone in their communities who had attended colonial schools.267 The story was similar in Fulbe regions of French Guinea, where in 1934 the fourth primary school opened in the region of Labé, which had roughly 400,000 inhabitants. In the northwestern corner of French Guinea most closely tied to southern Senegambia, the first primary 261 Interview with Sibo Balde, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017. 262 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, Renseignements demandés par le département sur la situation de la Guinée Portugaise, Lieutenant Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., June 10, 1927. 263 AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933, 160. 264 Interviews with Moreira Dauda Embalo, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 17, 2017; and with Idrissa Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 265 Interview with Saada Tcham, Usman Djau, Hamidu Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 266 Interview with Idrissa Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 267 Interview with Nitchiya Kantere, Fali Bandja, Farine Kantere, Marang Camara, and Demba Balde, Camadjaba, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017. 226 school opened in Gaoual in 1934.268 Despite these struggles, schooling was more common by the end of the interwar years. The slow expansion of schooling was reflective of other infrastructural challenges. Trucks transporting goods often could not travel from Basse, the capital of the Upper River Region, to the capital of Bathurst because of swamps, even during the dry season.269 Rainy season posed particular challenges, as European officials tended to avoid traveling and stay at home.270 As a result, officials visited seven towns in December 1928 never before seen by colonial officials. The next month, officials visited three Fulbe communities, and “although they have been there 12 to 13 years no Commissioner or White Man has ever visited their Towns.”271 No road connected eastern Portuguese Guinea’s major towns (Bafatá and Gabú) to southern Senegal, and only three roads were drivable in the late 1920s.272 By the close of World War II though, roads had been built throughout eastern Portuguese Guinea, and a 210-meter bridge was built across the Corubal River to allow for easier automotive travel between Bafatá and Bissau. By 1945, Gabú had over 300 miles of road, all constructed between 1920 and 1932. While some of those roads needed repairs, particularly the one connecting Bafatá and Gabú, travel was certainly easier than 25 years before.273 Similar growth occurred in southern Senegal, but in the rainy season only one road in 268 ANS 2G34/8, “Rapport sur la situation politique de la Guinée Française en 1934,” Lieutenant-Gouverneur de la Guinée Française, A. Vadier, 11. By contrast to Labé’s population of 400,000, the Macarthy Island Province (one of two Gambian regions in this study), only had 37,542. The eastern Fulbe regions of Portuguese Guinea had about 70,000 people. In 1936, the region of Kolda had 72,150 people. For these statistics, see NRS ARP 30/7, Annual Report of the M.I.P. for 1934, 5; AHU Relatório do Governo da Guiné 1933; ANS 2G36/79: Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1937, 12. These numbers could fluctuate depending on migration from one colony to another, and as we have seen, the Guinean Fulbe population became a vast resource for underpopulated regions of the Gambia, Senegal, and Portuguese Guinea. 269 ANS 1F3, Versement 14, Governor of Gambia to the Governor General of French West Africa, July 23, 1929. 270 NRS ARP 30/5: Monthly Diary of the Travelling Commissioner of M.I.P., February 1921, 2; ARP 30/9, Report on the MacCarthy Island Province for the Quarter ending 30th June, 1936. 271 NRS CSO 3/115: Monthly Diary, U.R.P., December 1928 and January 1929. 272 ANS 2F11, Versement 14, “Renseignements demandés par le département sur la situation de la Guinée Portugaise, Lieutenant Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., June 10, 1927; Rensenignements recueillis sur la Guinée Portugaise, 3ème trimestre 1930. 273 AHU Inspecção Administrativa na Colónia da Guiné, 1944–1945. 227 the whole region of Kolda was passable.274 Kolda was disconnected to Tambacounda to its east, until an access ramp was built to help get trucks across the Gambia River in 1931.275 The increase in road-building during this period reflects both colonial capacity to exact forced labor from their populations and a growing desire to monitor movement and promote the movement of goods within colonies rather than between them. In order to stake a claim to real control over southern Senegambia’s rural borderlands, schools and roads needed to exist in a meaningful capacity to connect people and assert a larger colonial identity. Their weakness even by the mid-1940s meant that Fulbe networks, while influenced by colonial power, still took place in a sphere removed in large part from colonial efforts to manage them. Detaching from Growing Colonial States During the interwar years, the French, British, and Portuguese started to establish the hallmarks of colonial rule. Colonial governments built infrastructure, expanded border security, and became a greater presence in the lives of their subjects. French officials believed that local people “started to accept our economic and administrative conceptions, with a feeling that disciplines them from day to day, especially as each campaign is a source of wealth that each family continues to benefit from.”276 The British also expressed optimism by 1945 that their colonial presence was finally established.277 In Portuguese Guinea, the 1940s saw an attempt to diminish the power of local chiefs, teach them Portuguese, and get the sons of chiefs into schools so as to expand Portuguese influence deeper into more rural parts of the colony.278 Education, while not yet common, became an increasingly common part of life in many small towns. 274 ANS 2G43/72, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport économique, Année 1943, 9. 275 ANS 2G31/78: Cercle de Kolda: Rapport politique annuel, 1931, 14. 276 ANS 2G29/95, Kolda, Rapport d’ensemble annuel, 1929, 19. 277 NRS ARP 31/8, Annual Report of the U.R.P., 1945, 1. 278 AHU Inspecção Administrativa na Colónia da Guiné, 1944–1945. 228 Despite the expansion of colonial states, Fulbe geographies adapted to respond to this growing challenge. Even in the 1940s, local people “always played on the borders, passing on either side or beyond according to the interests at the moment.”279 Officials noted that it was impossible to stop migration, but it could be regulated so as to track those crossing the border.280 The Governor of the Gambia recognized that working together with Senegal “might well lead to a radical and beneficial alteration in the economic relations of the two colonies whose economic and geographical interdependence had been lost sight of in the process of competition.”281 Officials in Senegal and the Gambia recognized that they had a shared interest in Senegambian trade and border control, but could not come to any sort of agreement on how to best resolve their competing perspectives. Southern Senegambians experienced differential treatment depending on the colony, region, or district. In French and Portuguese Guinea, colonial governments attempted to extract as much as possible from the population, with forced labor and taxation demands that caused grave harm. While life was often easier in Senegal and the Gambia, colonial rule still challenged southern Senegambians to adapt and mitigate the damage caused by colonial governments. In Senegal and the Gambia, Fulbe were at the margins of the colonial state, belatedly integrated into colonial infrastructure, education, and economic development. In Portuguese Guinea, Fulbe were geographically distant from centers of power, but had a much closer relationship to the government. In French Guinea, Fulbe were the most populous group, always at the center of the colonial imagination. Colonial efforts to change social relations and to sedentarize individuals and communities meant that migration out of Futa Jallon was more unidirectional than within southern 279 ANS 10D1/33, Politique region frontière, Gouverneur Senegal à Administrateur Ziguinchor, May 18, 1942. 280 ANS 2G42/1, Senegal, Rapport Politique, Année 1942, 42. 281 NRS CSO 3/349, Draft letter from Governor of Gambia to Secretary of State, 1939. 229 Senegambia, where low population densities and minimal administration meant that migration was an essential tool for economic opportunity as well as to escape state control. Migration also became increasingly important over the interwar years as colonial exactions became harsher, to escape colonial states or to acquire the financial means to pay their taxes. Fulbe had a particularly detached relationship with the colonial government. As Modi Jawo, a Gambian Dorobe Fulbe put it, “Fulbe fear governments. The Wolof, they are not scared.”282 Of course, many Fulbe did serve in colonial governments, as chiefs, interpreters, or employees. In Portuguese Guinea, Fulbe were sent to other regions of the country in an attempt to impose a hierarchical structure on decentralized societies. However, this was not the reality for the vast majority of Fulbe people, who wanted nothing less than to stay off the radar of colonial governments. In 1935, a French official wrote that the Fulbe “natural propensity to nomadism renders them less attached to their countries of origin,”283 however, this belief assumes that country of origin corresponded to colony of origin, and not to Fulbe ideas of territoriality. While Fulbe migrated from colony to colony, and within colonies, this migration took place within a larger Fulbe region, whose bounds were constantly renegotiated during the interwar period. Migrants crossing from Senegal to the Gambia or Portuguese Guinea were crossing colonial borders, yet they remained within a larger Fulbe community. To privilege the colonial conception of territory misses a crucial point: Fulbe people themselves, while understanding and accepting the existence of colonial boundaries, continued to conceive of southern Senegambia as a territory in and of itself. These Fulbe did not see themselves as departing one colony for another, and to what extent they 282 Interview with Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 25, 2017. The association of Wolof with the Senegalese government is common. See Mamadou Diouf, Histoire du Sénégal: le modèle islamo-wolof et ses périphéries (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2001). 283 ANS 21G62 (H), “Incident dans le cercle de Kindia (Guinée Française),” Governeur Général de l’A.O.F. au Ministre des Colonies, May 15, 1935, 1-2. 230 saw themselves as migrants, it was because they were leaving one set of Fulbe networks for another. As Futa Jallon became increasingly integrated into southern Senegambian networks, Fulbe Futa helped expand the role of Islam in local communities, affecting social and religious life more than colonial governments did. They built upon precolonial migration going back centuries, including the movement of non-Muslim Fulbe escaping Islamic rule in Futa Jallon two centuries before. Southern Senegambia continued to be a zone of refuge, a place where states struggled to exert influence in the face of a strong, rural civil society. Conclusion The interwar years was a period where both colonial states and Fulbe expanded their territorial networks. Colonial states began to build roads, schools, and health facilities, attempting to transform lives to fit French, British, and Portuguese colonial interests. At the same time, Fulbe social, religious, political, and economic networks expanded to provide opportunities to disengage from colonial states, relying on Fulbe territorial networks outside the purview of colonial states. These territorial networks had previously centered around a section of southern Senegambia stretching from the Gambia River to eastern Portuguese Guinea and northwestern Guinea but expanded in the interwar years to encompass the Futa Jallon highlands of French Guinea, where colonial rule was particularly trying. This period also saw the expansion of religious networks, as Islam began to deepen in southern Senegambia through migratory networks and the founding of religious communities in Medina El Hajj and Medina Gounass in southern Senegal. Economic networks expanded as colonial trading towns and seasonal farming provided opportunities for financial advancement. Lastly, social and political networks expanded as chiefs competed over populations, and Fulbe people migrated to lessen the burdens of colonial rule. By the end of the 231 interwar period, colonial governments began to exercise some semblance of border control, although their power had not put down deep roots in much of southern Senegambia. Fulbe in southern Senegambia imagined an alternative geography to that of colonial states, one where belonging was not tied to the boundaries of a specific colony, but to one’s own vision of their own homeland. Cross-border ideas of belonging led people to stake claims to land and territory in multiple states, giving them opportunities to move for better economic or political opportunity. While rooted in a larger Fulbe territory, these movements built on a longer tradition of movement for economic, social, and political reasons. The result of these movements was the development of a territorial form of belonging created not in spite of the influence of borders and divided territory, but in large part because of it. 232 Chapter 4: The Beginning of the End: Migration and State Control before Independence In the mid 1950s, a few years before Guinean independence, Idrissa Diallo, a young man from the district of Mali in French Guinea, crossed the border on foot into Senegal. No customs post or border patrol inhibited his movement from one French colony to another. He walked for a week until he arrived in Kedougou, the only town of any distinction in southeastern Senegal. He continued his walk, arriving one week later in Tambacounda, from whose crossroads he might have traveled northwest to Dakar, southwest into southern Senegal, or northeast toward the border with French Sudan. Diallo chose none of these options, instead heading by footpath westward toward the Gambia. But on the morning he reached its border, he encountered some people who said they did not want him to enter and that they would make sure he was sent back to Guinea. He explained to them the myriad of reasons he had fled his homeland, including forced labor demands, onerous taxes, and the difficulty of finding suitable farmland. The people of the village agreed not to turn Diallo in to the British authorities, fed him lunch and dinner, and gave him shelter for the night. The next day, after again receiving lunch and dinner from the village, he began to walk in darkness down the road; and he continued walking by night and sleeping by day until he reached the riverine town of Bansang. After two days there, he made the acquaintance of a World War II veteran from the Upper Casamance, who was temporarily in the Gambia selling peanuts and buying merchandise to take back home. The Senegalese veteran agreed to bring Diallo with him to his home village, the border community of Medina Yoro Foula, roughly ten miles away. Diallo has since resided there for sixty years.1 1 Interview with Thaymoko Traoré, Mamadou Mballo, and Idrissa Diallo, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017. 233 Even though he has not lived in Guinea for sixty years, Diallo has maintained connections to his homeland, returning there after independence in search of a wife. Today, due to the widespread availability of cell phones, he is able to talk regularly to family members he has hardly seen in several decades. His life history, as previous chapters have suggested, is of a type common in the borderlands of southern Senegambia. Loose border controls and ethnic, economic, social, and religious ties allowed Fulbe people and others to travel and migrate regularly between the colonies of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea throughout the colonial period. Those connections have been maintained throughout the postcolonial period, chiefly though not exclusively through migration, as the residents of southern Senegambia have continued to construct communities that straddle international borders and represent alternatives to the notions of community put forward by the region’s states. After World War II, Francophone intellectuals like Leopold Senghor and Aimé Césaire began to articulate an alternative vision of sovereignty than that put forward by nationalist movements around the world. Of course, they criticized colonial governments for what they did to those living under their rule, but the alternative they put forward was not based on the model of the nation-state. Rather than an independent Senegal or Martinique, they argued that a pluralistic, decentralized, federal France could pave a better way forward.2 These thinkers argued that nationalism was fundamentally flawed, and therefore they could find a better alternative. This vision is often thought of as a tragic loss, left in the refuse of the Mali Federation and other projects that attempted to transcend the model of the nation-state. If, instead of looking at the articulation of political ideas by Francophone elites, we look at the reality of how individuals and communities 2 Wilder, Freedom Time; Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation. These ideas were articulated elsewhere in Somalia and South Sudan. Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 10, and Kindersley, “Revolutionary political thought in South Sudan.” 234 practiced sovereignty in the borderlands of southern Senegambia, a different picture emerges. This chapter argues that a form of decentralized, almost federal sovereignty continued to emerge in southern Senegambia’s borderlands, even if colonial governments did not recognize it or agree that it should be so. Mobility stitched Fulbe and other communities of the region into an interconnected network where people could migrate if greater opportunity presented itself on the other side of the border, or if colonial exactions like taxation and forced labor became too burdensome. In the leadup to independence, nationalist narratives left little room for peoples who saw themselves as free to move between multiple states, imagining a greater community that did not rely on the rights granted to them by a particular colony or state. The colonial period was a time of increased mobility, albeit not in similar patterns for all groups. While many people within the region’s colonies became increasingly oriented toward their colonial capitals—i.e., Dakar, Bathurst, Bissau, and Conakry—most Fulbe in southern Senegambia continued to operate principally within a larger, trans-colonial Fulbe world. In Portuguese Guinea, most groups were internally mobile, but very few left for neighboring colonies. The exceptions were Fulbe and Mandinka people, who oriented themselves along kin and linguistic networks that extended deep into neighboring colonies.3 These networks posed a challenge to colonial and nationalist ideas of bounded states with discrete populations, but colonial governments did not have the resources to either restrict movement or cajole borderland residents into accepting a nationalist framework. The division of greater Senegambia into distinct units provided greater incentive for people to move, but neither colonial governments nor nationalist movements created a deep enough attachment to incentivize people to remain in a particular colony. As French subjects began to gain more political rights, French officials tried to crack down 3 António Carreira and Artur Martins de Meireles, “Notas sobre os movimentos migratórios da população natural da Guiné Portuguesa,” BCGP 14, no. 53 (1959), 14–15. 235 on emigrants to neighboring colonies, contending that those who left French West Africa would be considered foreigners, and that their future descendants would lose their French nationality and rights.4 These attempts to coerce migration typically failed. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the French, British, and Portuguese colonial governments in the region were poised to increase their control over their borderland populations. In the last years before independence, they expanded educational opportunities, built new health facilities, and monitored borders more closely. Yet, true control of the border proved an elusive goal, due to “the particular geographic situation of the region.”5 By the close of 1960, both of the region’s French colonies, Senegal and Guinea, would be independent, while the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea would not win their independence until 1965 and 1974, respectively. In the years leading up to independence, migration patterns shifted as political and economic circumstances changed throughout the region. French Guineans maintained their privileged position over Malians (or soudanais in the French terminology of the day) as the most-favored seasonal workers in the region, and many settled in the Gambia and southern Senegal. In order to demonstrate the alternative communities Fulbe people built in the borderlands of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea, this chapter will explore French, British, and Portuguese efforts to restrict movement and provide services that would tie colonial subjects to a particular geographic space. It will explore how independence movements shaped Fulbe regions of these four colonies, and how migration and cross-border trade continued to subvert colonial claims to territorial sovereignty and integrity. People moved for economic, political, and even religious reasons, with Islam spreading further in the region as a result of 4 ANS 2G50/143, Synthèse 2ème trimestre 1950, Gouverneur du Sénégal au Haut-Commissaire de la République, Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., August 9, 1951, 37. 5 ANS 2G50/100, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport politique 3ème trimestre 1950, October 9, 1950, 2. 236 traveling clerics and Koranic schools. The first colony in the region to become independent was Guinea, and the chapter will close with the immediate aftermath of Guinean independence, when Sékou Touré’s PDG government actively worked to destroy the cross-border ties Fulbe and others had built over the course of the colonial period. The Postwar Landscape Wartime migration to escape military conscription and increased colonial exactions left numerous West Africans scattered across different colonies from the ones they had resided in prior to the war. Residents of French Guinea, in particular, moved to neighboring colonies in substantial numbers. Many would return after the war, but others found their new surroundings more to their liking.6 As of the mid 1940s, most residents in southern Senegal were only tenuously connected to national politics. In Kolda, it was only in the eponymous regional capital that people expressed any interest in colonial politics; only two residents of the region had radios that would allow them to tap into colony-wide debates, and newspapers were unheard of. In 1950, in the neighboring subdivision of Velingara, the chef de subdivision reported, “Politics is practically non-existent.” Moreover, he reported, people in “the bush” were not at all interested in registering births, marriages, and deaths. Only those in larger trading towns exhibited any desire to participate in colonial record-keeping or using the colonial courts.7 Officials often ascribed Senegambians’ lack of interest in such matters to their supposed lack of advancement: as the commissioner of the Upper River Division of the Gambia wrote in 1949, “It is a difficult task to wed 20th Century institutions to 1st Century minds.”8 Throughout Senegal, its governor reported in 1950, 6 ANS 2G47/22, Guinée, Rapport politique, Année 1947, 20–21. 7 ANS 2G50/101, Kolda, Rapport politique d’ensemble, 1950, 2–3. The lack of interest in radios did not extend to other modern technologies, as the city of Kolda had two cinemas. On Velingara, ANS 2G50/107, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport Politique, Année 1950, January 15, 1951, A. Pinel, 3. As we will see in Chapter 5 and the Conclusion, the lack of registrations would allow postcolonial claims to citizenship in multiple countries. 8 NRS ARP 34/7, Upper River Division, Annual Report, 1949, 3. 237 Whatever one may say, the masses remain indifferent to politics. In the countryside, agricultural life remains the main concern and the only conflicts are those relating to questions of land or village chiefdoms; family or political rivalries oppose each other and after reconciliation, everything generally returns to calm. If at times the mass is very interested in politics, it is because it hopes to be able to obtain from them advantages or softening to the forest system, for example.9 Despite his obvious attempt to portray Senegalese society as being (in European terms) essentially medieval, the governor’s remarks reveal that people throughout the country were in fact interested in those aspects of politics they could control, which typically revolved around the most local questions. Likewise, in the Senegalese subdivision of Nioro du Rip north of the Gambia, it was the election of a local subdivision chief, rather than the naming of yet another French commissioner, that “raised a real enthusiasm” and revealed the importance “of being administered by one’s own race.”10 It is fairly clear that politics as conceived of by colonial officials did not correspond with politics on the ground—and perhaps especially for the many people who, rather than exercising limited political freedom in their home communities, “voted with their feet.”11 Even in the last years of the colonial period, the people of southern Senegambia tended to move within their cross-border region, rather than beyond it to colonial capitals and other large centers. The French consul in Bathurst complained that the Casamance was oriented away from the rest of Senegal and argued that building a trans-Gambian road to connect Senegal’s two halves would help to reorient the interior of southern Senegal, the Gambia and even parts of Portuguese Guinea away from the coast and toward Dakar.12 Unions like the Confédération générale des 9 ANS 2G50/143, Sénégal, Rapport politique, 1er trimestre 1950, Gouverneur du Sénégal au Haut-Commissaire de la République Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F. 10 ANS 2G56/173, Senegal, Synthèse politique, 2e trimestre 1956, Gouverneur J. Colombani, July 20, 1956, 3. 11 As Ilya Somin points out, “For people living under authoritarian regimes, foot voting through international migration is often their only means of exercising political choice.” In the case of residents of colonial Senegambia, any choice to migrate resulted in living in a colony, but the consequences of these movements were still significant given the different policies in place in the region. Ilya Somin, “Foot Voting, Federalism, and Political Freedom,” in James E. Fleming and Jacob T. Levy (eds.), Federalism and Subsidiarity (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 84. 12 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2184, Route transgambienne, A. Chataigner, Consul de France à Bathurst à Son Excellence Monsieur Le Ministre des Affaires Etrangères, “Au sujet d’accord AOF-Gambie sur la voie 238 travailleurs africains (CGTA) were much more powerful in the part of Senegal to the north of the Gambia, centered around the capital of Dakar, than to the south.13 Local political concerns continued to focus on what most affected communities: the selection of village and district chiefs, who determined how colonial policies would actually be carried out. In the interior of Portuguese Guinea, home mostly to Fulbe and Mandinka, local governance was delegated in large part to régulos (similar to district chiefs, but with an element of royalty attached) and village chiefs. Fulbe chiefs were associated closely with the colonial state but exercised some discretion over how Portuguese policies were carried out, a reality often ignored by officials in Bissau.14 In Fulbe areas of French Guinea near the border of Senegal, however, the situation was quite different. Far from being geographically peripheral to the colony, Futa Jallon and other Fulbe areas were an integral part of the colonial project, and as a result were much more involved in wider colonial political debates.15 These borderlands were dynamic spaces, full of movement and excitement. As one British official reported in May 1954 from the Gambia-Senegal border, an interesting morning was spent visiting the villages, mainly Wolof, along the border south of Bansang which adjoin that area once thought to be in the Gambia which eight years ago was found to be in the Cassamance. Difficulties over coos [millet] land, smuggling, cattle running and illegal groundnut buying give a spice to life down there but transgambienne,” March 22, 1956. The trans-Gambia road was finally completed in 2019 with the inauguration of a bridge across the Gambia River. 13 ANS 2G56/173, Senegal, Synthèse politique, 2e trimestre 1956, Gouverneur J. Colombani, July 20, 1956, 10. 14 António Carreira, “Do regime de propriedade indígena na Guiné Portuguesa” (Dissertação de Escola Superior Colonial, 1948–49), 47. The relationship between Fulbe chiefs and the Portuguese statement is well established, and in many cases Fulbe chiefs were assigned to rule over other ethnic groups. See Hawkins, “Conflict, Interaction, and Change in Guinea-Bissau,” 169. Hawkins writes that by placing of Fulbe chiefs over groups like the Balanta and Manjaco, “the Portuguese made the Fulbe a hated group in many areas of the colony.” Ibid, 185. Aliou Ly writes, “[T]he Portuguese gave the Fula a large measure of local privilege and used their ruling class as an instrument of indirect domination over the decentralized or acephalous communities.” Ly, “‘Courage does not from a Sardine Can but From the Heart’: The Gendered Realms of Power during Guinea-Bissau’s National Liberation Struggle, 1963– 1974” (PhD Dissertation, UC-Davis, 2012), 56. According to Fulbe in Guinea-Bissau today, their ancestors were chosen for these tasks because they were “more organized,” referring to their more hierarchical society. Interview with Moreira Dauda Embalo, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 17, 2017. 15 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 176–77. 239 sometimes lead to regrettable incidents (seldom reported) with the douaniers [customs agents].16 This “spice of life” allowed opportunities for individuals’ political and economic advancement, while also mitigating the burdens colonial regimes could place on individuals and communities. The cross-border communities created by Fulbe and others operated as a shadow state, albeit one without any centralized politics, that did not so much oppose as fail to intersect with those operated by the region’s various colonial governments. Largely for this reason, Fulbe communities by the end of the colonial period were more closely tied to one another than ever before, despite governmental efforts to exercise sovereignty over their territories, including by restricting the cross-border movement of people. Fulbe continued to move, both within and between colonies. As the commissioner of the Upper River Division complained in 1952: The Fula [Fulbe] group of tribes still tend towards a nomadic existence, moving in large circles over a period of years, cultivating and moving on, observing no international border and giving no lasting allegiance to any one Chief. They are always welcomed by the people of the area to which they move, as their cattle help to manure village lands other than their own, and they are generally good farmers, producing field crops surplus to their requirements.17 Portuguese observers likewise complained about the Fulbe’s semi-nomadism, and specifically that their bamboo huts allowed them to pick up and move at a moment’s notice: for instance, when the land they were farming became overworked. For this reason, colonial officials even attempted to introduce crops that would sedentarize the Fulbe, fixing them to particular villages.18 Education could also have served as a force for drawing the Fulbe and other borderland peoples into their respective colonies’ wider political and social lives; but its limited reach in rural 16 NRS CRM 1/1, Divisional Bulletin, MacCarthy Island Division, June 1, 1954. 17 NRS ARP 34/10, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1952, 2. 18 Carreira, “Do regime de propriedade indígena na Guiné Portuguesa,” 38, 49. Antonio George C. De Sousa Franklin, “O aldeamento como meio de combate ao nomadismo do Fula da Guine Portuguesa,” Estudos Coloniais 3, no. 3 (1953), 279–84. 240 areas hindered this process, leaving Fulbe borderland networks essentially unchallenged.19 While a few elite schools like the École William Ponty in Dakar drew standout students from across French West Africa, bonding them to one another via shared experience, colonial (and postcolonial) education was highly spatialized.20 For most rural people, living far from colonial centers of power, the impact of colonial education initiatives was strictly limited. For the entirety of the colonial period, there was no high school in the whole of the Casamance. When the first one was finally built in 1960, it was still more than 100 miles from the westernmost parts of the Upper Casamance. Previously, the nearest secondary school had been more than 135 miles away in Kaolack, and reaching it required one to cross the Gambia River (and the eponymous British colony).21 Colonial officials in Senegal admitted that there were stark differences between urban and rural schools: a “regrettable inequality” that placed children who had attended “bush schools” at a heavy disadvantage in later life, even if they made it to secondary school.22 As of 1950, the subdivision of Kolda had only five primary schools, and these were almost exclusively male. It was difficult to recruit students in small villages, and even those who were interested had to find families to host them for the academic year if the school was not within walking distance. These barriers precluded education for the vast majority of children, which—as well as disadvantaging 19 This observation was noted by colonial officials at the time. NRS ARP 34/8, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1950, 16. 20 On the École William Ponty, see Ruth Schachter Morgenthau, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 12–21. Benedict Anderson also features the school prominently in Chapter 7 of Imagined Communities. 21 ANS 2G60/17, Federation du Mali: République du Senegal: Ministère de l’education et de la culture: Projet de plan d’équipement du Senegal en établissements d’enseignement du second degré, 18. 22 ANS 2G54/954, Conferences des Directeurs de l’Enseignement du 15 au 22 sept. 1954, “Rapport: la liaison entre le primaire et la secondaire et les modalités d’entrée dans les Lycées et les Collèges,” Inspecteur d’Académie Fajadet, 5. ANS 2G53/75, Circonscription de la Casamance, “L’Inspecteur de l’Enseignement Primaire à Monsieur l’Inspecteur d’Académie à Saint-Louis,” Rapport de Fin d’Année, l’Inspecteur A. Rabejac, July 13, 1953, 1. 241 them in a direct sense—rendered them unavailable to participate in a core aspect of colonial integration.23 In the Upper River Division of the Gambia in 1946, only 180 children—not even 1 percent of the total—were being educated in colonial schools at any level. The greatest challenge to improving upon this situation was the lack of facilities operated by the colonial government, since the British outsourced schooling in the region to a variety of Christian missions, regulated by the Director of Education. In the MacCarthy Island Division, the first “Native Authority” school on the south bank of the Gambia River opened in Bansang in 1947, and was followed by a second in Brikama Ba in 1953.24 As well as the limited number of schools, obstacles to education included the reluctance among many families to suffer the medium-term economic losses that would be caused by releasing their children from domestic and agricultural labor.25 Schools also struggled to attract teachers who could understand local languages. In the Upper River Division, parents preferred to send their children to Native Authority schools because they included Koranic education, whereas mission school curricula included both implicit and explicit support for Christianity in the hope of converting their pupils. These tensions came to a head when the colonial government refused to install a Native Authority school in the district’s capital of Basse, which already had a mission school, on the grounds that “[i]n a country where schools are comparatively 23 ANS 2G54/954, Conferences des Directeurs de l’Enseignement du 15 au 22 sept. 1954, “Rapport: la liaison entre le primaire et la secondaire et les modalités d’entrée dans les Lycées et les Collèges,” Inspecteur d’Académie Fajadet, 5. ANS 2G53/75, Circonscription de la Casamance, “L’Inspecteur de l’Enseignement Primaire à Monsieur l’Inspecteur d’Académie à Saint-Louis,” Rapport de Fin d’Année, l’Inspecteur A. Rabejac, July 13, 1953, 1. Many of my interviews cited severe barriers to education. For those in Senegal, interviews with Thiedo Kande, Dabo, Senegal, December 13, 2016; Dioulde Sy, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017; and Dikory Balde, Gunde Balde, and Tako Sane, Nemataba, Senegal, February 14, 2017. 24 NRS ARP 31/9, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1946, 17–18; ARP 34/5, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1947, 28; ARP 34/8, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1950, 38; ARP 34/11, MacCarthy Island Divison, Annual Report 1953, 19. 25 This was a common refrain among interviews I conducted throughout southern Senegambia. It was also difficult to collect school fees. NRS ARP 34/11, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1953, 20. 242 scarce, it would seem pointless for two schools to have to compete with each other in one town.”26 Despite this decision, Koranic education dominated the eastern Gambia until independence, though some students and families sought out English-language schooling irrespective of their communities’ religious preferences.27 In Portuguese Guinea, there were only five “central schools” as of 1949, and only one of them served the colony’s two easternmost regions. Located in Bafatá, it had just 71 students.28 As of 1958, knowledge of the Portuguese language had spread minimally across the colony, with just 0.4 percent of the population able to speak it and 0.2 percent to read it. 29 During the late 1950s, primary education continued to expand in eastern Portuguese Guinea, but was almost exclusively male until after independence; as in the rest of the region, most parents wanted their children to farm and herd rather than attend school. 30 In French Guinea, education was almost nonexistent in most of the colony before the 1950s, and despite increases in the runup to independence, French- language schooling remained a rarity in Futa Jallon.31 Those who received a colonial education were often better tied into intra-colonial networks and more likely to move within colonies than those who did not. This also created a divide between the small number of colonially educated youth, their parents, and the rest of their communities. After finishing collège in the district capital of Kolda, more than 30 miles from his home, Thiedo 26 NRS EDU 2/231, “Proposed School at Basse,” June 21, 1957, and NRS ARP 34/13, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1955, 18. 27 Interview with Samba Mballow, Sare Bojo Gamana, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 28 AHU MU/ISAU/A2.001.02/008.0042, Inspecção Geral à Colónia da Guiné: Relatório do Inspector Superior Antonio de Almeida, May 1949, 15, 31. Additionally, there were “rudimentary schools” in the town of Gabú, as well as in the villages of Sonaco and Bambadinca. 29 Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ATT), PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ano de 1958, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, Gabinete, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958, 72. 30 On the gendered aspect of education, interview with El Hadji Tidjani Sané, Mama Ausu Sané, Ebraima Sané, Sadjo Mané, and Samian Sané, Kankelefa, Guinea-Bissau, April 10, 2017. For farming and herding, interview with Saada Tcham, Usman Djau, and Hamidu Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 31 Claude Rivière, Guinea: The Mobilization of a People, trans. by Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 44. 243 Kande joined the French colonial military, where he served across French West Africa in the years leading up to independence.32 For those who participated in colonial institutions like the military or who attended colonial schools, there was a greater pull toward intra-colonial and nationalist networks. Controlling the Border At the heart of the larger project to extend the reach of colonial governments deeper into the lives of borderland residents was control of the border itself. Though colonial governments in southern Senegambia had long wished to manage and regulate movement across their borders, they finally gained a limited ability to do so in the last years of colonial rule. Portuguese officials sought to regulate the movement of goods through a decree that required items coming from border regions—with a particular emphasis on fabric, often imported from Senegal and the Gambia—to “be accompanied by an import license […] considered as customs clearance, or a passport indicating the origin or provenance.” For kola nuts, which were almost always imported rather than produced locally, similar documentation was required.33 In Senegal, cross-border movement of people technically required a passport, although French officials noted this was more wishful thinking than reality. These passport restrictions went hand-in-hand with the aforementioned French policy that those leaving French West Africa to live elsewhere were to be considered foreigners.34 32 Interview with Thiedo Kande, Dabo, Senegal, December 13, 2016. 33 ANS Versement 14, 2F13, “Circulation des marchandises à l’intérieur de la colonie,” September 13, 1947; AHU MU/ISAU/A2.050.05/031.00186, Inspecção Administrativa Ordinária: Informação sobre a inspecção realizada na Circunscrição de Gabú, Inspector Administrativo Manuel Benton Gonçalves Ferreira, September 18, 1960, 122–27. 34 ANS 2G50/143, Synthèse 2ème trimestre 1950, Gouverneur du Sénégal au Haut-Commissaire de la République, Gouverneur Général de l’A.O.F., August 9, 1951, 37. These passport restrictions were part of the larger project of what Torpey calls “the state monopolization of the legitimate ‘means of movement.’” Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. 244 The British did not even bother to set up customs posts on their border, putting the onus on village chiefs to collect customs duties and record the amounts in receipt books. They acknowledged that this was a futile, “makeshift” system; as the MacCarthy Island Division commissioner put it, It cannot be expected that Customs duties will ever be regularly collected under this system, but it is doubtful whether any useful purpose would be served by substituting douaniers on the French model. With an unguarded and vulnerable frontier hundreds of miles in length, the prevention of smuggling would be an impossible task, and it is doubtful whether the results would justify the trouble involved.35 Only in the major market towns along the river were customs collected. The same commissioner remarked in early 1958, “Much unaccustomed [goods on which no customs duties are paid] goods must enter the Division but the present system of partial collection has proved to be more satisfactory than earlier attempts.”36 In the easternmost Upper River Division, in towns like Sabi and Fatoto, officials noted that “the need for Gambian Customs Posts […] was again felt.”37 Customs collection was also still relatively weak between Portuguese Guinea and the French colonies of Guinea and Senegal, where large quantities of fabric, cattle, peanuts, and rice regularly crossed the borders.38 Borderland residents agreed with this official assessment, stating that they had few problems crossing from Portuguese Guinea into either neighboring French colony.39 Nevertheless, the French were able during this period to successfully adopt an impôt flottant or “floating tax” on Gambian migrants farming across the border in Senegal. In 1955, the 35 NRS ARP 34/10, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report, 1952, 24. Emphasis my own. 36 NRS ARP 34/14, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report for 1956 and 1957, 8. The major market town on the south bank in the Division was Bansang. Additionally, MacCarthy Island (and its town of Georgetown, today Janjanbureh) was located in the middle of the river, though is generally more associated with the south bank of the river, where a bridge exists today to connect the island to the mainland. 37 NRS ARP 34/13, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1955, 10. 38 ANS 2G47/121, Guinée, Revue trimestrielle, 1er trimestre 1947, Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., June 17, 1947, 13. 39 Interviews with Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kan Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kan Diallo, and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Guinea-Bissau, February 27, 2017; and with El Hadji Mamadu Kande, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. 245 French and British came to an agreement whereby Gambians could not farm in Senegal without a certificate signed by their district’s commissioner. While it is unclear how zealously this new policy was enforced, it clearly had an impact. The impetus for it was a 1954 incident in which “a large number of Gambian villages […] bordering French territory” were “clearing and brushing farms in the Velingara District, without first obtaining permission and registering for Impot Flottant purposes.” Gambian officials would collect the “floating tax,” which would then be handed over to French officials. Even sixty years later, Gambian farmers remember paying this tax before crossing the border to farm.40 In 1950, representatives of the governments of French West Africa and the Gambia met at Government House in Bathurst, where the Governor of the Gambia welcomed the French delegation by stating that “the over-riding consideration” in determining trade policy “should be the welfare of the African populations on both sides of the political frontier in view of the close racial, social and economic ties of these people.”41 This compassionate statement was in part self- interested, since trade was much more in the interest of the Gambia. However, there was also a general recognition that these two territories could not and should not be walled off from each other, since the border between them was illogical. As one official admitted in 1954, on the fiftieth anniversary of the accords between the French and British over navigation on the Gambia River, considerations of public opinion forced the statesmen, even the most conciliatory, to try to avoid the slightest sign of weakness. The sovereignty of every square mile of disputed territory was fiercely discussed, even when, as Salisbury once said, the negotiators had no precise knowledge of the exact and actual location of the mountains, rivers and lakes whose fate they settled.42 40 NRS CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletins, May 5, 1954, November 23, 1955, June 19, 1956, September 8, 1956, and April 26, 1957. This is also mentioned for the MacCarthy Island Division in NRS ARP 34/13, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1955, 22. Cherno Kandeh of the border town of Nyamanar paid an impôt flottant 1000 CFA (West African francs) in the late 1950s. Interview with Cherno Kandeh, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017. 41 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2176/2-3, “Minutes of a meeting held at Government House, Bathurst on the 19th April, 1950, between Representatives of the government of French West Africa and the government of the Gambia.” 42 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2176/2-3, “L’entente Anglo-Française en Afrique Occidentale; 50 ans après,” 2–4. 246 These borders, of course, “could produce only borders full of anomalies. Tribal borders and internal trade routes were treated in such a contemptuous way.” However, these borders could not be changed, “because of the political difficulties that this could provoke to awaken questions that had just been solved with the greatest difficulty.” Officials therefore sought to avoid an “international crisis,” resignedly writing, “The arbitrary borders become sacred.”43 Even if the borders could not be altered for fear of geopolitical catastrophe, however, their meaning could be minimized to prevent too much tension from building up between the two governments and their respective peoples. By minimizing the importance of political borders, colonial governments bought into a vision of borderlands as connected spaces, thus furthering the beliefs of borderland residents themselves who saw these areas as spaces within which they could move freely. Staggered Movements toward Independence Throughout southern Senegambia, nationalist movements typically centered around capital regions and other centers of colonial power. At times, these movements gained traction in borderland areas, but for the most part they proved incapable of competing with borderland networks that had advantages of geography, trade, and language. To understand the different contours within borderland areas of southern Senegambia, the following section explores nationalist movements and their differential impact throughout each colony. Senegal Given the political situation on the ground in 1945, it would have surprised most observers that Guinea was the first colony in the region to become independent, in 1958. As the administrative center of French West Africa, Senegal seemed primed to become the first independent state in greater Senegambia. Even in the rural Upper Casamance, major towns like 43 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2176/2-3, “L’entente Anglo-Française en Afrique Occidentale; 50 ans après,” 2–4. 247 Kolda saw a blossoming of political life in the postwar era. In such towns by the 1940s, “[t]he development of access to schools, urbanization, the evolution of political and social struggles and the question of assimilationist policies bore fruit.” Urban sporting and art associations “played a decisive role in the formation of […] the new elites. They framed the fermentation and incubation and nationalism and led to political action.” However, political activity was still weak in the region, especially outside of large towns; this was due in large part to the late development of schooling in the region. Additionally, the traditional hierarchy maintained by district and village chiefs did not lend itself to the development of évolués that was seen elsewhere in Senegal.44 The biggest debate in the region was over the territorial counselor Yoro Kandé, who was not a Senegalese nationalist, and whose opponents claimed “played on the register of the autochthone, the ethnocentrism of the Pulaar language, like many other politicians of his time.”45 Others took issue not with Kandé’s message of Fulbe as autochthonous, but that he was not “noble” Fulbe, but rather of enslaved descent.46 Kandé claimed, ridiculously, that non-Fulbe were foreigners to the region, and even declined to run for mayor of the city of Kolda because most of its population was not “autochthonous” Fulbe.47 In the years leading up to Senegal’s independence in 1960, the traditional aristocracy in the region saw their power waning. This decline “created a new political and social environment in the subdivisions,” and there were regular political clashes between emerging political figures and customary chiefs. Many of the new leaders were traders, civil servants, and teachers who had received colonial educations. The first municipal elections in Kolda were held in 1958.48 In that 44 Sow, “Mutations politiques,” 187–202. 45 Ibid, 216–20. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid, 17–19, 226. 248 same year, a referendum was held to determine whether Senegal would remain in the French Community or choose immediate independence, and the vast majority in the Upper Casamance voted to maintain their relationship to France, at least temporarily. In many of the voting bureaus, the vote was unanimous. For example, in the town of Dabo, where I lived from 2010 to 2012, the recorded vote was 1,201 in favor and zero against; and in nearby Mampatim, 1,535 voted yes and without a single no. The town of Pata, bordering the Gambia, voted in favor of full independence, but only by 512 to 305. Ndorna, the birthplace of Musa Molo, the last king of Fuladu and a center of precolonial power, voted against the French Community by a vote of 454 to seven.49 After Guinea voted for immediate independence in 1958, French officials worried that “Guinean communists” would lead an underground campaign for independence in southern Senegal. One 1959 report claimed that “the left” had “conquered half of Casamance,” specifically citing the influence of Guineans.50 In 1959, Senegal and the colony of French Sudan (now Mali) decided to come together to create the Mali Federation under the auspices of the French Community. On April 4, 1960, the Federation signed an agreement with France leading to full independence on June 20. By the end of August, however, the Federation had broken down and Senegal and the new Republic of Mali separated. During the brief Federation era, elections were held in an increasing number of villages throughout southern Senegal.51 Independence was seen by many in Senegal as “liberation”, and even though day-to-day life changed very little at first, many perceived being free of colonial rule as cathartic.52 However, this catharsis did little to shape seasonal migration patterns. In June 1960, two months after Senegalese independence, British 49 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/3543, Referendum, loi constitutionnelle du 3 juin 1958, Circonscription: Ziguinchor, Subdivision: Kolda. 50 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2266/8, Rapport politique, Période du 25 mai au 25 juin 1959, June 30, 1959, 4. 51 ANS 11D1/219, Carnet de Transmission No. 12, March 12, 1959. 52 Interview with Saidou Diallo, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017. 249 colonial officials in the Gambia stated that seasonal migrant farmers were “reported to be arriving in greater numbers than last year. If the strong rumour, in circulation last year, that Mali [the Mali Federation] will pay no subsidy in 1960/1961 is still current we may expect a healthy influx of these seasonal visitors.”53 Despite liberation, in other words, many in southern Senegal chose to spend part of their year under colonial rule rather than harm their economic prospects. In the months following independence, the Senegalese government took a hard line against the importation of products from the Gambia, prohibiting “canvas shoes, matches, cigarettes, perfume, [medicines like] Mentholatum, Thermogene and […other] medicinal preparations.”54 These prohibitions did not stop goods from moving across the border, but did serve to label these movements as acts of smuggling. For southern Senegambians, the movement of goods across borders may not have been legal but was certainly accepted.55 French Guinea Postwar politics in French Guinea, especially in the Fulbe area of Futa Jallon, can be defined by the control that historically important families exercised over political life. From 1945 to 1954, the colony was marked by an elite-driven politics and the central role chiefs played in selecting and supporting candidates. During this early era of Guinean politics, nearly 75% of all delegates in the Guinean Territorial Assembly hailed from chiefly families, a number that along with Niger far outstripped the chief’s representations in all other AOF territories.56 The dominance of a small number of conservative chiefly families had grave long-term consequences for the project of national unity. Over the course of the 1950s, Sékou Touré’s Parti 53 NRS CRM 1/1, Divisional Bulletin MacCarthy Island Division May 1960, June 4, 1960. 54 NRS CRM 1/1, Divisional Bulletin MacCarthy Island Division, Sept. 16–30, 1960, October 4, 1960. 55 On these distinctions elsewhere in Africa, see Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience, 5, 21; Flynn, “‘We Are the Border,’” and MacGaffey et al, The Real Economy of Zaire: The Contribution of Smuggling & Other Unofficial Activities to National Wealth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). 56 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 188–89. 250 Démocratique de Guinée (PDG) became increasingly embroiled in a wider class struggle, actively opposing itself to the status quo represented and supported by the elite of Futa Jallon. The PDG tended to attract the descendants of enslaved persons and even the formerly enslaved themselves, as well as other marginalized groups including women. Elite Fulbe discourses based on the importance of the region’s tradition had little appeal to the large swathes of the population who had suffered at their hands for hundreds of years. The “free” Fulbe, meanwhile, saw their interests as represented by neither camp and were much less likely than others to vote in the 1958 referendum that determined the shape of Guinean independence. Subsequently, they tended to migrate out of Guinea rather than live under Touré’s regimented system of governance.57 On April 14, 1954, Yacine Diallo—a native of Futa Jallon and representative to the French National Assembly—died. The election convened to choose his replacement came down to two candidates: Diawadou Barry, a Fulbe who courted the Futa Jallon elite, and the PDG’s representative and future President of Guinea, Touré. Barry won the election with nearly 60 percent of the vote, but the PDG claimed malfeasance and the period after the election was marred by violence, leading to an increased political separation between Futa Jallon and the rest of the colony. In the January 1956 Guinean elections, the PDG again lost in Futa Jallon. However, the difference between levels of support for the party in Futa Jallon and the rest of Guinea was clear. Even though the PDG “rode to a sweeping victory in the 1957 territorial elections,” its relative weakness in Futa Jallon demonstrated that “the fractures that would mark postcolonial politics in Guinea had already been set: from both an internal and external perspective, the Fulbe and Futa Jallon were divergent from the rest of Guinea, a fragment in the making.”58 During 1957, prominent Fulbe politicians like Diawadou Barry, Ibrahima Barry (known popularly as Barry III), and Abdoulaye Diallo “tried 57 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 114–15. 58 A detailed description of this is available in Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 189–92. 251 to regain control over the masses in the Fouta Djalon by inciting them to default on their taxes and to commit acts of civil disobedience, and by fostering Peul ethnocentricity.”59 Even though many Fulbe did vote for the PDG, the relative lack of support for Touré and other PDG partisans was striking. After the PDG’s achievement of dominance in 1957, it began to attempt to restructure Futa Jallon, in much the same spirit they would later apply to Guinea’s Forest Region.60 The Gambia Figure 12. Sékou Touré, 1962 In contrast to the heated and at times violent politics of the postwar years in Guinea, Gambian politics were calm. The colony’s fractured administrative life and the lack of educational 59 Rivière, Guinea, 74. 60 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 75–77, 173–77. On the PDG’s efforts in the Forest Region, see Mike McGovern, Unmasking the State. The image of Touré above is from Wikimedia Commons and the Dutch National Archives (cropped by the author): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ahmed_S%C3%A9kou_Tour%C3%A9#/media/File:Ahmed_S%C3 %A9kou_Tour%C3%A9_1962.jpg 252 provision in most of its rural areas had effectively prevented the development of any sort of national identity. In the Upper River Division, commissioner K. J. Frazer cited the Gambia’s ethnic diversity and the hesitance of many Fulbe to travel to larger towns: With this considerable mixture of people in such a comparatively small area, the Administrative problem of creating and fostering a public spirit, which is more than purely local, is an extremely difficult one. […] This is true of the Fula group and particularly of the Lorobo and Fula-Torodo tribes who are very shy of official approach and are not frequently seen in the wharftowns. He further contended that “tribal ties” were “slowly disintegrating although they still have a profound effect on life. Unfortunately there is nothing replacing them. No sense of nationality stirs.” 61 In the eastern part of the Gambia specifically, the problem was not merely that the mixture of people prevented the fostering of a larger public spirit, but also that whatever such spirit existed was not oriented toward Bathurst, but toward neighboring areas of Senegal. By 1953, a Divisional Conference was held in Basse with all of the chiefs of the division. The primary topics of conversation were “the new Constitution and the 1953 seednut repayment.”62 However, political life—in terms of parties and coalitions—was absent from all parts of the region. In contrast to Sierra Leone, where the broad-based Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) had been the most prominent political grouping since 1951, none of the Gambia’s political parties stretched much outside of the “Colony,” a small area consisting of Bathurst and its surroundings and home to about one-fifth of the population. The Protectorate, which accounted for virtually all of Gambia’s land and the remaining four-fifths of its people, “remained largely excluded from […] political events”; and politics remained “an urban phenomenon.”63 That changed following the adoption in 1959 of a new constitution that gave twelve of the nineteen 61 NRS ARP 34/10, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1952, 2–3. The reference to the “Fula-Torodo” refers to the Toroodbe, another name for the Haalpulaar and one linked closely to Islam. 62 NRS ARP 34/11, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1953, 3. 63 Hughes and Perfect, A Politcal History, 133–34. 