“The equilibrium you admire in me is an unstable one, difficult to maintain. My inner life was split early between the call of the ancestors and the call of Europe, between the exigencies of black-African culture and those of modern life.” (Léopold Sédar Senghor)

Near the end of the 19th century, Otto von Bismarck, the German chancellor, brought the plenipotentiaries of all major powers of Europe together to deal with Africa's colonization in such a manner as to avoid provocation of war. This event, known as the Berlin Conference of 1884 - 1885, galvanized a phenomenon that came to be known as the Scramble for Africa.

The conference established two fundamental rules for European seizure of Africa. The first of these was that no recognition of annexation would be granted without evidence of a practical occupation, and the second, that a practical occupation would be deemed unlawful without a formal appeal for protection made on behalf of a territory by its leader - a plea that must be committed to paper in the form of a legal treaty.

Thus began a rush, spearheaded mainly by European commercial interests in the form of chartered companies, to penetrate the African interior and woo its leadership with guns, trinkets, and alcohol, and having thus obtained their marks or seals upon spurious treaties, begin establishing boundaries of future European African colonies.

The ease with which this was achieved was due to the fact that, at that point, traditional African leadership was disunited, and the people had just staggered back from centuries of concussion inflicted by the slave trade. Thus, to usurp authority, to intimidate an already broken society, and to play one leader against the other was a diplomatic task so childishly simple, the matter was wrapped up, for the most part, in less than a decade. Even at that stage, however, the countries would keep jostling for position in Africa against each other, attempting to snap up more land and consolidate it. 

As such, the scramble kept going at a fevered pitch until the outbreak of World War I. When they entered the negotiations in Berlin in 1884, the French were established in their flagship African territory of Senegal, situated at the westernmost point of continental Africa, which tended to give them an option over the vast reaches of the western continent so far unclaimed by any territory. 

The history of French engagement in Senegal can be traced back to 1677, with the French acquisition of a slave port on the island of Gorée, today a cantonment of the Senegalese capital of Dakar. From there, the French were apt to gaze across the vast expanse of unclaimed territory to their minor enclave of French Somaliland, founded between 1883 and 1887, and which would, in the post-independence era, become the state of Djibouti. The French imperial vision, therefore, became the establishment of French sovereignty over everything in between these two points, including, if possible, Egypt.

That vision ultimately clashed with British objectives, but somewhat ironically, conflicts against other enemies would determine how France’s overseas empire was ultimately decolonized. In conjunction with those geopolitical events, certain influential individuals at home would be ready to fill in the European power vacuum while leading various independence movements, and one of these individuals was a poet and politician named Léopold Senghor.

French Senegal: The History of the French Colony and Senegal’s Transition to Independence examines how France established the colony, and how that colony affected events in the 20th century before Senegal became a modern nation.