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Who colonized Senegal?

West Africa — the powers that ruled Senegal, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Senegal?

France, from trading posts at Saint-Louis and Gorée in the seventeenth century to full colonial rule and the capital of French West Africa at Dakar, until independence on 4 April 1960.

Senegal held a peculiar place in French empire: the Four Communes elected a deputy to the French parliament while the rest of the territory lived under the indigénat.

Reference

Who ruled Senegal, and when

before 1659
Jolof, Waalo, Cayor and other states
1659–1850s
French trading posts
1895–1960
French West Africa (AOF), capital Dakar

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
France
Independence
4 April 1960
Administrative centre
Dakar governed eight French colonies from 1895
Thiaroye
Colonial troops shot for demanding their pay in December 1944
Currency
The CFA franc, created in 1945, still ties the economy to Paris-set arrangements

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1659

    Saint-Louis founded as a French post.

  2. 1857

    Faidherbe begins systematic conquest of the interior.

  3. 1895

    Dakar becomes capital of French West Africa.

  4. 1944

    Thiaroye massacre of West African veterans demanding back pay.

  5. 1960

    Independence.

Context

What the record shows

The Thiaroye massacre of 1944 — French troops firing on West African veterans of the French army — remains the sharpest single illustration of what that citizenship was worth.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Senegal?
France, from trading posts in the seventeenth century to full colonial rule until independence in 1960.
What was French West Africa?
A federation of eight French colonies administered from Dakar between 1895 and 1958.
When did Senegal become independent?
4 April 1960.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Senegal

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.