253 directly elected seats (some were still appointed) to the Protectorate. Even though proportionally the Protectorate was still underrepresented, the new constitution gave most Gambians, for the first time in their lives, elected representation.64 Throughout 1959, the administrators of the MacCarthy Island and Upper River Divisions spent much of their time registering voters for the 1960 general election.65 The new constitution guaranteed the right to vote to both men and women, and both signed up with relative excitement. It also encouraged government officials to visit far-flung areas that they had often previously ignored. As the division commissioner of MacCarthy Island put it, this “served the additional purpose of allowing us to show the flag in seldom visited villages. The prize goes to Ker Sam Boye in Lower Saloum District where the Alkali told me that this was the first time he had seen a Commissioner in his village in his 42 years.”66 For many of these voters, there was a great deal of political debate to catch up on. One commissioner spoke encouragingly of how the residents of his division had adapted: The average Protectorate worker found himself at first as bewildered by the intricacies of Trade Unionism as he had been by the complexities of registration for universal suffrage but in both cases he proved himself quick to assimilate the pros and cons of these new conceptions and the heated arguments one now overhears on ferries and in bantabas [a village meeting place under a large tree] smack of the London School of Economics.67 By the close of 1960, elected Area Councils had replaced unelected, weak District Authorities as the primary political body in the Gambia’s interior.68 Though independence was still five years away, political life had developed rapidly in a very short time. 64 Hughes and Perfect, A Political History, 133–4. 65 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Division Bulletin, Nov. 1–30, 1959, December 3, 1959, 1–2. 66 Ibid. 67 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Division Bulletins, February and March 1960, April 4, 1960. 68 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Division Bulletins, Sept. 16–30, 1960, October 4, 1960 254 Portuguese Guinea Given the intensity with which the Portuguese held onto their colonies in the twentieth century and the slow growth of any political life in Portuguese Guinea, it seems in retrospect inevitable that this colony would have been the last in southern Senegambia to gain independence. Administration in the eastern Fulbe regions of Gabú and Bafatá was outsourced to régulos. Throughout the colony in the years leading up to 1950, “colonial political authority was often challenged by rural rebels who had not accepted the political sovereignty of the Portuguese colonial state.”69 Colonial decrees were only as effective as the ability of régulos to enforce them, and for the most part—due to the lack of both military and popular support—Portuguese policies were incompletely applied. Through the creation of smaller chieftainships, the Portuguese had fomented a fragmentation of political authority that impeded the emergence of any major political figures who could serve as unifying figures. In Portuguese Guinea’s easternmost region, Fulbe leaders could do little to assist the colonizers in controlling the population outside of the town of Gabú itself.70 Among the few who could bring people together, notably across ethnic divides, were Islamic clerics. Manuel Sarmento Rodrigues, the Governor of Portuguese Guinea and future Overseas Minister of Portugal, warned in 1948 that even though the Fulbe and other Muslim groups had up to that time caused less political trouble than others, they would be the most dangerous in the future, given that their shared religious ties could lead to greater cohesion.71 Throughout the 1950s Portuguese colonial reports warned that Islam could be a unifying anti- colonial factor, at least for the one-third of the colony’s population that was Muslim.72 This fear, 69 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 140. 70 Ibid, 140–43, 169. 71 ANS Versement 14, 2F13, “O Islamismo e o seu futuro em Guiné Português,” July 24, 1948. 72 J.M. da Silva Cunha, Missão de estado dos movimentos associativos em Africa: Relatório da campanha de 1958 (Guiné) (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Políticos e Sociais da Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, 1959), 14–15. 255 however, was counterbalanced by a belief that the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims would slow the growth of pro-independence sentiment, and perhaps even entirely prevent the development of a wider national consciousness that could topple the Portuguese colonial government.73 As in Senegal, officials feared the potentially destabilizing influence of newly independent Guinea after 1958. On May 21, 1959, Sékou Touré visited Sare Boido, a market town near the border of still-colonial Portuguese Guinea. Many officials from villages and towns in neighboring Portuguese Gabú came to listen as, with a cigarette between his fingers, Touré spoke in his native Maninka, which was then translated into Pulaar for the Fulbe in attendance.74 He emphasized that Guinea, like Portuguese Guinea, had been governed by Europeans for a long time; but that it was Africans who now ruled the former. He declared to the Portuguese Guineans in attendance, “Africa is the land of the blacks. Portuguese Guinea, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Ghana, all is Africa.” He went on to say, “The fight is not over,” a statement whose import could hardly have been lost on the Portuguese officials in attendance.75 They also speculated that Touré was conducting a silent campaign to recruit their subjects into his territory.76 Portuguese reports state that Fulbe, and particularly those recently arrived in the colony or descended from Guinean Fulbe, were skeptical of Touré’s comments;77 but given the hostility between his PDG government and much of the leadership of Futa Jallon, this lack of enthusiasm was understandable. 73 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ano de 1958, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, Gabinete, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958, 69. 74 Maninka is also known as Malinke. 75 Arquivo Histórico Diplomatico (AHD) S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Augusto de Barros, “Relações com a República da Guiné: Declarações co Pres. Sekou Touré durante uma visita ao posto de Sara Boide,” May 26, 1959. 76 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Informação No. 552/50-GU, October 21, 1960. 77 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Augusto de Barros, “Relações com a República da Guiné: Declarações co Pres. Sekou Touré durante uma visita ao posto de Sara Boide,” May 26, 1959. 256 Postwar Migration Flows Borderland residents of southern Senegambia migrated for a variety of reasons in the years leading up to independence. Economic connections led to seasonal migrant farming and trade across borders, while taxation and forced labor led others to move. Poor soil or pastureland created incentives for movement, as did religious networks based around Islamic knowledge and traveling clerics. Much as during the interwar years, Fulbe and other inhabitants of southern Senegambia would move back and forth between different territories if they did not like specific governmental policies. This migration could be short-term—such as simply waiting out the visit of a tax collector—or for the foreseeable future, if there was a real advantage to be gained on the other side of the border. French and Portuguese Guinea were widely considered to be the most difficult places to live in southern Senegambia, and so out-migration from both these places was more common than in-migration. However, migration flows could and did reverse if policies or economic conditions changed the pattern of incentives. Guinean Fulbe did not just leave for neighboring colonies like Senegal and Portuguese Guinea, but passed through southern Senegal on their way to the Gambia as well.78 As a colony made up entirely of border regions, the Gambia was intimately tied to Senegal, with virtually everyone there having cross-border familial ties, some dating back to the precolonial period and others related to migration that had occurred during the first half- century of British rule in the interior of the colony.79 Movement happened on a relatively small, often individual scale, slow when considered merely from one year to the next. But the aggregate result over longer periods was often staggering. 78 Interviews with Alpha Mballo, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017; with Ousmane Ba, Thierno Bocar Kande, and Aliou Balde, Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, February 20, 2017; with Sibo Balde, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017; with Demba Mballo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017; with Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017; and with El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Balde, Gabu, Guinea- Bissau, March 18, 2017. 79 Interview with El Haji Baba Baldeh, Sare Sofie, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. 257 The arrival of Fulbe from French and Portuguese Guinea to the subdivision of Velingara, the eastern half of the Upper Casamance, led to a doubling of its population between 1945 and 1964.80 This included a 12 percent increase from 1949 to 1950 alone, due to migration from the Gambia, French Guinea, and other parts of Senegal.81 The Gambia’s total population rose by 40 percent from 1940 to the close of 1949, in part due to immigration from Senegal, French Guinea, and to a lesser extent Portuguese Guinea.82 This suggests that records of individual migrations are far from complete. In 1950, for instance, just 350 people were recorded as moving from the Gambia to the districts of Guimara and Pata in southern Senegal; and in the same year, a group of 40 from Portuguese Guinea were noted as having immigrated into Coudora-Niampaīo in southern Senegal.83 Sometimes these changes were the result of the permanent migration of seasonal migrants, who had grown attached to particular villages after coming year after year to cultivate there.84 Just as populations could increase dramatically due to migration, they could also drop substantially over short periods. A 1951 population assessment of the Upper River Division showed a decrease of 11 percent from the year before, largely “due to farmers of Wuli and Sandu and Fulladu East Districts moving to French territory to grow groundnuts”, though “domestic differences with the Chiefs” also led people to hope for better political circumstances outside the colony. Nevertheless, British officials were optimistic that many of these emigrants would return after the close of the groundnut season. The largest declines were observed among two Fulbe 80 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 50. 81 ANS 2G50/107, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport politique, année 1950, Chef de Subdivision A. Pinel, 3; ANS 2G51/105, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport politique, année 1951, 3. 82 ANS 2G49/138, Senegal, Rapport politique, 4ème trimestre 1949. The other reason noted was not due to the birth rate, but by a new method of census taking. 83 ANS 2G50/100, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport politique, 2ème trimestre 1950, Chef de Subdivision Blaud, 7/11/1950, 4. 84 ANS 2G50/101, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble, 1950, 1. 258 subgroups long settled in the region, the Lorobo or Dorobe, and the Fulbe Firdu, named for the precolonial Firdu province located in the Upper Casamance. Lesser declines occurred among the more recently arrived Fulbe from Futa Jallon and Futa Toro. This suggests that longstanding residents of the region could have had an easier time migrating, knowing that they had roots to return to, and perhaps also stronger cross-border connections.85 Although colonial officials tended to worry about emigration rather than immigration, in the Gambia they became concerned that the population would outstrip the availability of cultivable land. In 1952, the commissioner of the MacCarthy Island Division wrote: It is difficult to see how present production of groundnuts or foodstuffs can be maintained unless further virgin bush is cleared, and villages are more widely dispersed in smaller units to avoid long distances between villages and farms. It would follow that the immigration into the Gambia of settlers must come under control, especially in areas which have already neared saturation point.86 By 1960, officials were struggling to figure out how to register voters, since “the South Bank appears to have attracted large numbers of settlers from the French Territories.”87 Complicating matters further, this migration was two-way, leading to considerable intermixing of the two colonies’ populations. In 1957, two entire villages in Gambia, Sare Batchie and Sara Nala, “had packed up and gone to France [Senegal], attracted apparently by promises of good water supplies and plentiful farming land in Cassamance.”88 Whether regulated or not, Gambian farmers in the eastern district of Kantora would “travel long distances to cultivate the better sections of the district” rather than stay near home, often “overflowing” into Senegal.89 In addition to migrants simply just crossing the nearest border, many from French Guinea and French Soudan, as well as 85 These population assessments excluded seasonal migrant farmers from other colonies. NRS ARP 34/9, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1951, 1. 86 NRS ARP 34/10, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1952, 21. 87 NRS CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletin, December 1959, January 4, 1960. 88 NRS CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletin, March 15–31, 1957, April 11, 1957. 89 NRS ARP 31/10, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1951, 17–18. 259 elsewhere in Senegal, settled in the northern part of Kolda. By the 1960s, more than half of the population in areas of Kolda bordering the Gambia were originally from different colonies/countries or other parts of Senegal.90 During this period, Wolof migrants founded many new villages mere kilometers from the Gambian border.91 Though French Guinea was known as a challenging place to live due to the harsh policies of its colonial government, the postwar years started with an increase in net migration into the colony. Many had left the colony during World War II, and the period from 1946 to 1948 saw large numbers of returnees swell the immigration figures considerably. Most had been staying in Portuguese Guinea and Sierra Leone, and a high proportion returned to Futa Jallon.92 For most of this period, however, the net flow of migration was typically out of French Guinea—and Futa Jallon especially, due to its overpopulation and scarcity of good farmland. Many former enslaved persons or individuals of enslaved descent left Futa Jallon either permanently or as seasonal workers, citing lack of opportunity.93 These migrants tended to follow family members who had previously migrated, and/or eventually to have other family members follow them.94 These migrants saw more access to economic and social mobility than they would have had at home, where a hierarchical society and the stigma of slavery still remained. Portuguese Guinea was often described as an even more difficult place to live than French Guinea; yet, many Fulbe migrants crossed the border from Senegal and settled in the Portuguese colony. They were particularly prominent in the regional capital of Bafatá, “where they constitute 90 The ethnic breakdown of these migrants (as a percentage of the population of the region) was Fulbe Futa: 19.3%, Soninke: 19.3%, Wolof: 14%, and Bambara: 1.5%. Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 60–61. 91 Interview with El Hadji Dieng, Moloubay Dieng, Modaiwa Dieng, and Lamin Ndiaye, Thallel, Senegal, February 14, 2017. 92 ANS 2G48/23, Guinée, Rapport Politique Annuel, 1948, 19. 93 ANS 2G55/152, Guinée, Rapport politique Annuel 1955, 11. 94 Interviews with Ibrahima Souare, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017; and with Boubacar Ba, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017. 260 a neighborhood of blacksmiths, goldsmiths and weavers who live in the best order, greatly appreciating our [Portuguese] hospitality.” Officials complained that Portuguese Guinea was “infested in the border regions after the end of the last great war by gangs of evildoers from the outside,” who were beaten back by the “courageous” administration.95 However, they also expressed aspirations to bring “desirable” migrants into their colony and to retain the existing population. Antonio George de Sousa Franklin, the chefe de posto in Sonaco in eastern Guinea- Bissau, wrote: “At the head of an administrative post bordering French Guinea, we had to adopt an attractive and conciliatory policy without pressures that would resulted in the alienation of the native to the neighboring French territory.” Franklin happily noted that this had resulted in “a significant population increase” due to immigration from French Guinea and a lack of emigration from Portuguese Guinea, which he argued reflected a relative “stabilization” of the Fulbe; and given their reputation as difficult to constrain, he claimed this as a victory.96 Nevertheless, while other groups migrated primarily within the colony, the Fulbe and Mandinka both maintained cross- border networks into Senegal and French Guinea, and thus could reasonably be described as oriented more toward French than Portuguese territory;97 and Fulbe chiefs in charge of local administration “were unable to stop the constant internal and external migration of [Portuguese] Guineans.”98 Following Guinean independence in 1958, Touré’s government sought to recruit border populations, not only to swell its own workforce, but also to undermine the Portuguese colonial state.99 Despite these efforts, however, a considerable part of the Guinean population left in the early years of independence, most notably to Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire.100 Most of those 95 AHU MU/ISAU/A2.01.001/01.00001, Inspecção Administrativa Ordinária na Colónia da Guiné em 1950–1951, 10. 96 Franklin, “O aldeamento,” 279–84. 97 Carreira and de Meireles, “Notas sobre os movimentos migratorios,” 9. 98 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 169. 99 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Informação No. 552/50-GU, October 21, 1960. 100 McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 6. 261 who left were young men who left by themselves, and those who were married often left their families behind until they could safely bring them across the border. While migration began to bind families and communities together on different sides of borders, these ties were solidified through intermarriage. Economic migrants, at least within rural areas, were almost exclusively male during this early period. The unmarried—or those looking for an additional wife101—often married into their new communities. In other cases, they returned home to look for wives in their home communities. The net result was that numerous marriages occurred across every border in southern Senegambia, linking Fulbe and other villages into an increasingly dense web of interconnections.102 Young male migrants who had chafed under the supervision of parents and elders at home gained freedom through the opportunities they found in neighboring colonies. Strange Farmers/Navétanes The Portuguese colonial administrator and historian António Carreira argued that seasonal migration to neighboring colonies was “rooted” in Fulbe and Mandinka customs.103 Regardless of the truth of this claim, large numbers of Fulbe and others did cross borders each year, primarily to cultivate peanuts and earn much-needed cash. During the interwar years, French Guineans replaced French Sudanese (Malians) as the primary seasonal migrants in the Gambia and in central and southern Senegal. In the Gambia, seasonal migrant numbers could vary widely from one year to the next, with officials recording a drop from 19,979 to 13,263 between 1945 and 1946.104 Yet, both figures represented a dramatic annual addition to the colony, whose entire population was 101 Islam as practiced in greater Senegambia allows a Muslim man to have up to four wives. 102 Interviews with El Hadji Gibril Djalo and Wagidu Djalo, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissau, April 7, 2017; and El Hadji Ibrahima Cissé, Contuboel, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 103 Carreira and de Meireles, “Notas sobre os movimentos migratorios,” 9. 104 ANS Versement 14, 1F6, “Gambie: Demographie: Le recensement de 1946 dans le protectorat de Gambie,” February 11, 1947. 262 only 216,107 in 1945. Most seasonal farmers concentrated their efforts in the eastern half of the Gambia, where land was more plentiful and the government’s reach less potent. In certain districts like Fulladu West, the number of seasonal farmers was often close to 20 percent of the local population.105 As such records would tend to suggest, “strange” farmers performed a significant percentage of the peanut cultivation in the Gambia: one-third of the colony’s exports in 1947, with half of the remainder being imported from Senegal. After the harvest, many would go to riverine trading towns to sell their goods and help load the boats heading to Bathurst. Colonial officials claimed that seasonal migrants “linger on at the close of the trade season, spend the money they have earned and tend to become a menace to the wharftown communities to which they attach themselves.”106 In other words, while permanent settlement of migrant laborers in villages was welcome, town life—in the British official imagination—would turn migrants into criminals. Colonial reports cited three main reasons for migration: “The ‘wanderlust’ of youth”; the communal and familial aspect of agriculture, which made it difficult for young men to earn and save money in their own villages; and the appeal of foreign fabrics.107 However, this colonial report ignores various other factors, notably the cash needed to pay colonial taxes. According to El Hadji Mamadu Kande, paying just one person’s annual taxes in Portuguese Guinea absorbed the proceeds from the sale of more than 100 kilos of peanuts.108 During the years leading up to independence, seasonal farming was something that for young Portuguese Guineans, “We all did that. […] If you did not have a wife yet, you could use that money for the dowry to get a wife. If 105 NRS ARP 34/4, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1946, 12. Fuladu West had a population of 17,837 and 3,376 “Strange Farmers.” There were only 2,131 total households in the district, meaning that there were more than 1.5 per household. 106 NRS ARP 34/11, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1953, 6. 107 ANS Versement 14, 1F6, “Rapport sur la question des navétanes en Gambie,” Abel Chataignier, August 28, 1947. 108 Interview with El Hadji Mamadu Cande, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. 263 you had a bad field, you could use that money to buy food.”109 Though the Gambia was usually the destination of choice for seasonal migrants, Gambians at times left to cultivate in Senegal if the price being paid for peanuts was significantly higher there.110 In 1946, several villages in the district of Jimara “complained of the growing lack of fertility in their soil and applied for permission to be strange farmers in Casamance,” a decision made easier by the fact that they could cross the border to farm each day and return to their homes at night.111 Figure 13. Bagging of peanuts in the Gambia, 1948 109 Interview with El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. 110 Paul Pélissier, Les paysans du Sénégal: les civilisations agraires du Cayor à la Casamance (Saint-Yrieix: Imprimerie Fabrègue, 1966), 547. 111 NRS ARP 31/10, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1951, 1; NGR 1/12, Upper River Province, Annual Report, 1946. The image of bagging peanuts in the Gambia above is from the National Archives of the United Kingdom: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_National_Archives_UK_-_CO_1069-28-7.jpg 264 Others traveled through the Gambia to work in the peanut basin of central Senegal—many doing so repeatedly, both during and after the colonial period. However, seasonal farming does not appear to have been pursued on a lifelong basis; alone among all my interviewees, Mamadu Djaló of Bafatá in Guinea-Bissau reported spending as long as twelve years in this activity. Many others reported going almost as often, but some said that the first time proved too much for them.112 As well as earning money (not least to pay colonial taxes), migrants sought access to goods unavailable at home. Bicycles were particularly valued, and many said the first time they had ever seen one was either when a migrant returned home, or when they themselves had migrated. They would also buy horses, donkeys, fabric, or anything else that was unavailable or more expensive in their places of origin. While colonial reports suggested that migrants’ quest for money was a fool’s errand, most former seasonal farmers believed their experience was beneficial enough to continue to do it for several years in succession. It was not just an economic decision, but a chance to see the world outside of one’s community and region.113 Young men saw economic opportunity not present in their communities, where responsibilities and profits were communal. Through their mobility, they gained autonomy unavailable at home. However, they were still responsible to their families. As some seasonal farmers from Guinea-Bissau remembered more than half a century later, “When you came back, you would not have wasted any of the money. When you first came back, even in the middle of the night, you would go to your father’s room, or your older sibling’s 112 Interviews with Mamadu Djaló, Mamadu Barry, and Mama Samba Queita, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017; Yussuf Embalo, Candate, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017; Pété Camara and Amadu Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017; Halimu Djaló, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissau, April 7, 2017; Sulai Balde and Muktaru Balde, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017; and Saada Tcham, Usman Djau, and Hamidu Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 113 Interviews with Halimu Djaló, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissau, April 7, 2017; and Mamadu Cande, Paunca, Guinea- Bissau, April 9, 2017. Straussberger features a lengthy discussion about colonial administrators’ concern with “exploitative practices.” “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 129–35. 265 room, whoever was an elder, directly there. You would not dare bring it to your mother’s room.”114 Thus, any autonomy gained while away from home did not always continue upon one’s return. In certain villages in Portuguese Guinea, people remember that virtually every young man from the community left as a seasonal farmer.115 Some would stay in southern Senegal, but most continued on to central Senegal or the Gambia.116 The Senegalese government attempted to regulate these migrations, and in 1948 installed two control posts in the subdivision of Velingara, one near the French Guinean border and the other near the Gambian border. Each migrant coming from French Guinea who passed through the post at Tonguia was to be given three days’ worth of rice to get them to the second post in Gouloumbou, where they would be given more rice. Any migrants coming from French Sudan were also to pass through the post at Gouloumbou. However, this regulation did not operate as the French intended, with only 208 migrants registering in Tonguia, and 535 in Gouloumbou.117 A few years later, a census of seasonal farmers in the Upper Casamance showed that only about 5 percent of them had gone through the proper procedure to obtain navétane identification, even though it would have entitled them to free transport on the Dakar-Niger railroad.118 Turning to those who stayed in southern Senegal, the 7,300 seasonal farmers who arrived in the Upper Casamance in 1950 represented an augmentation of the region’s population of nearly a tenth. More than three-quarters of this group were Fulbe from French Guinea, with most of the 114 Interview with El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017. 115 Interviews with Mamadu Cande, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017; Amadu Djaló, Alimu Balde, Mamangari Sané, and Malang Djau, Buruntuma, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017; and Djarga Sanha and Sadjo Sanha, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017. 116 Interview with Lamin Sabali and Mamadou N’jie, Mandina Samba Jawo, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 117 ANS 2G48/140, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport 2ème trimestre 1948. 118 ANS 11D1/0271, Tableau récapitulatif des Recensements des navétanes par cercles et cantons d’origine 1951; “Conditions transport et hébergement Navétanes Campagne 1952–53,” April 12, 1952. 266 rest coming from Portuguese Guinea.119 The weakness of commercial firms in Portuguese Guinea meant that for most people, going to Senegal was a rational economic decision, even if it kept them away from home during the harvest season.120 These migrants increasingly became a part of life in the villages they worked in, and much more so than those who went north of the Gambia, i.e., outside of Fulbe networks. They participated in household activities, with one navétane remembering, “We did not have to pay for food. But we would work for our host a few days a week. We would harvest and thresh peanuts, or we would find firewood for his wives or pull water. And when we had food, they would cook it for us and we would all share.”121 In southern Senegambia, many communities wanted seasonal farmers to stay, and used women as bargaining tools to achieve this aim: local men offered their daughters as wives to these seasonal farmers, with or without the former’s approval.122 Migration had an equally significant impact on the communities that migrants left. The ethnographer J. Richard-Molard reported in the late 1940s that in the region of Labé in French Guinea there were 1.266 women for every man due to out-migration of labor.123 Another study, from the mid-1950s, suggested that some 12 percent of the entire Futa Jallon region’s population was absent at any given moment.124 In communities that became net exporters of men, women began to take more prominent roles in food production, growing rice, peanuts and fonio.125 Local 119 The migrants from Portuguese Guinea were a mix of Fulbe and Mandinka. ANS 2G50/97, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport économique annuel 1950, 4; ANS 2G50/117, Rapport économique annuel 1950, 2. 120 ANS 2G50/100, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport politique, 2ème trimestre 1950, Chef de Subdivision Blaud, July 11, 1950. 121 Interview with Mbuli Balde, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017. 122 Interviews with Demba Balde, Ndorna, Senegal, February 17, 2017; and with Demba Jallow, Sare Ali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 123 Jacques Richard-Molard, “Démographie et structure des sociétés négro-peul: parmi les hommes libres et les ‘serfs’ du Fouta-Dialon (région de Labé, Guinée française),” Revue de géographie humaine et d’ethnologie no. 4 (1948), 45–51. 124 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 133. 125 Interview with Halimu Djalo, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissua, April 7, 2017. 267 shortages of agricultural labor occasioned by out-migration also forced many families to choose between their own nutritional requirements and the cash needed to pay taxes. In 1949, there was a food shortage in the district of Labé after 25,000 workers left for Senegal.126 Moreover, even though earning money to pay taxes was a major reason migrants cited for leaving their original communities, various difficulties ensued if taxes came due before they returned.127 Clandestine Trading A variety of products were also on the move across the borders of southern Senegambia. Decisions about seasonal migration were based in large part on commodity-price expectations, which were not always correct. Uncertainty about how successful one might be as a seasonal farmer also inhibited many people from taking that course of action. Therefore, the clandestine cross-border movement of peanuts became a regular occurrence. In 1945, the fact that nut prices were similar in Senegal and in Portuguese Guinea lulled colonial officials into an assumption that French nuts would not be sold in Portuguese territory. But alongside price, another major variable was convenience. For farmers in Velingara, far from any Senegalese port, or Youkounkoun in the northwestern corner of French Guinea, the logic of logistics dictated that goods should be moved north to the Gambia River, along which they could be easily shipped to the coast for overseas export. Indeed, most peanuts from Velingara were exported through the Gambian river port of Basse.128 In many years, French and British commercial firms in the Gambia were ready to weigh and buy peanuts earlier than those in Senegal were; and in villages anywhere near the Gambia’s border, selling anywhere else was unthinkable. Up and down the Gambia River, in places like 126 ANS 2G49/37, Guinée, Rapport politique annuel 1949, 55. 127 Interview with Aissatu Camara, Lamarana Djalo, Djabu Diamanka, and Hamina Camara, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017. 128 ANS Versement 14, 2F13, “Guinée portugaise,” January 22, 1945; A. Chataigner, Consul de France à Bathurst, May 22, 1948. ANS 2G50/106, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport 1er trimestre 1950, Chef de Subdivision Brustleir, April 11, 1950, 1. 268 Georgetown, Basse and Fatoto, firms maintained storage facilities where they would buy and export mass quantities of peanuts;129 and when the French introduced a pre-screening process for peanut buying in 1953, the number of cultivators and traders who crossed the border to sell their harvest in British territory only increased further.130 Ease of transport often corresponded with other factors. Typically, cloth was cheaper in the Gambia than in other parts of Senegambia. In 1955, British officials mentioned that an influx of French subjects to the Upper River Division had occurred because “Tambacounda is too far for most people to go if they want to buy cloth, and they prefer to come to Gambian shops, which are nearer, and from all accounts, better stocked than those in nearby French territory.”131 Several years earlier, the MacCarthy Island Division had been “marked by almost feverish buying of certain types of cloth which were either expensive or in short supply in Senegal and the Cassamance. Many French nuts were brought in to obtain cloth,” and merchants in Bansang bartered cloth for grain. However, these phenomena changed drastically from one year to the next, depending on the price of peanuts and the availability of certain highly sought-after goods.132 Even a month after the devaluation of the CFA franc (the currency of Senegal and French Guinea) in late 1958, British officials noted that “French money is still circulating freely and being brought in by the French Farmers who having sold their nuts at home come to buy English goods.”133 The 129 Interviews with Mama Tano Cissoko, Manda Douane, Senegal, February 28, 2017; Fa Sarjo Sanyang, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017; Abdrachman Baldeh, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017; and Juularou Jallow, Sare Luba, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. Today Georgetown is known as Janjanbureh, though many still refer to it by its prior name. 130 NRS ARP 34/11, Upper Rver Division, Annual Report 1953, 7. 131 NRS ARP 34/13, Upper River Divisional Bulletin No. 2 1955 (Jan. 16–31), February 3, 1955. 132 NRS ARP 34/5, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1947, 18. The Senegal/Casamance distinction refers to the fact that the Casamance is often thought of as apart from the rest of Senegal. In this context, Senegal refers to the part of the colony north of the Gambia River. 133 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Divisional Bulletin for Feb. 1–15, 1959, February 21, 1959. 269 fact that each colony had its own import-export networks strongly incentivized farmers and traders to move across borders to buy what they wanted. British and French governments worked together to regulate the movement of peanuts into the Gambia, not always with great success. In 1949, French officials noted, “[a]greements have already been reached to regulate [Gambia] river traffic in groundnuts. They are renewed each year and are the subject of extensive studies between the services of the [French] General Government and the Gambian Government.”134 This regulation often was more theoretical than actual, however. In Velingara, customs officials failed either to intercept or to collect dues on the flow of peanuts and other crops across the border. As the subdivision’s chief officer wrote, “In spite of two customs posts on the northern border and three guards circling in permanence, the number of Seizures made was ridiculous.”135 The same was true across the Portuguese Guinea-Senegal border, with officials in Senegal estimating that 400 to 500 tons of peanuts were brought in from the Portuguese colony in 1950; and 200 tons of peanuts were said to have left Senegal for the Gambia in the same year.136 At certain times, governments offered higher prices to deter smuggling. In early 1947, for instance, the Portuguese raised the price paid for peanuts and rice, in an attempt to stop their illicit movement to southern Senegal and French Guinea.137 It was not only crops that were moved across borders. The French consul in Portuguese Guinea estimated that 30 million CFA francs had been clandestinely imported into Portuguese Guinea as of 1947 and stated that they were being used primarily to buy gold and other items from French territory. Juula traders in French Guinea would buy gold and move it through neighboring 134 ANS 2G49.27, Senegal, Rapport politique annuel 1949, 38–39. 135 ANS 2G48/140, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport trimestriel, 1er trimestre 1948. 136 ANS 2G50/97, Subdivision de Kolda, Rapport économique annuel 1950, March 6, 1951, 4. 137 ANS 2G47/1221, Guinée, Revue trimestrielle, 1er trimestre 1947, June 17, 1947, 13. 270 colonies like Portuguese Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.138 Diamonds were another high-value item smuggled across the border into Senegal from French Guinea, and were only dealt with officially—if at all—upon arriving in Dakar for export.139 During the 1950s, plows became increasingly popular in the Gambia. Made in France, they were sold in Senegal to Gambian farmers who then took them across the border.140 Gas was moved across the border from Portuguese Guinea to newly independent Guinea, despite the latter having formally closed its border and established a series of strict government price controls.141 Cigarettes were smuggled regularly from both Senegal and Portuguese Guinea into the Gambia, and palm wine from Portuguese Guinea was brought clandestinely into the Gambia and Senegal.142 Individual traders like Sidou Diao of Ouassadou, a village in Senegal bordering Portuguese Guinea, would travel not just to the closest colony, but across the Upper Casamance to trade in riverside towns like Basse in the Gambia. Traders from Portuguese Guinea would regularly travel to both Senegal and the Gambia either to sell goods at higher prices than could be obtained at home, or to bring back goods that were unavailable or more expensive there. Some people would travel to buy products simply for personal and familial consumption.143 Higher prices for goods like leather, honey, wax, and gold could attract the movement of products from French to Portuguese Guinea, as occurred in 1946.144 Additionally, it should be borne in mind that anything 138 ANS Versement 14, 213, “Contrebande d’or et de devises,” Consul de France en Guinée Portugaise au Governeur Général de l’A.O.F., June 2, 1947; ANS 2G51/133, Guinée, Revue des Évènements, 2ème trimestre 1951, Gouverneur de la Guinée Française au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., August 8, 1951. 139 ANS 2G55/83, Guinée Française, Rapport annexe sur l'activité des services, presenté à l'assemblée territoirale par le Gouverneur Bonfils, 1955. 140 NRS ARP 34/13, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1955, 9. 141 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Informação No. 460/60-GU, September 27, 1960. 142 NRS ARP 34/11, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1953, 7; Interview with Samba Jamanka, Sare Njobo, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 143 Interviews with Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017; Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017; El Hadji Saikou Bah, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017; and Tacko Jawo and Mamadou Baldeh, Sare Tala, The Gambia, July 18, 2018. 144 ANS 2G46/22, Guinée, Rapport Politique, Année 1946, 23. 271 to be exported from southern Senegambia needed to be brought to the coast, and so movements to the Gambia River or any of the numerous rivers in Portuguese Guinea made more sense than moving goods overland to the northeast, where they could be transported by railroad to Dakar. Because of this, the colonial governments of Senegal and the Gambia were in constant discussion about allowing French products to be sent to the Gambia River, then on to Bathurst, then finally moved north by boat to Dakar.145 As briefly noted above, French money was in “free circulation” in the Gambia, and this enabled Senegalese to buy both necessities and luxury items there without having to change money.146 Technically, products like fabric and kola nuts required paperwork when coming from border regions, but in practice they could be smuggled into both Senegal and the Gambia in large numbers without great difficulty. Some of the largest clandestine movements of goods between Portuguese Guinea and its two French neighbors were organized by Lebanese traders resident in the Portuguese colony, a movement the French erroneously believed they could regulate by requiring visas to cross the border.147 British officials asked district chiefs to assist in stopping this clandestine trade, but resignedly admitted that “[t]hey would give little help.”148 In short, crossing the border regularly to buy and sell products was considered normal, and something governments had little ability to control.149 145 ANS Versement 14, 1F4, Directeur Général des Services Économiques au Directeur Général des Affaires Politiques et Administratives, November 28, 1947. 146 Interview with Tally Mballo, Diam Weli, Senegal, February 27, 2017. ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/2176/2, “Note sure l’influence française en Gambie,” 2 147 ANS Versement 14, 2F13, Haut Comissaire de la République en Afrique Occidentale Française au Gouverneur du Sénégal et au Gouverneur de la Guinée, September 30, 1948. 148 NRS ARP 34/7, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1949, 19. 149 Interview with Ñaala Balde and Pathe Balde, Dabo, Senegal, December 12, 2016. 272 Political Migration Inter-colonial political differences also played a substantial role in determining why, when, and how far people would move. A letter written pseudonymously by “Kolda and its surroundings” in 1947 asked the man in charge of the Casamance to dismiss Subdivision Chief Attuli, saying:, “Mr. Administrator, we come as a group to your side with our tears to warn you now that a large part of the farmers are ready to go to the Gambia and to Portuguese Guinea […] if he passes the winter here the Gambia will benefit from the farmers [who will migrate there.]”150 Disagreements with village chiefs could also lead people to cross borders, as in the case of several Gambian families who moved to Senegal in 1951.151 Even within colonies, people would often move from one district to another based on considerations of political leadership. Some districts were known for asking more of their residents than others, and so areas known for their heavy tax burdens often saw substantial reductions in their populations.152 Much political migration involved avoiding forced labor as well as taxation demands. In French West Africa, the Houphouët-Boigny Law officially declared an end to the era of forced labor in 1946. Unofficially, however, the practice persisted, as indeed it did in British West Africa after its official abolition there.153 The reason both the French and British could claim the abolition of forced labor is that it had essentially been outsourced. District chiefs (known as chefs de canton in Senegal and French Guinea and seyfolu in the Gambia) were responsible for making sure roads were built and maintained and that other necessary public works were completed in their respective 150 ANS 11D1/218, “Les population de Kolda” au Administrateur en chef commandant le cercle de Ziguinchor, May 6, 1947. 151 NRS NGR 1/12, Upper River Region, Annual Report 1951. 152 Interview with Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 153 Babacar Fall mentions some of the ways forced labor continued in Fall, Le travail forcé, 282–86. Catherine B. Ash writes, “By the late 1940s […] both the British and French had largely ended practicing any form of forced labor.” Ash, “Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa,” History Compass 4, no. 3 (2006), 405. Tiquet calls this “the theoretical abolition of forced labor.” Tiquet, Travail forcé, 24. 273 districts, and forced people to participate in such projects despite the formal abolition of coercion.154 In part because these projects were most prominent in rural areas, they tend not to show up in colonial records. Many left French Guinea towards the close of the colonial period for Senegal, the Gambia, and occasionally Portuguese Guinea, where they believed the governments would ask less of them. While traveling, these migrants tended to avoid larger towns, where the risk of being requisitioned for forced labor in their new colony was higher. At certain times of year, the main driver of border-crossing between Senegal and the Gambia by borderland peoples was governmental searches for labor. The same was true of tax-collection times, when many would leave their homes either temporarily or permanently.155 In Portuguese colonies, the abolition of the indigenato in 1961 was followed the next year by the Rural Labor Code, which ended the mandatory cultivation of cash crops. This meant that forced labor in Portuguese Guinea remained in full force even after the independence of its two neighbors, Guinea (in 1958) and Senegal (in 1960); and certain villages in Portuguese Guinea saw large numbers of people, especially young men, leave for Senegal and the Gambia in part because of the intensity of forced labor demands.156 Other Reasons for Migration While many crossed borders either temporarily or permanently to escape what they saw as unfair administrative demands over their money and bodies, others moved to access the social services provided in nearby colonies. In 1938, on the south bank of the MacCarthy Island Division 154 Alexander Keese points out some of the official ways forced labor continued and acknowledges that there was likely more that did not show up in archival documentation. Keese, “Slow Abolition within the Colonial Mind: British and French Debates about ‘Vagrancy,’ ‘African Laziness’, and Forced Labour in West Central and South Central Africa, 1945–1965,” International Review of Social History 59 (2014), 377–407. 155 Interviews with Mamadou Wouri Diallo, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017; Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kan Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kan Diallo, and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, Senegal, February 27, 2017; Diawdi Mahanera, Gambissara Français, Senegal, February 28, 2017; El Hadji Saikou Bah, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017; and Mamadou Boyi Jawo, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 156 Interview with Saini Djabai, Queita Djabai, Famara Mbuli Cisse, and Ebraima Djabai, Contuba, Guinea-Bissau, April 20, 2017. 274 in Bansang, the British built (with forced labor) the first hospital in the interior of the Gambia. It proved popular, and within a decade was treating almost 8,000 patients a year. In 1948, hospital records stated that 487 of these patients were “French subjects,” and that an additional 166 came from Portuguese Guinea.157 The real numbers were undoubtedly higher, since many did not identify themselves as coming from another colony for fear that they would be refused medical treatment.158 By the mid 1950s, the hospital was seeing more than 20,000 patients a year—many of whom traveled long distances to use it—and had become the primary medical facility for the northern part of Senegal’s Upper Casamance, whose facilities it far surpassed.159 For less urgent medical needs, many living in Senegal near the border town of Pirada in Portuguese Guinea would use the Portuguese hospital there.160 Others used borders to escape their debts. After World War II, the British colonial government created the Gambia Oilseeds Marketing Board (GOMB), which would advance farmers peanut seeds to be repaid after the harvest. In 1957, however, the GOMB decided that the debts owed to it were untenable, and made the decision to take civil action against about eight of the worst offenders in each district for non- payment of their seednut debts. It is hoped that this action will be taken seriously by all those who have not yet paid their debts. Non-payment is due in many cases not so much to a lack of money but to the feeling that G.O.M.B. have not pressed their debts in the past and that the chances are that they will not be pressed this year.161 These threats were generally unsuccessful and resulted in many families moving to Senegal rather than paying up. Later the same year, a Senegalese trader who owed money to a Georgetown trading 157 NRS ARP 34/6, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1948. 158 Hospitals in Gambia today still treat many Senegalese patients. If they present Senegalese identification, they are charged more than Gambians, but this policy does not take place. 159 NRS ARP 34/13, MacCarthy Island Division, Annual Report 1955, 15–16; Interviews with Mawnde Kande, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 12, 2017; and Saibai Darboe, Bansang, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 160 Interviews with Kanta Diao and Coumbarou Balde, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; Oumar Balde and Mbailo Balde, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; and Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017. 161 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Divisional Bulletin, Feb. 1–15, 1957. 275 syndicate was arrested and brought before the magistrate in an attempt to make him repay his debts.162 In 1959, when Lebanese traders attempted to collect debts owed to them from previous years, a number of their debtors fled to Senegal, albeit only temporarily in many cases.163 Islamic Networks at the Close of the Colonial Period In addition to the variety of economic and political reasons for people to move, religious networks also played an important role in movement in the late 1940s and 1950s. By the final years of colonial rule, Islam had spread to a substantial portion of the population of southern Senegambia, while remaining strong in its heartlands of Futa Jallon and eastern Portuguese Guinea, from whence it had begun to spread to groups other than the Fulbe and Mandinka. Sarmento Rodrigues, Governor of Portuguese Guinea, contrasted the spread of Christianity— which he argued had never been given the resources to succeed by Portugal—against the Fulbe’s substantial progress in spreading Islam throughout much of the colony, especially among the Biafada, in part due to “the resemblance of customs.” He contended that Islamization was beneficial to Portuguese Guinea, insofar as it had stopped the excess drinking of alcohol and provided a moral compass that prevented theft.164 In the Upper Casamance, too, French administrators noted that Islam spread “freely and easily.”165 Nevertheless, there were areas in the region where Islam had yet to take hold. In the Gambian district of Fulladu East, a noteworthy conflict occurred in 1954 between the district chief Jawuru Kurubally, who had recently gone on pilgrimage to Mecca, and his “non-islamised” Fulbe population.166 Many, especially in the Upper Casamance and the Gambia, stressed the lack of 162 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Divisional Bulletin, Oct. 17–31, 1957, November 11, 1957, 2. 163 NRS CRM 1/1, MacCarthy Island Divisional Bulletin, Feb. 1–15, 1959, February 21, 1957. 164 ANS Versement 14, 2F13, “O Islamismo e o seu future em Guiné Português,” July 24, 1948. 165 ANS 2G50/143, Senegal, “Renseignements politiques du 3e trimestre,” Gouverneur du Sénégal au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F, November 17, 1950. 166 NRS ARP 34/12, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1954, 3. 276 Islam’s presence even into the late colonial period, sometimes citing the ongoing presence of alcohol. In the MacCarthy Island Division, Fulbe would buy alcohol in Bansang or tap trees for palm wine. Public drunkenness, today almost nonexistent and a source of great shame when it does occur, was a fairly regular occurrence.167 Some Gambians estimated that of independence in 1965, most Fulbe in the eastern Gambia were not yet Muslim.168 In 1950, colonial officials suggested that roughly half of the Upper Casamance was Muslim but clarified that half of those were “rather superficial” adherents of the religion. Some of the most important Muslim towns at that time were south of the city of Kolda near the Portuguese Guinean border, and in the north near the Gambian border.169 In Portuguese Guinea, Islam’s first big push had occurred in the wake of conflicts between Muslim Fulbe from Futa Jallon and Mandinka from the kingdom of Kaabu, which led to the fall of Kaabu in the 1860s. Carreira wrote that while the ensuing conversion “must have been, at first, very superficial […] the truth is that having forgotten the violence of the ‘holy war’ period […] the natives, attracted by the novelty of an original civilization and by a credo that seduced them […] passed from the fetishist camp to the Islamic.” He further described this growth as “slow and persistent.”170 By the 1950s, Fulbe were noted as “ardent propagandists of Islam,” who “have [Koranic] schools in the smallest communities.”171 Portuguese officials characterized this Islam as “truly syncretic” and “adapted” to local circumstances; and while accurate, such arguments were more often deployed to disparage the faith of Islamic communities than as statements of fact, 167 Interviews with Fatoumata Jamankah, Sira Sanneh, and Saliff Jallow, Sare Mawundeh, The Gambia, July 20, 2017; with Samba Jawo, Sare Njobo, The Gambia, July 21, 2017; and with Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. 168 Interview with Demba Jawo, Sare Ali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017. 169 ANS 2G50/101, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble 1950, 10–11. The list of towns listed were Medina El Hajj, Dar Salam, Medina Alpha Sadou, Ilyao, Guiro Yoro Bocar, Guiro Yoro Alpha, Salikégné Peulh, Fafacourou, Pata, Kéréwane, Médina Yoro Foula, Kabel, and Medina Bayène. 170 Carreira, “Do regime de propriedade indígena na Guiné Portuguesa,” 49–50. 171 Franklin, “O aldeamento,” 276–77. 277 accusing Africans as practicing religion impurely and ignoring the process of cultural translation necessary in the adoption of any new religion.172 Migration was cited as an important factor in the spread of Islam. As pastoralists, Fulbe were not traditionally sedentary, and because many Muslims were on the move during the colonial period, Islam was able to spread from village to village and individual to individual. Indeed, José Júlio Gonçalves, a student at the Colonial School in Lisbon, argued that Fulbe people should be sedentarized specifically because this would limit the spread of Islam.173 As Carreira explained: The Peuls [Fulbe] and the Islamized Mandinka emigrate in small numbers (almost always men); they settle among the animists and seek to spread their culture, especially their religious creed [….] They have no prejudices against uniting with women from different ethnic groups. Frequent are marriages between Islamized Peul and Mandinka men and Balanta, Manjaco, […] Brame, and even Papel women. The reverse was not the case, however: Muslims would not allow their daughters to marry non- Muslims.174 Most credit Fulbe from Futa Jallon and Futa Toro for spreading Islam between 1945 and 1960. Whether or not they were clerics, the arrival of more devout Muslims in less devout villages seems eventually to have brought more and more people into the Islamic fold. Koranic education was also linked to migration. Because of the above-noted limited availability of education (and particularly secondary education) in most of southern Senegambia, many people chose to send 172 Carreira, “Do regime de propriedade indígena na Guiné Portuguesa,” 64–65, and José Júlio Gonçalves, “O mundo arabo-islâmico e o ultramar português,” Trabalho apresentado na cadeira de Política Ultramarina do Curso de Altos Estudos Ultramarinos do Instituto Superior de Estudos Ultramarinos, no ano lectivo de 1956–57 (1957), 181. For context about European sentiments about Islam in Africa, see David Robinson, Muslim Societies in African History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter 6. As Robinson points out, “The process is the same one that happened throughout the world that became Muslim or indeed throughout the world that became Christian or Buddhist or of any other persuasion.” 173 Gonçalves, “O mundo arabo-islâmico,” 126, 193–94. This is similar to what Brian Peterson describes in southern Mali. Peterson, Islamization from Below. 174 Antonio Carreira et Arthur-Martin de Meireles, “Quelques notes sur les mouvements migratoires des populations de la province portugaise de Guinée,” Bulletin de l’I.F.A.N., Série B, Tome XXII, Nos. 3–4 (1960), 384. 278 their children to Futa Toro or Futa Jallon to receive a proper Koranic education.175 Sidou Diao of Ouassadou, Senegal, was the first in his family to attend Koranic school. His parents were not religious and regularly drank alcohol, but he received an Islamic education from clerics from Futa Jallon. Ilo Baldeh of Sare Sofie in the Gambia never studied the Koran as a child. His parents drank heavily, and he had just begun to drink when he devoted himself to Islam as a young adult in the early 1960s.176 Others recalled the specific people who converted them. Samba Jamanka of Sare Njobo, the Gambia, converted to Islam along with his father in the late 1950s under the influence of Mama Lamin from the village of Sare Sanjo. The ceerno Mama Juulde, based in Ilyao in the Upper Casamance, is remembered not just as having converted many people at around the same time, but as having offered money to people who gave up drinking alcohol. Originally from Portuguese Guinea, he was one of many ceernaabe who moved into Senegal—which was markedly less Muslim—specifically to convert people.177 Particular clerics were linked to the conversion of various villages, and their histories are important to the establishment of Islam in certain areas. In some towns, the arrival of the first mosque was seen as a watershed moment in the growing presence of Islam: for example, in Paunca, Portuguese Guinea, in 1957.178 In other places, it was the public celebration of Muslim holidays or an influential cerno assembling the Muslims of a town together for public prayer.179 175 Interviews with Mamadu Sambu and Suleymane Embalo, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017; El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, Guinea-Bissau, April 11, 2017; and Alfa Djaló, Sare Bakary, Guinea-Bissau, April 26, 2017. 176 Interviews with Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; and Ilo Baldeh, Sare Sofie, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. 177 Interview with Demba Mballo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017. Ceerno is the Pulaar word for a religious teacher. The plural is ceernaabe. 178 Interviews with Dikory Balde, Gundo Balde, and Tako Sane, Nemataba, Senegal, February 14, 2017; and Mamadu Cande, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017. 179 ANS 2G50/101, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble 1950, 10. 279 In contrast to the limited spread of colonial education in eastern Portuguese Guinea, Koranic schools there were popular and numerous, and taught not just religion and the Arabic language, but how to write Pulaar with Arabic characters (known as ajami).180 In Futa Jallon, the stronghold of Islam in the region, Koranic schooling far outpaced colonial education.181 Most Muslims preferred Islamic education over colonial schooling, as the former allowed their children to “learn Arabic language and writing and […] follow the religion of their people.”182 In the Gambia, too, Muslims favored Islamic education over the English-language education promoted by the British. This was particularly true in the interior of the colony, where as we have seen, most education had been outsourced to Christian missions. In 1957, the chief of Fulladu East, Jawuru Kullaby, requested a government school rather than a mission one, because “Koranic teaching is not part of the curriculum at Mission Schools […] [and] [t]here is a fear that children will lose their Mohammedan faith and become Christians or Pagans.”183 In southern Senegambia, literacy was more common in Arabic and ajami (using Arabic script to represent languages like Pulaar, Mandinka, and Soninke) than in European languages, with 4.3 percent of the Upper River Division being literate in ajami as of 1950.184 Traveling Clerics Southern Senegambia was tied into a much wider network of traveling Muslim clerics. The region of Kolda was visited regularly by clergy from Futa Jallon, Futa Toro, Mauritania, Mali, and even as far away as Algeria. The Mauritanian cleric Abdallah ould Cheikh Sidia went on an annual 180 Franklin, “O aldeamento,” 277. Ajami played a crucial role in the expansion of the Muridiyya brotherhood. Fallou Ngom, Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjamī and the Murīdiyya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 181 ANS 2G46/22, Guinée, Rapport politique, année 1946, 2. 182 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ano de 1958, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, Gabinete, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958, 73 183 NRS EDU 2/231, “Proposed School at Basse,” June 21, 1957, 2. 184 NRS ARP 34/8, Upper River Division, Annual Report 1950, 2. 280 trip to the Casamance, the Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea throughout the 1950s.185 In 1950 alone, Kolda was visited by a surprisingly high number of prominent clerics, including El Haji Mamadou Ba, the head of the Kayes madrassa in French Soudan (who spoke with his local counterparts about the “modern Egyptian methods” he used in his teaching); Chems Eddine of the Lower Casamance; Mohamed of Médine; and Sidi Benamor of Laghouat, Algeria. Benamor held public conferences on Islam across the Upper Casamance, at which he preached about the proper practice of Islam and spoke of obedience to the French colonial administration. Mamadou Saidou Ba, the head of the community of Medina Gounass, went back to the region of his birth, Futa Toro, where Benamor was living at the time, to prepare the cleric for his journey. In Kolda, these traveling clerics were typically hosted by Maki Aïdara, a religious teacher who had arrived in 1945 or 1946 from a village in the neighboring region of Sedhiou, and who was involved in economic and political as well as religious pursuits. He regularly traveled to the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea not only to preach but to expand his commercial interests, and in 1950, went on a long trip that took him to French Sudan, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire.186 Thus, Islam spread in southern Senegambia via the movement of religious teachers as well as individual Muslim laypeople. Guinean Independence and the Marginalization of Fulbe While independence would be seen as liberating by many in Senegal, it was not received in the same way in Guinea; and many Guineans emigrated in the early years of their country’s independence, even to countries that were still under colonial rule. Just over a year after Guinea became independent, the Land Nationalization Law was passed to “eradicate relations of 185 ANS 2G51/144, Senegal, Rapport politique du 3ème trimestre 1951, October 24, 1951; ANS 2G57/116, A.O.F., Synthèse politique mensuelle, janvier 1957, 7. 186 ANS 2G50/143, Senegal, Rapport politique, année 1950, 14; ANS 2G50/101, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel d’ensemble 1950, 11–12; ANS 2G51/144, Senegal, Synthèse trimestrielle, 1er trimestre 1951, Gouverneur du Sénégal au Gouveneur Général de l’A.O.F., May 29, 1951, 9–15. The Aïdara family is still actively involved in the religious life of Kolda. 281 landownership and of production that it characterized as ‘feudal.’” All land would thereafter belong to the state, and not to individual citizens.187 Long distance trade, a feature of virtually every Guinean region dating back a millennium, likewise suddenly became a state enterprise rather than an individual one. No longer could people buy goods and resell them for more; instead, prices would be determined by the state and enforced through its Economic Police. While weekly markets had typically been held on different days to allow sellers and buyers to visit different ones, the government decreed that every market day would be Sunday, specifically to curtail such trading circuits. Polygamy was also initially banned, but eventually allowed if the second wife explicitly agreed to it.188 Many of these initiatives were nationwide, but some were targeted at Fulbe people in particular. President Touré and the PDG had issues with the Fulbe that dated back to the 1954 election to replace Yacine Diallo. The PDG decried the regionalism of the Démocratie Socialiste de Guinée (DSG) party, which they saw as too rooted in Futa Jallon, and were especially incensed that it published some of its materials in Pulaar. Violence had broken out in Conakry between Fulbe and others in 1956, leading to a permanent rift between the PDG and the DSG. As briefly noted above, in an effort to undermine the traditional aristocracy and promote its socialist ideas of equality, the PDG recruited women, those of enslaved descent, and the formerly enslaved to cast the DSG as elitist, and demanded the end of the traditional chieftaincy.189 By the March 1957 elections for the Guinean Territorial Assembly, the PDG was dominant, even in Futa Jallon; and immediately following those elections, the party began to remake the administrative structure of 187 McGovern, Unmasking the State, 100; Julie E. Fischer, “Tenure Opportunities and Constraints in Guinea: Resource Management Projects and Policy Dialogue,” Land Tenure Center Newsletter 72 (1994/5), 2. 188 McGovern, Unmasking the State, 147–48. 189 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 197–209; see also Elizabeth Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist Movement in Guinea, 1939–1958 (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2005). 282 the colony, creating elections for village chiefs and eliminating district (canton) chiefs.190 By early 1958, the prominent Fulbe politician Diawadou Barry was stating publicly that the RDA, a West Africa-wide party allied with the PDG, “scorned” Futa Jallon and were misappropriating its resources via overwhelming taxation.191 He further claimed that other, non-Fulbe regions of the colony were not paying their proper share of taxation, with some not paying any taxes at all. Violence in Conakry over the course of 1958 drove nearly 2,000 Fulbe in Conakry to return to Futa Jallon.192 While 94 percent of Guinea voted “no” to the French constitution and thus in favor of independence, 40.1 percent of those who voted in Labé opted for “yes” to remain in the French Community, and an additional 39.6 percent of registered voters did not bother to show up to the polling places.193 After the vote, prominent Fulbe politicians like Diawadou Barry and “Barry III” joined the PDG, seeing further opposition as untenable. Yet, despite this integration of prominent Fulbe into the Guinean government, Futa Jallon by 1961 was seen both by its own inhabitants and by the PDG government in Conakry as a region apart from the rest of the country. All that being said, however, most people who left Guinea during the early independence years—especially those who ended up in rural areas—did not move due to political conflict.194 Futa Jallon was overpopulated and had a shortage of quality soil for farming, two factors that had pushed migrants out for generations. After independence, economic conditions would in many ways become worse. In March 1960, Guinea rejected the CFA franc in favor of its own currency. That same year, they established the Comptoir Guinéen du Commerce Extérieur (CGCE) to control 190 Straussberger, “Storming the Citadel: Decolonization and Political Contestation in Guinea’s Futa Jallon, 1945– 61,” Journal of African History 57, no. 2 (2016): 242. 191 Quoted in Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 218. 192 Strausberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 219; and “Storming the Citadel,” 244. 193 ANOM FM/1AFFPOL/3517, Referendum, loi constitutionnelle du 3 juin 1958, Guinée. 194 By contrast, many—though not all—of the Fulbe from Futa Jallon who migrated to Dakar were part of an elite in exile. 283 foreign trade, and the Comptoir Guinéen du Commerce Intérieur (CGCI) to manage the internal economy. The CGCI set prices for food and other products and established state-run stores throughout the country. The guiding principle of these changes was that the entire economy should be controlled in a modernist, socialist way.195 Touré believed that decolonization was not just a political process, but a mental one as well, and saw state control of the economy as a way to rid Guineans of their colonial mentality. However, many of his people instead reacted with fear to what they perceived as their dwindling freedom. Nor was there much government accountability, or any obvious ways for Guineans to challenge governmental actions.196 Shortly after independence, the PDG government closed Guinea’s borders. Its border with Senegal became particularly tense as the other former French colony moved toward independence, in part because Touré viewed Senegal’s first president, Leopold Senghor, as a political leader whose mind was still colonized. Touré also believed that unless Guinea’s economy (and population) could be contained within its borders, it would have little hope of economic success.197 Numerous people from Futa Jallon fled across the border to Senegal in the year and a half between Guinean and Senegalese independence, with more following in the early 1960s. Most were peasants looking for better economic conditions, and while prior research has focused on Guineans who went to Dakar, a far greater number settled in southern Senegal.198 Roughly two-thirds of these immigrants to southern Senegal were formerly enslaved persons or “simple farmers” and pastoralists. As Mamadou Saliou Baldé wrote, “[t]he constant deterioration of the living conditions of the masses at the moment when they, after their victory over ‘feudalism’ and colonialism, 195 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,” 239. 196 Rivière, Guinea, 88–103. 197 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 317–18. 198 On Fulbe leaving just after independence, interview with Boubacar Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016. On Guineans in Dakar, Diallo, Les Guinéens de Dakar. 284 ardently aspired for a better life, was the immediate cause of these departures.”199 Though fewer in numbers, migrants of formerly elite status left not only due to economic concerns, but also because they found the idea of being governed by their former subjects unsavory. It is estimated that 42,000 Guineans arrived in the Upper Casamance between 1958 and 1968 alone, a number equal to 25 percent of the latter’s population; and the percentage of the Upper Casamance’s population that was of Guinean Fulbe descent rose from 14 percent in 1958 to 33 percent a decade later.200 Portuguese reports noted that many Fulbe had crossed from Guinea into Portuguese Guinea despite the former country’s “tight vigilance” at its borders.201 By the early 1960s, the question for many Fulbe in Guinea was not if they would migrate, but when and how. Conclusion In 1957, José Júlio Gonçalves wrote of the need to combat the diffusion of Arabic as the lingua franca and liturgical language of the interior of Portuguese Guinea, and that it needed to be replaced by Portuguese Creole.202 Islam’s rapid growth allowed it to serve as a unifying force for people throughout southern Senegambia, alongside shared languages like Pulaar and Mandinka. However, it was not just religion or language that bonded together the peoples of southern Senegambia. The colonial period saw rapid movement and migration across the region, bringing together families, communities, districts, and even colonies, and integrating the region as never before. The growth of these connections represented opportunities for political and economic advancement, as well as spiritual exploration. Despite the efforts of colonial governments to regulate the movement of people and goods in and out of their territory, they were not able to stem 199 Mama Saliou Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine: l’immigration des guinéens au Sénégal,” in Jean-Loup Amselle (ed.), Les migration africaines: réseaux et processus migratoires (Paris: François Maspero, 1976), 70–71. 200 Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 70-1. 201 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Informação No. 50/59-GU, June 25, 1959. 202 Gonçalves, “O mundo arabo-islâmico,” 193. 285 the rising tide of Fulbe migration. While it is true that Fulbe people and others in southern Senegambia were becoming increasingly reliant on networks within particular colonies, movement and connections throughout southern Senegambia emerged as even more prominent. These movements created an integrated cross-border territory that emerged as an alternative geographic space to the bounded colonial states of the region. The interconnectivity and sense of community created in southern Senegambia served as an alternative to colonial and nationalist arguments about the geography of particular states. Rather than be oriented toward the colonial capitals of Dakar, Bathurst, Bissau, and Conakry, Fulbe and other southern Senegambians were more attracted to opportunities on the other side of the border. Because most histories tend to be national, and those that are not often implicitly accept the geographic frames of modern nation-states, the alternative imagined communities formed in borderlands like southern Senegambia have been ignored. However, the stories of southern Senegambians offers a lived reality to what Senghor and Césaire had called for regarding French colonies in West Africa and the Caribbean: a new idea of sovereignty where flexibility, pluralism, and deterritorialization was the norm. These ideas grew in prominence following World War II, but not for the same fears of nationalism that worried Senghor, Césaire, and Hannah Arendt.203 Much like elsewhere in the colonial world, decentralized colonial federations could not transcend their differences. However, the idea of a disaggregated sovereignty that did not follow colonial boundary lines existed in reality in southern Senegambia, and as we will see, persisted in the 1960s and 1970s. Fulbe networks established during the colonial period proved particularly important for Futa Fulbe from the Futa Jallon highlands of Guinea, who saw their fortunes decline rapidly after 203 See Moyn, “Fantasies of Federalism.” 286 independence. As we will see in Chapter 5, movement out of Futa Jallon reached massive levels during the 1960s and 1970s. Moreover, in the early 1960s, the war of independence in Portuguese Guinea would shake that colony to its core, leading both during and after the war to considerable cross-border movement by the Fulbe. For those in Senegal and the Gambia, movement around the region took new forms, but was not driven primarily by violence, as it was for their southern neighbors. Postcolonial governments found themselves struggling to combat the alternative geographies of borderland peoples in southern Senegambia, who saw their cross-border community as more central to their lives than these new postcolonial states. 287 Chapter 5: Independence, Liberation, and the Challenges of National Belonging, 1958–early 1980s Over the course of the colonial period, moving across borders enabled southern Senegambians to protect themselves from the worst excesses of colonial rule, and in many cases to profit from better economic circumstances. In the 1960s and 1970s, during a period of intense internal conflict in Guinea and a bloody war for independence fought in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau), Fulbe people fled en masse for nearby areas of Senegal and the Gambia (see Figure 14).1 In doing so, they relied on transnational connections that dated back centuries, but which had expanded during the late colonial period for political, economic, and religious reasons. Ever since they were drawn in the late nineteenth century, colonial borders had served as sites of contestation and control; but these struggles were magnified as colonial governments sought to monitor and shape the movement of goods and people more comprehensively leading up to independence. Postcolonial governments tried, and often failed, to restrict this movement in meaningful ways: most notably, through the closing of the Senegal-Guinea and Senegal- Portuguese Guinea borders throughout most of the 1960s and 1970s. Migration networks to Senegal and the Gambia were a crucial safety valve for Fulbe people facing catastrophic violence and economic instability, despite potential migrants being confronted by governments looking to bend migration to their own purposes or eliminate it altogether. Indeed, colonial borderland migration networks not only persisted, but arguably increased in strategic importance amid intense political and economic change. Fulbe people’s movements across borders served to integrate parts of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea into a single region, whose identity provided 1 Base map created by the author using CARTO. 288 an alternative to the weak senses of national identity and belonging that marked each of those states’ marginal areas. Figure 14. Fulbe emigration from Guinea and Portuguese Guinea, 1960s and 1970s In the region of Kolda from 1960 to 1976, the population of districts bordering Guinea grew annually by an average of 4.9 percent; and through the 1970s, districts in eastern Kolda saw their populations increase by 6.4 percent per year, due mostly to incomers seeking political security and economic opportunity.2 Many Guinean migrants also continued onward: either to rural parts of the Gambia or to Senegalese cities like Dakar. Through their movement, migrants solidified the cross-border ties established during the colonial period and used them for new purposes. The bloody war for independence in Portuguese Guinea led many to seek refuge in nearby Senegal and 2 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 66. 289 the Gambia, while also providing refuge after the war for Bissau-Guineans who had fought in the Portuguese military during the war, who feared political violence after independence. In Guinea, economic policies designed to reshape the country led many to flee famine and economic hardship, or simply to seek greater opportunity. Though people also traveled between Senegal and the Gambia for more quotidian reasons than fleeing violence or economic despair, their movements had a similar impact in terms of subverting the nation-building projects of the embryonic Senegalese and Gambian governments. Whether these new states appreciated such connections or not, the prior existence of such cross-border relationships bound them together. In the leadup to Gambian independence, newly independent Senegal and British officials operating on behalf of the Gambia requested that a United Nations team investigate possible formal relationships between the two countries. Regardless of the political configuration, the U.N. experts regarded “the abolition of the customs frontier” as a top priority, given that “[t]he frontiers of The Gambia, which is entirely surrounded by Senegal, are artificial and arbitrary” and that “[s]trict surveillance of the frontier is impossible, which means that smuggling cannot be controlled effectively.” While noting that French and British colonialism had created some national differences, especially in urban areas and among elites, they nonetheless stressed the similarities between the two countries’ populations.3 In 1965, seven years after Guinean independence, João Conduto, a student at the Escola Superior Colonial studying Portuguese Guinea, wrote that “racial affinity with the populations of these [neighboring] foreign territories makes administrative action more complicated than in other administrative divisions,” and that these complexities were magnified by the ongoing war in the colony. During a period of economic turmoil in Guinea, borderland residents were deemed unable to live without 3 Hubertus J. van Mook et al., Report on the alternatives for association between the Gambia and Senegal (Bathurst: Gambia House of Representatives, 1964), 56. 290 Portuguese Guinea, as “they regard it as a second country because of the good reception they receive […] when it comes to doing business transactions.” Further complicating colonial administration were the fact that thousands of seasonal farmers went annually to Senegal and the Gambia as seasonal farmers, and that commercial exchange between Portuguese Guinea and the Republic of Guinea was constant, including weekly markets on both sides of the border.4 Research on Guinean exiles in Senegal during the 1960s and 19 notes that Touré argued that the Fulbe abroad were building the wrong sorts of trans-national communities […] Fulbe exiles and migrants were not much more welcome in their host communities; either due to ambiguous legal status, the problems they provoked for foreign governments when dealing with the Guinean state, or simply due to the local politics of xenophobia. These Fulbe lived in “a trans-national network comprised of exiles and migrants who were, to varying degrees, neither ‘at home’ nor ‘abroad.’”5 Guinean Fulbe in Dakar were far removed from Futa Jallon, culturally as well as geographically. On the other hand, Fulbe who settled elsewhere in southern Senegambia found themselves in a place not so different from home. Migrants crossed into Senegal by foot, avoiding “any sense of control, from departure to arrival, until […] safely ensconced in a relative’s home in the first Senegalese frontier town.”6 Relying upon the connections of their rural relatives across the border, Guinean migrants integrated into southern Senegal and eastern parts of the Gambia, avoiding the difficulties encountered by many of their brethren in Dakar. Migrants from Portuguese Guinea relied on similar ties, allowing them to integrate with relative ease into communities on the Senegalese side of the border. The PDG government of Sékou Touré enacted a campaign to modernize the Guinean nation and its peoples. In the southern Forest Region, the Guinean government embarked on a program 4 João Eleutério Conduto, “Influência do Islamismo na vida Económica dos Fulas” (Dissertation, Escola Superior Colonial, Lisbon), 14–16. 5 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 304–5. See also Diallo, Les Guinéens de Dakar. 6 Moussa Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal, Internal and International,” in Lucie Colvin et al., The Uprooted of the Western Sahel: Migrants’ Quest for Cash in the Senegambia (New York: Praeger, 1981), 176. 291 of “Demystification” designed to shake off “primitive” religious and cultural beliefs. “Demystification” was “part of a wider programmatic attempt by the state’s elites to organize everyday life around the sign of the nation, which would encompass all less significant distinctions, like ethnic or regional origins, but […] still imposed certain prerequisites for full citizenship.”7 While the case of Guinea was more radical than others, all the independent governments of southern Senegambia made efforts to align all facets of life with their respective ideas of the nation. For the most part, each of them failed during the first decades after independence: life continued to be organized around more local forms of belonging, at least among the Fulbe regions discussed in this study. The greater the violence (whether military or economic) that people experienced, the more likely they were to use their cross-border connections to find new homes within their culturally and economically interlinked transnational region. In both Guinea and Portuguese Guinea, the legitimacy of Fulbe people as national citizens was threatened due to their reluctance to take part in ideas of “sacrificial citizenship.”8 Both the ruling PDG government in Guinea, led by Sékou Touré, and the independence forces of the Partido Africano da Indepência da Guiné e Cabo Verde (PAIGC), led by Amilcar Cabral, defined citizenship by a willingness to sacrifice for the emerging nation. In Guinea, this sacrifice was primarily economic, and so anyone rejecting the policies of the PDG and emigrating in search of financial opportunity was defined as traitorous. Groups like the Fulbe who emigrated in large numbers became targets of the Touré government. In Portuguese Guinea, the relative reluctance of Fulbe to join the PAIGC as foot soldiers made their place in an independent Guinea-Bissau questionable. Many Bissau-Guineans who had served as Portuguese soldiers during the war thus left the country after independence, fearing retribution. 7 McGovern, Unmasking the State, 169. 8 Bernal, Nation as Network, 27. 292 Postcolonial states inherited a colonial legacy of defining groups by particular territories, and these ethno-territorial logics became increasingly encased in a nationalist frame over the course of the 1960s and 1970s.9 These states, like most of the studies around them, fall victim to John Agnew’s “territorial trap.” Whether implicitly or explicitly, academic research often treats states as bounded containers, with no spillover from their population into neighboring societies. By privileging the framework of bounded colonial and postcolonial states, they accept the state’s legitimacy to define actions in cross-border spaces as legitimate or illegitimate.10 The lack of the state in rural borderlands is seen as a “void,” when in reality informal cross-border institutions and frameworks fill this gap in a relatively seamless fashion.11 In order to escape this trap, I view Fulbe populations as the center of a transnational postcolonial community that crossed the borders of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. By viewing this Fulbe geographic space as equally worthy of study to the boundaries of any given state, I discuss how Fulbe in the borderlands of southern Senegambia rejected “the national order of things.”12 In doing so, they imagined an alternative, coexistent community to the postcolonial states of the region.13 Guinea: A Slow but Massive Exodus As we have seen, the people of Futa Jallon and neighboring areas had built ties via migration to the north, northwest and west dating back centuries. During the colonial period, this movement grew substantially as Fulbe and other groups left in search of economic opportunity and to avoid colonial taxation and forced labor in French Guinea. Following independence in 1958, 9 Talal Asad points out that the idea of “local peoples” rooted to a particular geographic space ignores larger ideas of mobility crucial to many peoples. Asad, Geneaologies of Religion, 7–10. 10 Agnew, “The Territorial Trap,” 53–80. 11 Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, “Local Powers,” 441. Louisa Lombard makes a similar point about the failure to imagine institutions outside of the “ideal-type” Weberian state in the Central African Republic. Lombard, State of Rebellion, 41. 12 Malkki, Purity and Exile, 1–2 13 Keren Weitzberg discusses similar ideas in Somali communities. Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 13. The use of Benedict Anderson’s idea of “imagined communities” is intentional. 293 the declining political and economic situation led many migrants to flee the country. Migrants like Boubacar Ba fled Guinea during the first two decades of Sékou Touré’s rule and established themselves in villages where family members had previously come as migrants. In the years after Ba’s migration, various relations followed him to the town of Fafacourou.14 In the first ten years following Guinean independence in 1958, Fulbe from Futa Jallon flooded into the Upper Casamance. Some 14,000 lived in the region of Kolda at independence, but that number grew to around 56,000 by 1968. 15 These numbers are just estimates, since it was impossible to record exact statistics given the Guinean government’s attitude toward emigrants.16 But it is clear that, far from slowing movement out of Guinea—even while Senegal was still a French colony—independence actually accelerated it, as people left for economic and political reasons that, for them, outweighed the disadvantages of French rule. In addition to those who settled in Kolda, significant numbers went elsewhere in Senegal, many to Dakar and eastern parts of the Gambia (see Figure 15). 17 Both before and after the war in Portuguese Guinea/Guinea-Bissau, Guinean Fulbe settled there as well.18 This was part of a larger emigration, not just of Fulbe, that saw two million Guineans living in neighboring countries by the 1970s.19 Following Guinean independence, Touré’s government enacted a form of socialism “characterized by its proud nationalism and its vociferous anti-imperialism, but also by a commitment to a strong central state that reached into all corners of the national territory.”20 As we have seen, Fulbe politicians and Futa Jallon voters expressed a relative lack of enthusiasm for 14 Interview with Boubacar Ba, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017. 15 Balde, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 69–70. 16 Soumah, ““Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 176. This rise led the population of Fulbe Futa in Kolda to rise from 14 to 34 percent. 17 Map created by the author using CARTO base maps. The highlighted region is the area covered by this dissertation. 18 Interview with Idrissa Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 19 McGovern, Unmasking the State, 192. 20 McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 6, 55–7. 294 immediate independence during the 1958 referendum that established Guinean independence, and thus were seen in many quarters as more committed to ethnic and regional politics than to the good of the Guinean nation. While Touré decried ethnic politics—which he made illegal—his politics reflected a distinctly anti-Fulbe viewpoint; and his disdain for Futa Jallon and the Fulbe was furthered by Fulbe emigration, which he saw as traitorous.21 Figure 15. Fulbe emigration from Guinea Crossing the Border Fulbe and others who crossed Guinea’s borders did so at great risk. The annual departure of seasonal farmers to Senegal during the colonial period resulted in a route that was well- established, but by the same token, well-known to the Guinean government at independence. As Moussa Soumah wrote in 1981, [t]he old nawetanat [i.e., navétane, seasonal farmer] trade route (Pita-Labe-Kifaya- Koundare-Medina Gonasse-Tambacounda), easily closed out by the army, the military, or 21 On the banning of ethnic politics, Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 263–64. 295 the national guard, has been replaced by a secret route composed of detours and traversed by Air Baape, often at night, along with all of the dangers inherent in such an adventure.22 Air Baape was a satirical name for this route; baape is a Pulaar word referring to “the bush,” and “Air” was applied in jest to ground-level travel. When interviewed by Fioratta, a migrant named Mamadou Oury discussed his own trip with the “chauffeurs baape,” or “bush drivers,” who helped him travel across the border to Senegal. During the crossing, Guinean soldiers hidden in the bush began to shoot at the young men crossing the border, resulting in the death of Oury’s friend Alseny. Oury was also shot, but after a day-long walk made it to Senegal, where he received medical care.23 Most migrants who hoped to find seasonal or long-term employment in southern Senegal or the Gambia, typically as farmers, were very careful to tell as few people as possible that they planned to cross the border, fearing informers.24 They also hired guides to take them via rural paths less likely to be monitored by border patrols.25 Those who left Guinea during this time describe the journey in horrific terms. Mariama Ba remembers, We ran and travelled through the forest, because the roads were very difficult […] If they saw you, they would kill you. We went through the woods day after day until we arrived in Senegal. If they found you in the forest they would attack. If they found a woman, they took you from your husband and made you go with him.26 For most, this was a grueling journey. As two Fulbe Futa now in the Gambia remember, Guineans came to Senegal by foot. There were no cars. The major roads were locked, and the military would stop you at the border. You went by foot, but the popular militia searched for people, and they had guns. If they saw you, they would say stop, and if you did not stop, they would shoot at you. Many people died in the bush.27 22 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 176–77. 23 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 101–2. 24 Interview with Alpha Bah, Kusalang, The Gambia, July 20, 2017. 25 Interview with Ilo Baldeh, Sare Sofie, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. 26 Interview with Mariama Ba and Coumba Ndiaye, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017. 27 Interview with Mamajan Jallow and Abdourrahmane Jallow, Basse Santa Su, the Gambia, July 19, 2017. 296 Migration during this period was massive, and according to one Guinean migrant, “Anyone who could would go to Senegal or Sierra Leone or Liberia, and they would be welcomed there. The people from Guinea may be the first refugees in West Africa. They all ran for Senegal, the Gambia, or Guinea-Bissau.” Those living in different parts of the country also fled to Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.28 After the economic turmoil of the early 1960s, the Guinean government put in place a substantial set of reforms known as the Loi-Cadre of 1964. A strong distillation of the economic philosophy of the Touré/PDG government, these reforms included a further crackdown on private trade, achieved by reducing the number of licensed merchants; and soon afterwards, the importation and exportation of a range of specific products was taken over entirely by state enterprises. These policies increased the incentive for migration, but the Loi-Cadre also doubled the number of border guards, making it more challenging to migrate.29 Nevertheless, while border crossing became more difficult at the individual level, the new policy had little effect on the overall number of people emigrating from Guinea. Once in Senegal, circumstances were easy. As Soumah explained, “[t]he migrant is impossible to catch; in Kedougou or Kolda, a ‘Diallo’ with Guinean nationality differs very little from a ‘Diallo’ with Senegalese nationality.”30 The fact that this surname was so common on both sides of the border encapsulates the shared familial ties that migrants could generally rely on if forced to claim local roots when challenged by Senegalese or Gambian officials. Returning was more difficult than leaving. Amadou Jallow, who migrated from Guinea to the Gambia in 1967, claimed that if Guinean border officials saw you returning, they would kill 28 Interview with Boubacar Barry, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017. 29 Ahmed Sékou Touré, 8 Novembre 1964 (Conakry: Parti Démocratique de Guinée, Imprimerie Patrice Lumumba, 1965), 21–22. 30 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 177. 297 you and take your things. Because of such possibilities, many who left stayed away; Jallow, for one, said that he had not returned to Guinea once since his emigration in 1967.31 As Fatoumata Jallow explained, “If they saw you [leaving], they would catch and kill you.” Jallow had firsthand experience of this, as her uncle was killed, and her husband disappeared. After waiting for several years for the latter’s return, she was told he had died, and decided to leave Guinea herself. Upon arriving in Nyamanar in the Gambia, where her mother and grandfather lived, she said life was “ten times” easier than in Guinea. 32 Other Guinean migrants had similar stories to tell. Returning with foreign money or goods was especially dangerous, as their discovery could result in imprisonment or the death penalty, even if the border crossing itself was uneventful. Those who crossed officially at a border posts, meanwhile, were subject to the whims of customs officers, who could choose to take pity on returnees, or to take a share—or indeed all—of their earnings for themselves.33 Straussberger called this “[t]he greatest risk most clandestine migrants apprehended near the border faced.”34 While generally this was true, a small number of returning migrants suffered death or injury at the hands of overzealous patrols. The Guinean state had a limited capability to actually restrict migration, but rather than increasing its small number of border guards, it sought alternative means of protecting its frontier. Eventually, PDG paramilitary youth wings were tasked with patrolling not only the border, but markets as well. Since the primary danger to the border was economic, ensuring black market goods stayed away from markets was deemed just as important as stopping potential emigrants from leaving. However, while the number of arrests of clandestine border crossers rose after these 31 Interview with Amadou Jallow and Alfa Omar Jallow, Sinchu Alieu, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 32 Interview with Fatoumata Jallow, Nymanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017. 33 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 104–5. 34 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 319. 298 youths were deployed, the majority of migrants were not intercepted.35 Surveillance increased further in 1970, when a coup attempt against Touré led to even more hostility toward movement out of Guinea, and this heightened state of security persisted until 1978, when the border was finally reopened.36 Defining a Transnational Futa Jallon Because much of Futa Jallon’s population emigrated over the course of the 1960s, the ruling PDG party increasingly defined Futa Jallon by its transnational linkages. Such connections were not new; migration during the colonial period had already established the transnational nature of Fulbe communities there. Yet, when this migration accelerated in the postcolonial period, it fed into the narrative that the PDG and Touré wanted to promote: that the Fulbe were not interested in the project of Guinean nation-building, but rather on enriching themselves. Straussberger notes, “Guinean leaders argued that Fulbe exiles were stooges of neocolonial forces, and directors of a broader Fulbe disloyalty. Either as a resource or a mark of treason, networks of Fulbe migrants and exiles played a central role in the articulation by the PDG of the Fulbe as Guinea’s anti- citizens.”37 Though the “anti-citizens” tag was applied especially to seasonal workers, Futa Jallon’s relative lack of support for the PDG and for Touré’s “non” campaign against the French Community and for immediate independence meant its people were vulnerable “to future accusations of treachery against the new Guinean nation-state.”38 Though the actions of the PDG based on such claims were unjustifiable, the claims themselves had some validity: many Fulbe were indeed uninvested in the project of building a new, “modern” Guinea, as they were already members of a community that stretched across the borders of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese 35 Ibid. 36 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 172. 37 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 17 38 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 68–69. 299 Guinea; and some parts of southern Futa Jallon were tied to Sierra Leone as well. When the Guinean state tried to enforce not just political but cultural and economic integration, the response of many in Futa Jallon (and elsewhere in Guinea) was simple: leave. As previous chapters have discussed, Fulbe Futa were tied into migration networks that stretched to the west, northwest, and north. Apart from Futa Jallon itself, their ties were not within Guinea, but outside of it. Slow but consistent migration meant that by 1974, an estimated 300,000 Guineans were in Senegal, just under a quarter of them in Dakar itself, where, more than 75 percent of migrants were Fulbe Futa.39 If the same proportion were found across the board, it would mean that roughly 225,000 Guinean Fulbe resided in Senegal at a time when Guinea’s population was only 4.35 million, and that of Futa Jallon between 1.2 and 1.25 million.40 The impact on the internal Guinean economy of the absence of such a large group was undoubtedly considerable. Lesser but still significant number of Guineans left for Côte d’Ivoire as well, but this did not capture the national imagination in the way that the Fulbe presence in Senegal did. By defining themselves not as Guineans but as actors in a regional, cross-border space, the Fulbe Futa marked themselves as apart from the Guinean nation, even if they did not intend to do so. The economic policies enacted by Touré and the PDG were met in Futa Jallon with skepticism, often amounting to hostility. The creation in 1960 of a weak Guinean replacement for the French franc, the sily, along with the removal of trade from private hands, left fewer opportunities for Fulbe traders and others to make profits. With most restricted from operating in the private market, their main options were to smuggle goods in and out of Guinea, or to move their businesses out of the country entirely. Sellers of kola nuts, fabric, and jewelry left, along with 39 Diallo, Les Guinéens de Dakar, 29–30, 54–55. 40 Guinea’s population from United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). Custom data acquired via website. https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/DataQuery/ The Futa Jallon population is extrapolated by percentages of Guinea’s population given in McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 54. 300 individuals who would become dealers in charcoal and fruit in Senegal and the Gambia.41 These economic changes occurred almost immediately following independence, and in 1960, the CGCE was established specifically to control foreign trade. With the economy destabilizing quickly, the Guinean government created the CGCI with the aims of preventing domestic price-gouging and moving commerce out of private hands and into those of the state.42 Touré and the PDG believed these were the only effective means of promoting a decolonized economic future for the country; and in that light, smuggling was seen as a neocolonial act performed by traitors. In 1965, border guards and members of the paramilitary youth wing of the PDG opened fire on Fulbe smuggling goods into Portuguese Guinea during its war for independence.43 With more than six percent of the Guinean population residing in Senegal, Touré had easy scapegoats when Guinea’s economy stumbled.44 For Fulbe Futa from various walks of life, cross-border migration became a tool not only for achieving the positive aim of being accepted by one’s immediate community, but also for avoiding the negative outcome of exclusion from the nation. Economic Migration Despite the political challenges posed by the PDG government, most Guinean migrants left for economic reasons. Most prior research on Guinean migrants to Senegal has focused on migration to urban Dakar.45 Migrants from Futa Jallon saw national capitals of Conakry and Dakar as providing opportunities unavailable at home.46 At the same time, Senegalese customs and 41 Moustapha Kane, “Le Sénégal et la Guinée (1958–1978),” in Moumar-Coumba Diop (ed.), Le Sénégal et ses voisins (Dakar: Sociétés-Espaces-Temps, 1994), 173. 42 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 239. 43 Ibid, 242–43. 44 United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2017). World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision. Custom data acquired via website. 45 For example, Diallo, Les Guinéens de Dakar; Fioratta, “States of Insecurity”; and Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation.’” 46 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 244–45. 301 immigration officials, along with the existing population of Dakar, treated Guineans as backward people easily impressed by the wealth and functional government of Senegal, and of Dakar in particular.47 The perspective of migrants to rural areas was very different, however. They were able to integrate into their new host communities with relative ease, and despite some tension with less-devout Muslim Fulbe populations in southern Senegal and eastern parts of the Gambia, previous generations of Fulbe Futa migrants had lessened such intra-Fulbe distinctions. For most Guinean migrants, the easiest move geographically was not to the region of Kolda, but to the Kedougou region in the extreme southeast of Senegal. Towns in Kedougou are, according to some, considered “peripheral parts of the Fouta Djallon.”48 While Fulbe migrants had settled in Kedougou for generations, the number there after independence was lower than in Kolda. Based on an investigation of Guinean migration in the 1970s, Mamadou Saliou Baldé, a Guinean academic based in Dakar, explained that migrants chose Kolda as their destination rather than Kedougou, which had a subsistence economy, because they wanted “to integrate into the modern economy and world, without, however, denying all of their customs and traditions.”49 Specifically, Kolda featured not only greater economic opportunities in a general sense, but also opportunities to buy an increasing quantity of cosmopolitan goods; and—unlike migrants in Dakar where the Wolof language centered everyday life—those who went to Kolda were able to remain within a largely Pulaar-speaking world. Though the Guinean government portrayed all emigrants as traitors, most were just seeking opportunity. Mariama Ba and her husband left the district of Mali in 1962 because of economic difficulties. After crossing the border, they settled in Medina Yoro Foula near the Gambian border, 47 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 119–21. 48 Ibid, 37. 49 Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 68. 302 and easily found someone to host them there. They worked as farmers, taking advantage of agricultural equipment and seeds provided by the Senghor regime in Senegal.50 Gobi Jallow left Guinea to trade in the Gambia, and clandestinely brought goods back into Guinea from Basse, from which he intended to go back to Guinea eventually. However, his children grew up in the Gambia and did not want to return to Futa Jallon.51 Cherno Hassimu Jallow left Guinea in 1968 for Dakar, looking for opportunities to earn money, which he said were entirely lacking in Guinea. Some four years later he came to the Gambia, originally to Janjanbureh, an island town and the capital of the Central River Region. He continued to travel around the region for work before finally settling in Basse in 1984.52 Amadou Jallow came from Kindia, a city near the Guinea-Sierra Leone border. After traveling across Futa Jallon in 1967, he took up farming in Senegal near the city of Tambacounda before leaving for the Gambia. He eventually settled in the village of Sinchu Alieu, where the chief gave him some farmland.53 Farmers were hit particularly hard by the Guinean government’s policies, which set prices for agricultural products well below their market values and enforced such prices vigorously, even at small weekly markets. But those who tried to take their agricultural products or herds out of the country risked imprisonment.54 Many found the situation becoming increasing untenable and difficult. Mamajan and Abdourahmane Jallow, now living in the Gambia, said of this time, If you had ten cows, you would have to give the government two. If you had 100 sacks of rice, you would have to give them 20 sacks. It was forced. If you farmed peanuts, you would give them to the government. Same if it was rice or goats or cows or livestock. It would all be given. It was a “norm.” If you not give them this, you were considered a counter-revolutionary and you would be in jail until you died, and they would take all your things. That’s how our father [an elder, not literally their father] was killed. There was a man near here, Sékou Touré made him leave. His government had a secret agency and the 50 Interview with Mariama Ba and Coumba Ndiaye, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017. 51 Interview with Mamajan Jallow and Abdourahmane Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 14, 2017. 52 Interview with Cherno Hassimu Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. During the colonial period, Janjanbureh was known as Georgetown. 53 Interview with Amadou Jallow and Alfa Oumar Jallow, Sinchu Alieu, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 54 McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 9. 303 agents would go and tell the governor that the man over there, he does not like the government. If they saw a pretty woman in a house, they would tell her husband to come to the governor. They would say to the man, “Hello. How are you? Why do you dislike the government?” If you don’t go to meetings; if the government did projects and you did not go. After that you had to flee; if you did not flee, you would lose your entire world. All Fulbe Futa people who are here today [in the Gambia], our fathers and grandfathers, it is because of Sékou Touré that they fled.55 The combination of increasing economic precarity and political pressures led many traders, farmers, and herders out of the country and into neighboring areas that were also predominantly Fulbe. The departure of large numbers of farmers resulted in a substantial decline in food production, increasing economic vulnerability and adding more fuel to Touré’s argument that the Fulbe were traitors to the nation. Many also took their herds across the border rather than keep them in state-mandated communal pens, and this led to a substantial decrease in cattle ownership, from one cow per two people in 1965 to one cow per three people in 1974. The quantity of cattle in the region saw even greater reductions, since the per capita decline coincided with a simultaneous decline in the region’s human population.56 There was a sharp class divide among those who left. More than two-thirds of immigrants were either of enslaved descent or poor peasants. Such migrants saw conditions worsening at a time where the end of the chieftaincy and colonial rule led them to believe things would be better.57 The Guinean government’s attempt to help farmers through the creation of agricultural cooperatives in 1962 failed as traders and richer villagers used such projects as vehicles for personal profit; and all such cooperatives were abolished in 1975. That same year, private commerce outside of weekly markets was outlawed entirely, but even before the ban, it had been substantially limited, prompting the smuggling of 55 Interview with Mamajan Jallow and Abdourahmane Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 56 Rivière, Guinea, 203–4. 57 Balde, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 71. 304 massive quantities of goods both into and out of Guinea.58 In 1963, two-thirds of the country’s coffee crop was sold outside of Guinea, primarily in Côte d’Ivoire but also in Liberia.59 Lamarana Ba, who was born in Futa Jallon and left as a child, began as an adult to smuggle sugar into Guinea, exchanging it for kola nuts he would bring back to Senegal and sell at a profit.60 Seasonal Farming As discussed in previous chapters, the tradition of seasonal farming between Futa Jallon and southern Senegal was well established at the close of the colonial period and tied residents of Futa Jallon to communities in Senegal and the Gambia, while further setting them apart from the mainstream of Guinean identity and allegiance. Migrant farming continued after independence, although it slowed over the course of the 1960s and 1970s. Migrants passing from Guinea into Senegal saw little difference between the two. Baldé noted in 1976 that [t]he Guinean arriving in Casamance does not have the impression of changing countries. The relief, although generally flat, does not differ fundamentally from that of Middle Guinea: the same savanna forest, with its clearings and termite mounds, same soils […] same climate […] he does not change his way of life either.61 The most noteworthy differences were in the sphere of agricultural practices. Migrants farmed peanuts, millet, rice, or fonio, but might also engage in herding or collective work. Many served as seasonal farmers for a year or two, then used the money they had earned to build a house or invest in cross-border commerce between Senegal, Guinea, the Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau.62 In 1961, the Guinean government officially outlawed seasonal farming abroad, and both Guinea and Mali developed publicity campaigns to discourage emigration from their countries. Nevertheless, about 10,000 people per year continued to cross the border clandestinely until 1968, 58 Balde, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 71–73, and Xavier Leunda, “Nouvelles institutions rurales en Guinée (1ère partie), Civilisations 23, no. 1/2 (1973/74), 91. 59 Rivière, Guinea, 109. 60 Interview with Lamarana Ba, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017. 61 Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 75–76. 62 Ibid, 76. 305 when bad rains and low prices in Senegal led to a sharp decrease. Many farmers from Guinea never returned, in part because of the tightening of border controls, and because a series of suspected coup attempts—some genuine, and some invented or exaggerated by Touré—made a suspect of anyone who tried to cross into Guinea from any bordering state, particularly from Senegal.63 Thus, instead of returning home, Guinean seasonal farmers became involved in other activities during the agricultural offseason, including charcoal fabrication. Even before independence, many seasonal farmers had begun to put down roots in southern Senegal, with some marrying local women, and others bringing wives from Guinea. Village chiefs often allocated available land to seasonal farmers to induce them to stay permanently. Men would typically arrive alone, while women would only settle in villages with their husbands or other relatives.64 Tellingly, those who stayed “deliberately refuse[d] to call themselves foreigners,” which made it difficult to determine exactly how many Guineans were in southern Senegal.65 The same process took place in the Gambia, where Guinean farmers settled as well. Compared to other regions, southern Senegal came to have the reputation of a “holy land.” Interviews conducted between 1977 and 1979 with seasonal workers in two towns there revealed that most hoped to put aside money from cultivating peanuts or cotton. More than two-thirds of them had come directly to the Upper Casamance, and most of the rest arrived after failures in the Gambia or the peanut basin of central Senegal. Three-fifths of the interviewees planned to return immediately to Guinea after selling their products; but because the period of the interviews coincided with the reopening of the Guinean border, this proportion is likely higher than it would 63 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 178. 64 Baldé, “Un cas typique de migration interafricaine,” 83–86. Interviews with Sarjo Jawo, Sarjo Kandeh, Amadou Jawo, Sare Ali, The Gambia, July 15, 2017; and Peter Baldeh, Mansanjang, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. 65 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 178. 306 have been through most of the preceding decade.66 In the Gambia, there were an estimated 33,000 Strange Farmers in 1974–5, and the demographic patterns differed by district. In the MacCarrthy Island District just north of Kolda, roughly two-thirds of seasonal farmers were from Guinea, while in the Upper River Region there was a mixture of Guinean, Senegalese, Malian, and some from other parts of the Gambia.67 A survey reported that more than half of Guinean seasonal farmers had come directly from Guinea, with the rest either already living in the Gambia or coming from another neighboring country (i.e. Senegal).68 Given the challenge of crossing the border during this period, this pattern is unsurprising. Families with extra land to cultivate in the Gambia and southern Senegal would engage Guineans to help out in their fields if family labor alone was insufficient; typically, this did not lead to the hiring of more than one or two per household, in part because the local families were also feeding, housing, washing the clothes of, and providing farming tools for these workers.69 Working conditions were negotiated, but generally fell within a limited range of acceptable options. Typically, the hired laborers would work for three to four days per week for their hosts, and the rest of the time for themselves. A shared language eased their integration into villages, though the local dialects differed slightly from those spoken at home. Some of the hosts were even Guinean-born or had parents from Guinea, and if they still had semi-active ties to family there, it further facilitated good relations between hosts and guests.70 Given that seasonal farming fostered Futa Jallon’s ties with neighboring countries, the practice was targeted by Touré as a mark of Fulbe separatism and a danger to the state: notably, in 66 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 172. 67 Kenneth Swindell, “Annex I: The Gambia: A Report on Migrant Farmers in the Gambia,” in K. C. Zachariah, “Migration in the Gambia,” in K. C. Zachariah and Julien Condé, Demographic Aspects of Migration in West Africa—Volume 1, (Washington D.C.: World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 414, 1980), G. 41. 68 Ibid, G. 57. 69 Interview with Ilo Baldeh, Sare Sofie, The Gambia, July 26, 2017. 70 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 175–76. 307 a 1976 speech to the Central Committee of the PDG, entitled “Enterrer le racisme peulh” (Bury Fulbe racism). “[T]his form of rural exodus,” he argued, “has always been fought by the Parti Démocratique de Guinée; but on this point, it must be admitted, the PDG has failed.” After listing the money spent on moving Fulbe seasonal farmers to good farmland near the Senegal border and on outfitting them with seeds and agricultural tools, he recounted telling Fulbe, “‘Instead of going to Senegal to humiliate the Nation, this is what the People of Guinea put freely at your disposal to develop your own soil.’ Despite this, the navétanat [seasonal farming] has not ceased.” In discussing the names of groups that needed to be saved, Touré listed the thief, the prostitute, the alcoholic, and finally, the navétane.71 Rooted in Touré’s views of the critical importance of building the Guinean nation, keeping people within its borders became an increasingly important, if unsuccessful, part of government operations. Touré saw Fulbe seasonal movement as proof that they were uninterested in becoming an integral part of Guinea, which to some extent was true. It also demonstrated that they were already part of a larger community, whose geographic bounds were inexact but extended into at least three other countries. Cattle and Other Quotas The 1960s and 1970s were a challenging time for pastoralist Fulbe. Futa Jallon was a difficult region to farm because of its poor soils. This challenge was a crucial factor for migrants, many of whom left to find better farming conditions. However, it was an excellent region for grazing. Whether due to such ecological conditions or to the significance of cattle ownership in Fulbe culture, the primary economic resource of Futa Jallon was its cattle herds. To supply 71 Ahmed Sékou Touré, “Enterrer le racism peulh: discours au meeting d’information du Comité Central le 22 aôut 1976,” in Ahmed Sékou Touré, Unité Nationale, Révolution Démocratique Africaine no. 98, 3rd edition (Conakry: Imprimerie Nationale “Patrice Lumumba,” 1978 [1976]), 186. 308 residents of Guinea’s growing cities with meat, the government required in the 1960s that roughly 10 percent of herds be sold each year to the state-controlled cattle trading company, which offered significantly less than the market rate. As a result, herders left with their herds to either Senegal or Sierra Leone, which had been a common response to colonial livestock policies as well. Even those who did not leave would often arrange to be away from their villages when census-takers came around to count cattle. The process of meat distribution and sale became notoriously corrupt, and in May 1975 the Guinean government responded by increasing cattle quotas and forcing herders to keep their cattle in state-run pens. This led to an exodus of herds to Senegal, with many new villages being established just across the border. The creation of public pens alone was estimated to have driven 20,000 Guineans across the border.72 Between the state-run cattle pens, the forced sale of cattle, and below-market prices for the cattle themselves, Fulbe herders found themselves economically vulnerable, and the elimination of private trade removed another economic option for those whose herds were large. But quotas affected other goods as well, with the government claiming more than half of a variety of harvested crops, including rice, palm oil, coffee, and bananas. The growers were paid, but at a fraction of the market price.73 Futa Jallon was far from alone in feeling the pain of these policies, and people from every part of Guinea left for each one of its neighbors. Nevertheless, Futa Jallon remained a particular target of the Guinean government for the reasons explained above. In 1976, the government announced that taxes in Futa Jallon would have to be paid in the form of grain and not cash, in an effort to forestall both black-market trading and migration out of Guinea. No other region of Guinea was targeted for such treatment. Most of Futa Jallon’s farmers scraped out a meagre subsistence living, and even in good years there was little surplus. The population 72 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 250–52, 288. 73 McGovern, A Socialist Peace?, 9. 309 responded in a variety of ways: some tried to grow enough food to pay taxes, others attempted to buy black-market grain to fulfill their obligations, and many emigrated.74 In 1977, women and young people in Conakry began to protest seizures of merchandise by the economic police, while rural communities fled in massive numbers to Senegal. The combination of Fulbe emigration and government policies, which were inextricably intertwined, estranged Fulbe people from their own government and bound them even closer to Fulbe and other groups across the border.75 Re-Opening the Border Following the 1977 revolt, the Guinean government recognized that the situation at its border was untenable. The restrictions of the past decade and a half had failed to limit emigration and had driven most private trade underground. It also prevented seasonal migrants from returning home and investing their money in Guinean businesses. Migrants who had seen opportunity nearby, but had initially hoped to return to Guinea, instead became integrated into their host countries. Whether hoping to encourage Guineans abroad to return home, or simply recognizing that its attempt to create an inescapable fortress had dramatically failed, the Guinean government opened the country’s borders to the outside world. Yet, the prevailing trends simply continued. Migrants who had installed themselves abroad sent for family members who remained at home, and many of them would not return to Guinea even to visit for decades afterward.76 Censuses taken in southern Senegal during the 1977–78 agricultural season showed that 30 to 40 percent of workers paying taxes were seasonal, mostly from Guinea, and also reported “a relatively large number of recently settled Guinean migrants.”77 While the attempt to return migrants permanently to Guinea failed, it did allow many to renew their family ties: rather than sneaking across the border 74 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 288–89. 75 Ibid, 298–300. 76 Interview with Ramatoulaye Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 77 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 177. 310 on rural paths, migrants could take large-scale transportation on major international thoroughfares.78 The continuation of out-migration from Guinea benefited southern Senegal and inland parts of the Gambia, both of which had abundant agricultural land due to low population densities.79 Portuguese Guinea: Independence, Migration and the Question of Fulbe Integration This chapter argues that a transnational view of Portuguese Guinean Fulbe provides a different perspective to what at first appears to be a national conflict. Prior to the war for independence, Fulbe chiefs had been among the closest allies of the Portuguese in Guinea. In some areas, the Portuguese appointed Fulbe chiefs to rule over non-Muslim, decentralized groups like the Balanta, and sought to stoke antagonism between Muslims and non-Muslims to prevent “a collective racial consciousness.”80 At that time, the colony was 35.6 percent Muslim, 63.5 percent animist, and a miniscule 0.86 percent Catholic. Portuguese administration had not penetrated deeply, and schooling was virtually non-existent. According to Portuguese censuses, 0.4 percent of the population could speak Portuguese and 0.2 percent could read it. Muslim populations like the Fulbe and Mandinka preferred Islamic schools where they would learn the Koran and to read, write, and speak Arabic.81 While they believed Fulbe chiefs were loyal to them, the Portuguese worried that Muslim marabouts would prove to be “an element of infiltration,”82 given the close ties of Muslim populations to the governments of newly-independent Guinea and Senegal. 78 Straussberger, “The ‘Particular Situation,’” 350. 79 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 180. 80 PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958. 81 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ano de 1958, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, Gabinete, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958, 69–73. 82 Arquivo Histórico Militar (AHM) PT/AHM/FO/007/B/22/308/1, O Comandante Luiz Alberto Filipe Rodrigues ao Director dos Serviços do Ultramar, Localização de unidades militares no interior da província, December 15, 1959. 311 Following the massacre of more than 50 striking dockworkers at Pidjiguiti in Bissau, the PAIGC established a base in Conakry with the aim of fighting for national liberation. Increasingly, the colonial government saw Portuguese Guinea’s borders with Guinea and Senegal as a threat. Senegal’s foreign minister, Doudou Thiam, announced at the United Nations on September 21, 1960 that the country had broken diplomatic ties with Portugal, and would grant asylum to those fleeing across the border, because “bloody repression prevents them from fighting in their country, with normal democratic means, for their dignity and independence.” He compared Portugal’s actions to those of the apartheid regime in South Africa, and argued for the exclusion of both from the U.N.83 Cross-Border Raids and Connections As the colonial state feared, the PAIGC indeed had important ties across both the Senegalese and Guinean borders. Even at the close of 1960, when the military struggle had yet to start in earnest, Portuguese Guineans in Senegal carried out operations against the Portuguese in Fulbe and other villages near the border south of Kolda.84 In the same year, Portuguese intelligence warned of “the presence of 5,000 civilized natives of our territory in Conakry […] ready to be launched into our territory at a coming date.”85 In June 1961, Amilcar Cabral, the leader of the PAIGC, convened a meeting with other independence leaders in Sare Boido, a Fulbe border town in Guinea; and later that year, Portuguese reports noted two military camps in southern Senegal.86 The PAIGC was not the only rebel group active in these borderlands, however. The Movimento de 83 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/10, Perintrep No. 10/61, Referido ao período de 1 a 30 de Setembro de 1961, O Comandante Militar, João Augusto da Silva Bessa, Bissau, September 30, 1961. 84 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/1/5/21, “Informação Numero 863/60-GU,” Enviada à Presidente do Conselho e aos Ministérios do Ultramar, Interior, Defesa Nacional, e Exército, December 26, 1960. 85 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/17/3, Telegrama Recebido, Comando Militar da Guiné a DEFNAC, No. 96-60, September 24, 1960. 86 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/227/1, Perintrep No. 9/61, Referido ao período 01Ago a 01Set61, CTI de Cabo Verde, Mindelo, O Comandante Militar José Maria de Azevedo Galvão de Melo, September 7, 1961. 312 Libertação da Guiné87 (MLG), established in Dakar in 1960, had a base in Koundara, Guinea, near the border with Portuguese Guinea and Senegal. This base was run by Lassana Sané, a former Muslim cleric from the border town of Kankelefa, who had fled to the Gambia for two years before moving to Guinea via Senegal.88 At first, these movements operated primarily in the open, but from 1963 they began to operate more clandestinely to avoid information being passed to the Portuguese. News reports in Portuguese Guinea noted that in Kolda, “a thousand Africans prepared to help the terrorists [the PAIGC]” had been chased across the border by Portuguese troops.89 With the help of local populations along the border, PAIGC soldiers regularly moved weapons from Senegal and Guinea into Portuguese Guinea.90 In 1966, the Senegalese government formally agreed to allow the PAIGC to establish bases in Senegal, and to allow free movement of soldiers in and out of Portuguese Guinea.91 Toward the close of the war, Fulbe and other communities in Kolda aided the PAIGC substantially by bringing goods and weapons into areas they had liberated. The Portuguese claimed the PAIGC were bribing Senegalese border guards to allow them to move freely into and around Kolda and the rest of the Casamance, and that local populations and village chiefs opposed the movement of PAIGC soldiers, which was certainly true in some cases.92 For the most part, however, the PAIGC operated with at least the tacit acceptance of the local 87 Movement for the Liberation of Guinea. 88 ATT PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/10, Perintrep No. 1/62, Referido ao período de 1 a 31 de Janeiro de 1962, O Comandante Militar, João Augusto da Silva Bessa, January 31, 1962. 89 ATT PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/227/1, Perintrep No. 9/63, CTI de Cabo Verde, Mindelo, O Chefe de Estado Maior Domingos José Cravo, September 1, 1963. 90 ATT PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/227/1, Perintrep No. 8/63, CTI de Cabo Verde, Mindelo, O Chefe do Estado Maior Domingos José Cravo, 8/1/1963; AHD C.E48.P8/2611 (PAA 444 940,1), Gonzaga Ferreira, Consulado de Portugal em Dakar, April 12, 1962 91 AHD S10.E12.P6/66898 (PAA 585), “Visit to Portuguese Guinea,” Patrick Orr, May 14, 1968. Additionally, four years later, representatives of the PAIGC, along with Leopold Senghor and Sékou Touré, met in the city of Velingara in eastern Kolda to discuss the situation in the Portuguese colony. AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01- RNP/S0411/UI08238, Situação do PAIGC, No. 229/71-GAB, January 31, 1971. 92 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Relatório de Notícia No. 197/BE, Relações do PAIGC com o governo Senegales, Chefe do Estado Maior, Robin de Andrade, March 11, 1971. 313 population. The independence forces maintained a house and warehouse in Velingara where they stored goods to be transported across the border into Guinea-Bissau. On a monthly basis, trucks from Koundara in Guinea laden with materiel including bazookas, other types of rockets, and light artillery pieces would head for the towns of Velingara, Kounkane and Mampatim.93 Local youth then helped walk these weapons across the border.94 In border towns, Fulbe individuals and families would allow PAIGC soldiers to eat and rest in their homes.95 However, relations were not always good. The PAIGC would sometimes raid villages near the border and demand food and temporary shelter.96 By 1971, the Senegalese government ordered its military to seize PAIGC arms and uniforms, ordering them to only use these in Portuguese Guinea. However, they were also given orders to attack Portuguese troops who entered Senegal;97 and when such forces crossed the border to punish the town of Salikegne for helping the PAIGC, the Senegalese military set up bases along the border to protect the population from future Portuguese incursions.98 Portuguese intelligence reports claimed that, to further safeguard its border populations from Portuguese attacks, the Senegalese government had given the PAIGC two protected forest areas at some distance from the border, which allowed the rebels to concentrate their troops instead of scattering them in small camps.99 93 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 542 – CI (2), República do Senegal, No. 1-2, May 11, 1971. 94 Interview with Boubacar Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016. 95 Interviews with Souleymane Mballo and with Mamadou Wouri Diallo, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017; and Seydou Touré, Pakour, Senegal, January 28, 2017. In fact, Seydou Touré allowed a PAIGC doctor to stay at his home a couple days a week during the war. 96 Interview with Pullo Balde, Coumbacara, Senegal, January 18, 2017. 97 AHD, 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0588/UI00276, Informação No. 958 – CI (2), August 17, 1971. 98 Interview with Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, Senegal, February 23, 2017. 99 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 525 – CI (2), May 8, 1971. 314 Refugees and Movement during the War for Independence During the war for independence, the population of Portuguese Guinea decreased substantially, as many fled the colony, becoming refugees in neighboring countries. Between 1960 and 1970, census figures indicate a decline of 57,267 people, or 12.4 percent. But in particular regions, the population dropped even more drastically: for instance, by nearly 75 percent in Farim, just to the southwest of Kolda.100 As early as October 1961, Portuguese reports estimated that between 400 and 450 refugees had settled in border villages in Guinea. That same year, the Senegalese government granted Portuguese Guineans asylum across the Upper Casamance, with others settling in Guinea. 101 Portuguese officials feared that these refugees planned to organize militarily and attack Portuguese Guinea.102 By 1964, the number of refugees had grown substantially. On Tabaski (Eid al-Adha), the most important Muslim religious holiday of the year, Radio Senegal reported that many prayed for the border villages of Portuguese Guinea whose increasingly threatened populations abandon it by the thousands to take refuge in Senegalese territory. There are more than 6,000 refugees in Kolda. […] They say that the dead sheep at the feast will feed these poor refugees but then the government has to take action.103 In August of the same year, an estimated 28,000 Portuguese Guineans were living in Senegal, and that number was growing by an average of 1,000 per month.104 Refugee populations also spiked 100 Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural,” 287–88. Some of this was due to significant migration into the city of Bissau, which saw its population rise by 122 percent as many escaping violence fled there. In eastern Portuguese Guinea, the effects were mixed. The population of Gabú remained virtually the same, while that of Bafatá actually rose 14.2 percent: less than would be expected, given natural population growth, but not by a substantial margin. In essence, these figures reflect a reorganization of the population, due to Bafatá and Gabú being considered safer during the war than areas to the south where much of the fighting took place. 101 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/10, Perintrep No. 11/61, Referido ao período de 1 a 31 de Outubro de 1961, O Chefe da 2a Repartição, José Maria Carvalho Teixeira, Anexo II, October 31, 1961; PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/9, Perintrep 6/61, O Comandante Militar José Augusto da Silva Bessa, Referido ao período de 1 a 30 de Junho de 1961, July 1, 1961; Perintrep 5/61, Relatório Periódico de Contra-Informação, O Comandante Militar José Augusto da Silva Bessa, Referido ao período de 1 a 30 de Junho de 1961, June 1, 1961. 102 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/227/1, Perintrep No. 11/62, O Chefe do Estado Maior João José Domingues, November 1, 1962. 103 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/227/1, Perintrep No. 5/64, CTI de Cabo Verde, Mindelo, May 1, 1964. Dhada, 240–41. 315 during intense bombing campaigns.105 Portuguese reports estimated that there were 60,000 refugees in Senegal alone as of June 1967, amounting to more than 10 percent of their colony’s population.106 Population losses were often focused in particular areas and during periods of increased violence. By 1970, there were an estimated 106,000 Portuguese Guineans, almost 20 percent of the colony’s population, in Guinea and Senegal (see Figure 16), many of whom were said to be Muslims that Cabral had enlisted to fight against the Portuguese.107 That same year, the Senegalese National Demographic Survey estimated that 15.4 percent of Guinea-Bissau’s population was in Senegal.108 This refugee population included at least 16,000 residing in the western half of Kolda, with the vast majority settled in rural villages and small towns no more than fifteen miles from the border.109 Some fled as far as the Gambia, where there was no risk of Portuguese incursions.110 Refugees continued to leave until the last months of the war, having no idea when the fighting and bombing would cease.111 While Portuguese Guineans working with the Portuguese would often guard the border, some remember these guards allowing people to flee across it unhindered if they spoke the same language, but demanding money or items of value from speakers of other languages as the price of crossing.112 Others recall that Portuguese soldiers would shoot at people attempting 105 Dhada, Warriors at Work, 76. The bombing campaigns of 1965 and 1967 were particular intense. 106 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0588/UI00276, O Director, Gabinete dos Negócios Políticios ao Governador da Província da Guiné, June 24, 1967. 107 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0588/UI00276, from Valeurs Actuelles, “Les ‘Palestiniens’ du Senegal,” August 3, 1970, transmitted in a report dated September 21, 1970. The map for Figure 16 was created by the author using CARTO base maps. 108 K. C. Zachariah and N.K. Nair, “Senegal: Patterns of Internal and International Migration in Recent Years,” in K.C. Zachariah, Julien Condé, and N. K. Nair, Demographic Aspects of Migration in West Africa—Volume 2 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank Staff Working Paper No. 415, 1980), S. 10. 109 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 51; and interview with Thiedo Balde, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017. 110 Interviews with Mamadou Lamin Ceesay, Brikama Ba, The Gambia, July 25, 2017; and El Haji Baba Baldeh, Sare Sofie, The Gambia, July 26, 2017; and AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0588/UI00276, Informação No. 958 – CI (2), August 18, 1971. 111 Interview with Sindian Balde, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 112 Interview with Fode Diaboula, Mampatim, Senegal, December 11, 2016. 316 to cross the border, whereas the PAIGC would only ask for money, and only sometimes.113 The entire populations of some border villages in eastern Portuguese Guinea left for Guinea due to the proximate threat of violence,114 and due to the above-mentioned Portuguese raids into Senegal, some villages in that country were also evacuated.115 Figure 16. Emigration from Portuguese Guinea during the war for independence In an effort to stop the flood of refugees, the Portuguese organized Fulbe and others into strategic hamlets under Portuguese protection. However, this generally failed. As Cabral explained, these strategic hamlets failed because people were “more realistic than the chiefs” and preferred “to take refuge in neighbouring countries, […] the liberated areas or the urban centres.”116 The Portuguese attempted to coax people into staying in these settlements by allowing 113 Interview with Ibrahima Biyaye, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017. 114 AHD C.E48.P8/2611 (PAA 444 940,1), Informação No. 94-SC/CI (2), February 11, 1965. 115 Interview with Amadou Balde, Thierno Balde, and Sekou Balde, Medina Ndoondi, Senegal, January 19, 2017. 116 Interview with Basil Davidson in December 1966, quoted in Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky: The Liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, 1963-74 (London: Zed Books, 2017 [1981]), 76. 317 the nonpayment of taxes, since taxation had led people to flee across Portuguese Guinea’s borders for the whole of the colonial period. The PAIGC did not collect taxes in the areas they liberated, for the same reason.117 On the other hand, Amadu Sadjo Sané reported that his family fled the village of Boé because of PAIGC violence, and continued to move between villages until 1966, when they arrived in the town of Cabuca and felt safe due to the presence of a Portuguese military camp.118 Those who fled to Senegal did so for a variety of reasons. Some cited the requisitioning of cattle and harassment by the PAIGC forces fighting for independence, while others fled precipitously during attacks by one side or the other. Husaynatou Djalo described the situation as producing never-ending fear, with women hiding in forests to avoid open areas that were more likely to be bombed.119 Moukhtarou Coulibaly’s village of Sare Mamadi housed Portuguese soldiers, and the PAIGC as a result came and attacked the village. He described the fighting, They came into our village and they shot at us and killed one person, the village chief’s son. When the PAIGC came, we ran away, and my elder brother went to untie the cows. One PAIGC soldier shot at him and thought he had hit him, but he did not. We took the cows and we came to Senegal near the border at Lingewa. We were there, we ran to come to the border. We slept by the border until morning.120 After crossing the border, Coulibaly settled in the village of Kideli “where the commissioner who was married to one of our [family’s] daughters lived. But my father said that it was too risky to stay there because it was close [to Guinea-Bissau], that we should come here to Mampatim,” where he has lived ever since.121 Meta Balde lived in a village in the region of Gabú, and during the war she said, “For three years we slept in the woods. We just came back once a day to the village for 117 Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 76, 101. 118 Interview with Amadu Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 15, 2017. 119 Interview with Husaynatou Djalo and Lamini Balde, Mafanco, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017. 120 Interview with Moukhtarou Coulibaly, Mampatim, Senegal, December 10, 2016. 121 Ibid. 318 dinner and returned with all our kids after they had breastfed enough that they would stop crying,” so they wouldn’t be heard by the PAIGC.122 But people fled because of Portuguese attacks as well. As the war went on, the PAIGC’s demands for food and cattle for their war effort placed already-stretched farmers in an even more precarious position.123 Arguably, however, life became even more difficult as time went by in areas that were still under Portuguese control. The PAIGC struck at Portuguese trading operations in the eastern part of the colony, making the growing and selling of peanuts difficult, and disrupting Portuguese distribution routes, while continuing to control the primary rice-growing areas and allowing little access to them.124 The war was particularly difficult on women, who were responsible not just for their own safety but that of their children as well.125 Despite the violence, residents of southern Senegal near the Portuguese Guinean town of Pirada continued to cross the border to visit the hospital there. In 1970, a shortage of medicine in Ouassadou led to large numbers of Senegalese seeking medical treatment in Portuguese Guinea.126 When Senegalese troops arrived in Ouassadou a few weeks later, they attempted to stop all movement into and out of Portuguese Guinea, and succeeded in reducing visits to the hospital by Senegalese by four-fifths.127 Similarly, in 1972, the Senegalese military stopped people crossing the border at Salikegne to receive medical treatment in Portuguese Cambadju; but this time, the 122 Interview with Meta Balde, Mampatim, Senegal, January 17, 2017. 123 Interviews with Oumar Diao, Coly Diamanka, Mediya Balde, and Fode Sabaly, Bagadadji, Senegal, December 14, 2016; and with Husaynatou Djalo and Lamini Balde, Mafanco, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017. 124 Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 90–92. 125 Interview with Meta Balde, Mampatim, Senegal, January 17, 2017. 126 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 454 – CI (2), April 1, 1970; and interview with Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017. 127 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 533 – CI (2), April 21, 1970. 319 PAIGC sought to win over the border population to their side by establishing a medical post near the neighboring village of Sambolencunda.128 Fulbe Collaboration? Most descriptions of the war for independence uncritically accept portrayals of Fulbe as Portuguese collaborators. Lopes and others have argued that, during the war, Fulbe chiefs attempted to leverage their existing relationships with the Portuguese to maintain their hierarchical societal structures.129 However, Joshua Forrest contends that ethnicity was generally “not determinative of a given peasant community’s choice of political allegiance.”130 There is little doubt that Fulbe were overrepresented in the Portuguese military during the war, but the reasons for this are complicated. The initial mobilization of the PAIGC focused on training militants from important towns, most notably Bissau, rather than areas dominated by Fulbe.131 Moreover, those Fulbe who did support decolonization early in the liberation struggle tended not to back the PAIGC, but other groups including the União dos Naturais da Guiné Portuguesa (UNGP) and the União Popular para Libertação da Guiné (UPLG), not all of which advocated violent methods. The UPLG in particular opposed Cabo Verdeans’ participation in the war, seeing them as not native to Portuguese Guinea. In 1962, the UPLG joined the coalition known as FLING (Frente de Luta pela Independência Nacional da Guiné), which at the time received support from the Senegalese government.132 Forrest has argued that Fulbe and Mandinka support for the UPLG 128 This post was visited twice per week by a PAIGC doctor named Joaquim Cá, based in Kolda: AHD 3/MU- GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 93 – CI (2), January 14, 1972. 129 Carlos Lopes, Etnia, estado e reláções de poder and Guinea-Bissau. The relationship between the Fulbe and the Portuguese is noted in, among others, Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, Dhada, Warriors at Work, and Gérard Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa. 130 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 186. 131 Stephanie Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissau (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), 82. 132 AHD S10.E12.P6/66899 (PAA 586), Guiné: Relações com o Senegal: Actividades dos partidos Senegaleses na Guiné, September 23, 1962; Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 61; Peter Karibe Mendy and Richard A. Lobban, Jr., Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013), 405–7. 320 arose from perceptions that the PAIGC was dominated by other ethnic groups, especially Cabo Verdeans.133 Support for the PAIGC from Fulbe within Portuguese Guinea tended to be less public than that from Fulbe in neighboring countries like Senegal and Guinea. However, many of the Fulbe financially or militarily supporting the PAIGC from these neighboring territories were originally from Portuguese Guinea themselves and had fled because of the conflict. Some Fulbe border villages were home to PAIGC bases from which raids into Portuguese-held territory were launched.134 Fulbe also continued to smuggle goods across the border throughout the war, their allegiance to one side or the other remaining ambiguous.135 Cabral believed the lack of Fulbe participation in the PAIGC was to be expected, given his analysis of Fulbe social structures, in which peasants were exploited by elites loyal to the Portuguese. He also defined the Fulbe as conquerors of their land, not indigenous to Portuguese Guinea.136 The perspectives of former Portuguese soldiers from Guinea-Bissau offers a different narrative about the decisions Fulbe men made. Ñaala Balde, who spent seven years with the Portuguese military in Guinea, attributed his decision to become a Portuguese soldier to PAIGC attacks on his village.137 Sekou Balde said he “didn’t know” the PAIGC, who spent most of their time recruiting among the Balanta and other populations.138 Yussuf Embalo said he would have 133 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 189. 134 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/10, Perintrep No. 2/62, Referido ao período de 1 a 15 de Janeiro de 1962, O Comandante Militar, João Augusto da Silva Bessa, January 15, 1962. 135 Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, 17. 136 Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: Selected Texts, Richard Handyside (ed. and trans.) (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), speech entitled “Brief analysis of the social structure in Guinea,” from a speech held in the Frantz Fanon Centre in Milan, May 1-3, 1964, 56–60. 137 Interview with Ñaala Balde, Dabo, Senegal, December 12, 2016. 138 Interview with Amadou Balde, Thierno Balde, and Sekou Balde, Medina Ndoondi, Senegal, January 19, 2017. 321 liked to join the PAIGC, but became a Portuguese soldier out of ignorance, whereas the Balanta— closely associated with the PAIGC—“understood the future.”139 Money was a frequently cited reason many had for joining the Portuguese.140 Sindian Balde, who lives today in Senegal, fought for the Portuguese because it was one of the few ways to earn money for his family. However, after getting married, his wife fled across the border to escape the violence. As he recalled, “If you are not paid well, you are risking your life every day, and your wife runs away, what are you doing here? That is how I came to Casamance to join my wife.”141 Moreira Dauda Embalo, whose family were colonial régulos, claimed Fulbe were with the Portuguese because the independence movement did not want them. However, his father, a colonial régulo, pretended he was younger, reducing his age by two years on government documents, to prevent his son from being eligible to serve as a Portuguese soldier.142 Though some Fulbe believed in the Portuguese cause and proudly fought alongside them, this was not the norm. In general, Fulbe remember the PAIGC as making little effort to mobilize them for the liberation movement.143 Because of Fulbe chiefs’ generally amicable relationship with the Portuguese, PAIGC operatives often feared that Fulbe would reveal their plans to the enemy. In Mafanco, outside of Gabú, some cited PAIGC harassment as their reason for joining the Portuguese forces.144 El Hadji Gibril Djalo said he was originally excited about the PAIGC, believing they would help the people of his village, but that after they failed to do so, the villagers sided with the Portuguese.145 Others 139 Interview with Yussuf Embalo, Candate, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017. Abasi Embalo expressed the same sentiment. Interview in Pitche, Guinea-Bissau, April 4, 2017. 140 Interview with Amadou Barry, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 141 Interview with Sindian Balde, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 142 Interview with Moreira Dauda Embalo, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 17, 2017. 143 Interview with Amadu Tidjani “Djallonke” Balde, Pitche, Guinea-Bissau, April 4, 2017. 144 Interview with Bocar Embalo, Samba Saidi, Mamadjang Embalo, and Tidjani Djau, Mafanco, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017. 145 Interview with El Hadji Gibril Djaló and Wagidu Djaló, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissau, April 7, 2017. 322 looked to the example of Senegal, which maintained good relations with the French following independence, and supported a model of peaceful decolonization that would feature continued relations with the Portuguese. Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro recalled that they and their friends wanted “partial independence,” not the total independence advocated by Cabral, which necessitated a military struggle. They said, “What we wanted the most was Portuguese and blacks working together, with the Portuguese supporting blacks.”146 The Portuguese propaganda campaign against the PAIGC included telling Muslim Fulbe that the PAIGC would force them to drink alcohol.147 An exception to the general rule, Ebraima Sambambe Mballo fought for the PAIGC for seven years. The Portuguese attempted to conscript him, but his father negotiated with the district chief to keep him out of it. His brother, on the other hand, chose to become a Portuguese soldier.148 Other Fulbe, meanwhile, ended up as Portuguese soldiers against their wishes, fearing harm to their families and communities if they refused.149 Many communities were concerned that they would be portrayed as “terrorists,” as the Portuguese generally termed the PAIGC.150 Armando Abdulai Balde of Canhamina became a Portuguese soldier after finishing his schooling. He claimed that he had to do so, as did other students completing their studies, because the Portuguese “had all your information.”151 Sulai Balde worked clandestinely for the PAIGC in the colonial town of Bafatá for eleven years, buying cows from villagers and bringing them to the PAIGC to slaughter and eat. Eventually he was arrested by the Polícia Internactional e de Defesa do Estado 146 Interview with Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 147 Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, 81. 148 Interview with Ebraima Sambambe Mballo, Sare Guiro, Senegal, December 13, 2016. 149 Interview with Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017; and with Amadou Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017. 150 Interview with Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte, and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, Guinea- Bissau, April 20, 2017. 151 Interview with Armando Abdulai Balde, Canhamina, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 323 (PIDE), a Portuguese security agency, whose agents tortured him for four months. Balde claimed there were many clandestine Fulbe PAIGC operatives, who had to be careful not to jeopardize their own safety and that of their family and communities.152 In Geba, some pretended to favor the Portuguese cause, but passed intelligence to the PAIGC at night. Because of the harm that would come to any PAIGC cadres caught by the Portuguese, such people needed to be as secretive as possible when living in Portuguese-held towns.153 Some Fulbe joined the PAIGC out of desperation. Fatima Buaro fled an arranged marriage to join the PAIGC, which had pledged to eliminate forced marriages and polygamy, and in hope of being reunited with her brother, who was fighting against the Portuguese. However, she was caught and married off to a Fulbe régulo. Her brother promised to come and free her from this marriage, but the régulo kept moving her between villages within his jurisdiction to prevent this. After five such moves, she ran away with her one-year-old son and eventually came across some PAIGC troops. They were suspicious of her, given that Fulbe were particularly opposed to the PAIGC at this early phase of the war, but talked her way into rejoining her brother in a PAIGC military camp. From that point, Buaro first trained as a nurse’s aide and worked at a PAIGC hospital, taking care of patients there and also visiting villages to provide medical treatment. Eventually she was captured by Portuguese forces and brought to Bissau, but within a year was rescued by the PAIGC and sent to work as a nurse in their hospital in the village of Vendo Leidi.154 The situation was further complicated by intra-Fulbe tensions between those of “free” and “enslaved” descent. The Fulbe rimbe (so-called “free” Fulbe) chiefs tended to ally themselves with the Portuguese, while Fulbe jiyaabe (“enslaved” Fulbe) often fought for the PAIGC. Jiyaabe also 152 Interview with Sulai Balde and Muktaru Balde, Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau, April 18, 2017. 153 Interview with Sadjo Sumaré, Geba, Guinea-Bissau, April 22, 2017. 154 Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms, 142–49. 324 discussed forming a Bloco dos Fulas Nativos (Bloc of Native Fulbe) to counteract the “non- indigenous” Fulbe rimbe and Fulbe Futa.155 Tension between various Fulbe chiefs and communities also led some to ally themselves with whomever their rivals opposed. In Sancorlá, for instance, the rule of a particularly harsh Fulbe chief provoked a large number of Fulbe to join the PAIGC.156 Portuguese political operations in Pachana along the Senegal border likewise alienated most Fulbe there from their leadership and drove them into the PAIGC fold.157 In Boé, many Fulbe strongly favored the PAIGC and fled to Guinea.158 So on the whole, while Fulbe generally worked more closely with the Portuguese than with the PAIGC, decisions about which side to ally with were highly localized and individualized. The same was true across the border in Senegal, albeit with much less risk to those who chose to assist the PAIGC.159 These stories indicate that the idea of Fulbe as simple Portuguese collaborators needs reassessment. Attitudes also changed over time. In Portuguese Guinea, many Fulbe were skeptical of the PAIGC at first, but eventually came around. As Kumba Kolubali, a Fulbe woman interviewed just after the war, explained, When the first comrade came here to mobilize us, we were very afraid. We did not know him so we did not trust him. We thought he was dangerous and that he would take our things and not pay for them. But he talked about all the bad things that the Portuguese were doing, which we understood very well. He said that the party believes everybody is equal and that we are all one people.160 As such, it should not be assumed that all those Fulbe who favored the Portuguese at the beginning of the war maintained this relationship consistently. 155 Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural,” 71–76, 268. 156 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 197. See also Chaliand, Armed Struggle in Africa, 18. 157 Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural,” 165. 158 Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural,” 167–68. 159 Nevertheless, toward the end of the war, a Senegalese military commander in the border town of Ouassadou warned Diamalal Diao that if he continued to help the PAIGC he would be arrested. AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01- RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 1406 - D.I., Assunto: Atitudes Favoráveis, Origem: D.G.S. - Guiné, December 17, 1973. 160 Quoted in Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms, 139. 325 It was difficult for the PAIGC to smooth out divisions that the Portuguese had intentionally exacerbated over the course of the colonial period, and the relatively close relationship between Fulbe chiefs and the Portuguese government during the war also impeded the rebel project of national integration. Cabral explained that when he asked Balanta soldiers to fight in Fulbe areas, they responded, “We’ve liberated our own country […] now let those others [in the east] liberate theirs.” Cabral added that the PAIGC “didn’t force the issue.”161 At times, the PAIGC and the Portuguese competed for the allegiance of the same Fulbe.162 Those within Portuguese camps tended to be safer and better fed and provided for than those elsewhere, and also ingested a steady diet of Portuguese propaganda. All these factors made them difficult for PAIGC operatives to access, let alone win over to their side. Post-War Movement By the close of the war, more than 100,000 Bissau-Guineans lived outside of their newly independent state, and it was unclear how many would return to the country. Numerous refugees who had fled to Senegal and Guinea returned after hostilities ceased, but their migrations in this period were not the only noteworthy ones. Many had fled dangerously exposed villages for towns and returned quickly to their former homes. However, those homes often needed to be rebuilt. Many in the liberated areas had established new villages in the forest to escape Portuguese bombing, but after the war returned to reestablish villages in or near their former locations in open country. All this planning and construction activity generally occurred at the expense of agriculture, and meant that roughly 90 percent of the food in Guinea-Bissau in the year after independence had to be imported.163 Most estimates of the Bissau-Guinean population in Senegal 161 Interview in Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 74. 162 Armando Ramos, quoted in Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 43. 163 Urdang, Fighting Two Colonialisms, 24. 326 indicate that about half of the refugee population returned in the years after the war.164 Similar percentages of Fulbe refugees returned to their former villages from southern Senegal to rebuild their lives. But by the same token, roughly half stayed in Senegal, where they had joined family during the war and/or established new connections.165 Figure 17. Raising of the Bissau-Guinean flag in Canjadude, 1974 After the close of the war, there was a great deal of tension between former PAIGC and former Portuguese soldiers.166 British Foreign Office reports from December 1974 mentioned rumors that 164 Dhada, Warriors at Work, 265. 165 Interviews with Kanta Diao, Coumbarou Balde, Oumar Balde, Dombel Balde, and Demba Boiro, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; and with Ousmane Ba, Thierno Bocar Kande, and Aliou Balde, Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, February 20, 2017. 166 Canjadude is located in northeastern Guinea-Bissau. Photo taken by João Carvalho, 1974: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hastear_da_bandeira_da_Guin%C3%A9_Bissau_ap%C3%B3s_o_arrear_ da_de_Portugal.jpg 327 the PAIGC had shot thirty-nine opposition leaders as “collaborators.”167 After a 1980 coup d’état in which Nino Vieira overthrew the Luis Cabral government, Vieira announced the unearthing of 500 bodies in mass graves in the Oio region. 168 Though most of the executions by the PAIGC government occurred in 1978, it killed former Portuguese soldiers, political opponents, and coup plotters throughout the late 1970s.169 Oral histories support the idea that the PAIGC government targeted ex-Portuguese troops, even sending its own soldiers into Senegal to search for them there. Meta Balde remembered lying about her husband’s whereabouts to PAIGC troops searching for him.170 Others also reported of the PAIGC searching for “traitors” in Senegal,171 and Bissau- Guinean news reports in the weeks following Vieira’s coup alleged massacres of former Portuguese soldiers—the ending of which was one of the coup’s stated objectives.172 Even as about 50,000 returned home, some soldiers fled to Senegal to avoid persecution. One former Portuguese soldier crossed the border to the village of Medina Ndoondi, where he already had family. Typically, the PAIGC searched for ex-soldiers who had played more prominent roles during the war. Ñaala Balde and Bakary Cissoko both stated that, while the PAIGC targeted ex-Portuguese soldiers, no one in a position to do anything about it knew about their participation in the war.173 Others found themselves refugees for a second time: Amadou Barry had fled Guinea for Portuguese Guinea as a child with his parents to escape the Touré regime, and became a Portuguese soldier during the war before leaving for Senegal in fear of postwar 167 Public Records Office (henceforth PRO) FCO 65/1454, Denzil (D.I.) Dunnet, to S.Y. Dawbarn, Esq, West African Department, FCO, December 6, 1974. 168 Nó Pintcha, November 29, 1980. 169 Rosemary E. Galli and Jocelyn Jones, Guinea-Bissau: Politics, Economics and Society (London: Frances Pinter, 1987), 98–99. 170 Interview with Meta Balde, Mampatim, Senegal, January 17, 2017. 171 Interview with Oumar Diao, Bagadadji, Senegal, January 18, 2017. 172 Nó Pintcha, November 29, 1980; interview with Sambaru Cande and Indjai Cande, Bantandjan, Guinea-Bissau, April 23, 2017. 173 Interview with Bakary Cissoko, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017; and with Ñaala Balde, Dabo, Senegal, December 12, 2016. 328 persecution, settling in the border town of Pakour where he already had family. When he told a gendarme that he was coming to live there, “He said no problem, that I should not disturb anyone and mind my business.”174 In Sonaco, one person claimed to have seen the PAIGC capture five ex-Portuguese soldiers after the war, and execute four;175 and even former PAIGC soldiers admit that the government targeted their former foes after the war had officially come to an end.176 Such persecution prompted Tcherno Embalo to go live with his brother in Guiro Yero Bocar, Senegal, but he returned after three years when the political climate seemed more favorable. Embalo is now the head of a district with 87 villages under his control, showing that these tensions did eventually dissipate. In response to his own reintegration to Guinea-Bissau, he said, “It is because I am a native. I was born here in this land. They cannot tell me that I cannot be someone here. They cannot do that.”177 Establishing Sovereignty Following Senegalese independence in 1960, its new government sought to define who would be a part of the new nation. Refusing a model of birthright or blood citizenship, Senegal’s government enacted a law that would allow those born elsewhere to acquire Senegalese nationality under certain conditions. It was designed to ensure that every person in Senegal could be defined as either Senegalese or foreign. Such a distinction had been difficult to make in the colonial period. Portuguese officials believed this new law would result in the expulsion of Cabo Verdeans from Dakar.178 In peripheral areas of the country like Kolda, the matter was of less urgency, but even there, some sought to establish their nationality. Moussa Tangara, a market worker in Kolda who 174 Interview with Amadou Barry, Pakour, Senegal, January 27, 2017. 175 Interview with Tcherno Alimu Djalo, Sonaco, Guinea-Bissau, April 3, 2017. 176 Interview with Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 177 Interview with Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 178 ATT PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, P.I.D.E., Informação No. 365/61-GU, Enviada à Presidência do Conselho e aos Ministérios do Ultramar, Interior, Defesa Nacional e Exército, March 23, 1961. It is unclear whether the law actually did this. 329 had been born in French Sudan (Mali) in 1906, put forward a request in 1962 to become a Senegalese citizen. To do so, he needed to document his identity and verify that he had lived in Senegal continuously for the previous ten years. Because Tangara had a Senegalese wife, government officials thought the process would be quicker, but warned that they needed to conduct an inquiry into his morality, conduct, and degree of assimilation. And even after clearing all those hurdles, he would need to be certified by a doctor as physically and mentally capable, and unlikely to become a burden on the Senegalese state or a danger to others.179 The government regularly sent naturalization certificates to Kolda and other regions to enable people to prove their newly acquired nationality.180 Much more common than requests for legal naturalization, however, were requests for Senegalese identification papers from people born outside of Senegal. Since few births were registered by the state prior to independence (or indeed after), the burden of proof was on governments, not individuals. A crucial part of constitutional development at independence was determining who would qualify for citizenship. In the Gambia, all those born in the Gambia to at least one Gambian parent or grandparent were automatically to be given citizenship, although those born in the Gambia to non-Gambian citizens were able to register in order to become a Gambian citizen. Also included were all those born outside of the Gambia whose fathers qualified as Gambians under the above nationality law. All children born in the Gambia or born abroad to Gambian fathers were also Gambian citizens, as were women married to Gambian citizens. However, the Gambian 179 ANS 11D1/223, R. Descrozaille, Garde des Sceaux, Ministre de la Justice au Commandant de Cercle de Kolda, January 5, 1963. 180 ANS 11D1/223, “Délivrance des certificats de nationalité,” President du tribunal de première instance de Ziguinchor au Goveurneur de la Casamance, September 9, 1961. 330 government was allowed to take away citizenship from any Gambian claiming the rights of citizenship in another country.181 In the Gambia in the years leading up to independence, a debate raged over whether non- English speakers should be allowed to become members of the country’s Parliament. A purely Anglophone legislature would have kept power centered in the capital area that had always dominated colonial politics, and severely limited political participation in the interior, where English-language education remained minimal. British colonial reports expressed skepticism about the Gambia’s future, even arguing that constitutional development might not work there, given the country’s small size, low population, and limited educational system.182 In the lead-up to independence, Gambians demanded more and more social services from their leaders. The Governor of the Gambia reported in 1964 that “[a]s one travels through the country one meets at every turn requests for various services the great majority of which are reasonable and desirable; unfortunately however, few of them are practical, simply because the Government has not got the money or the trained staff to provide them.”183 Education ramped up in the 1960s, with the colony boasting 54 primary schools by 1964, more than two-thirds of them government operated, in sharp contrast to the previous emphasis on religious education.184 The Gambia’s post-independence Immigration Act of 1965 gave Senegalese citizens “privileged” status there, meaning they were “no longer required to be in possession of passes or residential permits to enter, reside or take employment in The Gambia.”185 From the moment of independence, in other words, the Gambia’s government acknowledged its special relationship 181 The Gambia Independence Conference, 1964 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1964), Annex B, 7-8. 182 NRS PUB 10/184, “Constitutional Development in the Gambia,” June 15, 1959. 183 NRS PUB 10/243, “Summary of Proceedings of the Twenty-First Conference of Chiefs and Area Council Members, 25th-27th February 1964,” 5. 184 NRS PUB 10/243, “Summary of Proceedings of the Twenty-First Conference of Chiefs and Area Council Members, 25th-27th February 1964,” 12. 185 The Gambia: Report for the years 1964 and 1965 (Bathurst: The Gambia Printing Office, 1966), 3. 331 with its surrounding neighbor; yet, it tried to achieve the arguably contradictory goals of promoting economic development through cross-border trade while also strengthening border security.186 Senegal, for its part, feared that the Gambia would serve as a base for subversive elements trying to overthrow Senghor’s government, much as Touré had feared of Guineans in Senegal.187 As discussed above, the Guinean state and the PDG spent most of the first two decades after independence trying to prevent emigration and failed utterly: roughly one-third of those born in the country lived outside its borders by the 1980s. From Senegal, in contrast, it was easy to travel into Portuguese Guinea, but difficult to travel within it, a distinction that in many ways continues to this day.188 The government in Portuguese Guinea attempted to exercise similar control over their colonial subjects, as they believed the colony would continue to be a part of overseas Portugal. In 1958, they attempted to monitor and track their subjects more easily by introducing identification cards. Of the 21,000 that they provided to the local authorities in Gabú, only 2,416 had been distributed two years later, almost entirely in and around the town of Pirada.189 Senegal and the Gambia: How Special Should the Relationship Be? With independence seemingly inevitable by the early 1960s, the British government took steps to transfer power deliberately to the emerging Gambian government. The key issue that emerged from the independence debate was the nature of the Gambia’s relationship to Senegal. At the Gambia Constitutional Conference of 1961, the Governor, Edward Windley, framed the challenge of independence as the country’s small size, which many worried would render it unable to support itself: 186 Omar A. Touray, The Gambia and the World: A History of the Foreign Policy of Africa’s Smallest State, 1965- 1995 (Hamburg: Institut für Afrika-Kunde, 2000), 9. 187 Ibid, 35–36. 188 CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletin, May 1st-31st, 1961, June 5, 1961. I observed a similar dynamic traveling around Guinea-Bissau in 2017. 189 AHU MU/ISAU/A2.050.05/031.00186, Manuel Benton Gonçalves Ferreira, Inspecção Administrativa Ordinária: Informação sobre a inspecção realizada na Circunscrição de Gabú, September 18, 1960. 332 There are, then, many reasons, both political and economic, which suggest that consideration should be given to the Gambia’s relations with our neighbours with a view to seeing whether the obstacles to economic development resulting from separation can be overcome. I know that we are all conscious of many differences in the habits and traditions of the people of the Gambia and Senegal […] but if, after further stages in our constitutional development, a fully representative Gambian Government is able to address itself to these problems with the solid backing of the Gambian people who have elected them, Her Majesty’s Government would certainly not wish to oppose the development of a close association with our neighbours.190 While virtually everyone agreed that the Gambia needed some sort of formal relationship with Senegal, how close that relationship should be was a source of great contention. In 1961, M. E. Jallow, secretary-general of the Gambia Worker’s Union, declared that the Gambia and Senegal were “part of the same ethnic ensemble” but that “their total union, although desirable, should only be introduced gradually” due to “differences in language, culture, and others that exist between them.”191 He argued in favor of a series of slow, gradual steps toward integration, so as to “avoid the ill-fated experience of the Mali Federation,” the failed attempt of Senegal and Mali to create a shared state.192 In 1963, with independence imminent, the U.N.’s Secretary General appointed a team of four experts to examine the present constitutional, legal, economic and fiscal systems of Senegal and The Gambia and to provide data to enable the Governments and peoples concerned to consider and to decide on the form which the future relationship of the two countries might take on the attainment of independence by The Gambia.193 One of these experts also visited Cameroon to gather further information on the challenge of Anglophone-Francophone integration.194 The final U.N. report provided the following explanation for why some sort of association or federation made sense for the populations of the two countries: 190 NRS PUB 10/206, “Report of the Gambia Constitutional Conference, 1961,” speech to the Gambian House of Representatives, April 19, 1961, 1–2. 191 Dakar-Matin, “L’Union des Travailleurs de Gambie demandera l’autonomie immédiate du pays,” April 14, 1961. 192 Ibid. 193 van Mook et al., Report on the Alternatives for Association, 2. 194 Ibid. 333 Ethnically the indigenous populations of The Gambia and Senegal are identical; the same groups with the same languages and social structures live on both sides of the border. People cross the frontier without the feeling that they are coming among foreigners; they have relatives in the neighbor country; they inter-marry and have social contacts without difficulty. The Islam religion dominates in both communities. Of the thousands of ‘strange farmers’ who enter The Gambia annually with little or no formality to take part in the groundnut harvest, many are from Senegal; cattle go to pasture from one side of the border to the other; Gambians find jobs in Dakar and other Senegalese towns, as Senegalese do in Bathurst, and hardly consider themselves as immigrants. Daily life is very much the same in the rural areas of Senegal and The Gambia, centering around the same types of production in similar houses and with the same customs and family organization.195 Given that local populations treated Senegal and Gambia as one and the same, the idea of some sort of shared governance or confederation seemed logical. Nevertheless, the experts emphasized that [t]he long influence of two quite different colonial systems […] has created a divergence in administrative, cultural and certain economic respects that become more marked the higher one goes up the social ladder and the closer one comes to the larger centres of population and the business world.196 In other words, although colonialism had impacted the lives of virtually all Senegambians, it had not caused drastic changes that would have prevented the populations from integrating; yet, colonial education and acculturation had driven a wedge between the two countries’ respective sets of elites and urbanites, the very people who would be chiefly responsible for any decision on further integration. After the publication of the U.N. report, the Gambia put forward proposals for the first steps toward creating a federation. However, Senegal insisted that further political and economic integration would have to occur first. Because Senegal’s protectionist policies in the face of the Gambia’s low tariffs had led to large- and small-scale smuggling across the border, the U.N. experts had also suggested a customs union, which Senegal favored.197 But the Gambian 195 van Mook et al., Report on the Alternatives for Association, 4. 196 Ibid. Emphasis my own. 197 PRO PREM 13/2660, Visit of the Prime Minister of the Gambia to London, July 1969, Record of a Meeting held at 10 Downing Street, on Monday 21st July 1969 at 12.45 p.m. 334 government rejected this idea because it was expected to lead to an increase in the cost of living for Gambians.198 In any case, the ease of smuggling meant that people on both sides of the border could profit from their governments’ differing policies. In June 1971, at the sixth session of the Senegalo-Gambian Inter-Ministerial Committee, both sides reaffirmed their support for the construction of a bridge over the Gambia River. In fact, however, the Gambian government saw little incentive to actually move forward with the project, since it would lead to Senegalese trucks passing quickly through the Gambia, whereas the existing ferry crossing provided opportunities for Gambian shopkeepers and food sellers to make profits from occupants of waiting trucks, buses, and cars. The bridge also raised questions about “the sovereignty of The Gambia on whose territory the bridge will stand.”199 President Leopold Senghor criticized the Gambia’s stance toward Senegal, and a British Foreign Office report relayed his criticism that “Gambians were obsessed with questions of sovereignty and possible invasion by Senegal whereas the real problems for The Gambia were internal subversion and smuggling.”200 Indeed, the Gambia based its foreign relations with Senegal during this period on its own security concerns, rather than focusing on economic prosperity or the cross-border relations of its citizens.201 Incidents in the early 1970s tended to confirm Gambian officials’ fears, albeit in very small ways. In January 1971, Senegal violated the Gambia’s territorial sovereignty by sending in troops who “reportedly committed unfriendly acts which included the arrest, maltreatment and 198 Touray, The Gambia and the World, 40. The same issue doomed the Senegambia Confederation of the 1980s. See this dissertation’s conclusion. 199 PRO FCO 65/918, M.B. Collins, British High Commission, Bathurst to Tom Bambury, West African Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, “Trans-Gambia Bridge,” July 22, 1971. Similar debates played out leading up to the construction of the bridge across the Gambia River in 2017–18. 200 PRO FCO 65/918, “Senegal-Gambian Relations,” British High Commission, Bathurst, to Tom Bambury, West African Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, April 30, 1971. 201 Touray, The Gambia and the World, 30–31. 335 imprisonment of Gambian villagers alleged to have committed smuggling offenses.” This caused outrage among the Gambian people as well as from their government.202 Similar violations occurred in July 1974, when Senegalese border guards allegedly rounded up fifteen farmers in the Gambia and brought them to Senegal, where they were beaten and detained.203 The 1974 incident led to a formal complaint by Gambian president Dawda Jawara, who referred to it as akin to Hitler’s tactics against his weaker neighbors and African kingdoms’ slaving expeditions.204 The Continuation of Migration Patterns Following independence, migration across the borders of southern Senegambia persisted in large part due to the strength of cross-border connections. A 1971 survey estimated that 16 percent of the population of the Casamance—Lower, Middle, and Upper—were immigrants.205 A census of the Casamance in 1976 identified almost 100,000 people as foreign-born. Almost two- thirds of that number came from Guinea-Bissau, and much of the remainder from Guinea.206 In the northern part of Kolda bordering the Gambia, more than half the population was from outside southern Senegal.207 In 1971, there had been almost 16,000 Gambians in the Casamance, but that number had dropped substantially by 1976; and the numbers of Malians and Mauritanians was also small. Notably, only one-third of the foreign-born population identified by the census claimed foreign nationality, with the rest listing themselves as Senegalese.208 This deliberate refusal of migrants to declare themselves to be foreigners was “often a serious obstacle to attempts to make a statistical evaluation of migrants.”209 202 Bankole Timothy, “Senegambia: Myths and Realities,” Africa No. 38, October 1974, 39. 203 Timothy, “Senegambia: Myths and Realities,” 39. 204 West Africa, August 19, 1974. 205 Zachariah and Nair, “Senegal,” S.8. 206 Lucie Gallisel Colvin, “Senegal,” in The Uprooted of the Western Sahel, 98. 207 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 60–61. 208 Colvin, “Senegal,” 98. 209 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 176. 336 Over the course of the 1960s, many Gambians migrated to Senegal, in part because it had attained independence earlier, and also because of its subsidization of peanut prices. In the latter part of the decade, drought—along with the 1967 elimination of peanut subsidies—led many to return to the Gambia. Between the 1963 and 1973 censuses, up to 25,000 Gambians returned home, though 33,000 remained in Senegal as of 1970, nearly half of them in the Casamance.210 These flows were not unidirectional, however. In December 1959, with Senegalese independence approaching rapidly, substantial numbers of Senegalese settled on the south bank of the Gambia River;211 and five years later, the Gambia’s population was recorded as 11 percent foreign-born. Senegalese made up around 60 percent of these 35,000 people, with the rest divided between Guineans and Portuguese Guineans. Surprisingly, given that economic migration is remembered as a primarily male phenomenon, men made up only 58 percent of the foreign-born population, suggesting that most immigrants actually arrived as family units.212 Nevertheless, male migrants substantially outnumbered females in nearly every age demographic, with the exception of ages 15–25, mostly due to women migrating for marriage or divorce.213 In the next census a decade later, just under half of the 52,002 “foreign nationals” in the Gambia, were from Senegal, with almost 20 percent from Guinea and another 13 percent from Guinea-Bissau. Kenneth Swindell expressed skepticism about these numbers, suggesting that they were likely higher in the southeastern Gambia, where his research showed one-half of the heads of household in a village near Basse to be Guinean.214 As of 1980, most immigrants into the Gambia were farmers, and this 210 Colvin, “The Gambia,” in The Uprooted of the Western Sahel, 294. 211 NRS CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletin, December 1959, January 4, 1960. 212 Colvin, “The Gambia,” 289–94. Or wives and children could have come at a later date, while still migrating. Zachariah notes that sex ratios were nearly even for migrants from Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, while Guinean migrants were much more likely to be male. Zachariah, “Migration in the Gambia,” G. 28. 213 Colvin, “The Gambia,” 306. 214 Zachariah, “Migration in the Gambia,” G. 15-7. Given fears of self-reporting as foreigners, it does not surprise me that Guinean migrants—especially in the eastern Gambia—would have been undercounted. 337 was particularly true of migrants from Guinea-Bissau and Guinea.215 As Lucie Colvin wrote in 1981, “Migration patterns in the Gambia have taken the form of a regular and ongoing population exchange with Senegal, the country that surrounds it on three sides.”216 Because of the regular movement of people, people near the border viewed migration as relatively simple and straightforward. Because economic challenges in Portuguese Guinea had driven people out of the colony for generations, it should have come as no great surprise that, after it became independent as Guinea-Bissau, emigration continued. Luis Cabral’s postwar government prioritized economic investment in urban and industrial areas, while largely ignoring rural parts of the country. As a result, nation-building was severely impeded, and “economic disarticulation so pronounced that one can consider the neighbouring countries of Senegal and the Republic of Guinea Conakry as poles of economic and financial attraction for a high proportion of the population.”217 The same policies also led some to emigrate to the Gambia.218 Those who migrated during this period remember few problems with either crossing the border or working on the other side. Boubacar Ba, a naturalized Senegalese citizen originally from Guinea, moved to the Gambia for fourteen years, running a shop where he sold kola nuts and other items without experiencing any problems due to his origins. He married a woman in the Gambia before returning to Senegal in the early 1980s and taking another wife there.219 Aliel Mbailo Balde, a blacksmith from Guinea-Bissau, left for Senegal after the war of independence. He crossed the border and headed to the town of Dabo because he had family there who had informed him that 215 Colvin, “The Gambia,” 305–6. 216 Ibid, 287. 217 Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, 129. 218 Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau, 3. 219 Interview with Boubacar Ba, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017. 338 the town lacked a blacksmith.220 Saidou Diallo, the child of Guinean immigrants to the Gambia, moved to Senegal to live with his uncle in the town of Badion. His uncle had arranged a marriage for him in the town, and he decided to stay there because its land was more fertile.221 Herding also proved easier after the coming of independence to the region. The “floating tax” paid by Gambian farmers and herders in Senegal disappeared after independence, so many in border villages began to move their herds into Senegal to graze annually. The same was true for farmers near the border, who took advantage of abundant land in Senegal, mere miles away.222 Seasonal Farming after Independence Despite the end of colonial rule, seasonal farming persisted, as different economic policies continued to provide incentives for it.223 However, unlike the more organized process of colonial times, postcolonial seasonal farming appeared to be “spontaneous migration.”224 Farmers from Portuguese Guinea, which was notably poorer than its northern neighbors, continued to cross borders to farm in the Gambia and Senegal during the war for independence.225 Seasonal peanut farmers heading to other countries also gained access to goods unavailable at home, and returned at the end of the harvest with new agricultural technologies, fabrics, and other hard-to-obtain items. In 1970, a Portuguese report noted that people from throughout the Gabú region crossed into Senegal “on the pretext of going to visit family,” but in actuality to cultivate peanuts.226 This movement continued even as the protracted war made crossing into and out of Portuguese Guinea 220 Interview with Aliel Mbailo Balde, Dabo, Senegal, December 13, 2016. 221 Interview with Saidou Diallo, Badion, Senegal, January 25, 2017. 222 Interview with Juularou Jallow, Sare Luba, The Gambia, July 22, 2017; and with Alet Mballow and Tacko Mballow, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 223 NRS CRU 1/4, Upper River Divisional Bulletin, September 9-October 6, 1961, 2. 224 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 171. 225 AHM PT/AHM/FO/007/B/12/229/10, Perintrep No. 11/61, Referido ao período de 1 a 31 de Outubro de 1961, O Chefe da 2a Repartição, José Maria Carvalho Teixeira, October 31, 1961; and AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01- RNP/S0588/ UI00276, Informação No. 133 – SC / CI (2), January 19, 1968. 226 AHD S10.E12.P6/66898 (PAA 585), Informação No. 668 – CI (2), May 18, 1970. 339 increasingly difficult.227 Some, most notably Fulbe of enslaved descent, even migrated from Portuguese Guinea to Guinea to work seasonally.228 After the war, seasonal migration became easier as the risk of violence all but disappeared. Young men began to use the money they earned in Senegal and the Gambia to strike out on their own and set up their own households. Despite the PAIGC’s efforts to destroy traditional hierarchies in Fulbe areas, communities continued to operate as a gerontocracy, with community elders controlling the decision-making process. This process, in turn, perpetuated traditional hierarchies and led 10 percent of the population of the Geba Valley to migrate permanently out of the region.229 As discussed earlier in this chapter, young Fulbe men continued to come from Guinea as well, despite Touré’s prohibition of emigration. Many migrants eventually put down roots in their seasonal homes, whether by choosing to start a new household at once, or through “a relatively long intermediate phase of multiple-year migrations.”230 Some Gambian Wolof and Soninke left to migrate permanently into southern Senegal and become farmers, primarily of peanuts.231 During the 1960s and 1970s, the riverine lands of the Gambia became increasingly popular as a destination for seasonal farmers, not only because of the war in Portuguese Guinea but because of a long-term drought across the Sahel that lasted from 1968 to 1973. Migrants arrived from Guinea and Mali as well, with a decreasing percentage coming from southern Senegal. A 1974–5 study estimated that there were 33,000 seasonal farmers in the Gambia, a number slightly larger than the number of rural households in the entire country and equivalent to 12.6 percent of the 227 Dias, “Mudança sócio-cultural,” 287. 228 C. A. Picado Horta, Análise Estrutural e Conjuntural da Economia da Guiné - Diagnóstico da Situação Económica (Província da Guiné: Comissão Técnica de Planeamento e Integração Económica, 1965), 14. 229 Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau, 141–43. 230 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 171. 231 Pélissier, Les paysans du Sénégal, 547. 340 country’s entire agricultural workforce.232 They came because Gambian currency provided opportunities to obtain “a better variety and cheaper assortment of consumer goods.”233 Bissau- Guinean and Guinean migrants also traveled shorter distances to work in southern Senegal, where land was abundant, the currency stronger, and commercial goods more readily available than in their homelands.234 Smuggling One of the greatest perceived threats to the governments of southern Senegambia was the continued extralegal movement of goods across borders. On January 11, 1969, at a meeting of the National Council of the ruling UPS Party, Senegal’s finance minister, Jean Collin, addressed an economic issue of tremendous importance to the government: the movement of goods into the country from the Gambia. Given the drastic per capita differences in imports (but not consumption) of a variety of products ranging from radios to cigarettes, Collin asserted “that a large and growing share of the goods officially entering the Gambia have Senegal as the real destination. To that degree, the contraband has the character of an economic aggression, and seems to me must be fought as such.”235 A few months later, President Senghor publicly agreed with Collin, further characterizing this economic aggression as “a mortal peril for the nation.”236 One report claimed Senghor described the Gambia as “leveled like a revolver in the belly of Senegal.”237 The Gambian government rejected these claims and pushed back, blaming Senegalese nationals for moving contraband and arguing that Senegal needed to keep its own house in order.238 British reports called 232 Colvin, “The Gambia,” 289. 233 Ibid, 311. 234 Interview with Souleymane Kande, Aliou Kande, Bocar Mballo, Biaye Balde, Pathe Balde, and Mama Samba Mballo, Medina El Hadji, Senegal, February 20, 2017. 235 ANS Jean Collin, “Rapport au conseil national de l’U.P.S. sur la situation financière de l’état,” January 11, 1969. 236 West Africa, April 12, 1969. 237 PRO PREM 13/2660, Background Note, 1969. 238 Africa Confidential, March 5, 1969; and West Africa, February 8, 1969. 341 Senegalese statements “so strong that The Gambians have persuaded themselves that they are in some danger of military attack.”239 In the 1960s and 1970s, monitoring the extralegal movement of goods was on the minds of both governments, but for different reasons. Because of Senegal’s protectionist policies, it was difficult to import many products, and Senegalese consumers desired goods more cheaply available in the Gambia.240 However, this importation undermined Senegal’s tariffs. For this reason, as we have seen, discussions of confederation between Senegal and the Gambia often hinged on the adoption of a common customs frontier.241 In 1969, the same year that Senghor and Collin denounced the Gambian government, the Gambia managed to export up to one-third more peanuts and oil than it produced, due to Senegalese farmers selling their harvests there and using the proceeds to buy radios, food, and clothing more cheaply than they could at home.242 It was not just Gambians who benefitted from this trade. Small-scale Senegalese traders crossed the border regularly to buy goods, then return to Senegal to sell them at a markup. From his home in Salikegne, less than a mile from the Guinea-Bissau border, Moussa Bayo traveled every week for twelve years to three market towns in the Gambia, where he would buy goods and then return home, selling them at a 100 percent profit. Despite carrying more than fifty pounds of items per trip, he said he never ran into trouble with customs during that entire period.243 Many people in Senegalese border communities did all their shopping in the Gambia, since it was easier than traveling longer distances to the bigger markets of southern Senegal.244 Small-scale traders in Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, a village on the border with Senegal, regularly went to the Gambia to 239 PRO PREM 13/2660, “MEMORANDUM: Visit of the Prime Minister of The Gambia,” 1969. 240 van Mook et al., Report on the Alternatives for Association, 52. 241 Ibid, 56. 242 AHD 3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0589/UI02400, newspaper article by Russell Warren Howe, “The Gambia, ‘Condemned to Quality,’” Baltimore Sun, February 29, 1969. 243 Interview with Moussa Bayo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017. 244 Interview with Saikou Balde, Pata, Senegal, February 15, 2017. 342 trade in the 1970s following independence.245 In an effort to crack down on the movement of goods, officials in the Casamance ordered in 1967 that all groundnuts be sold within the country.246 In order to stop unregulated cross-border trade, governments had to convince traders and communities that illegal cross-border economic transactions were also illicit. These extralegal transactions formed “the second economy” in the borderlands of southern Senegambia, an economy that existed alongside the primary, legal one.247 Because of the importance of this second economy, borderland residents accepted the movement of a variety of products, even if their governments did not. Smuggling existed at larger scales than just across the Senegalese-Gambian border. Farmers and traders regularly brought rice out of Portuguese Guinea into Senegal, Guinea and the Gambia in the early 1960s.248 During the war, certain items like kola nuts and sugar became scarce in Portuguese Guinea as fighting disrupted trading networks, and individual traders took advantage of these opportunities by sneaking these items across the border.249 Trade increased after the war, and tied the region of Gabú much more closely to Senegal and Guinea than to the city of Bissau.250 In much of eastern Guinea-Bissau, the Senegalese CFA continued to dominate rural trade in the years following independence.251 The market town of Cacheu in western Guinea-Bissau saw one- third of its peanuts and palm oil sent clandestinely to Senegal.252 In 1983, the newspaper Le Soleil 245 Interview with Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 246 PRO EXO 1/5, “Seizure of groundnuts and lorry by Senegalese Authorities in the Casamance,” January 25, 1967. 247 The second economy comes from MacGaffey, Entrepreneurs and Parasites, and MacGaffey et al., The Real Economy of Zaire. The distinction between illegal and illicit trade is discussed in much of the cross-border literature on Africa, including Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience, 5, 21; and Flynn, “‘We Are the Border,’” 324. 248 AHD C.E48.P8/2611 (PAA 444 940,1) “A situação na Guiné Portuguesa,” Augusto Deslandes, March 13, 1964. 249 Interviews with Kanta Diao and Coumbarou Balde, Ouassadou, Senegal, January 26, 2017; and with Ismaila Balde and Sekou Oumar Balde, Ilyao, Senegal, February 24, 2017. 250 Forrest, Lineages of State Fragility, 225. 251 Philip J. Havik, “Female Entrepreneurship in a Changing Environment: Gender, Kinship, and Trade in the Guinea Bissau Region,” in Carla Risseuw and Kamala Ganesh (eds.), Negotiation and Space: A Gendered Analysis of Changing Kin and Security Networks in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (New Delhi: Sage, 1998), 205–25. 252 Nó Pintcha, September 4, 1982. 343 estimated that extralegal trade was triple the size of its legal counterpart.253 The post-independence PAIGC government in Guinea-Bissau took issue with private traders, and created a system by which “official traders” would serve the countryside. This coverage was often incomplete and led to most peanuts and rice being sold outside of official channels. As Galli and Jones explained, “to acquire cooking oil, soap, matches, cloth and so on, on a regular basis, a peasant family had to be able to sell its crops outside Guinea.”254 The government campaigned against not only itinerant juula traders, but against female traders who engaged in cross-border trade in Senegal and Guinea.255 Bringing Marginal Regions into the Fold Following independence, the postcolonial governments of southern Senegambia attempted to bring into the fold regions that their colonial predecessors had deemed marginal. Southern Senegambians often bristled at these attempts, seeing themselves as part of a regional community that stretched across national borders. Borderland residents did not see themselves as belonging to one particular state and rejected “the national order of things.”256 While they laid claim on the rights of citizenship, they also rejected a citizenship that would limit their options to any one particular state. Similar to the case of Hutu refugees in Tanzania, “[T]hey dissolved national categories in the course of everyday life and produced more cosmopolitan forms of identity instead.”257 These cosmopolitan forms of identity emerged as a result of nearly a century of interactions and movements in borderland spaces, where the line between Senegal, the Gambia, 253 Le Soleil, December 5, 1983. This is similar to what MacGaffey et al. found in Zaire. The Real Economy of Zaire, 11. 254 Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau, 113–19. 255 Philip J. Havik, “Guinea-Bissau’s Rural Economy and Society: A Reassessment of Colonial and Postcolonial Dynamics,” in Patrick Chabal and Toby Green (eds.), Guinea-Bissau: Micro-State to ‘Narco State’ (London: Hurst & Company, 2016), 72. 256 Malkki, Purity and Exile, 1–2. 257 Ibid, 4. 344 Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea was often blurry and more importantly, irrelevant. As elsewhere in Africa, southern Senegambians imagined themselves as citizens of multiple states, even if governments did not agree.258 They persisted because of the weakness of governments to make sovereignty real in borderland regions. A 1971 confidential report cited PAIGC raids from Senegal into Portuguese Guinea as clear evidence that “President Senghor has no genuine control in the south.”259 Throughout the 1970s, however, the Senegalese government advanced policies that made citizenship more beneficial. Government agencies promoted rural development and land reform, and expanded schooling to more and more rural areas. Employment opportunities through the Senegalese state became more common, even if they were still not distributed equally throughout the country. Quite a few immigrants claimed Senegalese nationality during censuses to gain access to these resources, or purchased fake identification cards,260 but most had little trouble obtaining citizenship papers, especially if they already had relatives with citizenship who could vouch for them.261 Similar processes were work in the Gambia, whose government tended to award citizenship to anyone claiming to have been born there.262 After the end of the war in Guinea-Bissau, the PAIGC government found it difficult to gain acceptance in the mostly Fulbe regions of Bafatá and Gabú. In the December 1976 elections for regional councils, the PAIGC received over 80 percent of the vote nationally, but in Bafatá managed only the slightest of majorities, 50.4 percent, and performed not much better in Gabú, with 56 percent despite little effective opposition.263 Linguistic integration proved a challenge as 258 Tague, Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania, 163. 259 AHD S10.E12.P6/66898 (PAA 585), Overland News Agency, “Portuguese Guine,” April 17, 1971. 260 Colvin, “Senegal,” 100. 261 This was cited in many interviews, including with Fatoumata Diallo, Mampatim, Senegal, December 9, 2016; and Saliou Seydi, Amadou Seydi, Sounkarou Kande, Thiara, Senegal, January 20, 2017. 262 Interview with Fatoumata Jallow, Nyamanar, The Gambia, July 27, 2017; and Mambie Sabali, Sare Buti, The Gambia, July 24, 2017. 263 Davidson, No Fist is Big Enough to Hide the Sky, 178. 345 well. The 1979 census showed that 86 percent of people in Bissau and 79 percent in Bolama spoke Bissau-Guinean Creole, as compared to just 31 percent in Gabú and 18 percent in Bafatá.264 In areas they liberated during the war, the PAIGC instituted People’s Committees and attempted to transform hierarchical social structures whenever possible.265 However, in many Fulbe areas traditional leadership remained in place.266 While Luis Cabral’s government attempted to diminish the power of village chieftaincies through People’s Committees and the establishment of a socialist state, many of these changes had only six years to take hold before Nino Vieira’s government reversed course in 1980.267 Moreover, government investment in Bissau and its immediate environs further marginalized Fulbe areas. Despite Cabral’s rhetoric of decentralized power, the opposite occurred after independence, with the centralization of power among PAIGC elites preventing the Fulbe elite from attaining positions of power in Bissau.268 The late 1970s and early 1980s also saw Portuguese-language schooling in some Muslim areas of rural Guinea-Bissau supplanted by Koranic schooling.269 In short, in the years following independence, Fulbe areas of Guinea-Bissau did not come into closer relations with the rest of the country, but continued to be closely tied to its neighbors. Conclusion In the 1960s and 1970s, Fulbe and other borderland residents in southern Senegambia crossed colonial and national boundaries regularly, often settling for a long period or permanently in a new colony or country. More than half a million people from Guinea and Guinea-Bissau left 264 Mario Santos, “Algumas considerações sobre a nossa situação sociolinguistica,” Soronda: revista de estudos guineenses 4 (1987), 12. 265 Peter Aaby, The State of Guinea-Bissau: African Socialism or Socialism in Africa? (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1978), 8. 266 Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, 121. 267 Interview with Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 268 Lopes, Guinea-Bissau, 111, 120-1. 269 Lars Rudebeck, “The Effects of Structural Adjustment in Kandjadja, Guinea-Bissau,” Review of African Political Economy 49 (1990), 47–49. 346 their homes and migrated to Senegal and the Gambia in an effort to escape economic hardship and war. Most of these migrants’ destinations were not urban capitals like Dakar and Banjul, but rural communities similar to those from which they had come. Many followed relatives who had migrated previously, and this facilitated their integration into new communities. Movement occurred with relative ease within a broad region that encompassed large areas of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. And even as all four of these countries became independent, national identity remained secondary to a regional identity related to, but not directly dependent upon, ethnicity. Borderland residents rejected “a sedentarist metaphysics” that sorted individuals, communities, and groups into national containers, viewing any movement outside of each container as international migration.270 The integration of this region during the colonial period facilitated migration for economic gain, or in more dire circumstances such as flight from violence in Portuguese Guinea or from severe economic hardship in Guinea. Migrants retained ties to their original homes, which were not far away and usually accessible, especially following the end of the war in Guinea-Bissau and the opening of Guinea’s borders. Through migration, they established an alternative territorial community to those articulated by the sovereign states of the region. Although this community did not have firm limits, its integration was arguably stronger than that of any of the nations it intersected with. Migration could be dramatic but was often quotidian and frequent. Some migrants left their villages for immediately neighboring countries, while others moved in stages. Pate Manneh was born in the village of Kamambolou in northwestern Guinea, not far from the Guinea-Bissau and Senegal borders. In 1972, he moved to the regional capital Gaoual to apprentice as a tailor before moving the following year to Conakry. In 1975, struggling to find work, he left Guinea for the 270 Malkki, “National Geographic,” 31. 347 Gambia to farm in the village of Kundam. His older brother had previously come to the Gambia to farm and founded a village. After one rainy season farming in the Gambia, Mane returned to Guinea for two years. In 1978, following his father’s death, he went this time to Senegal to farm. After one year as a seasonal farmer, he moved to the eastern Gambian regional capital of Basse and sent for his wife, who was still living in Guinea. He then returned to Senegal annually for several years to farm seasonally. This story is not extraordinay. Mobility in southern Senegambia was the norm, not the exception. Lucie Colvin wrote in 1981 that “[t]he governments of Senegal and Gambia […] have, through these last 50 years, received a steady stream of immigration with an adaptability and social harmony rarely matched elsewhere.”271 But her statement could just as easily apply to the relationship between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Guinea, or the Gambia and Guinea. As of 1981, about one-tenth of Guinea-Bissau’s population was in Senegal, and that percentage was likely higher in Fulbe areas. Temporary and permanent migration tied the economies of Guinea-Bissau and southern Senegal closer together, both during the war for independence and the years that followed.272 As a survey of migrants in southern Senegal indicated, political boundaries were widely seen as insignificant in comparison to regional ones.273 Moving from Gabú to Kolda, or from Labé to Basse, was a less drastic change than moving to a national capital, or to another region within the same country. The constant large-scale movement within this region also softened the hierarchical character of Fulbe society, as the distinctions between “free” Fulbe, those of enslaved descent, and Fulbe Futa all became blurred.274 271 Colvin, The Uprooted of the Western Sahel, 340. 272 Ibid, 318. 273 Soumah, “Regional Migrations in Southeastern Senegal,” 174. 274 Anne-Marie Hochet, Paysanneries en attente: Guinée-Bissau (Dakar: Enda, 1983), 60–63. 348 By the early 1980s, rural Bissau-Guineans exercised indirect control over their government’s actions by removing themselves from state structures and integrating themselves further into cross-border networks.275 But this was merely one part of a much larger project of regional integration that impeded national integration everywhere in the region, as thousands of rural Senegalese, Gambians, Bissau-Guineans, and Guineans opted out of most state ideologies and projects, and instead chose to integrate further into transnational communities. Lorenzo Bordonaro has described the postcolonial state in Guinea-Bissau as an “irrelevance,” a “legal and sociological fiction devoid of any sovereignty or political and moral authority that can survive beyond its empirical existence.”276 The states of Senegal, the Gambia, and Guinea certainly were more than fictions; but their existence as sovereign, bounded states were tested by the creation of an alternative community in the borderlands of southern Senegambia. None of this is to say, however, that borderland residents were immune from national politics. As Malik Jammeh explained, in the first decades following independence, “[p]eople began to wake up” to national concerns.277 Fulbe and other borderland residents took advantage of economic opportunities provided by governments but ran away from whatever state actions threatened them. During the 1960s and 1970s, borderland communities became further integrated with one another, but simultaneously saw this integration threatened by the desires of postcolonial governments to control, monitor, and restrict movement. 275 Galli and Jones, Guinea-Bissau, 192. 276 Lorenzo I. Bordonaro, “Introduction: Guinea-Bissau Today—The Irrelevance of the State and the Permanence of Change,” African Studies Review 52, no. 2 (2009), 37. 277 Interview with Malik Jammeh, Sankuli Kunda, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 349 Chapter 6: Medina Gounass and the Construction of Extra-National Space The first five chapters of this dissertation have focused on the durability of civil society in southern Senegambia since the nineteenth century. They have shown the importance of mobility and migration in creating an alternative territoriality than that put forward by the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial states of the region. Through their disengagement from the states of the region, Fulbe people believed that living in-between states provided more opportunity than rooting one’s connections solely within the national territory of a particular country. In Roberts’ framing, Fulbe actively sought to live in the places where the fog of colonial and postcolonial rule had least densely settled.1 The most extreme example of this state disengagement and the creation of an alternative community of belonging is Medina Gounass, a city of more than 40,000 people located in the eastern part of the Upper Casamance.2 Medina Gounass, founded in 1935 by the Fulbe ceerno [religious teacher] Mamadou Saidou Ba, has operated within the boundaries of the Senegalese state yet outside of its control for nearly a century. Though Fulbe and others have informally developed a larger cross-border sense of belonging, Medina Gounass represents the formalization of such thinking into explicitly anti-colonial and anti-national space. The community operates in many ways as a parallel entity to the Senegalese state. As this chapter will show, Medina Gounass has actively cultivated a detachment from local and national government since its founding in 1935: seeing colonial and postcolonial state control as detrimental to the religious lives of its citizens and to its own religious and economic networks. These networks were formed through decades of temporary and permanent migration. This vision 1 Roberts, Two Worlds of Cotton, 16. 2 Agence nationale de la statistique et de la démographie (ANSD) Senegal’s statistics bureau. The population of the rural community containing Medina Gounass is 51,226. This rural community consists of Medina Gounass and some small surrounding villages. 350 contrasts strongly with those of other Islamic communities in Senegal and elsewhere that, in colonial times and since, have actively cultivated relationships with their governments for the purpose of their own advancement.3 While Tijani marabouts like Umar Tal rejected colonial rule, by the 1920s his descendants like Seydou Nourou Tall had a close relationship with the French.4 Other marabouts like Saad Buh, Sidiyya Baba, and Malik Sy operated in tandem with the expanding colonial state in Senegal and Mauritania.5 The founder of the Muridiyya, Amadou Bamba, had a complicated relationship with the French that eventually ended with accommodation after multiple exiles.6 However, the Muridiyya have been closely tied to the colonial and postcolonial states in Senegal, who have granted them relative autonomy in exchange for political support (or at least tacit acceptance).7 On the other hand, millenarian movements of the early twentieth century like the Chilembwe uprising in Nyasaland and the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa actively sought an end to European rule, using violence to throw oppressive colonial regimes off of African land.8 Less than a decade after Medina Gounass’ founding, the Jola prophet Aline Sitoe Diatta led an anti-colonial revolt in the Lower Casamance against French colonial rule with followers from Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese Guinea.9 As a part of this revolt, the village of Efok in Senegal even fled to Portuguese Guinea in 1942 rather than submitting 3 For West Africa during the colonial period, Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, and David Robinson and Jean- Louis Triaud (eds.), Le temps des marabouts: Itinéraires et strategies islamiques en Afrique occidentale française v. 1880-1960 (Paris: Karthala, 1997). 4 Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, 159; Sylvianne Garcia, “Al-Hajj Seydou Nourou Tall ‘grand marabout’ tijani: L’histoire d’une carrière (c. 1880–1980),” in Robinson and Triaud (eds.), Le temps des marabouts. 5 Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, Chapters 8–10. 6 Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad. 7 The research on the Muridiyya is extensive. Among others, Cheikh Tidiane Sy, La Confrérie sénégalaise des Mourides: un essai sur l’Islam au Sénégal (Paris: Présence africaine, 1969); Donal B. Cruise O’Brien, The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) and Saints and Politicians: Essays in the Organization of a Senegalese Peasant Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); Jean Copans, Les Marabouts de l’arachide: La confrèrie mouride et les paysans du Sénégal (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988); and Ngom, Muslims Beyond the Arab World. 8 On Chilembwe, see Fields, Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa, and Jane and Ian Linden, “John Chilembwe and the New Jerusalem.” On Maji Maji, Iliffe, “The Organization of the Maji Maji Rebellion.” 9 Baum, West Africa’s Women of God, 146. 351 to French rule, returning seven years later.10 Colonial governments sought to move religious leaders from ideas of revolt to accommodation, exiling religious leaders like Bamba before pushing them toward accommodation as a way to return home. In Côte d’Ivoire, the French expelled Liberian preacher William Harris, whose message brought people together across ethnic lines and inspired French fears that this solidarity would lead to a desire for autonomy.11 In developing the city as an anti-colonial and later anti-national space within the confines of Senegal, the residents of Medina Gounass have put forward a third model: neither of accommodation nor of violent resistance, but of detachment. They have created a space simultaneously inside and outside of Senegal. Medina Gounass’ borderland location has allowed the community and its leaders to operate transnationally and create a sense of community across borders that operates outside of formal state structures while still resembling the apparatus of a state. Although many throughout Africa have created political movements in exile, seeking a return to their natal homes, the community of Medina Gounass has created parallel administrative units while serving as the focal point of a transnational religious movement. To take seriously the Fulbe ideas regarding the space and territory of Medina Gounass is to recognize the difficulty of postcolonial nations to integrate their more marginal regions. The city lies within 40 miles of the borders of the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea (see Figure 18 below), but distant from the administrative apparatus of the Senegalese government. The town’s identity is defined in great measure by its connection to “complete Sufism,” a merging of Sufi spirituality and Sunni orthodoxy.12 Indeed, it is at the center of religious and economic networks 10 Baum, West Africa’s Women of God, 154. 11 Sheila S. Walker, The Religious Revolution in the Ivory Coast: The Prophet Harris and the Harrist Church (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 54. 12 Yaya Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa Ou Le Soufisme Intégral De Madiina Gunaas (Sénégal)," Cahiers d’études africaines 14, no. 56 (1974), 671–98; Mamadou Dia, Islam Et Civilisations Négro-Africaines (Dakar: Nouvelles Éditions africaines, 1980), 130. 352 that stretch across Senegal and beyond its borders, forming a complex web of territory that is fundamentally misaligned and operating in parallel with the national boundaries of the region. The leadership of the town and its followers reject organization around national lines, with disciples across greater Senegambia who have regularly migrated to the community across colonial and national borders and who continue to travel internationally for a variety of religious occasions. The largest of these events is the daaka, a ten-day spiritual retreat held annually just outside the city. During the period leading up to the daaka, usually empty border posts wave through exclusively male caravans of pilgrims; and in 2004, one journalist estimated that 300,000 people attended the retreat.13 This pilgrimage is, however, merely the most visible example of a transnational connection that dates back over 80 years. The larger followers of Medina Gounass are known as the dental, a Pulaar word meaning community in its broadest possible sense and Figure 18. Location of Medina Gounass from Google Maps 13 Ibrahima Khaliloullah Ndiaye, “Medina Gounass: dans les secrets de la retraite spirituelle du ‘daaka,’” Le Soleil, April 23, 2004. 353 implying a level of organization and solidarity.14 The dental stretches across international lines, connecting followers in southern Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, Guinea, the Senegal River Valley, and further abroad.15 Both before and after independence, Medina Gounass’ citizens and leaders disengaged from governments, choosing to inhabit a territory defined not in virulent opposition to the state, but simply as apart from it. Victor Azarya and Naomi Chazan have pointed out four forms of state disengagement: suffer-manage, escape, parallel systems, and self-enclosure.16 In the case of Medina Gounass, those living in and moving to the community have clearly created a parallel system, with laws and political structures differing from the Senegalese mainstream. Yet, they have also escaped from their formerly colonized status and/or distant places of origin; and substantially enclosed themselves away from the French colonial and Senegalese states, even if aspects of that enclosure have become threatened since the 1970s. Unlike in the cases studied by Azarya and Chazan, these strategies and their multiplicity of uses have resulted in the creation of an alternative community that stretches across national borders. In a response to Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, Edward Tiryakian argues that the presence of charismatic religious figures was a crucial and neglected factor in the development of proto-nationalist movements globally, particularly in a variety of cases across Africa.17 Mamadou Saidou Ba qualifies as such a figure, however, his followers were not driven to rebel against the colonial state, nor was he exiled elsewhere. Instead, he sought to create a pure Muslim space outside of colonial and postcolonial control, within the geographic bounds of 14 For this definition of dental, see N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts face à la ‘modernité,’” 617. 15 Including Morocco, France, Spain, and the United States. 16 Victor Azarya and Naomi Chazan, “Disengagement from the State in Africa: Reflections on the Experience of Ghana and Guinea,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 29, no. 1 (1987): 106–31. 17 Tiryakian, “The Missing Religious Factor,” 1411. 354 Senegal but not mediated through the state itself. Rather than combat the state head-on, Ba and his followers chose to disengage, a decision both colonial and postcolonial states did not dispute. Much of our knowledge of the community comes from a 1964 dissertation written by M. Cheikh Ba, a Fulbe geographer who conducted research in the community on its human and physical geography. Included among this research was a household survey of the town, tracking when each family arrived in the community as well as their motivations for migration to Medina Gounass.18 Mamadou Saidou Ba himself only did one public interview, held in 1968 and published by Yaya Wane in 1974 alongside an article on the community in the Cahiers d’études africaines. In it, the ceerno expands on the community’s religious history, as well as Islamic practice in Medina Gounass and the rest of Senegal.19 This chapter is rounded out by colonial documentation, contemporary research on larger migration patterns, oral histories done by David Robinson in the 1960s and 1970s and by myself in 2017, and lastly by postcolonial newspapers and scholarship. Creating an Alternative Geography Those who pledge devotion to the religious leaders of Medina Gounass, but do not reside there, remain citizens of the states in which they live. However, their relationship to Medina Gounass allows them to temporarily escape state channels. As Bayart points out, “Actors are found neither in nor outside of the State. Rather, all actors, depending on circumstance, sometimes participate within a statist dimension and sometimes turn away from it.” The residents of Medina Gounass, for their part, turn away from the state on a daily basis, rather than just on occasion like the rest of southern Senegambia. In many cases across Africa, communities have taken the “exit option,” which, “when taken to extremes, leads to territorial sanctuaries.” While there are many types of such sanctuaries, Medina Gounass acts as both a religious and a political one, a place 18 Ba, “Un type de conquête.” 19 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa.” 355 where the rules of the Senegalese state do not apply. As Bayart points out—and as Scott has argued regarding parts of inland Southeast Asia—escape “is still one of the constituent strategies of the production of politics and social relations.”20 The communities of southern Senegambia as a whole can be seen as moving in and out of the state regularly, but only Medina Gounass has almost wholly walled itself off from the state. In other words, the form of territoriality centered around Medina Gounass is different from, but complementary to, that exercised elsewhere in southern Senegambia. Medina Gounass is a model of “communal self-management” as described in the 1970s by the Fulbe sociologist Yaya Wane. In the mid-1980s, the journalist Moriba Magassouba described the community as “an Islamic mini-republic,” and an “isolate.”21 However, though it is fair to say that it is isolated from the Senegalese state, the city’s tendrils extend far outside the borders of Senegal, creating larger communities of religious belonging in neighboring areas of the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea as well as elsewhere in West Africa. However, to characterize its influence as essentially or merely religious is to miss an important part of the picture, for Medina Gounass is almost exclusively a Fulbe community, and its international influence has spread through Fulbe networks. By its existence, it demonstrates the resilience of cross-border ties in the face of colonial and postcolonial efforts to restrict and monitor movement and reveals the fragility of states over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In short, Medina Gounass, its residents, and its followers demonstrate the ability of Fulbe people to create communities of belonging that are, for the most part, unencumbered by national boundaries. For its first forty years, Medina Gounass was a town of immigrants, and this religious movement, like other Fulbe 20 Bayart, The State in Africa, 245–49. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed. Mike McGovern makes a similar argument about communities in the Forest Region of Guinea. McGovern, Unmasking the State. 21 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 672. Moriba Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal: Demain Les Mollahs? La question musulmane et les partis politiques au Sénégal de 1946 à nos jours (Paris: Karthala, 1985), 48. 356 movement of the period, emphasizes the importance of rural-rural migration in African history, an important trend generally ignored by the emphasis on rural-urban migration and emigration out of Africa. Both Senegalese and foreign researchers have described Medina Gounass as unrepresentative of the rest of the country and even West Africa. Senegal’s first prime minister, Mamadou Dia, referred to the town as “an original creation.”22 It is generally considered a city apart from the rest of the region of Kolda, and it is geographically separated from the other important Sufi centers of Senegal, located in the center and north of the country. Many researchers have compared it to Touba, a much larger but similarly autonomous location in central Senegal.23 In both cases, colonial and postcolonial governments have given greater autonomy to Sufi centers of power than to the general population at large. However, despite Medina Gounass’ religious exceptionalism, when we view the community through the realm of its transnational ties, the community is of a piece with the rest of southern Senegambia. Like elsewhere, ethnic, religious and social networks have bound together people across borders, and those networks have been larger than any one particular group. From its founding, the community was defined by its transnational ties. Beginning in 1942, Medina Gounass hosted an annual religious retreat, the daaka, which welcomed Tijani Sufi visitors from neighboring countries. And since its founding, the primary road running from French Guinea’s Futa Jallon to southern Senegal passed through the community, putting it at an economic and social crossroads that served to bring more followers as well as economic gain to the city’s clerics. 22 Dia, Islam et civilisations négro-africaines, 127. 23 Vincent Monteil, Esquisses sénégalaises: Wâlo, Kayor, Dyolof, Mourides, un visionnaire (Dakar: IFAN, 1966), 191; Eric Ross, “From Marabout Republics to Autonomous Rural Communities: Autonomous Muslim Towns in Senegal,” in Steven J. Salm and Toyin Falola (eds.), African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2010 [2005]), 39; and Ross, “Marabout Republics Then and Now: Configuring Muslim Towns in Senegal,” Islam et sociétés au sud du Sahara: cahiers annuels pluridisciplinaires (2002), 35-65. 357 Notably, although religion has played a crucial role in encouraging migration to Medina Gounass, many people have come simply seeking economic opportunity and a better quality of life more broadly. The profile of immigrants to the community was different depending on their location of origin. For those coming from colonial Portuguese Guinea, political and religious aspects were most important in facilitating their movement. For those from Medina El Hajj, the town where Ba and most of the first migrants lived before founding Medina Gounass, family ties assisted migration. For migrants from Futa Toro and the Senegal River Valley, economics and shared cultural traditions primarily drove migration.24 One contemporary researcher cited a variety of reasons for migration into the town, emphasizing, “The importance and continuity of migratory movement, the low professional qualification of migrants and the decisive importance of economic motives pushing adult men, whatever their condition, to leave the [Senegal River] valley to seek work.”25 Whatever the reason, migrants—particularly those who crossed borders—escaped the states of the region, settling in a community virtually unencumbered by the national structures of their former states. In Medina Gounass, familial and ethnic ties have tended to mean that migrants have been welcomed; and over time this welcoming attitude has fostered a larger sense of community that encompasses not only the town itself but the villages across greater Senegambia from which migrants have come. This, in turn, has facilitated the additional mobility of people, whether temporary (e.g., pilgrimages) or permanent. Nevertheless, the strength of these cross-border ties has ebbed and flowed, alongside the political calculations of the region’s governments: most notably, the 2016 closure of his country’s border with Senegal by the Gambia’s president, Yahya 24 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 82. 25 Jean-Louis Boutillier, La moyenne vallée du Sénégal: étude socio-économique (Paris: I.N.S.E.E., 1962), 253. 358 Jammeh.26 Thus, Medina Gounass has disengaged from the Senegalese state while still being at times restrained by national boundaries. While migration into Medina Gounass has always been diverse, the patterns of migration into the town have changed over time. The initial founding of the community in 1935 came primarily from Fulbe migrants in the western Upper Casamance from the village of Medina El Hajj.27 Alongside these migrants were a substantial minority of Gaabunke Fulbe from Portuguese Guinea. From 1935 to 1945, most migrants came from Portuguese Guinea. The ten years after featured diffuse movement to this growing town in southern Senegal, primarily from within the Upper Casamance. Starting in 1955, massive numbers of Haalpulaar from northern Senegal and Mauritania arrived, changing the demographic makeup of the community substantially.28 The last period of massive immigration took place from the mid-1960s to the 1970s, with Fulbe from Portuguese Guinea arriving during the colony’s violent war for independence, and more Fulbe arriving from the Senegal River Valley.29 In the late 1970s, Senegal’s government underwent a campaign of decentralization, forcing Medina Gounass to open itself up to Senegalese political life. This corresponded with the death of Mamadou Saidou Ba in June 1980, and heated discussions about who would replace him as the spiritual leader of the community.30 While even today Medina Gounass does not interact regularly with the government of Senegal, it is very much a part of the modern world. Many of the community’s members have emigrated out of Senegal looking for 26 RFI Afrique, “Sénégal-Gambie: on est encore loin de la réouverture des frontières,” May 16, 2016 (last accessed at http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20160516-senegal-gambie-frontiere-negociations on August 19, 2019). 27 The founding of Medina El Hajj is mentioned in Chapter 2, and the founding of Medina Gounass briefly in Chapter 3. 28 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 72. 29 N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 627. 30 Dia, Islam et civilisations negro-africaines, 130. Ed van Hoven, “Medina Gounass: The End of a Religious Isolate,” Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) Newsletter 4 (1999), 25. 359 economic opportunity, and the town itself serves as an important smuggling node for goods going in and out of Senegal. The founding of a community The settling of Medina Gounass occurred in the context of a nearly two-decade search by Fulbe migrants for space in which they could establish autonomous religious communities. Unlike other religious movements of the period, these migrants sought not to topple colonial governments, but to live outside of them in small religious communities. In 1916, hundreds of Fulbe living in Portuguese Guinea crossed the border into Senegal after a dispute with the colonial government, who feared that their chief marabout El Hajji Aali Caam was seeking political power. This border crossing was conceived of as part of a longer tradition of fergo (self-imposed exile) for the purpose of achieving spiritual autonomy. These movements were similar to the movements of followers of Umar Tal in the mid-to-late nineteenth century fleeing French colonial expansion along the Senegal River Valley.31 However, unlike these movements, Caam did not seek to establish a larger state apparatus but simply a village of piety. In 1918, he founded Medina El Hajj as a village dedicated to work and religion that would operate outside of French colonial structures.32 As its population grew, fed by immigration from Futa Toro and the Gambia, more than 300 splinter villages formed.33 Caam emphasized political and economic control over Medina El Hajj and forbade the growing of rice.34 These migrants sought not just to be near the ceerno’s spiritual prestige, but to also stay at a distance from the expanding colonial states of greater Senegambia. 31 Fulbe cases of this are discussed in David Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid- Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), and John H. Hanson, Migration, Jihad, and Muslim authority in West Africa: The Futanke colonies in Karta (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 32 See Chapter 2. 33 Interview with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hajj, Senegal, February 20, 2017; Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 109. 34 Abderrahmane N’Gaïdé, “Stratégies d’occupation de l’espace et conflits fonciers en Haute Casamance (Kolda, Sénégal),” in D. Guillaud, A. Walter & M. Seysset (eds.), Le Voyage inachevé…à Joël Bonnemaison (Paris: Orstom, 1998), 6. 360 To these migrants as well as to Caam, spiritual, political, and economic autonomy went hand-in- hand. While many other marabouts of the early twentieth century had close (if often fraught) relationships with the French, Caam presented his followers with a different model: escape. The contrast of his approach to that of the “rising new star” of the era, Seydou Nourou Tall, is particularly stark. Tall was the grandson of the marabout, military commander and state-builder Umar Tal. His popularity grew throughout the 1920s, and his influence extended across French West Africa. However, Tall’s ability to preach across French territory without any hindrance was tied to his support of the French regime. 35 The French had seen Tijani marabouts like Umar Tal as “fanatics” in the nineteenth century, but in the 1920s they enjoyed good relationships with most of the important Tijani leaders, who by that time—rather than advancing their own territorial visions—accepted those of colonial governments.36 In 1927, a young marabout named Mamadou Saidou Ba arrived in Medina El Hajj in the Upper Casamance. Born in the village of Néré in the Mauritanian part of Futa Toro, Ba began to study the Koran with Cheikh Moussa Kamara in Ganguel along the Senegal River. He continued his studies in Thilogne under Caam, until the latter left for Portuguese Guinea in 1908, and after that, with Hamet Baba Talla.37 It was a fertile time to study in Futa Toro. Umar Tal had called for a hijrah or fergo out of Futa Toro into his new colonies in the late 1850s, and this was duly followed by a series of migrations out of French-controlled areas over the subsequent three decades, 35 On Seydou Nourou Tall, Garcia, “Al-Hajj Seydou Nourou Tall ‘grand marabout’ tijani”; and David Robinson, “Muslim societies in a secular space,” both in Robinson and Triaud (eds.), Le temps des marabouts, 247–54, 566. 36 Robinson, Paths of Accommodation, and Babou, Fighting the Greater Jihad. 37 Interview with Muhamadu Sayid Baa conducted in July 1968, from Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 680. Diadie Ba, interview with David Robinson, April 20, 1968. Cheikh Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 51. Al- Hajj Bokar Ba and Moussa Gueye, interview with David Robinson, April 5, 1968, Kaedi, Mauritania. 361 primarily to Nioro in western Mali.38 After the French colonel Louis Archinard conquered Nioro in 1891, however, the exiles’ independence came to an end, and the remainder of the 1890s saw most of them return to Futa Toro; this added prestige and support to the Tijaniyya just as Mamadou Saidou Ba was beginning his studies.39 Ba also spent time with Amadou Barro, an important Tijani marabout who settled in the coastal city of Mbour. Barro was also close to Caam, now in Medina El Hajj, whom Barro designated as his spiritual successor. Almost two decades after Caam left for Portuguese Guinea, Ba left northern Senegal for Medina El Hajj to rejoin his former teacher there, and Caam later named Ba as his spiritual successor.40 Upon Caam’s death in 1935, controversy arose about who was to succeed him. While Ba was Caam’s chosen successor, some objected to him as an outsider who had arrived to the community within the last decade. He therefore had not participated in the original founding of the town. Four of Caam’s children contested Ba’s selection, arguing that they should succeed their father. For many in Medina El Hajj, Ba was the natural choice, as he was substantially more renowned than Caam’s sons. Eventually, Caam’s son, Mamadou, replaced him.41 The district chief, Abdoul Diallo, did not like Ba, and according to oral histories, attempted to arrest him. However, Ba managed to escape with the help of Seydou Nourou Tall. Ba considered returning to Futa Toro, but was talked out of it by Tobo Balde, the chief of the Senegalese district of Pakane, which was along the border with Portuguese Guinea. Along with his followers, Ba avoided the 38 Robinson, The Holy War of Umar Tal. On Fulbe colonies in western Mali (French Sudan), and Hanson, Migration, Jihad, and Muslim authority in West Africa. 39 Ibrahima Abou Sall, “La diffusion de la Tijâniyya au Fuuta Tooro (Mauritanie-Sénégal),” in Jean-Louis Triaud and David Robinson (eds.), La Tijâniyya: Une confrérie musulmane à la conquête de l’Afrique (Paris: Karthala, 2000), 380–89. 40 Interview with Muhamadu Sayid Baa conducted in July 1968, from Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 680. Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 51. 41 N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts face à la ‘modernité’,” 621–22. Ba, “Un Type de Conquête Pionnière,” 51. Diadie Ba, interview with David Robinson, April 20, 1968. On the succession result, see ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 20. 362 major road that went between the region’s two major towns, Kolda and Velingara. He stayed near the border with Portuguese Guinea to avoid colonial authorities and headed to the east.42 Upon arriving in the eastern subdivision of Velingara, he was welcomed by the district chief of Kantora, Yero Sabaly. Sabaly had taken over Kantora in 1934 and wanted to attract migrants to his sparsely populated district. Sabaly happily welcomed Ba and his followers and gave them land in an isolated corner of the district near Senegal’s borders with Portuguese and French Guinea. Ba, for his part, viewed their migration to Kantora as part of a tradition of hijrah dating back to the Prophet Muhammad himself. 43 From this narrative, it is clear that both Caam and Ba exercised forms of territoriality grounded in religious practice that differed from those put forward by the French colonial government, which saw Senegal’s borders as fixed and inviolable. Ba began his religious community with about 1,100 settlers, all of whom had come with him from Medina El Hajj.44 After the founding of Medina Gounass, Medina El Hajj continued as a religious center, but with whose prestige was quickly swallowed up by this new burgeoning religious town. Those with close ties to the Caam/Thiam family remained, but most of the community followed Ba.45 In Medina Gounass, Ba set up a community to showcase his interpretation of proper Tijani practice. In the early 1960s, Cheikh Ba wrote that the community was characterized by “a puritanical form of the Tijani sect, a peaceful expansion of religion, isolation for meditation and working the land, [and] mistrust of the colonial administration who wanted to subordinate the most 42 Oumar Ba, interview with David Robinson, January 26, 1974. N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 622. 43 ANS 10D4/0015, Territoires de la Casamance, Cercle de Kolda, Rapport Annuel 1934, February 18, 1935, 8. Interview with Idrissa Sow and Mohamadou Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 1, 2017. Ba saw his movement as escaping persecution for his religious beliefs, just as the Prophet Muhammad had done. It also parallels the movement of his mentor, El Hajj Aali Caam, to Medina El Hajj. Ba writes that that Sabaly welcomed Ba to the area “with the main purpose of spreading the Word among its still animist citizens.” Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 51–52. 44 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 68. 45 Interview with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hajj, Senegal, February 20, 2017. The French referred to this family as “Thiam,” though Caam and Thiam are the same last name. Thiam is the French spelling of the phonetic (in Pulaar) Caam. In the Gambia the name is spelled Cham, and in Guinea-Bissau it is Tcham. 363 influential religious sects in order to use them politically.”46 In other ways, however, Medina Gounass was well integrated into wider Fulbe networks that spread outside of Senegal. For instance, the town was located at the center of smuggling routes from Senegal toward the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea.47 In 1936, perhaps anticipating the community’s future economic importance, the French colonial government established the first customs post in the area.48 The First Forty Years Patterns of migration to Medina Gounass have changed frequently since its founding in 1935, and thus its territorial networks have followed suit. We have ethnographic data for this movement for the period up to Cheikh Ba’s survey, conducted in the early 1960s. Of the community’s 133 founding families, comprising about 1,100 people, nearly four-fifths came from the town of Medina El Hajj, where Mamadou Saidou Ba had previously lived. Of the remaining twenty-eight families, all but two came from Gabú, the easternmost region of Portuguese Guinea. One family came from French Guinea, meaning that from its initial settlement Medina Gounass was tied to both its neighbors to the south.49 Medina Gounass’ first decade saw substantial growth, as 55 new families arrived in the rapidly expanding town. Of these families, almost two-thirds came from Portuguese Guinea. Cheikh Ba’s ethnographic research revealed the myriad of motivations migrants had. Immigrants to Medina Gounass discussed the harsh fiscal and economic regime enacted by the Portuguese as an incentive to leave for a community in French Senegal where they would be less burdened. They also criticized Fulbe chiefs operating under the Portuguese for reinforcing colonial power, while in Medina Gounass no such power existed. Among the other reasons cited for their departure was 46 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 52. 47 Oumar Ba, interview with David Robinson, January 26, 1974. 48 ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 22. 49 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 68–72. 364 “the fight against Islam” and “the division between sects” encouraged by the Portuguese authorities to decrease the power of Muslims and increase the influence of Christianity.50 Among the less political reasons cited by Gaabunke Fulbe migrants were better opportunity for pastureland for their herds and better soil for agriculture.51 The other nineteen families came from a variety of areas within greater Senegambia, including French Guinea and British Gambia. This decade also saw the first direct immigration from the Senegal River Valley, a trend that became demographically dominant later on. These migrations into Medina Gounass reflected a larger rejection of the colonial states of the region, and a desire to escape these states and create an autonomous space whose connections reached into neighboring colonies. By this point, in addition to its immigrant population, Medina Gounass already had many followers in adjacent districts of Senegal, the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea.52 The first daaka pilgrimage, held in the seventh year of the town’s existence, was arguably both a cause and an effect of its growing religious influence. However, the daaka was exclusive at first, primarily oriented to the family and friends of Ba.53 Starting in the mid-1940s, families started to arrive from even farther away. From 1945 to 1955, seventy-one more families arrived, bringing the total to 259. Movement was much more diverse than in the community’s first decade. These arrivals were much more diverse than those of the community’s first decade, with just fourteen families coming from Portuguese Guinea, alongside considerable numbers from elsewhere in the Upper Casamance, Futa Toro, the Gambia, 50 The Portuguese engaged in a deliberate strategy to play Muslims and non-Muslims against each other to prevent any larger solidarity. See Chapter 5. A Portuguese colonial report from 1958 said antagonism between Muslims and non-Muslims was key to averting “a collective racial consciousness.” PT/TT/AOS/D-N/25/13/2, Ministério do Exército, Direcçāo dos Serviços do Ultramar, “Relatório da missão à Guiné: Conclusões,” December 31, 1958. 51 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 73–74. 52 Ibid, 72. 53 On the founding of the daaka (spiritual retreat), see Gina Gertrud Smith, Medina Gounass: Challenges to Village Sufism in Senegal (Copenhagen: Books on Demand, 2008), 53. ANS 2G45/93, Cercle de Ziguinchor, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport Annuel, 1945, 2. On the early years of the daaka, Ndiaye, “Medina Gounass.” 365 and French Guinea.54 By 1950, Medina Gounass was the largest town in its subdivision, with a population of roughly 1,600, surpassing the capital, Velingara.55 This was a period of increased migration into the eastern Upper Casamance in general, as migrants from the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea crossed into the region attracted by its abundant farm and pastureland as well as the comparatively lax French government in the area.56 It was not just colonial rule or land that attracted them, but the lack of economic opportunities and health services in Portuguese Guinea encouraged many to migrate to comparatively better-off Senegal to the north.57 For many of the Fulbe migrants arriving in Medina Gounass, and in particularly those coming from Gabú in Portuguese Guinea, familial ties and ethnic and religious affinity for other Fulbe Muslims facilitated migration across colonial borders. This cross-border movement was seen not as exiting one colony or entering another, but as moving within a larger Fulbe space to areas where government would be less intrusive. As Cheikh Ba wrote, “Rare are the ‘Portuguese’ Fula [Fulbe] who, once arrived, do not find a part of their family in the village.”58 Migrants followed specific roads where they knew they would be less likely to be caught by the Portuguese colonial government while crossing the border. They generally followed two well-worn paths, stopping in particular villages along the way.59 Fulbe migrants throughout the larger region sought to disengage from colonial states and their exactions, with immigrants to Medina Gounass representing the most extreme version of this disengagement. 54 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 72. Other new regions of migration included the Sine-Saloum Delta just north of western Gambia (two families) and the Jolof region of central Senegal (one family). 55 ANS 2G50/107, Cercle de Ziguinchor, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport Politique, Année 1950, January 15, 1951, 3. 56 Van Hoven, “Medina Gounass: The End of a Religious Isolate,” 25. 57 José de Almada, “Àcerca de problemas indígenas da Guiné,” in Congresso Comemorativo do Quinto Centenário do Descobrimento da Guiné (Lisbon: Sociedade Geografia de Lisboa, 1946), Vol. 1, 212–14. 58 Carreira and de Meireles, “Quelques notes.” Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 75. 59 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 79. These routes were from Kankelefa in Portuguese Guinea to Paroumba, Linkering and Medina Pakane in Senegal, and from Pirada in Portuguese Guinea to Wassadou, Kounkané and Bonkonto in Senegal. 366 From the mid-1950s, “massive” numbers of Haalpulaar arrived in Medina Gounass from the Senegal River Valley; specifically, eighty-three out of the 120 families who settled there between 1955 and 1963. A diverse group of migrants also arrived from other areas, notably including another seventeen families from Portuguese Guinea. The migration of the Haalpulaar was due in large part to a “dramatic breakdown under the influence of the market economy.”60 Outmigration from the Senegal River Valley during this period was massive, primarily to the capital region of Dakar and the peanut basin of central Senegal; and by 1963, 20 percent of the population of the river valley had left.61 Limited quantities of land and the harsh desert climate exacerbated economic changes occurring across the region. A societal and cultural conservatism marked the region, resulting in “the general blockage of society by the caste system and the profundity of Islam’s penetration.” As a result, Medina Gounass came to be seen as a “promised land” for many Haalpulaar, especially those disadvantaged societally, albeit largely for economic rather than religious reasons. These migrations are similar to the way many marginalized groups fled Futa Jallon for other areas of southern Senegambia. Most migrants did not have professions outside of herding and basic farming, with the exception of a small number of fishermen.62 These movements followed two centuries of migration from the Senegal River Valley to the south, making many familiar with the routes to be traveled.63 60 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 72–76. 61 Abdoulaye Diop, “Enquêtes sur la migration Toucouleur à Dakar,” Bulletin de l’I.F.A.N., Série B, Tome XXII, nos. 3-4 (1960), 393–418. For a slightly later period, see André Lericollais and Marc Vernière, “L’émigration Toucouleur: du fleuve Sénégal à Dakar,” Cahiers d’ORSTOM XII, no. 2, 1975: 161–175. The outmigration was particularly prominent in the central part of the valley between Podor and Matam, with large-scale migration stretching out to Bakel. 62 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 77–83. According to Ba, the only other professional class to migrate to Medina Gounass were Hamananké Fulbe blacksmiths from Gambia. 63 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 76–77. Interview with Amadou Moussa Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 367 As of 1963, most of Medina Gounass’ population of almost 4,000 consisted of migrants from Portuguese Guinea and their descendants. Within that group, more than half had come via Medina El Hajj, and they formed an elite class within the town. Holding conservative religious views, they “imposed their lifestyle on the whole village.”64 The Haalpulaar formed about 30 percent of the population; and the remainder’s places of origin were scattered across Senegal, newly-independent Guinea, and the Gambia.65 Arguably the greatest commonality among the residents of Medina Gounass was the rurality of their heritage. None of the migrants were from urban areas, and the only resident of the community who had been educated in French-language schools was Mamadou Saidou Ba’s secretary, who facilitated the community’s dealings with the outside world.66 Even though migration was based in part on familial ties, immigrants to Medina Gounass came from a variety of villages. From Portuguese Guinea, at least thirty-four villages were represented, the largest of which accounted for eleven families. Immigrants claimed at least fifteen villages of origin in the Upper Casamance, as well as at least thirty different locations in the Senegal River Valley. In the case of the river valley, substantial numbers of people came from both the Senegalese and Mauritanian sides of the river. Like elsewhere in greater Senegambia, migration occurred both between colonies and within them. Travel to Medina Gounass in this early period was not easy. Most from Portuguese Guinea came by foot, or on rare occasions, by bike. Those coming from the western part of the Senegal River Valley took boats to the coastal city of Saint-Louis before taking a train across the country. Others far from major roads, rivers, or trains took donkeys for hundreds of miles. All of those arriving from northern areas were received in the city of Tambacounda—about 50 miles by road 64 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 123. 65 Ibid, 123. 66 Ibid, 70, 83. 368 from Medina Gounass—by regional delegates of Ba.67 Those coming from Guinea followed the national road to Senegal, but this became difficult after Guinea’s first president, Sékou Touré, closed the border with Senegal after independence in 1958. After the temporary reopening of the border in the early 1960s, migrants again relied on this road to bring them from Futa Jallon to Medina Gounass.68 By the early 1960s, Cheikh Ba noted, “The spiritual influence of the Ceerno [Mamadou Saidou Ba] has developed rapidly, particularly in recent years with the opening of the village to the outside, under the influence of the multiplication of ‘ziyara,’ [ziara] or visits of devotion, and the expansion of commercial relations.”69 These ziara, alongside the annual daaka, spread the influence of Medina Gounass across Fulbe areas of southern Senegambia, as well as to more distant parts of West Africa. People who came annually for devotional reasons returned home with stories of the town’s wealth and piety. Mamadou Saidou Ba, meanwhile, traveled to see his followers in the Senegal River Valley and to recruit new members for his community. He also visited other parts of Senegal, the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea, and operated a network of delegates in major population centers including Tambacounda, Matam, Dakar, and Bathurst (Banjul), as well as in Portuguese Guinea and the Futa Jallon region of Guinea.70 To varying degrees, the people he inspired to migrate to Medina Gounass remained connected to their places of origin, and thus were instrumental in the creation of a larger network of followers across Senegal and its neighboring countries. 67 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 81. 68 Ibid, 80, 226. 69 Ibid, 54. 70 Interview with Saidou Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. Saidou Ba is the grandson of Mamadou Saidou Ba, and the son of the current head ceerno, Amadou Tidiane Ba. On Ba’s delegates, see Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 231. 369 As early as the 1950s, the constant stream of immigrants into Medina Gounass led to shortages of land there, as the town grew to be the fifteenth largest in Senegal.71 Due to overcrowding, the community organized the clearing of the surrounding forest and the establishment of new villages focused on large-scale farming, primarily of groundnuts. Ba’s highly visible backing for these villages lent him “profound […] spiritual prestige”; and in 1963 it was remarked that “[t]here is not today a region of Senegal, the Gambia, and eastern Portuguese Guinea where Ceerno does not have disciples.”72 Simultaneously, villages loosely affiliated with Medina Gounass sprang up farther afield: north of the Gambia, along the Senegal River Valley, in Portuguese Guinea, and in Guinea.73 One village in this category, Fass, was founded in Portuguese Guinea in 1954 with Ba’s support. From the outset, like Medina Gounass, Fass designated itself a place of “pure” Sufism, where the tenets of Islam could and would be practiced without government interference.74 Following the outbreak of war in Portuguese Guinea in the early 1960s, tens of thousands of Fulbe fled across its borders, with some ending up in Medina Gounass following previous migrations. At the same time, migrants continued to arrive from the Senegal River Valley and eastern Senegal, leading the population of Medina Gounass to triple in a period of just six years: to 12,551 in 1971.75 Guinean Fulbe also moved there, primarily to escape the economic and political policies of Touré’s government, which branded them as traitors whose hierarchical 71 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 25–31. 72 Ibid, 61. 73 Ibid, 236. 74 Interviews with Ma Tidjani Sall, Yunusa Balde and Mama Salu Cande; Abibulai Boiro and Amadu Tidjani Cande; and Rubi Balde, Aissatu Balde, Maimuna Balde, Salimatu Boiro and Hawa Cande, Fass, Guinea-Bissau, April 6, 2017. 75 N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 627. Interview with Idrissa Sow and Mohamadou Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 1, 2017. 370 society and skill at private enterprise threatened Guinea’s modernization.76 Migrants arrived from the Gambia as well, though not in as significant numbers.77 Decentralization: Medina Gounass enters Senegalese politics For four decades, Medina Gounass’ religious importance and borderland location allowed it to operate essentially without reference to domestic politics, and thus without any serious challenge to its territorial vision. Then, in the mid-1970s, this isolation was threatened by the increased importance assigned to cotton production.78 Previously, Medina Gounass’ economy had centered on groundnut production: with Ba buying up the crop and selling it to outsiders on the community’s behalf, a process that effectively allowed him to control his people’s relationship with the formal Senegalese economy. Cotton cultivation, on the other hand, was first controlled by a French company, the Compagnie française pour le développement des fibres textiles (CFDT), and then beginning in 1974 by the Senegalese public-private enterprise, SODEFITEX (the Société de développement et des fibres textiles). In the 1960s, cotton cultivation increased rapidly in the town and by 1971, it was the largest cotton producer in all of Francophone West Africa.79 However, in 1975 Ba banned the cultivation of cotton, which he claimed “would lead to a serious reduction in women’s fertility.”80 However, others have speculated that he perceived cotton as a threat to his power, insofar as its cultivation would tend to integrate the community into the market economy and the outside world more generally.81 At around the same time, many Haalpulaar 76 Van Hoven, “Medina Gounass: The End of a Religious Isolate,” 25. For more on Fulbe emigration from Guinea, see Chapters 4 and 5. 77 Interview with El Haji Malick Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 1, 2017. 78 For more on cotton production in the region, see Sarah Hardin, “Developing the Periphery: Cotton Production, Pesticide, and the Marginalization of the Fulbe of Southeastern Senegal over the Twentieth Century” (PhD Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2013). 79 Ibid, 229. 80 Van Hoven, “Medina Gounass: The End of a Religious Isolate,” 25. 81 This is a disputed position. Some in Medina Gounass say that Ba stopped cultivating cotton in his own fields and others followed him in doing so, although it was their choice. Others claim that the pesticides used in the cotton 371 arrived in Medina Gounass as a result of worsening drought along the Senegal River. This gave rise to intra-Fulbe tensions, particularly involving the Haalpulaar, who looked down on the Fulakunda of southern Senegal as “recently Islamized.”82 The communal ban on cotton production, meanwhile, cut off a major source of income for the Fulbe in Medina Gounass, many of whom departed for villages in its hinterland where they continued to cultivate it while remaining relatively close to Ba.83 This was symptomatic of the fact that both the market economy and the Senegalese government had, over four decades, crept nearly to the edge of his community, threatening his community’s economic autonomy. In 1976, the Senegalese government embarked on a campaign of decentralization, with villages organized into small groupings known as “rural communities,” each managed by an elected council. This policy change further destabilized Medina Gounass, by involving it in electoral politics for the first time.84 Despite most of the townspeople refusing to place themselves on the voter rolls, the 1978 election can be seen as a tipping point in Medina Gounass’ isolation, at least in terms of national politics; and the net effect of widespread non-participation was that local politics were dominated by Haalpulaar.85 While almost 82 percent of Senegal’s voters cast their ballots for Leopold Senghor’s ruling Parti Socialiste (PS), Medina Gounass voted for the opposition Parti Démocratique Sénégalais (PDS).86 Some people even speculated that Haalpulaar officials in Medina Gounass hid the votes of Fulakunda Fulbe in order to throw the election in the PDS’s favor.87 Growing tension between different Fulbe groups within the town further really were harming women’s fertility, and a third opinion is that it was a question of food security and the need for the community to be agriculturally self-sustainable. Hardin, “Developing the Periphery,” 256–61. 82 Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 51. 83 N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 631. 84 Ross, “From Marabout Republics to Autonomous Rural Communities,” 259. 85 Dia, Islam Et Civilisations Négro-Africaines, 129. 86 N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 631. Sylvie Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 254–55. Interview with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 87 Interview with Thiedo Balde, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017. 372 incentivized the movement of Fulbe out into the surrounding area. Coupled with in-migration of more Fulbe from northern Senegal, this led to a rapid shift in the demographics of Medina Gounass, which at the time of writing is a primarily Haalpulaar community, despite its original Gaabunke and Fulakunda roots. Today, Fulakunda live primarily in the surrounding villages, where they engage in agricultural practices frowned upon by the religious leadership of Medina Gounass.88 These hinterland communities benefit from the town’s spiritual prestige, while at the same time engaging with—rather than seeking to escape—the mainstream of Senegalese society. This ongoing rejection of Medina Gounass’ doctrine of isolation has perpetuated long-standing tensions between its inhabitants per se and those who live just outside it. Beginning in 1979, due to rising intra-Fulbe tension, a series of violent clashes erupted between the Haalpulaar and other Fulbe groups in the area. Known as “the war of the rocks”, it resulted in the death of one Haalpulaar and ten arrests. In 1980, at least thirteen people were shot and killed in the immediate vicinity of the daaka, and additional deaths in the surrounding villages were reported; and from this point onward, Fulakunda began to withdraw from the daaka, leaving it a primarily Haalpulaar event. The “cotton war” followed in 1983, and resulted in one death and at least two injuries, and conflict continued throughout the 1980s and 1990s.89 A rift between Haalpulaar and other Fulbe groups persists, but it is currently non-violent, and most Fulbe in southern Senegambia appear able to separate this tension from their religious attachment to Medina Gounass’ clerics.90 88 Interview with Saidou Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 89 “Les pages sanglantes de l’histoire de Medina Gounass: de la pierre au kalachnikov,” Sud Quotidien no. 2118, April 26, 2000, 2; Interview with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 90 Interview with Thiedo Kande, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017 373 Making Muslims, Controlling Citizens Mokhtar Sow left his village in Mauritania for Medina Gounass in the early 1970s, having heard it would be a good place to live from others who had visited for daaka. He left his cattle and other belongings in his village with his brother, and upon arrival was welcomed by Mamadou Saidou Ba, who gave him land and a place to live. Because he did not know how to farm, he worked as a cattle herder. Despite being Muslim, he also knew very little about Islam before arriving; he had not studied the Koran as a child, and said that he only properly learned about the religion upon his arrival.91 Another immigrant, El Haji Malick Ba, arrived in 1967 from the Mauritanian side of the Senegal River in Futa Toro. He left his wife behind to migrate to Medina Gounass and claimed that he knew a hundred other men who had done the same. Upon reaching the town, he was given land, and the community’s leadership organized a new marriage for him. For those coming from Mauritania and other West African countries, it was not difficult to immigrate to Senegal or to become naturalized as citizens there.92 The people of Medina Gounass agreed to follow a particular form of Islamic practice articulated by Ba. Upon their arrival, would-be settlers presented themselves to the community for “definitive asylum” or fergo. Ba’s belief was that this particular form of self-imposed exile would allow the community to practice Islam “properly.” After being welcomed by Ba, the prospective immigrant entered a probationary period, during which he—solo migrants were almost exclusively male—lived with the unmarried men within Ba’s household. His behavior would be monitored, especially the punctuality and regularity of his attendance at the mosque. On a semi-regular basis, he would also meet publicly with the marabout, and receive the following instructions: Guest, welcome to Medina Gounass, Muslim and Tijani village. We welcome you among us, for the love of God, and with the following conditions: you must accept our discipline 91 Interview with Mokhtar Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 92 Interview with El Haji Malick Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 1, 2017. 374 [… and] frequent the mosque with everyone […]. If you accept these conditions, you can now consider yourself a Medina inhabitant, of the same title as the oldest inhabitants of this place.93 Upon accepting these conditions, the applicant would be referred to “the Minister of Housing,” who would help him choose a place of residence.94 Public prayer was obligatory. To further separate itself from the Senegalese state, Medina Gounass established its own time zone, which was ahead of Senegal’s official time by between 45 and 55 minutes, depending on the position of the sun, as determined using a system of rods in the “Arab manner.”95 From the founding of the community, Mamadou Saidou Ba sought to differentiate Medina Gounass from the Islam of the wider region. As members of the community told Cheikh Ba, at the founding of the village no sacrifices were “performed to conciliate the ‘spirits of the earth.’ The religious content is no longer the same, it is a monotheistic religion and not a ‘religion of the earth.’”96 The purpose of this differentiation was to draw a distinction between Medina Gounass and the newly Islamizing Fulbe of the wider region, most of whom were still not Muslim as of the community’s founding in 1935. Unlike other parts of southern Senegambia, there were no sacred forests in the area, although it is unclear whether that was a prohibition or a byproduct of the sparse population of the area prior to the establishment of the community.97 Religion was to permeate every aspect of life, not just as a system of beliefs, but through rules of conduct and action that would extend through political, social and economic life. Magassouba described this as a “rigorous and intransigent Tijanism” that rejected the “liberal and modernist” Tijanism located in urban centers closer to centers of power like Dakar and Kaolack. Medina Gounass was to serve as an 93 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 678. 94 Ibid. 95 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 142. 96 Ibid, 57. 97 On the spread of Islam during this period, see Chapters 2 and 3. On the lack of sacred forests, see Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 60. 375 “ideal Muslim city” and “a new Pakistan.” The Pakistan reference refers to the translation of the country’s name: “land of the pure.”98 This purity alluded not just to Islamic practice but by the supposedly unspoiled character of Medina Gounass, which was inside the boundaries of Senegal but not politically controlled by it. Therefore, the town did not just set itself in opposition to colonial governance, but the postcolonial state as well. However, Ba was not happy with the progress of this “new land of the pure.” During his interview with Wane in July 1968, Ba expressed his frustration that as what he saw as Medina Gounass’ impropriety. He emphasized that the strict segregation of men and women was necessary to maintain Islamic piety. He pointed out, Below the village, there is a river. Men bathe there with women, shirtless; they wash their clothes there, their heads uncovered. I advised them to wash their clothes at home several times. Stubborn as they have always been, they continue to go there. I can only advise them, but not constrain them. Fortunately, some hear my advice and stay at home.99 Women were to serve only as wives and mothers, living reclusively in their homes. When leaving the house, they were required to veil. The only man who was allowed to know a woman’s face and “the sound of her voice is her husband and master.” Women were to give complete obedience to their husbands, and to be segregated from men both spatially and economically. After the last prayer of the day, women could not leave their homes until dawn. As Wane wrote, this was part of “the norms of Islam such as Medina Gounass practices, without reserve nor nuance.”100 On the other hand, Mamadou Saidou Ba believed women should not be bullied into changing their activities, as this would not be productive. 101 98 Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 42–49. 99 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 689. 100 Ibid, 674–75. Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 141. 101 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 674–75, 690. 376 The annual daaka took place and continues to take place outside of the community, so as to not be “corrupted” by the presence of women.102 Moreover, Koranic education occurs along gender-segregated lines. For many who immigrated here, men and women mixed freely in their communities, which was and continues to be the case for the area surrounding Medina Gounass as well.103 In order to facilitate marriages and thus, in theory, reduce the possibility of immoral behavior, bride prices were minimal in the town; for those who could not pay, Ba himself would pay.104 Punishments for adultery were harsh, and differed for men and women. Men were fined and brought in front of the mosque to receive corporal punishment. If they refused the punishment, they would be banned from the village for two years. On the other hand, if a woman committed adultery, she was to be taken to a special space in the marabout’s home and stoned by her husband until he was satisfied. He could not divorce her unless she recommitted adultery, in which case their marriage was dissolved and she was “condemned to celibacy,” or she would leave the village to escape the community’s scorn.105 The large portion of immigrants from Futa Toro were accused of holding superstitions, which was explained by “the lack of organization of Muslims, and by the inexistence of a single chief of all the Muslims, at least those of our country.”106 This reference to the lack of a “chief of all the Muslims” indicates Ba’s desire for a larger Muslim political community, although he never sought to confront the postcolonial Senegalese state with this aspiration. As for gris-gris—amulets with Koranic verses sown into cloth pouches—Ba argued that they were not forbidden unless marabouts used them to harm another person, and that it was forbidden to charge for a gris-gris 102 Interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 103 Interview with Mokhtar Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 104 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 678–79. 105 Ibid, 679. 106 Ibid, 689. 377 unless the marabout knew it would actually work.107 Ba attempted to centralize religious leadership so as to impose his view of piety on his community, both those living in Medina Gounass and among his followers outside the town. Ba was critical of many of the other Sufi brotherhoods of Senegal, and of Islamic practice in Senegal more broadly. Of the Muridiyya, he said, “I do not consider them as Muslims, since their religious practice, in my opinion, leaves something to be desired. This big error is due to the weakness, even the ignorance, of their marabouts.” The only exception to this intellectual weakness, according to Ba, was the founder of the Muridiyya, Amadu Bamba, and the religious leader and teacher Basiiru Mbaake of Diourbel, who had died two years prior.108 Ba also criticized the followers of Ibrahim Niasse, who he believed prayed incorrectly in a way that negated their devotions.109 He took issue with Senegalese who studied in North Africa, and upon returning, disparaged Senegalese Islam. Ba classified them as Wahhabis, and as a sort of unbelievers who “mediocrely” practice Islam. According to the ceerno, “We consider the Muslims instructed in French schools more pious then them.”110 Despite Ba’s criticism of Wahhabism, Eric Ross finds Wahhabist practices an apt comparison for the cleric. He writes that Ba went to southern Senegal “in order to bring its ‘wayward’ Peul [Fulbe] inhabitants back to the ‘Straight Path’ of Islam.” He thus complicates consideration of Medina Gounass as a Sufi town, since, “Though Tierno Seydou Baa was a Tijâni shaykh, his social project had far more in common with Wahhabism than with Sufi spiritual fulfillment.”111 The theology of the community has tended and continues to blend 107 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 692. 108 Ibid, 686. 109 Ibid, 689. The followers of Niasse have several names but are generally referred to as the Faydah Tijaniyyah (Tijani Flood), the Talibé Baay (disciples of Baay, or father), or colloquially in Senegal as the Niassènes (followers of Niass). Rüdiger Seesemann, author of a biography of Niasse, refers to the community as the Jama’at al-fayda, or the Community of the Divine Flood. Seesemann, The Divine Flood: Ibrahim Niasse and the Roots of a Twentieth- Century Sufi Revival (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 110 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 686–87. 111 Ross, “From Marabout Republics to Autonomous Rural Communities,” 261. 378 Sufi mysticism with a particularly harsh, legalistic form of everyday practice and organization, which has led to the comparisons to Wahhabism. The leadership of Medina Gounass attempted to restrict secular entertainment—dance, music, etc.—and alcohol and tobacco were (and are) forbidden. They banned wrestling, and radio programs were broadcast solely in Arabic and focused on religion. Children were also not supposed to play games. However, this often proved impossible as members of the community pushed back in small ways. By the early 1960s, the introduction of radios reduced Medina Gounass’ separation from the outside world, as programs in Pulaar and Arabic connected residents of the community to Fulbe and other Muslims in the wider area. A likely apocryphal story elucidates Ba’s reputation as a man uninterested in worldly (i.e. political) concerns. According to Mouhamed Moustapha Kane, Senegal’s first president Leopold Senghor visited Medina Gounass and offered Ba anything he wanted. The religious leader responded, “You can’t [give me that], because what I want is to have you convert to Islam and shave your head.” In this telling, Senghor later said about Ba, “kii, moy marabout,” which in Wolof means, “this one, he is the (true) marabout,” because he could not be bought off with money or government investments.112 When asked about the practice of French education, Ba responded, “I occupy myself only with the practice of my religion.” While he believed “the French school is very useful in the world,” as it formed the basis of many modern professions, he also stated, “Man did not come into the world to learn, to have a job, and thus eat well, buy clothes and satisfy his parents, his friends and the poor. He must above all else learn Koran and Islamic law, in order to know fully the domain of God and the enacted obligations that man must apply to the letter.”113 Even today, Medina Gounass’ marabouts see it as an isolated model to the Muslims of West Africa, because outside of the 112 David Robinson, personal communication with Mouhamed Moustapha Kane, November 25, 1986. 113 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 682. 379 community, “People have not thrown away their customs yet.”114 The town’s marabouts continually refuse the imposition of government schools in French because they believe it would lead to a decline in religiosity. One ceerno, Abdoul Hayou Diallo, said that members of the community were welcome to send their children outside of the village to receive a French education, but that they would not be allowed to do so within the village.115 The presence of nearby Fulbe villages suggests not just growing discontent with the community’s leadership following the cotton ban, but also with Ba’s larger religious and political project. For new migrants fleeing drought, these conditions may have seemed a small price to pay for the economic support of Medina Gounass’ clerics. But for those born in the community or who arrived as children, the restrictions often proved stifling. Some left Medina Gounass seeking economic opportunities or relief from the long list of religious proscriptions. Those who remained often expressed their resistance in secret, as even today Medina Gounass’ leadership inculcates a sense of loyalty, at least in open conversation.116 The primary opposition to these religious restrictions came from the youth of the community, who found themselves more aware of larger trends in the region. In 1983, a series of “revolutions” arrived in Medina Gounass. As Magassouba wrote, “Many girls have traded the chador (a type of head covering) for blue jeans or a skirt and go dancing on Saturdays to reggae or disco music, and some young people do not even hide smoking.” The introduction of electricity into the community alongside the installation of a post office furthered these changes the next year. These young Fulbe were intentionally provocative with their behavior, an attitude that would have been unthinkable fifteen years earlier.117 The 114 Interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 115 Ibid. 116 Interviews with Thiedo Balde, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017; and with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017. 117 Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 52. 380 primary threat to Medina Gounass was internal dissension over religious norms, not the external imposition of the political power of the Senegalese state. Autonomy in a Religious Border Community During the colonial period, the community’s interactions with the French government were few, and it featured in only a few scattered references in colonial reports. A 1936 annual report mentions that the town had been founded, and in 1945, Mamadou Saidou Ba was mentioned as the only important marabout of the Velingara subdivision.118 Despite being the same area’s largest town, Medina Gounass did not even feature in a 1950 colonial map. The next year, a French report cited the town as “an interesting agricultural community.”119 Oral histories shared by members of the community tell a similar story: that the French colonial government did not dare to interfere in Medina Gounass, perhaps in fear that if they did, Ba would lead his followers both inside and outside of the community away, across one of the nearby borders.120 In any case, colonial governments made no effort to challenge Medina Gounass’ territorial vision, and did not establish any governmental structures in there, even as the town grew to be the second largest in the region. At independence, the community remained essentially outside the administrative purview of the new state of Senegal, which initially attempted—without any success—to establish that Medina Gounass existed within its confines. Within the town, such efforts were generally greeted with disdain. As Cheikh Ba put it in the early 1960s, “The hatred of everything official is in some cases a form of refusal. Witness the ‘rejection’ on the part of the Ceerno of the proposal made by the administration to build in the village a [medical] dispensary 118 ANS 2G36/79, Kolda, Rapport politique annuel, 1936, 20. 2G45/93, Cercle de Ziguinchor, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport Annuel, 1945. 119 ANS 2G50/107, Cercle de Ziguinchor, Subdivision de Velingara, Rapport Politique, Année 1950, January 15, 1951, 3.2G51/144, Synthese Trimestrielle, 1er Trimestre 1951, Le Gouverneur du Sénégal, May 29, 1951. 120 Interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 381 and a twinned school.” As of the early 1960s, the nearest representative of the Senegalese government was a lone agent of the Comité Régional d’Assistance pour le Développement who was based about 40 miles away. This agent would come into town twice a year, at the beginning and end of the rainy season, to distribute and collect seeds for groundnut production. On such occasions, Ba’s secretary served as an interpreter—and at other times as a makeshift doctor and meteorologist, despite having no formal training in any of these fields. Cheikh Ba also discussed the larger “spirit of autonomy of the Fulbe and the aspiration to an orthodox Islamic culture,” which he saw represented Medina Gounass’ distinctive time zone and radio broadcasts in Arabic, which was also its only written language (though Mamadou Saidou Ba’s secretary translated his correspondence into French to facilitate communication with the outside world). In short, Ba and the rest of the town’s leadership “jealously conserved and defended, with a great deal of relentlessness, the autonomy it […] gained since its founding.”121 Moreover, this autonomy continued even as the community’s marabouts lost hold of its economy in the face of growing integration into wider markets. Despite Medina Gounass’ administrative apartness, its leadership was unable to stop the infiltration of new products and desires over the course of the 1960s. In and of themselves, these commodities—radios, bicycles, refined sugar, Chinese green tea, coffee—seemed innocuous enough; but collectively, they brought the town into a closer relationship with the rest of Senegal, as well as with other neighboring countries. Given Medina Gounass’ outside ties of ethnicity, language and religion, it was never truly isolated. Yet, its loss of control over the importation of particular products did alter it in meaningful ways. Young men who left the village for a period of time to go “to Senegal” exerted “a certain influence” over their peers; knowing basic Wolof or 121 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 141–42, 241–42. 382 French enhanced their status, and Cheikh Ba went so far as to describe this as a “crisis of ‘liberation’ that some young people go through.”122 In order to learn certain professions, it was necessary to leave the community, opening migrants up to the wider world. It was also necessary to leave the community to learn certain professions. In the late 1960s, Amadou Moussa Diallo left Medina Gounass for the Gambia, where he apprenticed as a tailor. After thirteen years there, he worked as a tailor in Dakar, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Mali before eventually returning to Medina Gounass. Diallo noted that even today, because children in the community do not study French, they have difficulties with assimilating into the modern economy.123 In the early 1970s, Wane described Medina Gounass as “a true model of communal self- management since its founding.”124 While Ba still led the community spiritually, he delegated its day-to-day management to his subordinates. The village chief, Mamadu Yoro Jallo, was in effect “a Minister of the Interior, charged to transmit to the population the general directives of the grand ceerno” as well as being responsible for tax collection. These taxes went to another ceerno, Usmaan Caam, a “sort of Minister of Finances” who also served as the “Minister of Foreign Affairs,” in charge of relations with the Senegalese state. In addition to his dual ministerial role, Caam’s lineage gave the community further spiritual legitimacy, as he was the son of Ba’s mentor, El Hajji Aali Caam.125 Additionally, there was a Minister of Religious Affairs (in charge of Islamic education and propaganda), a Minister of Work and Housing and a Minister of Agriculture.126 122 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 242–43. 123 Interview with Amadou Moussa Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 124 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 672. 125 Hardin, “Developing the Periphery,” 244. Hardin also points out that Caam coordinated agriculture as well. 126 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 674. 383 The leadership of the community also managed its internal and external commerce, supervised the activity of the marabout’s stores, and organized the transportation of imports and exports.127 As Wane emphasized, It should be reiterated that this administrative organization, which runs smoothly, is entirely out of the official state structures now found in all the bush villages. To be honest, Madiina Gunaas is a virtually independent village, which ignores services such as schools, dispensaries, police, agriculture, animal husbandry, etc. […] Madiina Gunaas, more than ignoring the said services, has duly challenged them since colonial times, and the administration of independent Senegal has had the good taste not to override it, but to recognize the autonomy of the village and to let it pursue a sociological and economic experiment that is without a doubt one of a kind.128 The reluctance of the state to challenge Medina Gounass’ autonomy allowed it to create an alternative imagined community to that put forward by the state of Senegal. As such, Medina Gounass is a part—albeit the most extreme one—of a larger project of belonging stretching across the borders of southern Senegambia. Moreover, the parallel state structures of the town were only one element of Medina Gounass’ larger spatial project of creating an alternative, not-Senegalese territory. Even today, the only formal relationship between the city and the Senegalese state is through tax collection, performed by local officials and reported to the national government in good faith. This disconnect between the people of Medina Gounass and their internationally recognized government has been facilitated by community’s leaders banning direct relations with the Senegalese state since its founding.129 Despite this and other efforts to prevent corruption by “Occidentalization,” however, the Senegalese government recently established a hospital on the 127 Wane, “Ceerno Muhamadu Sayid Baa,” 674. 128 Ibid, 674. 129 Interviews with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017, and with Saidou Ba, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. On the banning of direct relations, N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 629. It is unclear how this order could be enforced. 384 outskirts of the city: a development that was welcomed by local residents, who apparently did not share their leaders’ disdain for modern medicine.130 While Wane and others have been right to point out the exceptional aspects of Medina Gounass, the community’s distance from the Senegalese state is part of a larger story of autonomy in the southern Senegambian borderlands. Though other communities did not have their own ministers, they did withdraw from the Senegalese, Gambia, and Bissau-Guinean states in meaningful ways. The story of Medina Gounass connects to a lengthier history of individuals, families and communities searching for autonomy in borderland spaces. The lack of a French- language school throughout the history of Medina Gounass may, in theory, have separated it from the rest of the wider region. However, because the town is known by Fulbe communities as a center of Islamic learning, it is connected to the wider region through a series of Islamic learning networks. People throughout the region of Kolda send their children to study the Koran in Medina Gounass, as do many Fulbe in neighboring areas of Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Guinea.131 Medina Gounass’ autonomy is also evidenced by its harsh gender-segregation policies and public punishments for consuming alcohol and tobacco, which do not apply in the rest of Senegal. Anyone found guilty of theft is whipped publicly, and local ordinances continue to accord with a particular interpretation of Koranic law.132 Gina Gertrud Smith argues that Medina Gounass 130 Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 49. I observed the hospital on my visits to Medina Gounass in March and April 2017. Cheikh Ba discussed the health problems present in Medina Gounass in the early 1960s. Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 148–49. 131 Interviews with Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hajj, Senegal, February 20, 2017, Bocar Embalo, Samba Saidi, Mamadjang Embalo, and Tidjani Djau, Mafanco, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017; and Bouraima Sow, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. On Guinea, Mohamadou Mountaga Diallo, “Frontières, strategies d’acteurs et territorialités en Sénégambie. Cas des frontières Sénégal- Gambie et Senegal-Guinée Conakry,” (PhD Dissertation, Université Montpellier III, 2014), 191. 132 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 145; Smith, Medina Gounass, 26; Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 48; interview with Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 385 “others” the Senegalese state and its “constitutional ethos of civil liberties and egalitarianism.”133 And even as the increasing integration of Medina Gounass into national politics has inevitably brought it into closer relations with the Senegalese state, migrants leaving the community for overseas destinations have reinforced its economic autonomy, via remittances with a significant aggregate value.134 Cross-Border Ties, Then and Now Perhaps the key to Medina Gounass’ strength as an autonomous religious community were its connections across borders. Within fifteen years of Medina Gounass’ founding, it had undergone “a spectacular development that […] brought fame beyond national borders.”135 As of the early 1960s, it had long “turned its back to the Casamance, orienting all its activities toward Tambacounda and Dakar, the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea”; and by their nature, its bicycle routes across borders were difficult for customs officials to police; favored cross-border contacts; and generally strengthened “the conception of the inexistence of borders that the Fulbe of the village have.”136 Roads leading west to the remainder of the Casamance, north toward the Gambia, and south toward the two Guineas also reinforced the town’s strong regional viewpoint. And from a point less than a mile from the Gambia’s border, a major road went east to Tambacounda, a key stopping point both on the way to Dakar and on routes eastward toward Kedougou, Matam, and into Mali. Because of its central location near three borders, Medina Gounass was well positioned to attract followers in neighboring countries, giving it a transnational religious prestige as well as access to economic opportunities. 133 Smith, “Self-Identification and Othering Among the Senegalese Fulfulde Speaking People and Others,” in Stanislaw Grodz and Gina Gertrud Smith (eds.), Religion, Ethnicity and Transnational Migration between West Africa and Europe (Boston: Brill, 2014), 58. 134 Van Hoven, “Medina Gounass,” 25. 135 Magassouba, L’Islam au Sénégal, 48. 136 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 202–3. 386 Given Ba’s origins in Futa Toro, he was well connected to religious and political leaders in the region, and so too was his community. In 1951, Ba facilitated the visit of a ceerno from Futa Toro to Medina Gounass and the upper Casamance.137 In the early 1960s, Tierno Seydou Kane of Futa Toro heard that 35,000 people were visiting Medina Gounass annually, and by 1971, he claimed that number had risen to 50,000.138 Unsurprisingly, this influence cut both ways: Ba also regularly traveled to Futa Toro to preach and proselytize, and as of 1968, one part of Ganguel in Futa Toro was noted for being full of his followers.139 As we have seen, he also preached and appointed delegates in neighboring territories.140 In the easternmost part of the Gambia, the Upper River Region, Ba—aided by the common threads of Fulbe language and culture—convinced many Fulbe to adopt the particular path of Medina Gounass, rather than that of competing Sufi orders. In Sare Bojo, the Gambia, Ba is credited for having strengthened Islam through his visits in the 1950s and 1960s.141 Ahmadou Fadel Kane notes that the whole east of that country, and “all the Upper Gambia, settled by Toucouleur [Haalpulaar] and Fulbe,” belonged to “the Gounass allegiance.”142 The cross-border ties created between Ba’s followers and his successors contributed to the development of a strong sense of religious solidarity among Fulbe in much of the Gambia, southern Senegal, and eastern Guinea-Bissau. Medina Gounass’ greater Senegambian ties were also reinforced by the migrants who moved to the community. As discussed earlier, from its founding in 1935 until the mid-1970s, Fulbe migrants arrived mostly from the western part of the upper Casamance, from Portuguese Guinea, and from the Senegal River Valley. However, there 137 ANS 2G51/144, Synthese Trimestrielle, 1er Trimestre 1951, Le Gouverneur du Sénégal, May 29, 1951. 138 Tierno Seydou Kane, interview with David Robinson, July 2, 1971. 139 Diadie Ba, interview with David Robinson, April 20, 1968. 140 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 231. Abdoulaye Kane, “Global Connections in a Sufi Order: Roots and Routes of the Medina Gounass Tijaniyya,” Paper delivered at the international symposium on Religion and Migration, November 25–27, 2010, 4. 141 Diallo, “Frontières,” 208. 142 Kane, “Les frontières,” 1821. 387 were other secondary centers in Guinea, the Gambia, eastern and central Senegal, and the Sine- Saloum delta.143 Until the mid-1970s these ties were based on permanent migration, itinerant preaching, and pilgrimages to Medina Gounass, but over the last forty years only the preaching and pilgrimages remained as the era of mass immigration in the community ended. On January 23, 1971, Ba arrived in the border town of Ouassadou, less than four miles from Portuguese Guinea. His plan was to minister to his followers on both sides of the border before proceeding deeper into Portuguese Guinea to visit his followers in Pirada and Paunca. While some from Portuguese Guinea clandestinely crossed the border to see him in Senegal, however, the latter country’s government refused to allow Ba to enter Portuguese Guinea. Portuguese reports from this time mention that Portuguese Guinea’s independence leader, Amilcar Cabral, and Guinea’s President Touré had both sent emissaries to Ba in an effort to establish good relations with him. Cabral allegedly even offered to pay for the damage done by his soldiers to Medina Gounass’ splinter village, Fass.144 During the instability that characterized the late 1970s, Medina Gounass became tied more closely to both the Senegalese government and the market economy, in ways that also brought it into a closer economic relationship with Senegal’s neighbors. This period included the reopening of the Guinea-Senegal border in 1978, in the wake of Touré’s decision that Guinea could no longer be walled off from the outside world. This further strengthened the connections between Medina Gounass and Guinea, as people passed more easily through the town, once more on the primary route from Futa Jallon to the Casamance. The opening of the border furthered both religious and economic linkages, reinforcing Medina Gounass’ strength and autonomy relative to the Senegalese state. 143 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 69–70. 144 AHD/3/MU-GM/GNP01-RNP/S0411/UI08238, Informação No. 142, January 29, 1971. 388 In 1980, Senegal’s former prime minister Mamadou Dia noted that Medina Gounass had ties not just to neighboring countries, but to Mauritania, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, and even as far away as Cameroon. In recent years, the current leader of the community, Amadou Saidou Ba, has welcomed delegations from every region of Senegal, a variety of countries in West Africa (especially Mauritania), as well as further abroad like France and the United States.145 Mohamadou Mountaga Diallo considers Medina Gounass “a factor in bringing border peoples closer together and [something that] contributes to the consolidation or even the creation of sociocultural links.”146 It is a place where populations from various countries come together religiously, although these connections within the city of Medina Gounass itself are tempered by tension within Fulbe populations. Nonetheless, the religious connection created among Fulbe between the Gambia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau and border regions of Guinea has helped build a larger sense of belonging separate from national identifications. Medina Gounass still has a strong hold on many border communities across the region to this day. In Sare Bojo, the Gambia, most people in the town travel to Medina Gounass on an annual basis for religious festivities and to show their devotion to the community’s spiritual leaders.147 Koranic schooling has also helped foster regional ties, as students arrive in Medina Gounass annually from every surrounding country and from across southern Senegal. Today, Medina Gounass’ local connections with Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia are its strongest. Fass148 in Guinea-Bissau, today a town of roughly 5,000 people, fashions itself as a smaller version of Medina Gounass, created in its image. As in Medina Gounass, Fass’ most 145 Dia, Islam et civilisations negro-africaines, 129. N’Gaïdé, “Les marabouts,” 626. 146 Diallo, “Frontières,” 208. 147 Interview with Souleymane Saidy, Alassan Mbaye, and Doro Sy, Sare Bojo Medina Mbaye, Gambia, July 19, 2017. 148 Fass refers to Fez, the location of the grave of the founder of the Tijaniyya, Ahmed al-Tijani. 389 important person is not the (essentially ceremonial) village chief, but the chief ceerno. The laws of Fass are not exactly the same as those of Medina Gounass, but likewise rely on a rigid interpretation of Islamic law. Women do not work outside the home, even in agriculture. Religious leaders in Fass have no objection to community members sending their children to Portuguese- language schools elsewhere, but like those of Medina Gounass, they will not allow such a school to operate within their community. Even though Guinea-Bissau, unlike Senegal, is not a majority- Muslim state, Fass has, since its founding, experienced few if any problems with the Portuguese colonial and postcolonial governments. Unlike Medina Gounass, however, Fass is not on an important economic axis, nor does it profit from large numbers of remittances, leaving it impoverished in comparison to the community on which it models itself.149 In many other parts of Guinea-Bissau, people proudly mention their family ties to Medina Gounass, and its importance in their lives;150 and across eastern parts of the Gambia, too, Medina Gounass (or the idea of it) serves as a crucial connective tissue among Fulbe people within and outside the country.151 Historic connections between particular villages and Medina Gounass often rely around a particular religious leader. In the town of Fatoto, people credited a particular Ceerno Alassan from Medina Gounass as serving as an important Koranic teacher. As Medina Gounass’ influence has grown, its annual daaka has become as much a giant transnational market as a spiritual event: a place where you can both pray and buy a motorcycle free of customs duties.152 Some parts of Senegal even send caravans to the retreat, as explained by Abdoulaye Kane: “The daha [daaka] caravans leave the Senegal River Valley villages where 149 Interviews with Ma Tidjani Sall, Yunusa Balde and Mama Salu Cande; Abibulai Boiro and Amadu Tidjani Cande; and Rubi Balde, Aissatu Balde, Maimuna Balde, Salimatu Boiro and Hawa Cande, Fass, Guinea-Bissau, April 6, 2017. 150 Interviews with Bocar Embalo, Samba Saidi, Mamadjang Embalo, Tidjani Djau, Mafanco, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017; and Idrissa Balde, Galomaro Cossé, Guinea-Bissau, April 21, 2017. 151 Interview with with Bouraima Sow, Fatoto, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. 152 Interview with Thiedo Balde, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017. 390 lorries and buses filled with human beings head East. The followers in Dakar organize also caravans with several buses most of which are given by the government.” A 2004 Le Soleil report that 300,000 people attended daaka mentioned that a large proportion of these visitors were from Futa Toro, Futa Jallon, and Macina in Mali.153 One journalist estimated that in 2017, 1,900 buses and other vehicles arrived for it, primarily from Senegal, but many from Guinea-Bissau as well.154 Because of the tensions among Fulbe groups around daaka and its reorientation as a primarily Haalpulaar event, other Fulbe groups have gravitated toward the ziara. However, these lines are often blurred, with many Gambian Fulbe coming to daaka each year; and in the case of the ziara, the intra-Fulbe tensions at work in the daaka have taken on a religious bent, with Fulakunda Fulbe clerics arguing that the ten-day length of the daaka is contrary to the precepts of the Koran. And, though many Fulakunda come to sell food and goods during daaka, they generally do not take part in its spiritual aspects.155 Medina Gounass’ transnational ties also extend past West Africa. Ba was aligned closely during his life with Ceerno Mamoudou Barro from the coastal Senegalese city of Mbour, who he studied under as a young man.156 Mamadou Barro’s son, Tierno Mansour Barro, born in 1925, began to lead spiritual retreats among the Fulbe diaspora, first elsewhere in West Africa, then later in Central Africa, before finally making his way to Europe in the 1970s. Abdoulaye Kane writes of the younger Barro, “Hearing reports of spiritually-ambivalent Haalpulaar [Pulaar-speakers] youth in France, Tierno Mansour assigned himself the mission to save the lost souls of Haalpulaar youth in France.” The target was not conversion of course, but Muslims themselves, who were 153 Ndiaye, “Medina Gounass.” 154 Interview with Thiedo Balde, Kolda, Senegal, February 11, 2017. 155 Interviews with El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, Senegal, February 26, 2017; Souleymane Kande, Aliou Kande, Bocar Mballo, Biaye Balde, Pathe Balde and Mama Samba Mballo, Medina El Hadji, Senegal, February 20, 2017; and Mamajan Jallow and Abdourahmane Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 14, 2017. 156 Al-Hajj Bokar Ba and Moussa Gueye, Interview with David Robinson, Kaedi, Mauritania, April 5, 1968. 391 “believed to be in need of reintroduction to purer and more orthodox forms of Islam.”157 Because many of these migrants could not afford to return to Senegal regularly, Tierno Mansour Barro began to hold an altered version of Medina Gounass’ daaka in Mantes-La-Jolie, in the western suburbs of Paris. Tierno Mansour also went several times to Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Gabon, the Central African Republic, and both the Democratic Republic and the Republic of the Congo in order to preach to Fulbe migrants there.158 Economics Beyond Borders As the above discussion suggests, Medina Gounass’ relationships across borders have never been exclusively religious. Within its first decade of existence, the community became closely tied-in to economic networks both within Senegal and across its borders. As of the early 1960s, the second most important place in the community—after only the central mosque—was the intersection of the Guinea and Aynémadi roads, a center for commerce circulating between the Futa Jallon highlands of Guinea and Tambacounda in southeastern Senegal. Traders reaching Tambacounda could then continue on to Dakar. At the time, only one market existed in Medina Gounass, which was open from 7 AM to 7 PM. In this market, goods from Guinea and Senegal passed through on their way to the rest of Senegal or southward to Futa Jallon. After the closing of the Senegal-Guinea border in 1958, this shifted regional trade patterns away from Guinea, although some were still able to clandestinely cross the border.159 When the border reopened a few years later, stores in Medina Gounass came to profit again from Guinean trade. In the early 1960s, according to Cheikh Ba, “At least every two days trucks pass coming from Labé or Mamou […] laden with bananas, oranges or kola nuts destined for the Senegalese 157 Kane, “Global Connections in a Sufi Order,” 4–5. 158 Ibid, 5–7. 159 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 89. 392 markets.” The Upper Casamance served as an important waypoint for goods moving across the wider region, either circulating from Guinea to northern Senegal, or between Portuguese Guinea and the Gambia.160 Products coming from the Gambia and Portuguese Guinea included matches, powdered milk, fabric, drinks, jewelry, and bicycles. Arriving from Guinea were the aforementioned kola nuts, oranges and bananas. Moving south into the town from the transit town of Tambacounda were fabric, hats, flashlights, drinks, canned milk, foodstuffs, and bicycle parts. From the rest of Senegal, especially Dakar, came a variety of clothing and building items, rice, construction materials, household products, oil medicine, and many others. Moving north to Dakar through Tambacounda were groundnuts, fruits, bamboo fencing, palm wood, and bamboo poles. Imported products moving through Medina Gounass were sold in surrounding villages.161 While Medina Gounass has always attempted to isolate itself from the rest of the upper Casamance, which it has generally regarded as not sufficiently or properly Muslim, the development of cross-border economic ties through the 1950s and 1960s brought the community into closer relationships with its neighbors. Immigrants from other colonies and countries used their ties to facilitate economic relationships through family and other connections. These relationships were noted for their lack of concern with national borders.162 At least through the 1970s, Mamadou Saidou Ba controlled commerce directly: most trucks coming in and out of the community were owned by Ba himself, as were most of the small stores in the town. Initially, groundnuts grown in the community were sold directly to the ceerno or to traders coming from Velingara or Tambacounda, through colonial commercial houses; and after the implementation of the “Plan du Sénégal” in 1961, Ba bought the groundnuts directly from local producers for 15 160 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 215–16. 161 Ibid, 220–21. 162 Ibid, 221–22. 393 CFA/kilo, before reselling them to official cooperatives for 18–20 CFA/kilo depending on the set government price.163 In recent years, commerce in Medina Gounass has increased substantially, due to the establishment in 1997 of a weekly market in Manda, less than fifteen miles to the north of the town and less than a mile from the Gambian border; goods brought to Manda from Guinea have to pass through Medina Gounass. Along this market road today, one can observe a variety of products coming from the cities and towns in Guinea to be distributed in Medina Gounass and across the Upper Casamance.164 Transnational Smuggling The movement of goods through Medina Gounass by extralegal means has played a crucial role in the town’s development dating back to the colonial period and has contributed strongly to the power and wealth upon which it relies to maintain its distance from the governments of the region. Senegal’s French rulers always found it difficult to monitor the movement of imported products across its borders, and from its foundation, Medina Gounass was in a key position at the center of contraband routes to the Gambia, and Portuguese and French Guinea. During the 1960s and 1970s, merchandise from those three countries coming into and through Medina Gounass remained almost entirely outside of government supervision, despite the existence of customs posts.165 Since at least the 1970s, individuals in Medina Gounass would travel to the Gambia regularly to buy goods that were cheaper there, or simply unavailable in Senegal.166 The movement of goods across Senegal’s borders with virtually no oversight represents a subversion of the country’s sovereignty, and an acceptance that religious communities like Medina Gounass are in some ways autonomous from the Senegalese state. Much like the cross-border movement of goods 163 Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 221–22. 164 Diallo, “Frontières,” 264, 403. 165 Oumar Ba, interview with David Robinson, January 26, 1974. Ba, “Un type de conquête pionnière,” 223–24. 166 Interview with Mokhtar Sow, Medina Gounass, Senegal, April 29, 2017. 394 elsewhere in the region, these actions are seen as acceptable, even if the state views them as illegal.167 The illicit movement of goods across borders was aided by the historic relationship between religious leaders and smuggling in Senegal. As Samba Ka pointed out, “Senegalese religious towns and religious leaders […] have played an important role as relay centers and as operators and protectors of smugglers. The towns are de facto free ports, since customs agents are not allowed to operate.” He also noted Medina Gounass, in particular, as a “safe haven for smugglers.”168 After violence broke out in the early 1980s in Ziguinchor, smugglers who had been based in that region moved their trade routes further east. Many of these routes centered on the eastern Gambian town of Basse, from which goods would be moved south through Medina Gounass toward Guinea via Fulbe networks. Religious leaders’ interest in cross-border trade was widely noted, and after the 1989 failure of the Senegambia Confederation, they were even invited to pray for good relations between Senegal and the Gambia and the reopening of the border between the two countries.169 Governments in the region, most notably Senegal’s, made few efforts to suppress smuggling networks. Such was the depth of the relationship between religious leaders and smuggling that one newspaper article declared, “Customs agents that venture into religious centers know beforehand that their actions are futile and even prejudicial to their department.”170 In most post-independence border posts, customs agents were few, and underpaid. Guinean customs agents were particularly well known “for their lax behavior, bribery, complacency, and extreme 167 As referenced elsewhere in this dissertation, this is a key point by many, including Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience, and Flynn, “‘We Are the Border.’” 168 Samba Ka, “Rich entrepreneurs, poor economies: Smuggling activities in Senegambia” (PhD Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 1994), 42–43. 169 Ibid, 71, 134. 170 Le Soleil, March 2, 1992. 395 negligence.”171 Senegalese customs officers were better, but still easily bought off, especially when religious leaders were involved. As of 1998, some smugglers regularly brought large amounts of merchandise from the Gambian capital of Banjul and crossed the border heading for Medina Gounass. The standard bribe to customs agents at that time was 250,000 to 300,000 CFA, roughly $400–$500. By the end of the twentieth century, Medina Gounass was essentially a “free zone.”172 In response to the Senegalese government’s returning of contraband to smugglers, an article in Wal Fadjri warned that the state’s authority was being tested: “The whole department of Velingara is sitting on a powder keg called Medina Gounass.” 173 The relationship between Senegalese religious leaders and the government vis-à-vis religious commercial enterprises dated back to the colonial period, when Muslim leaders encouraged and supervised large-scale peanut production. Fanchette described Medina Gounass as “a significant commercial hub […] [and] the largest warehouse for Gambian and Guinean contraband in Senegal.”174 According to many in the town and surrounding area, including the head ceerno’s son, customs officials will let you through without any trouble if you are going to Medina Gounass. According to Saidou Ba, the religious leaders of the community have developed an understanding with border officials on the basis of “politics,” i.e., agreements with government officials not to bother those visiting or returning to the community.175 Essentially, therefore, the leadership of Medina Gounass operates a customs- free town on the fringes of the Senegalese state. However, there are limits to what the government will allow. In 2016, the commandant of the gendarmerie in Kolda Ousmane Nguer barred the road 171 Ka, “Rich entrepreneurs, poor economies,” 124. 172 Sylvie Fanchette, "Désengagement de l'État et recomposition d'un espace d'échange transfrontalier: la Haute- Casamance et ses voisins," Autrepart 19, no. 3 (2001), 98–103. 173 “Rebellions, clandestinité, fraudes, meurtre: prémisses d'une instabilité à l'africaine au Sénégal,” Wal Fadjri 3295, March 8–9, 2003. 174 Fanchette, "Désengagement de l'État,” 104. 175 Interviews in Medina Gounass with Saidou Ba, April 29, 2017; and Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Senegal, March 3, 2017. 396 leaving Medina Gounass, in an attempt to stop the trafficking of fraudulent and stolen goods. He seized items worth an estimated 13.55 million CFA ($23,000), including five tons of sugar and twenty barrels of oil. Sources told Wal Fadjri that all of it came from one merchant based in eastern Guinea-Bissau.176 Conclusion On April 12, 2017, on the fifth day of daaka, the ten-day spiritual retreat held outside of Medina Gounass, a fire spread rapidly through a group of temporary wood-and-thatch structures housing pilgrims, killing twenty-nine. The pilgrims to daaka, primarily Fulbe, come from several countries in West Africa, and—increasingly—from Morocco, France, and beyond. Due to water- supply problems, fires were a regular occurrence in the decade leading up to 2017, but this was the first fatal one.177 Though the lack of any response from the Senegalese government contributed to the deadliness of the blaze, it also represented the disconnect between Medina Gounass and the state of Senegal. Since their town’s foundation in 1935, the actions of the people of Medina Gounass have demonstrated an alternative territorial vision to those put forward by colonial and postcolonial governments. This geography implicitly rejects the territorial visions of Senegal and its neighbors, and instead connects Fulbe communities in southern Senegambia, the Senegal River Valley, and elsewhere. The persistence of these networks, coupled with the building by Medina Gounass’ residents of what amounts to a shadow state, disengaged from the colonies and states of their birth, highlights the incomplete nature of the region’s various nation-building projects. Since the mid-1970s, the Senegalese government has begun to encroach on Medina Gounass; and yet, the town’s territorial vision and numerous other facets of its de facto independence have survived. 176 Wal Fadjri, “Kolda – 5 tonnes de sucre et 20 bidons d’huile saisis par la gendarmerie,” April 21, 2016. 177 RFI Afrique, “Sénégal: le bilan de l’incendie de Médina Gounass s’alourdit,” April 16, 2017, http://www.rfi.fr/afrique/20170416-senegal-bilan-incendie-medina-gounass-dakar-morts (accessed March 26, 2020). 397 This geographic vision complements the other cross-border forms of belonging present throughout southern Senegambia. Though Medina Gounass is an extreme example of autonomy in a border region, similar principles are at work across the region. Since Senegal’s independence in 1960, Medina Gounass has been cited repeatedly as an exceptional town, isolated from the outside world. This chapter shows that this view needs to be reassessed. While Medina Gounass’ autonomy from the Senegalese state is in many ways exceptional, there are other ways in which the town’s history parallels that of surrounding areas of southern Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and Guinea. Like much of the surrounding region, Medina Gounass has existed both within and across national borders. Its connections have been and continue to be as much to surrounding countries as to Senegal. Since the community’s founding, religious and economic life in Medina Gounass has primarily been a regional affair. Moreover, although Medina Gounass’ formal shadow state structures are unique in the region, the continued desire for autonomy in border regions is much more the norm in this part of Senegambia than the exception. As Bayart argues, throughout Africa many have treated the “exit option” as a viable alternative to engaging in state structures.178 While those merely visiting Medina Gounass exit the Senegalese’s state’s orbit only partially, the waves of migrants that settled there from 1935 until the mid-1970s experienced this process as exiting their various states of origin—Senegal included. The continual migration of Fulbe to Medina Gounass from throughout greater Senegambia have created and entrenched territorial networks crisscrossing Senegal’s borders with the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and even Mauritania. As a result, much of the Fulbe population of surrounding countries, especially Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia, pledge their allegiance to the Medina Gounass path of the Tijaniyya. The town has thus been able to establish 178 Bayart, The State in Africa, 256. 398 and perpetuate its autonomy due in large part to the strength of its religious community throughout Senegal and the African diaspora. While the high percentage of immigrants from the Senegal River Valley differentiates Medina Gounass from other parts of southern Senegal, many of the same border dynamics have been at play in both the city and the wider region. People have married and developed relationships across borders, used the border to move goods outside of state control, and crossed the border in times of struggle. In other ways, Medina Gounass is truly an exception. Its insistence on a modified version of sharia law, its explicit refusal to allow many formal government institutions like French- language schools, and its often-violent tension between Fulbe groups originating in northern and southern Senegambia have not been the norm for the region. The community has been able to establish and continue this autonomy because of the strength of its religious community, throughout Senegal and in the African diaspora. Senegal’s current president, Macky Sall, even attends daaka regularly. In short, Medina Gounass’ power, measured especially in terms of its ability to ignore the Senegalese state, is arguably as strong as it has ever been. Regardless of the extreme nature of Medina Gounass’ autonomy, it reflects a larger regional vision of cross-border belonging much greater than just the town or its followers. Like the rest of southern Senegambia, Medina Gounass has pushed back against colonial and postcolonial ideas of territorial belonging and national rootedness, and while its residents are mostly citizens of Senegal, the Senegalese state is nearly absent within the community. 399 Conclusion: The Postcolonial Incorporation of Citizens: Territorial Belonging Reconsidered I have argued in this dissertation that territorial forms of belonging often do not align with the boundaries of modern states. While states often view this misalignment as a problem to be solved—primarily through the inculcation of national identity—this dichotomy need not be a drawback. For the residents of southern Senegambia, national boundaries have served to delineate one state from another, but also to create opportunities on both sides. Different currencies, political regimes, and infrastructures have also served to promote consistent boundary crossing. Yet in other ways, this boundary crossing exists within a larger territory, one that I have referred to as southern Senegambia. The exact bounds of this space are less important than its central place in the imagination of southern Senegambians. This is a territory, whether it is recognized by any state as such. Just as nation-states are imagined communities, so too is southern Senegambia. As Benedict Anderson writes in Imagined Communities, language has a “capacity for generating imagined communities, building in effect particular solidarities.”1 The imagined community of southern Senegambia is not just about language, but about familial, ethnic, and religious ties.2 Islam served an important role in deepening belonging over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, particularly in keeping host-guest relations strong throughout southern Senegambia as well as further to the west in the border between the Lower Casamance and the Gambia.3 While one’s place of birth was important, “strangers” could be incorporated into communities in the Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau, or found their own communities on unoccupied land.4 Though 1 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 133. Emphasis in the original. 2 On the omission of religion on the idea of imagined communities, see Tiryakian, “The Missing Religious Factor.” 3 Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, 273. 4 One example of this is the village of Fass Kahone in southern Senegal. The village was founded by Alpha Balde, a Bissau-Guinean migrant to Senegal who originally settled in the village of Oumar Afia before continuing further north in search of a more isolated space. Interview with Alpha Balde, Fass Kahone, Senegal, January 16, 2017. 400 Chapter 5 of this dissertation ended in the early 1980s, ideas of belonging have continued to adapt in the past four decades. This conclusion argues that cross-border belonging continues to be strong as a result of postcolonial political, economic, and social developments, and that the idea of fluid or flexible citizenship still has value today in southern Senegambia. Dating back to the precolonial period, the movement of southern Senegambians reflects an alternative conception of territoriality and sovereign space than that of the governments of the region, who attempted to shape movement in ways they saw fit—a “kinetocracy,” in the words of Rossi.5 By doing so, these territories—whether precolonial kingdoms/polities, French, Portuguese, and British colonies, or independent Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea—have sought to exercise exclusive control over the “legitimate ‘means of movement.’” This supposed domination of movement is structured through identification cards, and above all else, the passport.6 Of course, there is always a gap between behavior the state deems legitimate and the behaviors those living within the boundaries of the state deem licit. In many cases, individuals can deem something illegal but licit.7 In situations where the state is relatively absent, the “second economy”—actions outside formal state control—can substantially outweigh the “first economy.”8 During the colonial period, this differentiation between illegal and illicit had an even greater resonance in the face of colonial efforts to impose a government and economic system from outside. In the era after World War II, colonial intellectuals like Senghor and Césaire criticized colonialism as limiting the possibility of political forms in Africa.9 In their eyes—and in the view 5 Rossi, “Kinetocracy.” 6 Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. 7 Roitman, Fiscal Disobedience, 5, 21. 8 MacGaffey et al., The Real Economy of Zaire, 11. 9 Wilder, Freedom Time; Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation. 401 of many others—sovereignty need not be unitary and imposed from above.10 They knew, as Carnegie points out discussing the Caribbean, that the modern nation-state “imposes a certain homogeneity on its citizens” and that “[n]ationalism both presumes and demands a fundamental sameness.”11 In East Africa, Somali peoples imagined a diversity of political futures that did not need to rely on a model of territorially-bounded sovereign states.12 As colonies mostly gained their independence or in a few cases became folded into the metropole as legally equal spaces, they took a variety of forms. Some federations within larger colonies collapsed, while others became individual states.13 Under Senghor, Senegal briefly attempted to take part in the Mali Federation, before political differences split the federation in two. Many have lamented the failure of these federations, seeing the complete victory of the modern nation-state as a lost opportunity to rethink the relationship between peoples, territory, and governments. In The Nation and Its Fragments, Partha Chatterjee laments the failure of postcolonial states to reimagine political formations, The result is that autonomous forms of imagination of the community were, and continue to be, overwhelmed and swamped by the history of the postcolonial state. Here lies the root of our postcolonial misery: not in our inability to think out new forms of the modern community but in our own surrender to the old forms of the modern state. If the nation is an imagined community and if nations must also take the form of states, then our theoretical language must allow us to talk about community and state at the same time. I do not think our present theoretical language allows us to do this.14 Autonomous forms of imagination of course have and continue to exist. Communities exist that do not align to the bounds of nation-states but accept living inside of them. The communities of this dissertation are one such example. Through mobility and migration—whether permanent or 10 Cooper, Citizenship between Empire and Nation, 10. 11 Carnegie, Postnationalism Prefigured, 3. 12 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders, 10. 13 The Dutch East Indies became the independent state of Indonesia, while French West Africa and French Indochina separated into their constituent parts. 14 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 11. Emphasis my own. 402 temporary—southern Senegambians constructed an alternative community across borders, whose patterns changed as political, economic, and environmental conditions shifted. Nationalist movements have been an important part of the development of colonial and postcolonial African states and are worthy of the significant number of studies devoted to their analysis. However, these histories leave a substantial proportion of the population out of the narrative. Though southern Senegambians were at times drawn into nationalist sentiments, their integration into various nation-states was incomplete. This was due to a variety of factors, some imposed from outside, but others generated from the actions of Fulbe and others in the borderlands of Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea. Throughout Africa, the idea of national territory and of the liberation of particular geographic territories has had incredible significance. SWAPO in Namibia, FRELIMO in Mozambique, the ANC in South Africa, and most important for this study, the PAIGC in Portuguese Guinea, all operated from neighboring territories in an effort to liberate their imagined communities from colonial and/or white-majority rule. Not only did these movements wage war for independence, they operated governments in exile.15 In the case of the Western Sahara, Polisario continues to operate the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) from exile in Algeria.16 For these movements, national territory and the dream of national sovereignty sustained drawn out, and for the Western Sahara still incomplete, journeys to decolonization.17 For those states that progressed more smoothly from colonial to postcolonial rule, nationalist movements still privileged a particular, territorial conception to sovereignty and citizenship that left many 15 Williams, National Liberation; Tague, Displaced Mozambicans; and Ellis, External Mission. The broad literature on Guinea-Bissau’s war for liberation discusses the PAIGC in Guinea and Senegal, but no book-length study focuses primarily on the PAIGC in exile. The most thorough and non-contemporary history of the war is Dhada, Warriors at Work. 16 Wilson, Sovereignty in Exile. 17 A similar “incomplete” movement is of activists who rejected the inclusion of British Togoland into Ghana, and its separation from French Togoland. Skinner, The Fruits of Freedom. 403 unsure of their place in new, soon-to-be nation states. What place did seasonal migrant workers have in new African democracies? Or those who migrated or whose families had migrated during the colonial period? Discourses of autochthony and definitions of citizenship proved crucial to large proportions of the population in the postcolonial period. Nugent argues that the “margins”— by which he means peripheral, border regions of states—defined both colonial and postcolonial state-making.18 The question that remains is how did borderland residents shape their own identities—national, transnational, ethnic—in a world of constant mobility? Though the actions of states are important to study, this dissertation focuses on the world southern Senegambians built through their movements and decisions about state engagement and disengagement. Through this selective engagement, Fulbe and others created closer bonds while still at times participating in nationalist projects in the decades before and after independence. In this work, I have primarily focused on the Fulbe of southern Senegambia. However, they are not the only inhabitants of the region, and it is important to not “Fulanize” the story of the region, just as accounts of the Mandinka-centered kingdom of Kaabu often feature hegemonic discussions of “Mandinkization,” or discussions of Senegal focus on the larger “Wolofization” of the country.19 As a result of the greater influence of Wolof-speakers (whether ethnically Wolof or otherwise), Pulaar-speaking communities in northern Senegal have pushed back through linguistic activism, promoting their language through literacy, theater, and radio. They have done the same in Mauritania, pushing back against the dominance of Hassaniya Arabic in that country.20 As I discussed in the introduction, there are many terms in Pulaar to refer to communities or national 18 Nugent, Boundaries, Community and State-Making in West Africa. 19 I criticized the idea of Mandinkization in Chapter 1. For a contemporary critique of narratives of the Mandinkization of the Jola, see Steven Thomson, “Revisiting ‘Mandingization in Coastal Gambia and Casamance (Senegal): Four Approaches to Ethnic Change,” African Studies Review 54, no. 2 (2011), 95–121. On the Wolofization of Senegal, Diouf, Histoire du Sénégal. 20 John Hames, “‘A river is not a boundary’: interplays of national and linguistic citizenship in Pulaar language activism,” Canadian Journal of African Studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines 51, no. 1 (2017), 103–122. 404 structures: including dental (community in its broadest sense) and lenyol (lineage, ethnicity, nation, or people). The territory of the state is referred to as leydi, meaning country but also land, territory, or earth. The concept of both sides of the border as a particular territory, lineage, or people could potentially indicate a desire for a unified political territory that reflects the bounds of the leydi, dental, or lenyol. However, Fulbe and other southern Senegambians have not asked for nor fought for a larger territory that represents their interests. Unlike in the Lower Casamance in southwestern Senegal, there is no Fulbe secessionist movement in southern Senegambia.21 There is no irredentist movement either calling for the unification of Fulbe territories in southern Senegambia or in Fulbe communities across West Africa. Secessionism exists in many parts of Africa,22 yet southern Senegambian communities have not shown any outright hostility toward the “national order of things.”23 Rather than actively seek to change the territorial landscape, southern Senegambians have recognized the opportunities provided by living in between states. Pulaar-language activists in northern Senegal and southern Mauritania argue “maayo wonaa keerol” (“water is not a boundary”).24 This refers to the Senegal River that separates Senegal from Mauritania and that which in theory could be expected to divide Pulaar-language speakers on both sides of the border. The actions of southern Senegambians suggest an addition to this statement is worth making: “frontière/fronteira/border wonaa kéérol,” meaning “the border is not a boundary.” The Pulaar 21 There are many works on separatism in the lower Casamance, including Jean-Claude Marut, Le conflit de Casamance: ce que dissent les armes (Paris: Karthala, 2010); and Vincent Foucher, “Cheated Pilgrims: Education, Migration and the Birth of Casamançais Nationalism (Senegal)” (PhD Dissertation, University of London, 2002). Mark Deets makes a convincing argument that previous works have primarily focused on elite nationalist and separatist discourses and ignored the wishes of the larger public. Mark William Deets, “Mapping a Nation: Space, Place and Culture in the Casamance, 1885–2014” (PhD Dissertation, Cornell University, 2017). 22 For example, see the recently published Lotje de Vries, Pierre Englebert, and Mareike Schomerus (eds.), Secessionism in African Politics: Aspiration, Grievance, Performance, Disenchantment (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). 23 Malkki, Purity and Exile, 1–2. 24 Hames, “‘A River Is Not a Boundary,’” 105. 405 term kéérol implies a difference between two places that southern Senegambians do not recognize in their use of borrowed French, Portuguese, and English words for borders. The border is a line that separates states, but it does not separate people. The boundary is therefore as porous as people want it to be.25 Figure 19. Canhamina, Guinea-Bissau, border crossing with Senegal 25 The photo above was taken by the author on March 2, 2017. 406 The concept of transitional or cross-border belonging is an obvious one for most border- dwellers. Despite national sentiments, Agotime communities on both sides of the Ghana-Togo border continue to come together for festivals and major events, even if more than a half-century of independence has created ideas of the difference between Ghanaians and Togolese.26 In many cases, as Asiwaju argues, “From the viewpoint of border society life in many parts of Africa, the Partition can hardly be said to have taken place.”27 While this point is valid, it misses the point that in many cases borders in the colonial and postcolonial world have often brought borderlanders together. Though ties existed between Fulbe and others in southern Senegambia, colonial rule unintentionally brought even more incentive for movement and the development of a cross-border civil society. The border could at times have saliency, especially when governments closed it, or when violence on one side of the border threatened to spill across to the other side. It was at these moments where governments intruded most on cross-border life. While postcolonial governments had more legitimacy than their colonial predecessors, that legitimacy did not suddenly transfer to the border that separated individuals and communities from family, friends, and religious leaders. Perhaps the best comparison for the cross-border forms of belonging southern Senegambians have developed since the late nineteenth century are religious communities. Throughout Africa, communities practicing African traditional religions, Christianity, and Islam operate across borders, mostly disregarding the limits of particular states.28 Scholars of African history have discussed the ways in which religious movements have worked to build communities across borders, and in the impact that religious communities in different colonies and states have 26 Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, Chapter 13. 27 Asiwaju, Partitioned Africans, 4. 28 These borders are not crossed only by land, but by sea or air as well. The Muslim hajj to Mecca is one such example. Many Senegalese Tijani Muslims also make pilgrimages to Fez, Morocco, to see the tomb of the order’s founder, Ahmed al-Tijani. 407 had with each other.29 The dynamic between foreigner and citizen is less meaningful when one crosses the border regularly for naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals, among other lifecycle rites.30 While discourses of autochthony and skepticism of “foreigners” may not be a problem in southern Senegambia, in other African states nationalist sentiment and border controls have led to more complicated feelings on the other side of the border. In Burkina Faso and Ghana, postcolonial citizenship laws and narratives of who is properly Burkinabe or Ghanaian have heightened already- existing tensions about the proper inhabitants or owners of particular tracts of land.31 Regional Organizations and Territorial Belonging In May 1975, fifteen West African countries came together in Lagos, Nigeria, to sign the Treaty of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). As part of the treaty, they institutionalized the reality on the ground in many parts of West Africa; while these relatively new governments had the right to exercise sovereignty over their territory, they could not discriminate within the larger West African community. Article 27 of the treaty, entitled “Visa and Residence,” featured two clauses. The first states, “Citizens of Member States shall be regarded as Community citizens and accordingly Member States undertake to abolish all obstacles to their freedom of movement and residence within the Community.”32 While this was wishful thinking—the Senegal- 29 Among many others, for Islam, see Lansiné Kaba, The Wahhabiyya: Islamic Reform and Politics in French West Africa, 1945-1960 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974); Ousman Murzik Kobo, Unveiling Modernity in Twentieth-Century West African Islamic Reforms (Boston: Brill, 2012); and Hanretta, Islam and Social Change. Derek Peterson connects the East African revival movement with the idea of ethnic patriotism. Peterson, Ethnic Patriotism and the East African Revival: A History of Dissent, c. 1935–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). An edited volume that gets at the transnational nature of many spirit shrines in different parts of Africa is Allan Charles Dawson (ed.), Shrines in Africa: History, Politics, Society (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2009). 30 This is common in virtually every border region in Africa, but Nugent discusses this in relation to the westernmost part of the Casamance. Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, 485. 31 Lentz, Land, Mobility and Belonging in West Africa, 197. 32 United Nations Treaty No. 14843, “Treaty of the Economy Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Concluded at Lagos on 28 May 1975.” United Nations Treaty Series 1010, 17–41. Available online at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%201010/volume-1010-I-14843-English.pdf. The sections on visa and residence are on page 30. 408 Guinea border was closed at the time of the agreement and remained so for years afterward—the ECOWAS Treaty does represent an acceptance of the mobility and movement already present in southern Senegambia. The second clause of Article 27 made ECOWAS members exempt citizens of their fellow states from visas and residence permits, allowing them the same rights to economic opportunities as citizens have.33 In doing so, they framed citizens of ECOWAS states as “Community citizens.” The treaty did not end tensions between citizens of neighboring countries across the region, but it did legalize movement and in theory minimize the meaning of citizenship in any particular state. The ECOWAS Treaty did not make these changes overnight. Instead, in 1979 ECOWAS presented a three-phase framework through a protocol “relating to free movement of persons, residence, and establishment.” The first phase related to the right to enter a country, and the abolition of any necessary visas. During that phase, an ECOWAS citizen could only stay up to ninety days before applying for an extension. This period was to last for a maximum of five years, and then an additional protocol was to be signed to deal with phases two and three, which were to allow a “Right of Residence” and “Right of Establishment” respectively.34 An additional four protocols added between 1985 and 1990 strengthened the previous protocol to grant Community citizens the “Right of Residence” and to avoid the mass expulsion of Community citizens.35 While the goal was to have all three phases complete by 1991, fifteen years after the signing of the treaty, 33 United Nations Treaty No. 14843, 30. 34 ECOWAS Protocol A/P.1/5/79 Relating to free movement of persons, residence and establishment, signed May 29, 1979. Available at: https://documentation.ecowas.int/download/en/legal_documents/protocols/PROTOCOL%20RELATING%20TO%2 0%20FREE%20MOVEMENT%20OF%20PERSONS.pdf 35 A. Opanike and A.A. Aduloju, “ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement and Trans-border Security in West Africa,” Journal of Civil & Legal Sciences 4, no. 3 (2015), 2. 409 phases two and three are still incomplete. As of 2010, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, and Guinea- Bissau still all required payment for an annual ECOWAS residence permit.36 The Senegambia Confederation—The Failure of Political Community On July 30, 1981, a group of the paramilitary Gambian Field Force declared a coup d’état while Gambian President Jawara was in London attending the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. After taking over the Banjul Airport and the radio station, they declared that Jawara was overthrown in an attempt to defeat “imperialism and neo-colonialism.”37 Jawara requested aid from Senegalese president Abdoul Diouf, who sent forces into the country to end the coup. That November, Jawara and Diouf announced their plans to form a confederation,38 which was then formalized through a formal agreement on December 17. Though some sort of formal arrangement had long been discussed, the coup attempt forced Jawara to admit he had little control over his country, and in particular his military. The confederation agreement acknowledged that the two countries “constitute a single people divided into two States by the vicissitudes of History,” and that both Senegal and the Gambia have shared “historical, moral, and material imperatives.” However, it made clear that this was not a radical arrangement. Clause 2 insisted that the Confederation entailed “[each] State maintaining its independence and sovereignty.”39 The focus of the Confederation was primarily military and economic, with both states pledging to defend each other—an important point following the coup attempt—and to create “an economic and monetary union.” Even though Senegal’s population was nearly ten times that of the Gambia, the 36 Aderanti Adepoju, Alistair Boulton, and Mariah Levin, “Promoting integration through mobility: Free movement under ECOWAS,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 29, no. 3 (2010), 122–24, 127–28. 37 PRO FCO 65/2467, “The Gambia: Attempted Coup.” 38 Arnold Hughes, “The collapse of the Senegambian confederation,” Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 30:2, 200–1. 39 PRO FCO 65/2471, “Agreement between the Republic of The Gambia and the Republic of Senegal concerning the establishment of a Senegambia Confederation,” signed December 17, 1981, 1. The underlining is in the original. 410 Gambia received one-third of the seats in the Confederal Parliament.40 Of the nine ministers, five were Senegalese and four were Gambian.41 The very short treaty was supposed to be the first step in defining further integration between the two countries. Even before the Senegambia Confederation, the two states had worked closely together. In the years between Gambian independence in 1965 and the creation of the confederation, the two states signed roughly 30 treaties, including the creation of a Senegalo-Gambian Permanent Secretariat (PSSG) and the creation of the Gambia River Basin Development Organisation (OMVG).42 For the Senegalese government, the treaty’s primary interest was economic. In the decades after independence, smuggling across the Senegal-Gambia border resulted in imported goods entering the Gambia at lower rates then being taken across the border to Senegal. A customs union would, in theory, negate this challenge.43 In a British Foreign Service report about public opinion on the confederation, David Le Breton noted that the greatest opposition was in the capital region. He said that the Aku population in Banjul opposed the closer relationship between the two countries, and that these sentiments were shared “probably among many other civil servants,” except Wolof who would welcome their increased representation in a larger Senegambian space. Le Breton believed that the large proportion of immigrants in the greater Banjul area, many of whom had ties to Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, and Mali, would also “be instinctively opposed to greater Senegalese influence over The 40 PRO FCO 65/2471, “Agreement between the Republic of The Gambia and the Republic of Senegal,” 1–3. The 60- member Confederal parliament had 40 seats for Senegal and 20 for the Gambia. According to Hughes, if seats had been allocated in terms of population, the Gambia would have had only six seats. Hughes, “The collapse of the Senegambian confederation,” 210. 41 Hughes, “The collapse of the Senegambian confederation,” 210. Again, demographics would have given the Gambia only one ministerial post. 42 Ibid, 202. The acronyms reflect the names in French. 43 On the Gambia-Senegal smuggling, see Chapter 5. As shown in Chapters 2–4, this was a common concern among colonial governments as well. 411 Gambia.”44 On the other hand, he speculated that in the eastern Gambia people would have less reason to distrust the idea of the confederation, as the population was “much less concerned about the status of Governments or the significance of national boundaries. In every day rural life they would be happy to go on ignoring frontiers, so that any scheme to improve integration between The Gambia and Senegal is likely to be favoured, at least until some disadvantage is discerned.” It is impossible to know how Le Breton acquired his information, particularly about areas in the eastern Gambia, because, as he noted, “There is no open debate or discussion of the merits or demerits of confederation.”45 In the days following Jawara’s reinstatement to power, he introduced the Emergency Power Regulations of 1981, which made speaking in support of the coup attempt a punishable offense. The result was that many feared open disagreement with the Senegambia Confederation would be purposefully misconstrued as support for the coup.46 As the confederation unfolded, reactions were mixed, with very few in vocal support of the union. Even most of those who supported closer ties between the two countries wanted them to happen slowly.47 The major sticking point between the two governments was economic. The confederation was supposed to lead to the Gambian adoption of the Senegalese CFA, a currency shared with several other Francophone West African countries. In fact, a 1984 report recommended the Gambia do just that. The Gambia was willing to join the West African Monetary Union (UEMOA) that structured the CFA, but as an autonomous polity, not through the larger confederation.48 A joint committee recommended the creation of a free trade zone, which was finally agreed upon in August 1987, but was never implemented. As Omar Touray points out, for 44 FCO 65/2471, D. F. B. Le Breton, “Senegambia – Public Opinion,” December 15, 1981, 1. 45 Ibid, 2 46 FCO 65/2469, The Gambia Gazette, Legal Notice No. 8 of 1981, “Emergency Powers Regulations, 1981,” Vol. 98, No. 35, August 3, 1981; FCO 65/2471, Le Breton, “Senegambia – Public Opinion,” 2. 47 Hughes, “The collapse of the Senegambian confederation,” 211. 48 Touray, The Gambia and the World, 113. 412 many rural Gambians, an informal free trade zone already existed in the form of weekly markets known as lumos, held on both sides of the border. At the time, most Gambian in the eastern part of the country already occurred in CFA.49 Nugent argues that the primary reason for the lack of Gambian support for the confederation was that prices for staple items in the Gambia would have risen substantially, hitting rural people particularly hard.50 In fact, Hughes estimated that Gambians would have seen a cost of living increase of roughly 20 percent.51 On August 23, 1989, Diouf decided to withdraw Senegal from the Senegambian Confederation because of the slow progress toward economic integration.52 I take no issue with Touray, Nugent, or Hughes’ interpretations of the failure of the confederation as primarily economic. However, I do think it is important to reframe the collapse of the Senegambia Confederation as driven not just by elite political discussions and by the challenges of a customs and monetary union. As the previous chapters of this dissertation have shown, Senegambians had already created an integrated cross-border community. People moved back and forth for particular reasons and needs, and while governments made efforts to control their borders, they saw border control as more of a nuisance than something requiring an organized effort. For borderland residents, economic and political union could only take away benefits gained from living near a border. Political turmoil in the Gambia could be escaped by going to Senegal and vice-versa, but a confederation would remove this possibility. The opportunity to profit from “the second economy” would disappear under a customs and monetary union. Recognizing the folly of tying oneself too closely to a particular polity, borderland Senegambians—which included virtually all 49 Touray, The Gambia and the World, 113–17. Lumos still structure commerce across southern Senegambia and are particularly prominent in border communities. Because all of the Gambia, especially upriver, is near to the Senegalese border, lumoss are an important meeting place for Senegalese and Gambians. 50 Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, 418–19. 51 Hughes, “The collapse of the Senegambian confederation,” 213. 52 Ibid, 215. 413 Gambians—either quietly or openly disdained the confederation. When I conducted interviews in 2016 and 2017, some expressed support for some larger political formation, but most people appreciated the ability to move between states. Most wanted more legal freedom to move—as ECOWAS is supposedly working toward—but recognized the value of living in between multiple states and leveraging their cross-border connections to their advantage. In the view of southern Senegambians, confederation was unpopular in border regions because it would have marginalized borderlanders and taken away an important economic and political opportunity. The failure of the Senegambian Confederation and the reluctance of the broader population to support such a union cannot be separated from the wider geopolitical circumstances of the late 1970s and 1980s. In the late 1970s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) became involved in reforming Senegal’s economy. The World Bank’s structural adjustment program and the IMF’s plan to restructure Senegal’s debt resulted in a dramatic withdrawal of the state from economic activity.53 These changes required SODEFITEX, Senegal’s cotton parastatal, to reduce subsidies to growers in southern Senegal and put producers in a precarious economic position.54 As groundnut prices dropped drastically in the Gambia alongside loans from the IMF, the Gambian government withdrew from state intervention in economic production and by 1986, had turned the Gambian dalasi into a floating currency.55 In 1985, the Gambian government began to subsidize the price of peanuts to encourage production, but when this subsidy ended during the 1989–90 growing season, peanut production collapsed.56 In Guinea-Bissau, like in the rest of southern Senegambia, structural adjustment did not just lead to state withdrawal from economic 53 Catherine Boone, Merchant Capital and the Roots of State Power in Senegal, 1930-1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 209–11. 54 Hardin, “Developing the Periphery,” 269. 55 David Cooke and Arnold Hughes, “The politics of economic recovery: The Gambia’s experience of structural adjustment, 1985–94,” Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics 35, no. 1 (1997), 95–96. 56 Ibid, 98. 414 activity. In fact, it led to a general crisis among much of the rural population, which lost hope in the ability of governments to meaningfully provide support to those unable to lobby national governments.57 This growing removal of the state created greater incentives for cross-border communities and networks to expand in the face of growing economic precarity, at least in relation to the states of the region. Lumos and the Strength of Civil Society Throughout southern Senegambia—not just in border areas—lumos are a feature of everyday life. Lumos are weekly markets, held in towns or even small villages on a rotating basis. These markets serve as an economic lifeline for many in areas where goods are not for sale on a daily basis. Some of the larger lumo sellers operate several days a week in different markets, selling on both sides of borders. With the coming of structural adjustment and the withdrawal of the various states of the region, weekly lumos became an important meeting point for small-scale traders and producers in the informal economy.58 Lumos grew increasingly throughout the 1980s, especially along borders between Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Guinea, moving a variety of different products to each country.59 Amy Niang argues “that the contribution of local populations in furthering regional integration points to a form of ‘integrated approach’ toward integration and borders, economic, social and cultural, at the grassroots level.” Perhaps more importantly, she points out that cross-border traders “become political actors on a part with, and at times more relevant, than the state.”60 Lumos provided a way to informally structure this trade 57 Rudebeck, “The Effects of Structural Adjustment,” 34–51. 58 Samba Tenem Camará, “Lumo – Estatuto, funcionamento e organização dos Mercados Periódicos na Guiné- Bissau – estudo de caso no lumo de Mafanco” (PhD Dissertation, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, 2010), 27–45. 59 For a list of the products that leave Guinea-Bissau for neighboring countries, see Camará, “Lumo,” 37. 60 Amy Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-faire Integration: Trade and Mobility in a Cross-border Market,” African Studies 72, no. 1 (2013), 43. 415 and strengthen a larger sense of economic and social community and belonging across borders, doing the work of cross-border integration governments were unwilling to do. While there were a few weekly markets in the region prior to the 1980s, the rise of lumos corresponds directly with the withdrawal of governments from economic production. In Guinea- Bissau, just one lumo existed prior to 1980. However, four lumos were founded in the 1980s, fifteen in the 1990s, and another fifteen in the 2000s.61 In the Upper Casamance of Senegal, fourteen lumos existed as of 1998, and many more have sprouted up since then.62 In the Gambia, the construction of a lumo in Sare Bojo in 1983 has brought fellow Gambians, Senegalese, Bissau- Guineans, and Guineans to this small town to trade.63 These markets—like much informal commerce—often tend to be structured around female traders, who deal in small quantities of goods.64 On the other hand, larger traders are typically male.65 In the late 1990s, military conflict in Guinea-Bissau led to a drastic reduction in social services provided by the state, which forced Fulbe and others to search out economic opportunities through small-scale cross-border trading for their survival.66 Along the border between the southeastern Gambia and southern Senegal, each day is marked with movement to a different lumo. Traders decide which lumos are worth their time, as some smaller venues may not be worth the journey. The same is true along the Senegal- Guinean border, where the strength of the CFA against the Guinean franc is opportune for Guinean sellers.67 Often markets exist in twinned towns on either side of borders, so that local producers or consumers do not even need to cross the border to sell or purchase products from the other 61 Camará, “Lumo,” 105. 62 Sylvie Fanchette, “Désengagement de l'État,” 93. 63 Interview with Samba Mballow, Sare Bojo Gamana, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 64 Camará, “Lumo,” 42. The gender dynamics of lumos are quickly shifting and may become primarily male in the near future. 65 Diallo, “Frontières,” 246. 66 Camará, “Lumo,” 43–44. 67 Mohamadou Mountaga Diallo, “Frontières et activités marchandes en Afrique de l’Ouest: logiques d’acteurs et fonctionnement scalaire,” Territoire en movement: Revue de géographie et aménagement 29 (2016), 7. 416 country.68 Many of these goods cross the border by bicycle, motorcycle, or donkey or horse cart outside of border crossings, allowing for them to be imported and exported essentially duty-free. On the days of particular lumos, buses known as “minicars” full of sellers and buyers traverse southern Senegambia to trade in a variety of agricultural and other products. Public transportation can be difficult for anyone traveling away from the lumo in the morning but heading in the direction of the market is easy.69 Abdoul et al. argue that the “plurinational” Fulbe have been well positioned to operate in these new lumos because of their cross-border ethnic ties. They contend that Fulbe “structure” southern Senegambian trade through their “community-based” organization.70 As earlier chapters have shown, southern Senegambians broadly and Fulbe in particular have developed a cross- border community through their mobility and exchanges. The development of lumos is a recent example of how such changes have come to be more formalized, but these markets have also continued the growth of this cross-border community. In the Senegalese border town of Medina Yoro Foula, less than two miles from the Gambia border, the lumo has helped develop the community and increased the growth of local businesses.71 For nearly a quarter of the houses of the town, their primary place to purchase supplies is the Gambian market at Bansang, less than 10 miles away. At the weekly market in Medina Yoro Foula, 70 percent of the Fulbe traders are from Bansang. Similarly, in Pata, about 40 miles west of Medina Yoro Foula, half of the Fulbe merchants come from the adjacent Gambian town of Brikama Ba, which also has its own lumo, 68 Fanchette, Au pays des Peuls, 333. 69 The largest lumo in southern Senegambia is undoubtedly Diaobé, held on Wednesdays. If one arrives at the bus depot (the “garage”) in the morning, they can be assured of a quick departure. 70 Mohamadou Abdoul et al., “Le cas de la Sénégambie méridionale,” in Enda Diapol, Les dynamiques transfrontalières en Afrique de l'Ouest: analyse des potentiels d'intégration de trois "pays-frontières" en Afrique de l’Ouest (Paris: Karthala, 2007), 71. 71 Interview with Thaymoko Traoré, Mamadou Mballo and Idrissa Diallo, Medina Yoro Foula, Senegal, February 13, 2017. 417 founded in the 1980s and visited by many Senegalese.72 In Niaming, a small village two miles from Medina Yoro Foula, I was told that without the nearby lumo, the village would have “nothing.”73 In Pata, Mamadou Danso said lumos have increased musibbe, a Pulaar word meaning “relative” in its broadest possible sense—it can refer to anyone with the same last name as you.74 The same point was reiterated by those in Guinea-Bissau about relations with people in Senegal and Guinea.75 People also see lumos as bringing jokkere endam, which roughly translates as respect for the bonds of blood, family, or community.76 The Senegalese border town of Manda Douane—named in part for the customs (douane) post—has grown rapidly since the development of its lumo in 1997.77 The town profits from its location less than a mile from the Gambian border, as well as its location as the terminus of the region’s primary road to the Fulbe region of Guinea, the Futa Jallon highlands. The town is also near to the major Sufi religious city of Medina Gounass, which ties it to the economic networks the town’s clerics operate.78 In Manda, many came at first to trade at the lumo before settling in the town permanently, especially Fulbe Futa from Guinea. In addition to those from Senegal, Gambians, Guineans, and Bissau-Guineans travel there to engage in commerce. People participate in a great deal of currency trading in Manda as well.79 For most southern Senegambians, there is a 72 Diallo, “Frontières,” 168, 253; on Brikama Ba’s lumo, Interview with Mankama Fatty and Bounding Bayo, Brikama Ba, The Gambia, July 25, 2017. 73 Interview with Modou Diaw, Keba Boye, Mamadou Boye, Babou Boye, and Ousmane Seck, Niaming, Senegal, February 14, 2017. A similar point was made by Yero Demb. Interview with Yero Demb, Sare Luba, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 74 Interviews with Mamadou Danso, Pata, Senegal, February 15, 2017; and Gellel Bah, Samba Kunda, The Gambia, July 16, 2017. Musibbe is connected to the idea of musidal, which refers to ties of kinship. 75 Interviews with El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Balde, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 18, 2017; and Amadu Embalo, Sonaco, Guinea-Bissau, April 3, 2017. 76 Interviews with Cherno Hassimu Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 19, 2017; and Madala Sow, Sare Gela, The Gambia, July 18, 2017. 77 Diallo, “Frontières,” 264. 78 See Chapter 6. 79 Interviews with Mama Tano Cissokho, Manda Douane, Senegal, February 28, 2017; and with Alhadji Gumanneh, Kessemah Samoreh, and Abdouleh Gumanneh, Koina, The Gambia, July 13, 2017. 418 larger acceptance that lumos have helped bring bamtaare (development),80 or at the very least, have made life easier.81 However, some contend that lumos are not necessarily good for consumers, only for those who sell.82 Bamba Jeng of Sinchu Alagi observed that while lumos have their benefit, they are not responsible for developing the country, a remark that pointedly denotes the absence of the state in rural development.83 In the Gambia, where the entire country is near the border with Senegal, lumos have increased relations substantially, as all of its markets are near to Senegal.84 For many Gambians, there is an easily accessible circuit of lumos so that one can get both staple and/or discretionary items any day of the week.85 Lumos represent that “the state, despite its declared aversion to informal regulations, does in fact foster and support the informal economy.”86 These markets are often built by the Senegalese state, but are minimally regulated and provide opportunities to move goods across borders with minimal customs supervision.87 Diaobé, The Center of the (Market) Universe Located in the middle of southern Senegal, with easy access to Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and the Gambia, Diaobé is a major weekly Wednesday event for many southern Senegambians, so much so that the market has expanded and now operates Tuesday through Thursday.88 One of the 80 Interview with Mamadu Cande, Paunca, Guinea-Bissau, April 9, 2017; El Hadji Mamadu Cande, Pirada, Guinea- Bissau, April 11, 2017; Samba Ly, Alu Djalo, and Kadjatu Djalo, Cambadju, Guinea-Bissau, April 24, 2017; and Mariama Kindima Seydi, Dabo, Senegal, April 28, 2017. 81 Juulde Balde and others said that lumos “ustu tampere nde leydi ndi,” which literally translates as “reduced the fatigue of the land/country.” Interview with Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Musa Baldeh, and Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, The Gambia, July 20, 2019. 82 Interview with El Hadji Gibril Djalo and Wagidu Djalo, Madina Boé, Guinea-Bissau, April 7, 2017. 83 Interview with Bamba Jeng, Sinchu Alagi, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 84 Interviews with Kebba Baldeh, Sare Jawube, The Gambia, July 12, 2017; and with Leggil Jallow, Sare Mala, The Gambia, July 13, 2017. 85 Sarjo Sow and Demba Demb of Fula Bantang in the Gambia mentioned to me six accessible Gambian lumos and two in Senegal. Interview with Sarjo Sow and Demba Demb, Fula Bantang, The Gambia, July 20, 2017. But many Gambians pointed out the variety of lumos, helped by the compressed nature of the Gambia’s territory. Interview with Alpha Jallow, Yoro Beri Kunda, The Gambia, July 23, 2017. 86 Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-Faire Integration,” 49. 87 In recent years, the Senegalese state has built new, permanent lumos in many villages in the Kolda Region. 88 When I first arrived in the Upper Casamance in 2010, Diaobé was a one-day event. While the lumo is still primarily a Wednesday event, many of the traders stay all three days to profit from out-of-town visitors and those seeking to avoid the crowded streets that characterize any Wednesday in Diaobé. 419 largest market towns in West Africa, traders come from as far away as Mauritania, Sierra Leone, and Mali.89 Created in 1974, the same year as Bissau-Guinean independence, Diaobé’s weekly market grew rapidly due to increased trade between Senegal and its southwestern neighbor. After the destruction caused by the war for independence, Bissau-Guineans flocked to Diaobé to trade in an effort to reconstruct their new country. Sékou Touré’s death in 1984 brought a new government with a more liberal trade policy that increased trade between Fulbe in Guinea and southern Senegal, expanding Diaobé’s market even more. Conflict between Senegal and Mauritania in the late 1980s resulted in the exodus of many Mauritanian Wolof and Fulbe traders, a large number of whom settled in Diaobé.90 Most of those who go to Diaobé are not large-scale traders, but farmers selling peanuts after the Senegalese state withdrew from direct purchases or Bissau-Guineans selling fruit at prices unobtainable at home.91 For many “foreign” traders, the markets of Dakar and Touba are restricted. However, Diaobé has no such restrictions. This allows Guinean Fulbe women—the majority of traders in the town—to use their connections to control trade from their home country through advantages unavailable to Senegalese or Gambian traders. Diaobé serves as a focal point for channeling Guinean, as well as Bissau-Guinean and Gambian, goods into southern Senegal and then onto the rest of the country.92 Niang refers to Diaobé as “a trading community without borders,” which comes with a variety of consequences. The town is a mixture of Senegal and its neighbors, with a great deal of economic activity that largely benefits the region. However, like many trading towns, Diaobé suffers from a lack of infrastructure to support the large numbers of passers-through. 89 Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-Faire Integration,” 41. Informally I have been told that traders from Côte d’Ivoire come as well, though I have yet to meet any personally. 90 Fanchette, “Désengagement de l’État,” 96–97. 91 Interviews with El Hadji Dieng, Moloubay Dieng, Modaiwa Dieng, and Lamin Ndiaye, Thallel, Senegal, February 14, 2017; and with El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Bade, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 18, 2017. 92 Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-Faire Integration,” 50. 420 Peripatetic male traders have encouraged a growth in prostitution and increased the HIV/AIDS rate in the region of Kolda. Primarily because of Diaobé, Kolda had the highest recorded HIV/AIDS rate in the country (2.4 percent) as of 2010–11.93 Diaobé also features a substantial drug trade connecting the Upper Casamance to the Lower Casamance and the Gambia.94 Niang points out that Diaobé “provides the stimulus to resourceful populations who restructure the borderland space whilst reinventing integration from below.”95 This “reinvention” of integration from below is just one small part of a larger creation and construction of a cross-border community, more integrated by the late 2010s than in the end of the nineteenth century. Guinea-Bissau: The Tensions of Integration In late 1995, Guinea-Bissau applied formally to join the UEMOA, which resulted in abandoning the Bissau-Guinean peso in exchange for the CFA franc used by Senegal. This application was approved in May 1996 and went into effect the following year.96 The insertion of a Lusophone country into a Francophone monetary union may seem odd, yet the Gambia had engaged in discussions about joining the UEMOA earlier in the 1980s. In fact, Guinea-Bissau first attempted to join the monetary union in 1987, however, tensions over border-crossing by both the secessionist movement of the Casamance and the Senegalese government in pursuit of the same separatists put those talks on hold until 1994. Many in Guinea-Bissau feared an influx of Senegalese workers and traders, a flood which has yet to occur. However, there was an unrelated 93 On prostitution, Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-Faire Integration,” 54. The HIV/AIDS statistics come from the ANSD, “2010-11 Enquête Démographique et de Santé à Indicateurs Multiples au Sénégal (EDS-MICS): VIH/Sida,” available online at: http://www.ansd.sn/ressources/rapports/EDSMICS2010-2011-VIH-Sida.pdf. 94 Nelly Robin, “Le déracinement des populations en Casamance: Un défi pour l’État de droit,” Revue européenne des migrations internationales 22, no. 1 (2006), 19. 95 Niang, “The (In)Commodities of Laissez-Faire Integration,” 59. Emphasis my own. 96 Renato Aguilar and Åsa Stenman, “Guinea-Bissau: From Structural Adjustment to Economic Integration,” Africa Spectrum 32, no. 1 (1997), 71. 421 arrival of refugees fleeing the Casamance crisis.97 At the time of the integration, the economic incentives for the CFA seemed unclear, while the political incentives seemed much greater.98 Two decades later, these political consequences have proven to be the lasting legacy of Guinea-Bissau’s adoption of the CFA. In border towns in both Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, people make the same arguments and use the same language to discuss a shared currency leading to greater integration as they do for lumos. Thus, El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Balde of Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, argue that the adoption of the CFA “increased musibbe,” a feeling shared by Moussa Bayo of Salikegne, Senegal.99 On the other hand, there are mixed sentiments about the economic implications of the CFA. Many complain that in comparison with the much weaker peso, prices have risen substantially.100 Several men I interviewed in Nemataba, Guinea-Bissau, took opposing sides on the effects of the CFA with no resolution.101 Prior to 1997, Fulbe and Mandinka traders bought goods in Guinea-Bissau and took them to Senegal, a comparative advantage that has since disappeared. The adoption of the CFA has led more goods from Senegal to be introduced into eastern Guinea-Bissau and thus it is no longer necessary to go to Senegal to buy certain items.102 In contrast to the increased cross-border feelings of belonging brought by the CFA, a proposed 1998 amendment to Guinea-Bissau’s constitution showed the precarious nature of 97 Aguilar and Stenman, “Guinea-Bissau,” 89–91. In Bissau in 2017, I heard more concern about Guinean Fulbe migrants, who I was told had become wealthy while also closing their stores for Islamic prayers and holidays, which was apparently unacceptable. 98 Ibid, 93. 99 Interviews with Moussa Bayo, Salikegne, Senegal, February 21, 2017; and with El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Balde, Gabú, Guinea-Bissau, March 18, 2017. This sentiment was also shared in Candjufa. Interview with Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, Guinea-Bissau, April 1, 2017. 100 Interview with Yussuf Embalo, Candate, Guinea-Bissau, April 2, 2017; and with Mamadu Turé, Saco Balde, Bakari Demba Balde, and Bubacar Djau, Badjocunda, Guinea-Bissau, April 10, 2017. 101 Interview with Mamadu Balde, Gela Balde, Amadu Balde, Mama Salu Djalo, Samba Embalo, and Mady Balde, Nemataba, Guinea-Bissau, April 3, 2017. 102 Interviews with El Hadji Ibrahima Mané, Bambadinca, Guinea-Bissau, April 19, 2017; and with Mamadu Sambu and Suleymane Embalo, Cabuca, Guinea-Bissau, April 5, 2017. 422 transnational belonging. This potential amendment, which did not pass, required the president and other top positions to both be born in the Republic of Guinea-Bissau and have Bissau-Guinean parents. The amendment was in large part a reaction to the military uprising of the same year led by General Ansumane Mané, which hoped to topple President Nino Vieira’s government. The topic of Mané’s birthplace was the subject of leaflets left by Senegalese troops in the country supporting Vieira, which claimed his supposed Gambian birth meant he could not become Bissau- Guinean. As Joanna Davidson describes, these policies seem strange in a region where mobility across borders is so common.103 One humanitarian worker, opposing the amendment, claimed that roughly half of the population came from elsewhere—primarily Guinea, Senegal, the Gambia, and Cabo Verde.104 Davidson puts the blame for this “native birth” phenomenon on “the nation’s need for territorially-based history, a primordial sense of itself and a symbolic sense of unity.”105 These claims are tied to a larger global discourse on autochthony that frames to connect belonging to a territorial nationalism.106 In the West African context, this debate reflects a shift in the idea of the incorporation of “strangers” or “foreigners” into communities.107 Given the long war for independence focused on pushing the Portuguese out of Guinea- Bissau, it may be unsurprising that nationalism has taken on a greater territorial sentiment than in Senegal to its north. However, in border communities in eastern Guinea-Bissau the incorporation of “strangers” has not changed in the ways these debates played out in the public sphere. The proposed constitutional amendment challenged the 1992 citizenship law of Guinea-Bissau, which 103 Joanna Davidson, “Native birth: Identity and territory in postcolonial Guinea-Bissau, West Africa,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2005), 37–38. 104 United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN) for West Africa, Update 908, February 12, 2001. 105 Davidson, “Native birth,” 44. 106 Ibid, 49–50. 107 Ibid, 52. On the historical incorporation of “strangers” into communities in greater Senegambia, see Brooks, Landlords and Strangers. 423 gave nationality to those who “are Guinean citizens by origin.” In case it was unclear that the idea of “origin” could be used for political gain, the law clarified, “A Guinean citizen of origin shall be presumed, unless it is proven to the contrary, for a newborn born in the territory of Guinea- Bissau.”108 However, the law did not allow dual citizenship. This was remedied in 2010, when the National Assembly passed a nationality law allowing Bissau-Guinean citizens to become dual citizens. In the law itself, the government acknowledged the importance of doing so, as, “Today we live in a globalizing world.” Since Guinea-Bissau is a “country of emigrants,” it was important to “create the necessary conditions for a better integration of its citizens who live abroad, including to permit them to acquire foreign nationality without losing Guinean nationality.”109 This recognition of the fluidity and multiplicity of citizenship represents the lived reality of most borderland Bissau-Guineans in both the colonial period and the years since independence. Senegambian Border Issues in the Twenty-First Century Despite increasing integration between the borderland populations of Senegal and the Gambia, recent years have seen a perpetual opening and closing of the border to public transport and the movement of goods. In early 2014, the Senegalese transportation unions imposed restrictions on vehicle movements between Senegal and the Gambia after the latter country drastically increased payments—in CFA or other foreign currencies—for vehicles crossing on the ferry from northern and central Senegal to the Casamance. These restrictions had drastic effects on many living near the border. As Haddijatou Jeng told the Gambian newspaper Foroyaa, “We at the border earn our income and maintain our families here.” She continued to criticize Senegambian political leaders for their lack of understanding, as, “The political leaders may not 108 Lei da Cidadania, Lei No. 2/92 De 6 de Abril, April 6, 1992. 109 Lei de Nationalidade, Lei No. 6/2010, June 21, 2010. In República da Guiné-Bissau, Boletim Oficial No. 25, 221- 2. 424 be directly affected by this border problem, but for us the petty traders whose livelihoods depend on the economic activities that thrive in borders areas where there is free movement of goods and people, the situation is becoming dire.”110 The 2014 border shutdown also affected the household consumption of vegetables across the Gambia, many of which were imported from Senegalese markets by Gambian traders.111 In mid-April, the border reopened for five days, closed again, and then was finally reopened on April 25. The standoff was only resolved when the Gambia Ports Authority—which manages the river crossings—came to an agreement with the Senegalese unions.112 These types of inter-governmental standoffs have been far too common between Senegal and the Gambia, particularly during Yahya Jammeh’s presidency. Another dispute in 2016 led to a three-month border closure, with Guinean President Alpha Conde arriving to mediate the dispute between the Gambia and Senegal. During that period, no commercial vehicles passed from Senegal to the Gambia, causing substantial economic damage to both countries. During the 2016 dispute, Jammeh blamed Senegal for closing the border in response to a Gambian tariff, claiming “this is more than the 8th time that the Senegalese, since 1994 [when Jammeh took office], have been closing the border at any time, and anytime they wish to open they open it.”113 While the Senegalese transport union did in fact boycott the Gambia, they did so as the result of a tariff increase on trucks from 4,000 CFA to 400,000 CFA overnight (from nearly $7 to almost $700).114 Jammeh went on to claim that there were 950,000 Senegalese in the Gambia, in contrast to just 110 Mustapha Jallow, “A Slowdown in Economic Activities At Border Crossings as Small Business Operators Call On the Authorities to Resolve the Crisis,” Foroyaa, February 12, 2014. 111 Alhagie F.S. Sora, “Impact of Border Restrictions on the Vegetable Trade,” Foroyaa, February 12, 2014. 112 Mustapha Jallow, “Gambia-Senegal Borders Re-Opens Again,” Foroyaa, May 5, 2014. 113 Quoted in Adam Jobe, “President Conde Mediates in Senegal-Gambia Border Closure,” The Point, May 16, 2016. 114 Using exchange rates as of August 2, 2019. The information on the tariff increase comes from “Gambia-Senegal Border Reopens,” The Point, May 26, 2016. 425 5,000 Gambians in Senegal. He did not cite the source of his statistics, which seem greatly exaggerated, but if true would mean that according to the president, more than half the country’s population originated in Senegal. However, Jammeh did not criticize the presence of Senegalese citizens in the Gambia, claiming that Africans “are all as one family,” and “Senegalese including Guineans are treated under the same laws that Gambians are being treated in this country and they live peacefully in this country.”115 It is unclear why Jammeh grouped Guineans in the category of Senegalese, but Guinean traders also saw their trucks stuck at the border. The border crisis also affected Guinea-Bissau, as the price of sugar rose threefold due to the inability of trucks leaving Gambia to pass through Senegal on its way south.116 As mentioned at the beginning of this dissertation, the political crisis of January 2017— when Gambian President Yahya Jammeh refused to leave office—led to the flight of nearly 100,000 Gambians to neighboring Senegal and Guinea-Bissau. Soon after the inauguration of new president Adama Barrow, the governments of the Gambia and Senegal began construction on the TransGambia bridge, the first-ever bridge across the Gambia River in the Gambia.117 The funding for the bridge was primarily from the African Development Bank, and the cornerstone for the bridge had been laid earlier during the Jammeh administration.118 Ousman Gajigo, a Gambian economist working for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, published an op-ed in The Point arguing for the substantial benefits of the bridge. He argued that the bridge would result in incredible time savings, a 50 percent increase in TransGambia traffic, as well as decreased prices 115 Quoted in Jobe, “President Conde Mediates.” 116 Ibid. 117 There is a bridge across the Gambia River in Senegal that separates the regions of Kolda and Tambacounda, but for vehicles going to the Casamance this requires a detour of several hours from the more direct route through the Gambia. For vehicles heading to the lower Casamance (Ziguinchor), the detour is even more substantial. 118 Any further construction was delayed by the multiple border disputes described above. 426 for Gambian consumers.119 Debates over the construction of a bridge date back to the 1920s, but a positive working relationship between Barrow and Senegalese President Macky Sall finally resulted in the bridge’s completion. The bridge was finally inaugurated on January 21, 2019, at a ceremony featuring the presidents of both countries and a performance by Senegal’s most prominent musician, Youssou N’Dour.120 Ambassador Fodé Seck, Senegal’s representative to the United Nations as well as the head of the Senegalo-Gambian Permanent Secretariat, stated that the bridge would not just advantage Senegal and the Gambia, but Guinea-Bissau and Guinea as well.121 It is unclear whether the bridge will prevent any further border closures, but it will certainly lead to greater socioeconomic integration between the Gambia and Senegal. The TransGambia bridge represents a larger acknowledgment by the governments of both countries of the shared ties between borderland people in both countries, and their shared interest in increasing connections across the border. Informal Naturalization: The Making of Citizens In southern Senegambia, as in many places across Africa, birth registration is not common. Because of this, many in the region have been able to stake claims to citizenship based on a declared place of birth that may not correspond to reality. Senegal does not require births to be declared, however, birth certificates are required to enroll a child in school. In 2012, one school teacher in the region of Kolda told IRIN that only 50 out of 172 children in the local preschool had birth certificates.122 In Guinea-Bissau, less than half of births are registered, while in the Gambia 119 Ousman Gajigo, “The TransGambia Bridge: A Contributor to Gambia’s Economic Development,” The Point, February 10, 2017. 120 Omar Wally, “The Gambia River bridge set to end ‘centuries’ of trade chaos with Senegal, BBC News, January 23, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46973684 (accessed March 26, 2020). 121 Momodou L. Jaiteh, “Envoy hails Trans-Gambia bridge, Senegambian relations,” The Point, January 3, 2019. 122 IRIN Africa English Services, “Senegal: Texting for birth certificates,” August 9, 2012. 427 that figure is closer to 60 percent. In both countries, other births are registered but without a formal birth certificate. Across West and Central Africa, these percentages are much lower in rural areas than in urban centers.123 Senegal allows retrospective registration through free court hearings, which allows people to make backward-looking claims about the location of their children’s birth to best benefit them.124 Since most people did not have birth certificates—and even those who had them could claim they did not—it became a relatively simple process to become a citizen of a new state, especially if one had been living somewhere for a long time. Moukhtarou Coulibaly, who came to Senegal from Guinea-Bissau following the war for independence, described how he became a Senegalese citizen: We [his family] got papers here. Early, it was easy here. I got a certificate of nationality. I got it here in Mampatim. The government gave it to me. They asked me where I came from. They asked my father where he came from. He told them, ‘Medina Ndoondi’ [a village in Senegal near the border]. We did not say we were from Guinea-Bissau. If you told them you were from Guinea-Bissau, they [the government] would not accept you.125 While some had more difficulty than others, in general the process was straightforward. As long as one could claim a place of origin within the country, then that was accepted at face value. Aliel Mbailo Balde said, “It was very to get papers. My nephew was an important man who owned a store. I was responsible for him. He helped me get papers. But I did not tell them [the government] I was from Guinea-Bissau. I told them I was from here. Many of us got papers that way.”126 For 123 Amiya Bhatia et al, “Who and where are the uncounted children? Inequalities in birth certificate coverage among children under five years in 94 countries using nationally representative household surveys,” International Journal for Equity in Healthy 16, no. 148 (2017), 5–6. 124 Simon Heap and Claire Cody, “The Universal Birth Registration campaign,” Forced Migration Review 32 (2000), 22. 125 Interview with Moukhtarou Coulibaly, Mampatim, Senegal, December 10, 2016. 126 Interview with Aliel Mbailo Balde, Dabo, December 13, 2016. 428 most people, they used existing family members in Senegal to validate their claims of being from a particular place.127 At times, states of the region even engaged in registration drives to regularize those who had no paperwork proving them citizens. In 1992, Amadou Seydi—who was born in Guinea- Bissau, helped run a regional Senegalese government effort to get birth certificates and citizenship documents to those in without access to them. He even got documents through that process. As he described it, “There was a time, Senegal, they gave papers to everyone. If you were staying here at this time, they gave them to you for free […] In 1992, everyone who did not have birth certificates got them. We gave them all until we were done. Even if you did not have identification, you did not pay for it.”128 Similar efforts allowed those born in Senegal to get identification qualifying them as Gambian citizens. The primary concern of governments was to document who lived in their territory, not to question them so as to catch them in a lie.129 Most of those I asked said it was not difficult to acquire legal citizenship, with Bakary Cissoko informing me that no one even asked about his place of birth.130 Amadou Barry was born in Guinea, grew up in Guinea- Bissau, and fled to Senegal after the war. When I asked him how he became a Senegalese citizen, he said, “My uncle said come here [to the town of Pakour], your mother is here, and I left there and came here. I went to the police, then I explained to them that I was coming with my family. They asked, where are they? I said there they are, he called me, and he wrote [papers for] all nineteen of us.” After arriving in Pakour, the village chief assigned him a place to build his house.131 Amadou Jallow of Sinchu Alieu, born in Guinea, was helped by a local organization of 127 Interview with Meta Balde, Mampatim, Senegal, January 17, 2017. 128 Interview with Saliou Seydi, Amadou Seydi, Sounkarou Kande, and Yero Dioum, Thiara, Senegal, January 20, 2017. 129 Interviews with Samba Kande, Samba Kande, and Samba Kande, Fafacourou, Senegal, January 21, 2017; and with Aliou Mballo, Pakiri, Senegal, January 24, 2017. 130 Interview with Bakary Cissoko, Thiara, Senegal, January 23, 2017. 131 Interview with Amadou Barry, Pakour, January 27, 2017. 429 Guinean-born individuals to acquire Gambian citizenship.132 Chiefs were also often given jurisdiction to regularize individuals. Saibai Darboe, who previously served as the Alkalo (chief) of Bansang in the Gambia, helped more than 200 Fulbe families acquire paperwork as well as to set up compounds in the town.133 The role of chiefs in the process of legal national integration follows a long regional history of chiefs as key figures in incorporating outsiders into communities. Others have not seen the need to formally change their nationality, not because of any national pride, but because they do not see the value in doing so. Mamadou Saidou Jallow, who lives in Basse Santa Su, the capital of the Upper River Region, lived in both Senegal and Guinea as a child before arriving in the Gambia around 1986. Despite having Senegalese citizenship, he said he has had no problems with his Senegalese origin. He would only acquire Gambian citizenship, he claimed, if he needed to buy a house.134 However, Pate Manneh, also of Basse, did buy a house despite his Guinean citizenship. While his children are all Gambian citizens, Manneh has seen no reason to try to acquire new citizenship.135 Mamadou Boyi Jawo was born in Guinea and arrived in Senegal in 1950 and has yet to change his citizenship.136 These individual life histories tell the story of a region where citizenship could be valuable or essentially meaningless depending on the circumstances. For some, acquiring citizenship proved a way to set up even deeper roots in their new countries, while others saw little worth in obtaining citizenship. Regardless of the decisions people made, the lack of historical registration in southern Senegambia made the boundary between citizen and foreigner almost as unclear legally as it was figuratively. Thus, while national identity still has salience in southern Senegambia, its expressions 132 Interview with Amadou Jallow and Alfa Omar Jallow, Sinchu Alieu, The Gambia, July 22, 2017. 133 Interview with Saibai Darboe, Bansang, The Gambia, July 21, 2017. 134 Interview with Mamadou Saidou Jallow, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 19, 2017. 135 Interview with Pate Manneh, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 136 Interview with Mamadou Boyi Jawo, Basse Santa Su, The Gambia, July 17, 2017. 430 are often limited in a world when many have family in multiple neighboring states or have lived in two, three, or even four different states themselves. Whether or not the freedom of movement put forth by ECOWAS exists yet in a legal fashion, southern Senegambians have exercised freedom of movement in their own lives, moving between different states and staking claim to the rights of citizenship in multiple countries. Citizenship and Xenophobia in Independent Africa Southern Senegambia stands in sharp contrast to the visible fears of “foreigners” held in many parts of Africa and institutionalized through draconian citizenship laws. As Bronwen Manby points out, “[T]he countries where citizenship has been most contentious are often the countries that saw the greatest colonial-era migration; migration not only of Europeans and Asians to the continent, but in even greater numbers of Africans within the continent.”137 In many of these states, citizenship laws are framed to diminish opportunities for assimilation and naturalization. As a result, many Banyarwanda are disenfranchised from the Congolese state, which has changed its laws several times since independence, but each one bases nationality in ethnicity. Whether one can become a citizen depends on whether a given group was from “the ethnic groups and nationalities of which the individuals and territory formed what became Congo at independence.”138 In South Africa, Jean and John Comaroff describe, In South Africa […] a phobia about foreigners, above all foreigners from elsewhere in Africa, has been the offspring of the fledgling democracy, waxing, paradoxically, alongside appeals to ubuntu, a common African humanity. In the 1990s, that phobia congealed into an active antipathy to what is perceived as a shadowy alien nation of ‘illegal immigrants’; the qualified, ‘illegal,’ has become inseparable from the sign, just as, in the plant world, invasive has become locked, adjectivally, to alien. Popularly held to be ‘economic vultures,’ who usurp jobs and resources, and who bring with them crime and disease, these 137 Manby, Struggles for Citizenship, 2. 138 Quoted in Manby, Struggles for Citizenship, 9. For more on struggles of autochthony in the D.R. Congo, Stephen Jackson, “Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern D.R. Congo,” African Studies Review 49, no. 2 (2006), 95–123. 431 anti-citizens are accused—in uncanny analogy with non-indigenous flora—of spreading uncontrollably. And of siphoning off the wealth of the nation.139 These fears exist in many parts of the African continent, and in places like Côte d’Ivoire religion has played a particular role in driving fears of Muslim “foreigners,” as the descendants of Malians and Burkinabe become an increasingly large part of the Ivorian population.140 Few West African countries were immune from either tension over outsiders or the use of xenophobia as a political tool. In 1969, the Ghanaian government passed the Aliens Compliance Order, a bill to regularize foreigners who were resident in the country, but which actually resulted in 155,000 leaving the country in early 1970. Many of these were neighboring Togolese.141 In perhaps the most dramatic example of postcolonial expulsion, the Nigerian government expelled about 1.5 million undocumented immigrants in January 1983, declaring that they had two weeks to leave the country. In the resulting chaos, an estimated 700,000 Ghanaians, 180,000 Nigeriens, 150,000 Chadians, and 120,000 Cameroonians fled the country.142 Geschiere and Nyamnjoh argue that political liberalization “seems to trigger a general obsession with autochthony and ethnic citizenship invariably defined against ‘strangers’—that is, against all those who ‘do not really belong.’”143 This is part of a wider conversation about autochthony in Africa, which is tied not just to citizenship, but also the politics of land. These conversations revolve around both local and national claims to belonging.144 Even for groups with long histories in particular national territories, their inability to fit into the national imagination— 139 Jean and John L. Comaroff, Theory from the South: or, How Euro-America is evolving toward Africa (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2012), 102. 140 Among others, see Marie Miran-Guyon, “Islam in and out: Cosmopolitan Patriotism and Xenophobia among Muslims in Côte d’Ivoire,” Africa 86, no. 3 (2016), 447–71; Mike McGovern, Making War in Côte d’Ivoire (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011); and Ruth Marshall-Fratani, “The War of ‘Who is Who’: Autochthony, Nationalism, and Citizenship in the Ivoirian Crisis,” African Studies Review 49, no. 2 (2006), 9–43. 141 Nugent, Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa, 439-40. 142 Aderanti Adepoku, “Illegals and Expulsion in Africa: The Nigerian Experience,” International Migration Review 18, no. 3 (1984), 432. 143 Geschiere and Nyamnjoh, “Capitalism and Autochthony,” 423. 144 See, for example, Lentz, Land, Mobility, and Belonging in West Africa. 432 like Somalis in Kenya—have left national belonging and citizenship out of reach for many.145 While there is not legalized discrimination, Guinean migrants to Dakar are often viewed as backward, and their inability to speak Wolof marks them as outsiders.146 Guineans describe Senegalese immigration officials as dismissing their ID cards by saying “Anyone can get a Guinean ID card” and by comparing their identification to papers given for animals, not human beings.147 Yet to this day communities in southern Senegal still welcome Guinean migrants, as well as those from their fellow neighbors the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. Guinean migrants continually arrive in the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau as well. When I was conducting interviews in 2016 and 2017, I continually had to tell people that while I wanted to talk to migrants, I did not need to talk to migrants who had arrived recently. I remember once being told in a small village near the Gambia border, “This man came from the Gambia last month,” or in a town in southern Senegal, “This ceerno arrived from Guinea this week.” Given the relative ease by which southern Senegambians can cross borders and integrate into new communities, why is there a disconnect between local and national belonging? There are several reasons to explain the relative success of integration in the borderlands of southern Senegambia. The first reason is the region’s historical and ethnolinguistic ties. Southern Senegambia was connected long before the drawing of boundaries in the region, and thus shared languages as well as the more recent shared heritage of Islam has given southern Senegambians a greater ability to incorporate outsiders. The second reason is the long tradition of host-guest relations in the region, a history not unique to southern Senegambia, but one that is facilitated by the continued availability of land. Even in cities like Kolda, Basse, or Gabú, there is 145 Weitzberg, We Do Not Have Borders. 146 Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 121. 147 Quoted in Fioratta, “States of Insecurity,” 118. 433 still available land for new settlers without displacing the existing population. This is less feasible in Dakar, where a lack of Wolof can also mark migrants as outsiders (many young Senegalese have already learned Wolof by the time they arrive in Dakar, making this less of a barrier for them). However, I would argue there is a third, and perhaps even more important reason. Since the late nineteenth century, mobility and migration have created a transnational community in southern Senegambia, leading people to see themselves as more interconnected than they had previously. While southern Senegambians recognize national origin as a category, it has not typically served to mark certain people as outsiders. The insecurity of colonial rule, as well as the turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s in Guinea-Bissau and Guinea further pushed forward an idea that if states were not responsible for their citizens’ well-being, then communities themselves would take on those functions. The withdrawal of states from the public sphere through structural adjustment, which began in the late 1970s but continued until the 1990s, confirmed the importance of mobility as a means of mitigating insecurity. The value of fluid and flexible citizenship in rural southern Senegambia The term “flexible citizenship” has entered the vocabulary of academics and policymakers in the last 20 years to describe a series of increasingly global citizens, at home in countries all around the world.148 What much of this discussion misses is that transnationality and flexible citizenship is as much a local, cross-border, or regional phenomenon as it is a global one. While there are vast power differentials between a dual citizen international businessman and a farmer in southern Senegambia, both are using the limits of regulation on citizenship to their benefit. Both are seeking to profit from a world that allows—whether legally or informally—people to move between spaces and lay claims to rights of citizenship when it suits them. Of course, legal 148 Aihwa Wong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999). 434 citizenship is not always necessary. In most of southern Senegambia, outsiders are not incorporated on the basis of citizenship, but on shared ethnolinguistic, religious and cultural ties. This allows individuals and families to gain from economic opportunities unavailable at home, whether through the practice of particular professions, farming, animal husbandry, and more. Much of this work is unregistered, taking place in the informal or “second” economy. Because of this disconnect between state and population, there is a fluidity in determining who is Senegalese, Gambian, Bissau-Guinean or Guinean in this larger space. That fluidity dissipates the closer one gets to centers of power like Dakar, Banjul, Bissau, and Conakry, but does not disappear entirely. Ideas of fluid and flexible citizenship have allowed borderland populations to move continually for more than a century. Colonial governments had limited reach on their margins, and when they attempted to impose their will on the population, many moved across the border. Military conscription, forced labor, and other forms of taxation drove hundreds of thousands of southern Senegambians to other colonies from the beginnings of colonial rule. During World War I, the population of the eastern Gambia and eastern Guinea-Bissau increased drastically as many fled across borders to avoid being sent to war.149 Over the course of the colonial period, governments often walked a fine line between exacting what they could out of populations and incentivizing immigration, or at the very least attempting to limit emigration. In the 1960s and 1970s, roughly twenty percent of Portuguese Guineans as well as almost one-third of Guineans fled violence, economic hardship, and political oppression. Since that time, conflict in the Lower Casamance, civil war in Guinea-Bissau, and political oppression under the Gambian presidency of Yahya Jammeh drove many more across borders, whether for temporary or longer-term stays. In all of these examples, southern Senegambians relied on the fluidity of borderland life to search for 149 See Chapter 2. 435 opportunity and a better life for themselves and their families. Just like displaced Mozambicans in southern Tanzania, Fulbe and others in southern Senegambia showed “a proclivity toward an imagined dual-citizenship.”150 They often laid claim to multiple, overlapping identities, feeling simultaneously Senegalese, Gambian, Bissau-Guinean and/or Guinean. Whether legal citizenship corresponded with how people imagined themselves was only sometimes at issue. Citizenship could be fluid, flexible, and multiple. After independence, African states inherited national space that was unevenly developed and irregularly integrated into both state institutions and the national imaginary.151 Postcolonial state policies toward peripheral regions were shaped by two opposing forces: first, a desire to integrate marginal regions into the core of the emerging state, but second, to avoid wasting resources in places where people actively pushed back against state incursions. This represents in large part a continuation of colonial policies toward peripheral borderland regions, which were often taxed the least in an effort to keep their populations within the boundaries of particular colonial territories.152 The tension between desires to integrate but to avoid alienating borderland populations played a pivotal role in allowing fluid ideas of citizenship to continue. Rather than crack down on international boundaries, postcolonial governments accepted that, for the most part, they would be unable to patrol every last mile of their borders or limit the number of “foreigners” in their national territory. 150 Tague, Displaced Mozambicans in Postcolonial Tanzania, 163. 151 In the case of Tanzania, this unevenness was exposed by those in the southeastern part of the country, who questioned the decisions made in Dar es Salaam. Priya Lal, “Self-Reliance and the State: The Multiple Meanings of Development in Early Post-Colonial Tanzania,” Africa 82, no. 2 (2012), 226. 152 Nugent, Boundaries, Communities and State-Making in West Africa, 30. 436 Sacrificial vs. fluid citizenship Postcolonial ideas of sacrificial citizenship are increasingly at odds with borderland concepts of fluid citizenship.153 In the first two decades following Guinean independence in 1958, Sékou Touré publicly denounced those who left the country for opportunities abroad. He accused those who left for Senegal of “humiliat[ing] the Nation,” and put the seasonal migrant farmer alongside thieves, sex workers, and alcoholics.154 In Touré’s view, even temporary emigration disqualified Fulbe and others from full citizenship in postcolonial Guinea. Despite emigration from all corners of Guinea, Fulbe departures were particularly condemned by the PDG government. Other West African nation-states, like Mali, defined citizenship in particular ways that ignored the importance of mobility across borders.155 In Guinea-Bissau, participation in the war for independence—or at the very least not actively opposing it—became the defining factor in determining a group’s place in the nation after independence. The relative lack of Fulbe participation in the PAIGC and their greater role in Portuguese military units marked Fulbe as not fully Bissau-Guinean, a distinction exacerbated by the flight of many Fulbe across national borders to Senegal and Guinea. However, these tensions have dissipated in the nearly half-century since independence, particularly as Bissau-Guinean Creole has increasingly become a language of national importance. The notion of sacrificial citizenship corresponds well to a framework of territorial and national belonging. The ideal postcolonial citizen thus lives within the bounds of the state, works to benefit the national territory of the state, and therefore earns his or her full citizenship. This is a perspective at odds with the fluid and malleable ideas of citizenship held in many borderland areas 153 On sacrificial citizenship, Victoria Bernal, Nation as Network, Chapter 1. 154 Touré, “Enterrer le racism peulh,” in Touré, Unité Nationale, 186. 155 Mann, From Empires to NGOs, 167. 437 across Africa, and which are particularly prominent in southern Senegambia. Many southern Senegambians did feel a growing attachment to postcolonial nation-states, learning new languages and moving within the boundaries of the state rather than outside of them. Mobility moved in new directions as people in southern Senegal moved to capital cities or elsewhere within their countries. However, mobility structured around southern Senegambia continued to be important, especially when government policies diverged, or populations were at risk of violence. The greatest challenge to fluid ideas of citizenship is an increasing notion that those with multiple national affinities cannot be accepted as members of a particular national community. This has become an increasingly prominent public position not just in parts of Africa, but in the United States and Europe as well. As of 2019, ideas of fluid or multiple citizenship are still accepted in southern Senegambia, and do not mark borderlanders as suspect. However, this is not the case elsewhere in West Africa. In Côte d’Ivoire, there has been continued skepticism of those deemed foreigners, as “the relationship between foreigner and citizen continued to be thought of in terms of territorialized ethnic spaces.” Those who cannot be mapped as Ivorian thus will always be foreigners, as will their descendants.156 Côte d’Ivoire is an extreme example due to its high levels of both immigration and internal migration, with more than a quarter of the population in 2006 made up of non-nationals.157 Though immigrants from Mali and Burkina Faso were able to incorporate themselves into northern Ivorian communities, all of which were at least nominally Muslim, the steady movement of migrants from northern to southern Côte d’Ivoire led to a general discounting of northern Ivorians as proper citizens.158 While the children of Guinean immigrants in both urban and rural areas in Senegal and the Gambia have had little trouble becoming full 156 Marshall-Fratani, “The War of ‘Who Is Who,’” 18. 157 Ibid, 19. 158 Ibid, 19-20. 438 citizens, this is not the case elsewhere. In some parts of Africa, national belonging and autochthony are one and the same, while other states—like those of southern Senegambia—have accepted immigrants and their descendants. The past and future of fluid citizenship Since the late nineteenth century, southern Senegambians have created a community of belonging beyond boundaries. Fulbe and others in southern Senegambia have treated national identity as fluid and flexible, for the most part rejecting national boundaries while selectively accepting their significance when beneficial. Both colonial and postcolonial governments put forward a territorial identity misaligned with the myriad of ways borderlanders moved and interacted. Governments saw little return to be had in combatting this movement, allowing a cross- border community to flourish and increase in importance over the course of the twentieth century. Through their movement, southern Senegambians laid claim to fluid identities, drawing on traditions of mobility, flexible ethnicity, and integration that had long characterized the region. In an era where national identities became increasing salient and territorially defined, borderland residents pushed back against defining one side of the border against another. The continued strength of rural civil society and the deep roots of the “second” economy insulated people from the vagaries of colonial and postcolonial policymaking, while confirming that the region was leydi goto (one land/territory/country). The prominence of fluid ideas of citizenship means that southern Senegambians see little incentive toward regional political integration. The idea of a politically unified southern Senegambia is for the most part perceived negatively, as uniform laws and governments would take away many of the advantages of living in a borderland. Because migrants have been able to continually move across borders, immigrating to a new country did not mean the severing of past 439 connections. The development and ubiquity of mobile phones has further tied southern Senegambians together in recent years, connecting Guineans who have not returned home in half a century to their families. Even as national identity has taken on increasing significance in access to state resources, technology has reinforced regional ties and created even deeper ideas of belonging. The dimensions of southern Senegambia’s transnational connections will certainly shift in the years going forward, as ECOWAS moves toward an increasingly mobile West Africa and technology further connects southern Senegambians. Through all of these changes, southern Senegambians will continue moving to attend naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals, to search for economic opportunity, and to participate in a community beyond boundaries. Toward the end of the introduction, I referenced Boubacar Barry’s call for understanding greater Senegambia. In arguing for the importance of such a study, he wrote, Today we cannot sidestep the issue of political unity in a federal framework within which all member states will give up their international sovereignty. That is the prerequisite for the creation of a viable regional space. The point is not to modify existing frontiers. It is to unify existing states in ways that enable the zone’s people and natural regions to rediscover their homogeneity within a vast supranational framework.159 Since the drawing of colonial boundaries in the 1880s, southern Senegambians have created a “viable regional space,” albeit one unrecognized by the governments of the region. They have treated fluidity and flexibility as a virtue worth holding onto even as states sought to territorialize and nationalize their citizens. In this work, I have sought to demonstrate that Barry’s hopes were at least partially realized in southern Senegambia. In his honor, this is “my homage to a frontier- free land of Peoples, Senegambia.”160 159 Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic slave trade, xii. 160 Ibid, xxi. 440 APPENDICES 441 APPENDIX A: NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY, NAMES, AND LINGUISTIC TERMS Disseminating work that crosses linguistic boundaries requires a great many choices, not all of them obvious. Fulbe names—when they were written—were typically written in Arabic until the colonial period, and French, British, and Portuguese sources reflect those spellings differently. Thus, the last name Diallo in Senegal and Guinea becomes Jallow in the Gambia and Djaló in Guinea-Bissau. I have chosen to adopt to spell those names differently for those residing in each country. Names of precolonial individuals are written how they would read to English speakers; Musa, rather than the French Moussa, or Caam rather than Thiam or Tcham. However, when those spellings are quoted, I have left them in the original. Typically, precolonial figures were most identified by their names rather than surnames, a distinction I have chosen to adopt in this text. Thus, Alfa or Musa Molo are referred to either by their full name or simply as Alfa or Musa. For terms in the Pulaar language, I use spellings that would read most phonetically to speakers of English; for example, musiddo rather mousiddo. The one exception is that a Pulaar c is a ch in English. I have intentionally omitted implosive consonants, as they will be confusing to most readers and will cause little confusion for those who speak Pulaar. Pulaar terms often do not translate directly into English, so I often use three or four different words to get at the multiplicity of meanings. I use the Pulaar term Fulbe rather than the Mandinka (borrowed by the English and Portuguese) Fula or the French Peul(h) as it more accurately describes Fulbe self-representation. Words from Pulaar or other languages are translated at first in the text but not typically afterward. They can be found in the glossary that precedes the text. Lastly, place names and geographic features are spelled in English even if they are in non- Anglophone countries: Futa Jallon and Fuladu rather than Fouta Djallon and Fouladou. The 442 modern country of Guinea is referred to as French Guinea until 1958, and Guinea-Bissau as Portuguese Guinea until 1974. 443 APPENDIX B: GLOSSARY OF PULAAR, SENEGAMBIAN, AND GEOGRAPHIC TERMS Ajami – Writing of African languages in Arabic script (Pulaar, Wolof, etc.) Alkalo – Village chief in the Gambia Almami – A title taken by many West African Muslim rulers Baape – “Bush” a term used to describe rural areas, similar to the French brousse (Pulaar) Bafatá – Eastern region of Portuguese Guinea/Guinea-Bissau, as well as its eponymous capital Bainunk – An ethnic group in Casamance before the Mandinka and Fulbe Bamtaare – Development (Pulaar) Banjul – Capital of the independent Gambia (formerly Bathurst) Basse – Capital/largest city of the easternmost region of the Gambia, the Upper River Region Bathurst – Colonial capital of the Gambia (today Banjul) Biafada – Ethnic group living primarily in southern Guinea-Bissau Bissau – Capital of Portuguese Guinea (after 1942) and Guinea-Bissau Bundu – A 17th–19th century Fulbe kingdom along the Senegal-Mali border, as well as the region of the same name Canton – Colonial term for a small administrative unit run by a local appointed chief (French) Casamance – The part of Senegal south of the Gambia Lower Casamance – The southwestern region of Senegal similar to contemporary Ziguinchor Middle Casamance – The southern region of Senegal similar to contemporary Sedhiou Upper Casamance – The southern region of Senegal similar to contemporary Kolda Ceerno – Religious teacher or spiritual guide (Pulaar) Central River Region – Eastern region of the Gambia (previously known as MacCarthy Island Province/Region) Cercle – Colonial term for a region within a particular colony (French) 444 Concelho – Colonial term for a region within a particular colony (Portuguese) CFA franc – Contemporary currency of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, among others Chef de canton – Chief of a canton (French) Collège – Lower secondary school (French) Conakry – Capital of French Guinea and independent Guinea Corvée – Forced labor (French) Daaka – Annual religious gathering outside of Medina Gounass (Pulaar) Dakar – Capital of colonial and independent Senegal Dalasi – Currency of the Gambia Dental – Community in its broadest possible meaning (Pulaar) Dorobe – Subset of the Fulbe noted for nomadic behavior, most prominent in the eastern Gambia Douane – Customs (French) Évolué – Colonial term for an “evolved” person (French) Ferde/fergo – A self-imposed exile/flight (verb: ferde, noun: fergo), similar to hijrah Firdu – Province of Kaabu and Fuladu around the modern city of Kolda French Guinea – French colony corresponding to modern Guinea Fof ko gotum – It’s all the same (Pulaar) Fof ko leydi goto – It’s all the same country/land/territory (Pulaar) Fof ko duula goto – It’s all the same place (Pulaar) Forriá – Polity and geographic region of southeastern Guinea-Bissau French Sudan – French colony corresponding to modern Mali Fronteira – Border (Portuguese) Frontière – Border (French) Fula – British and Portuguese term for Fulbe and for Pulaar, borrowed from Wolof Fuladu – Kingdom in southern Senegal, the southeastern Gambia, and eastern Guinea-Bissau 445 Fulakunda – Fulbe sub-group in southern Senegal and neighboring parts of the Gambia and Guinea-Bissau Fulbe – Ethnic group of roughly 40 million across West Africa, also known as Fula, Peul, Fulani, and several other names Fulbe Futa – Fulbe sub-group from the Futa Jallon highlands of Guinea Futa Jallon – A highland region of northern Guinea, as well as the 18th–19th century kingdom of the same name Futa Toro – A region encompassing the middle Senegal River Valley, as well as the 18th–19th century kingdom of the same name Gaabunke – Fulbe sub-group from eastern Guinea-Bissau Gabú – Easternmost region of Portuguese Guinea/Guinea-Bissau, as well as its capital Gandal – Knowledge (Pulaar) Geba – Important 15th–19th century port along the river of the same name in Guinea-Bissau Griot – West African praise singer, oral historian, and musician Haalpulaar – Fulbe sub-group in Futa Toro, sometimes known as Toucouleur Haakil – Intelligence (Pulaar) Hijrah - A self-imposed exile/flight like that of the Prophet Muhammad (see fergo) Indigénat/Indigenato – Set of laws/institutions codifying the difference between European and African (French/Portuguese) Jalan – Sacred shrines centered on particular forests, trees, stones, or caves (Mandinka) Jiyaabe – Fulbe of enslaved descent (Pulaar) – singular jiyaado Jokkere endam – Respect for the bonds of blood, family, or community (Pulaar) Kaabu – Polity in southern Senegambia for several centuries until the 1860s Kalasal – Limit of a field or house, referring to a fence or outside wall of some kind Kedougou – Southeasternmost region of Senegal Kéérol – Limit, boundary, or frontier of a community, polity, or territory Kolda – Region of southern Senegal covering the Upper Casamance, as well as the capital of the same region 446 Laamu – Government (Pulaar) Lenyol – Lineage, ethnicity, nation, or people (Pulaar) Leppi – Fulbe woven fabric used to pay precolonial taxes Leydi – State, land, ground, or territory (Pulaar) Lorobe – Synonym for Dorobe, often used by the British – singular Lorobo Lumo – Weekly market held across southern Senegambia (Pulaar) Lycée – Upper secondary school (French) Maayo – Body of water (Pulaar) MacCarthy Island Region – Colonial Gambian region corresponding to the Central River Region Maccudo – Enslaved person, (Pulaar) – plural, maccube Macina – 19th century Fulbe kingdom in central Mali Madrassa – Islamic religious school (Arabic) Mandinka – West African ethnic group of the Gambia, Senegal, and Guinea-Bissau, as well as the language of the same name Mansa – King/Emperor (Mandinka) Mansaba – King of kings, for example, the king of Kaabu (Mandinka) Mansadugu – King’s town (Mandinka) Marabout – Muslim religious leader/teacher in West Africa (originally from Arabic) Muridiyya – Islamic brotherhood prominent in Senegal and the Gambia founded in the late 19th century by Amadou Bamba—its followers are known as Mourides Musibbe – Relatives, broadly defined (Pulaar) – singular, musiddo Nyanco – The royal families of Kaabu Peso – Currency of Guinea-Bissau from 1974 to 1995, replaced by CFA Peul(h) – French term for Fulbe, borrowed from Wolof Poore – Rubber (Pulaar) Portuguese Guinea – Portuguese colony corresponding to modern Guinea-Bissau 447 Presidio – garrisoned town in Portuguese Guinea Pulaar – Language of the Fulbe (known in its eastern dialects as Fulfulde) Régulo – Colonial and postcolonial chief in Portuguese Guinea, with an connotation of royalty (Portuguese) Rimbe – Fulbe of “noble” ancestry (Pulaar) – singular, dimmo Sahel – African geographic region between the Sahara and the savannah Senegal River (Valley) – River separating Senegal and Mauritania, with headwaters in Mali Sarahule – Mande ethnic group found in Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Guinea, generally referred to Soninke outside of the Gambia Seyfo – Gambian district chief (similar to a chef de canton in French colonies) – plural, Seyfolu (Mandinka) Soninke – Ethnic group found in Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Mauritania and Guinea, known as Sarahule in the Gambia Southern Senegambia – Geographic area consisting of the southeastern Gambia, the Upper Casamance (Senegal), eastern Guinea-Bissau, and northwestern Guinea Tambacounda – Region of Senegal east of Kolda Tata – A military fortification (Mandinka) Tijaniyya – Islamic brotherhood in West and North Africa, founded by Ahmed al-Tijani, whose followers are referred to as Tijani Tirailleur – French colonial African soldiers, in particular the tirailleurs sénégalais across French West Africa Toucouleur – Synonym for Haalpulaar; Fulbe of the Senegal River Valley and Futa Toro Turuban – Annihilation (Mandinka), referring to the fall of Kaabu Ummah – The community of Muslims Upper River Region – Easternmost region of the Gambia Wolof – Largest ethnic group in Senegal; also present in the Gambia and southern Mauritania Ziara – Visit of devotion to a marabout or ceerno (Arabic) 448 APPENDIX C Figure A-20. Administrative Map of Senegal From Wikimedia Commons, Author Amitchell125 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Senegal,_administrative_divisions_in_colour_2.svg 449 APPENDIX D 15°N Dakar !^ o 17°W 16°W 15°W 14°W 15°N !P Thiès !P Diourbel THE GAMBIA THE GAMBIA !P Fatick S E N E G A L !P Kaolack !P Kaffrine 14°N 13°N A T L A N T I C O C E A N BANJUL o !P Gunjur NORTH BANK CENTRAL RIVER Janjanburah !P Kerewan !P LOWER RIVER !P Mansa Konko UPPER RIVER Basse Santa Su !P !^ Banjul Gambia Riv e r Brikama WEST COAST Kalagi !P Ziguinchor !P Sédhiou !P Farim !P Kolda !^ National capital !P Administrative capital Town, village o Airport International boundary Regional boundary Main road Secondary road 20 40 Km 10 20 Mi 0 0 14°N 13°N The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. 17°W !P Cacheu 16°W G U I N E A - B I S S A U 15°W !P Gabú 14°W Map No. 4540 UNITED NATIONS June 2018 Figure A-21. Administrative Map of the Gambia Department of Field Support Geospatial Information Section (formerly Cartographic Section) Note: During the colonial period, Janjanbureh was known as Georgetown, and the Central River Region as the MacCarthy Island District/Region From the United Nations https://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/gambia.pdf 450 APPENDIX E Figure A-22. Administrative Map of Guinea-Bissau From the United Nations https://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/guineabi.pdf 451 APPENDIX F S E N E G A L Kédougou Bafing M A L I Bamako Niagassola Sibi Balaki Kali Mali G a m bie Yambéring L A B É L A B É Koubia Tougué Bafing Dinguiraye Kalinko Sélouma Bissikrima Dabola Cisséla Lélouma Labé Pita M A M O U Dalaba K a k r i m a K I N D I A K I N D I A Konkouré Kindia Kégnéko Mamou Ouré Kaba FA R A N A H Kolèntèn Madina Woula g o n o M Kamakwie Maréla Falaba Kabala Faranah u Mafo Tiro N i g e r Kissidougou Pamalap Kambia Little Port Loko Pepel i l e S el or Makeni R o k Lunsar S I E R R A L E O N E Koidu-Sefadu Yèndè Milimou Guékédou Voinjama Kailahun Foya Siguirini Bakoy Kintinian Tinkisso Niandankoro Doko Bankon Siguiri Kourémalé Niger i n a Sankar Yanfolila O u a s s o u l o u B a l é Baoulé K A N K A N Kouroussa N i g er Balato Mandiana Niantanina Kankan n a M Niant Moribaya ilo Sabadou Baranama Saladou Sankarani Dio n Odienné Kérouané Sokourala Sibiribaro Macenta Beyla NZÉRÉKORÉ Boola Sènko Dougbèla Touba GUINEA Geba Gabú Bafatá G U I N E A - B I S S A U Cor u b al Buba Kogon Dabiss Boké Sansalé Koundâra K o u l o u ntou Foulamôri T o m iné Gaoual Wéndou-Mbôrou Kounsitél Sangarédi Télimélé Îles Tristao Kamsar B O K É Tougnifili Boffa Fria Konkour GUINEA Dubréka Coyah Forécariah Conakry Îles de Los National capital Regional capital Prefectural capital Town, village Major airport International boundary Regional boundary Main road Secondary road Railroad A T Lungi Freetown L A N T I C O C E A N Bo Jong Momaligi Sewa Daru Kenema Moa Mano Loffa Gbeya L I B E R I A Zorzor Koulé Nzérékoré Lola Yomou Diéké Yekepa St. P aul Gbarnga Gahnpa 0 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 km 25 50 75 100 mi The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. Sulima Map No. 4164 Rev. 4 UNITED NATIONS August 2014 Figure A-23. Administrative Map of Guinea CÔTE D'IVOIRE Danané Department of Field Support Cartographic Section From the United Nations https://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/guinea.pdf 452 BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 BIBLIOGRAPHY Interviews All interviews were conducted by the author unless stated otherwise Senegal: Boubacar Ba, Fafacourou, January 21, 2017 El Haji Malick Ba, Medina Gounass, March 1, 2017 Lamarana Ba, Medina Yoro Foula, February 13, 2017 Mariama Ba and Coumba Ndiaye, Medina Yoro Foula, February 13, 2017 Ousmane Ba, Thierno Bocar Kande, and Aliou Balde, Guiro Yero Bocar, February 20, 2017 Saidou Ba, Medina Gounass, April 29, 2017 Aliel Mbailo Balde, Dabo, December 13, 2016 Alpha Balde, Fass Kahone, January 16, 2017 Amadou Balde, Mama Samba Balde and Abdoulaye Diallo, Sare Sandiong, January 19, 2017 Amadou Balde, Thierno Balde, and Sekou Balde, Medina Ndoondi, January 19, 2017 Boubacar Balde, Fafacourou, January 21, 2017 Demba Balde, Ndorna, February 17, 2017 Dikory Balde, Gundo Balde and Tako Sane, Nemataba, February 14, 2017 El Hadji Daiwa Balde and Sakho Balde, Pakour, January 27, 2017 El Hadji Souma Balde and Daouda Balde, Velingara, February 26, 2017 Hassana Balde, Abdrachmani Kane Diallo, Mouhamadou Mokhtar Kan Diallo, and Sattana Sow, Koutoukounda, February 27, 2017 Ismaila Balde and Sekou Oumar Balde, Ilyao, February 24, 2017 Meta Balde, Mampatim, January 17, 2017 Ñaala Balde and Pathe Balde, Dabo, December 12, 2016 Oumar Balde and Mbailo Balde, Ouassadou, January 26, 2017 Pathe Balde and Diadiy Balde, Sare Boki, March 1, 2017 Pullo Balde, Coumbacara, January 18, 2017 Sadio Balde, Dabo, December 14, 2016 Saikou Balde, Pata, February 15, 2017 Sibo Balde, Salikegne, February 21, 2017 Sila Kumba Sirancho Baldeh and Manjang Mballow, Sare Bojo Sambou, July 18, 2017 Sindian Balde, Pakour, January 27, 2017 Thiedo Balde, Kolda, February 11, 2017 Amadou Barry, Pakour, January 27, 2017 Moussa Bayo, Salikegne, February 21, 2017 Ibrahima Biyaye, Thiara, January 23, 2017 Sadiou Cissé and Kelountan Komma, Thiara, January 23, 2017 Bakary Cissoko, Thiara, January 23, 2017 Mama Tano Cissoko, Manda Douane, February 28, 2017 Moukhtarou Coulibaly, Mampatim, December 10, 2016 Mamadou Danso, Pata, February 15, 2017 Fode Diaboula, Mampatim, December 11, 2016 454 Ibrahima Diaby, Timindalla, March 1, 2017 Abdoul Hayou Diallo, Medina Gounass, March 3, 2017 Amadou Moussa Diallo, Medina Gounass, April 29, 2017 Boubacar Diallo, Mampatim, December 9, 2016 El Hadji Moustapha Galle Diallo, Mampatim, December 10, 2016 Fatoumata Diallo, Mampatim, December 9, 2016 Hadji Diallo, Sinthian Hadji, February 14, 2017 Mamadou Wouri Diallo, Pakour, January 27, 2017 Mouminatou Diallo, Ramatou Balde, and Aliou Barry, Pakour, January 27, 2017 Saidou Diallo, Badion, January 25, 2017 Kanta Diao, Coumbarou Balde, Oumar Balde, Dombel Balde, and Demba Boiro, Ouassadou, January 26, 2017 Oumar Diao, Bagadadji, January 17, 2017 Oumar Diao, Coly Diamanka, Mediya Balde, and Fode Sabaly, Bagadadji, December 14, 2016 Sidou Diao, Ouassadou, January 26, 2017 Modou Diaw, Keba Boye, Mamadou Boye, Babou Boye, and Ousmane Seck, Niaming, February 14, 2017 2017 Mamadou Danso, Pata, February 15, 2017 El Hadji Dieng, Moloubay Dieng, Modaiwa Dieng, and Lamin Ndiaye, Thallel, February 14, Mamadou Gassama, Salikegne, February 21, 2017 Mawnde Kande, Medina Yoro Foula, February 12, 2017 Samba Kande, Samba Kande, and Samba Kande, Fafacourou, January 21, 2017 Souleymane Kande, Aliou Kande, Bocar Mballo, Biaye Balde, Pathe Balde and Mama Samba Mballo, Medina El Hadji, February 20, 2017 Mamadou Konta, Salikegne, February 23, 2017 Diawdi Mahanera, Gambissara Français, February 28, 2017 Aliou Mballo, Pakiri, January 24, 2017 Alpha Mballo, Medina Yoro Foula, February 13, 2017 Demba Mballo, Salikegne, February 23, 2017 Ebraima Sambambe Mballo, Sare Guiro, December 13, 2016 Souleymane Mballo and Mamadou Wuri Diallo, Pakour, January 27, 2017 Tally Mballo, Diam Weli, February 27, 2017 Demba Sabaly and Yero Balde, Hamdallaye, April 24, 2017 Mawnde Sabaly, Ndorna, February 17, 2017 Mariama Kindima Seydi, Dabo, April 28, 2017 Saliou Seydi, Amadou Seydi, Sounkarou Kande, Thiara, January 20, 2017 Idrissa Sow and Mohamadou Sow, Medina Gounass, March 1, 2017 Mokhtar Sow, Medina Gounass, April 29, 2017 Dioulde Sy, Badion, January 25, 2017 Ibrahima Thiam, Medina El Hadji, February 20, 2017 Seydou Touré, Pakour, January 28, 2017 Thaymoko Traoré, Mamadou Mballo and Idrissa Diallo, Medina Yoro Foula, February 13, 2017 Guinea-Bissau: Abdulai Ba and Armando Abdulai Balde, Canhamina, April 23, 2017 455 Amadu Tidjani “Djallonke” Balde, Pitche, April 4, 2017 El Hadji Hogo Balde and Abdrahmane Balde, Gabú, March 18, 2017 Idrissa Balde, Galomaro Cossé, April 21, 2017 Mamadu Balde, Gela Balde, Amadu Balde, Mama Salu Djalo, Samba Embalo, and Mady Balde, Nemataba, April 3, 2017 Mansara Balde, Galomaro Cossé, April 21, 2017 Ousmane Balde, Sare Bakary, April 26, 2017 Rubi Balde, Aissatu Balde, Maimuna Balde, Salimatu Boiro and Hawa Cande, Fass, April 6, 2017 Salu Balde, Bafatá, April 18, 2017 Sulai Balde and Muktaru Balde, Bafatá, April 18, 2017 Abibulai Boiro and Amadu Tidjani Cande, Fass, April 6, 2017 Aissatu Camara, Lamarana Djaló, Djabu Diamanka, and Hamina Camara, Paunca, April 9, 2017 Pété Camara and Amadu Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, April 5, 2017 El Hadji Mamadu Cande, Pirada, April 11, 2017 El Hadji Mamadu Seku Cande, Umar Cande, and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, April 11, 2017 Mamadu Cande, Paunca, April 9, 2017 Sambaru Cande and Indjai Cande, Bantandjan, April 23, 2017 Umar Cande and Sambaru Boiro, Pirada, April 11, 2017 El Hadji Ibrahima Cissé, Contuboel, April 23, 2017 Toumani Dembou and Demba Boiro, Cumpanghor, April 1, 2017 Saini Djabai, Queita Djabai, Famara Mbuli Cisse, Ebraima Djabai, Contuba, April 20, 2017 Alfa Djaló, Sare Bakary, April 26, 2017 Amadu Djaló, Alimu Balde, Mamangari Sané, and Malang Djau, Buruntuma, April 9, 2017 El Hadji Gibril Djaló and Wagidu Djaló, Madina Boé, April 7, 2017 Halimu Djaló, Madina Boé, April 7, 2017 Husaynatou Djaló and Lamini Balde, Mafanco, April 2, 2017 Mamadu Djaló, Mamadu Barry, and Mama Samba Queita, Bafatá, April 18, 2017 Tcherno Alimu Djaló, Sonaco, April 3, 2017 Bakari Djana, Gêba, April 22, 2017 Abasi Embalo, Pitche, April 4, 2017 Amadu Embalo, Sonaco, April 3, 2017 Bocar Embalo, Samba Saidi, Mamadjang Embalo, and Tidjani Djau, Mafanco, April 2, 2017 Moreira Dauda Embalo, Gabu, March 17, 2017 Tcherno Embalo and El Hadji Boiro, Candjufa, April 1, 2017 Yussuf Embalo, Candate, April 2, 2017 El Hadji Fuma Fati, Bambadinca, April 19, 2017 Nitchiya Kantere, Fali Bandja, Farine Kantere, Marang Camara, and Demba Balde, Camadjaba, Samba Ly, Alu Djalo, and Kadjatu Djalo, Cambadju, April 24, 2017 El Hadji Ibrahima Mané, Bambadinca, April 19, 2017 Ibrahima Sadjo, Malang Saidi, Mamadu Lamin Konte and Naniko Sadjo, Farankunda, April 20, April 9, 2017 2017 Ma Tidjani Sall, Yunusa Balde and Mama Salu Cande, Fass, April 6, 2017 Mamadu Sambu and Suleymane Embalo, Cabuca, April 5, 2017 Amadu Sadjo Sané, Cabuca, April 15, 2017 456 El Hadji Tidjani Sané, Mama Ausu Sané, Ebraima Sané, Sadjo Mané, and Samian Sané, Kankelefa, April 10, 2017 Djarga Sanha and Sadjo Sanha, Bambadinca, April 19, 2017 Sadjo Sumaré, Geba, April 22, 2017 Saada Tcham, Usman Djau, and Hamidu Balde, Galomaro (Cossé), April 21, 2017 Mamadu Turé, Saco Balde, Bakari Demba Balde, and Bubacar Djau, Badjocunda, April 10, 2017 The Gambia: Alfa Bah, Kusalang, July 20, 2017 El Hadji Saikou Bah, Basse Santa Su, July 17, 2017 Gellel Bah, Samba Kunda, July 16, 2017 Abdoulie Baldeh, Sare Buti, July 24, 2017 Abdrachman Baldeh, Fatoto, July 16, 2017 Bakari Demba Baldeh, Sankuli Kunda, July 23, 2017 Dikori Baldeh, Kusalang, July 19, 2017 El Hadji Baba Baldeh, Sare Sofie, July 26, 2017 Ilo Baldeh, Sare Sofie, July 26, 2017 Juulde Baldeh, Abdoulie Baldeh, Musa Baldeh and Mamadou Jallow, Sare Ngai, July 20, 2017 Kebba Baldeh, Sare Jawube, July 12, 217 Peter Baldeh, Mansanjang, July 16, 2017 Sannah Baldeh, Sare Buti, July 24, 2017 Toranko Bawarrow, Sare Njobo, July 21, 2017 Mamadou Lamin Ceesay, Brikama Ba, July 25, 2017 Saibai Darboe, Bansang, July 21, 2017 Yero Demb, Sare Luba, July 22, 2017 Mankama Fatty and Bounding Bayo, Brikama Ba, July 25, 2017 Alhaji Gumanneh, Kessemah Samoreh and Abdoulie Gumanneh, Koina, July 13, 2017 Alpha Jallow, Yoro Beri Kunda, July 23, 2017 Amadou Jallow and Alfa Omar Jallow, Sinchu Alieu, July 22, 2017 Cherno Hassimu Jallow, Basse Santa Su, July 19, 2017 Demba Jallow, Sare Ali, July 15, 2017 El Hadji Mamadou Yaya Jallow, Basse Santa Su, July 17, 2017 Fatoumata Jallow, Nyamanar, July 27, 2017 Juularou Jallow, Sare Luba, July 22, 2017 Leggil Jallow, Sare Mala, July 13, 2017 Mamadou Saidou Jallow, Basse Santa Su, July 19, 2017 Mamajan Jallow and Abdourahmane Jallow, Basse Santa Su, July 19, 2017 Ramatoulaye Jallow, Basse Santa Su, July 17, 2017 Samba Jamankah, Sare Njobo, July 21, 2017 Fatoumata Jamankah, Sira Sanneh, and Saliff Jallow, Sare Mawundeh, July 20, 2017 Malik Jammeh, Sankuli Kunda, July 22, 2017 Mamadou Boyi Jawo, Basse Santa Su, July 17, 2017 Demba Jawo, Sare Ali, July 15, 2017 Modi Jawo, Sinchan Paramba, July 26, 2017 Samba Jawo, Sare Njobo, July 21, 2017 Sarjo Jawo, Sarjo Kandeh, Amadou Jawo, Sare Ali, July 15, 2017 457 Tacko Jawo and Mamadou Baldeh, Sare Tala, July 18, 2017 Bamba Jeng, Sinchu Alagi, July 22, 2017 Cherno Kandeh, Nyamanar, July 27, 2017 Pathe Kande and Demo Mballow, Sare Mansali, July 15, 2017 Musa Kouyate, Brikama Ba, July 24, 201 Pate Manneh, Basse Santa Su, July 17, 2017 Alet Mballow and Tacko Mballow, Sare Buti, July 24, 2017 Samba Mballow, Sare Bojo Gamana, July 19, 2017 Mambie Sabali, Sare Buti, July 24, 2017 Lamin Sabali and Mamadou N'jie, Mandina Samba Jawo, July 15, 2017 Souleymane Saidy, Alassan Mbaye and Doro Sy, Sare Bojo Medina Mbaye, July 19, 2017 Fa Sarjo Sanyang, Fatoto, July 16, 2017 Modou Sao, Sinchu Alagi, July 22, 2017 Ali Sow, Dikori Sow, Sara Baldeh, Amadou Kandeh, Yoro Beri Kunda, July 22, 2017 Bouraima Sow, Fatoto, July 16, 2017 Madala Sow, Sare Gela, July 18, 2017 Mady Sow, Tenkoli, July 17, 2017 Sarjo Sow and Demba Demb, Fula Bantang, July 20, 2017 Keba Tambedo, Sare Abdou, July 22, 2017 Billay Tunkara and Intha Danguru, Gambissara Lamoi, February 2, 2017 Interviews conducted by David Robinson: Al-Hajj Bokar Ba and Moussa Gueye, Kaedi, Mauritania, April 5, 1968 Diadie Ba, April 20, 1968 Oumar Ba, January 26, 1974 Mouhamed Moustapha Kane (personal communication), November 25, 1986 Tierno Seydou Kane, July 2, 1971 Archives Dakar, Senegal: Archives Nationales du Sénégal, Dakar (ANS) Centre d'Études des Sciences et Techniques de l'Information (CESTI) The Gambia: National Center for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Oral History Archive, Fajara National Records Service (NRS), Banjul France: Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer (ANOM), Aix-en-Provence Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), Paris Lisbon, Portugal: 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