France as a Muslim Power in West Africa

At certain times in itshistory one might think of France as a Christian power.At no time would one think of it as an Islamic power.But by the early twentiethcentury, French authoritieswere actively discussing andevaluating their policies as a

puissance musulmane

,

or“Muslim power,” by whichthey meant an imperialpower with Muslim subjects.

France as a Muslim Power in West Africa

David Robinson

France became a “Muslim power,” in the sense of an imperial nation with Muslim subjects, over the course of thenineteenth century. This practice and policy ﬁrst emerged in Algeria, and from the mid-nineteenth century it was al-so deployed in Senegal and Mauritania, the initial core of French West Africa. The process of conquering the

bidan

, or “whites,” of Mauritania, an Arabic-speaking nomadic peo- ple with a strong sense of racial superiority over the

sudan,

or “blacks,” of Senegal, and the competition with Moroccoover claims to the Sahara encouraged the development of this policy, which was codiﬁed in the early twentieth cen-tury through the concepts of

Islam maure

and

Islam noir

,concepts which remain inﬂuential today.

At certain times in its history one might think of France as a Christianpower.

1

At no time would one think of it as an Islamic power. But by theearly twentieth century, French authorities were actively discussing andevaluating their policies as a

puissance musulmane,

or “Muslim power,”by which they meant an imperial power with Muslim subjects. The Frenchcontrolled the Maghrib through the colony of Algeria, the protectorate of Tunisia, and an emerging sphere of inﬂuence in Morocco. They dominatedmany Muslim societies in West Africa and had established interests andclients in the declining Ottoman Empire. They published the

Revue du Monde Musulman

to deal with questions of knowledge and power andcompared themselves to Great Britain, the Netherlands (Snouck Hurgronje1911), Germany, Italy, and other countries with “Islamic” dominions orinterests.France ﬁrst began to think of itself as a “Muslim power” in 1830after the invasion of Algiers and the acquisition of Muslim subjects. Al-geria became the example of the success—and sometimes the failure—of France as a Muslim power (Ageron 1968; Julien 1964). Algerian precedentswere invoked in Senegal and Mauritania, especially during the “creation”of Senegal by Governor Faidherbe in the 1850s and the “paciﬁcation” of Mauritania in the early 1900s.

2

By the Anglo-French Agreement of 1890France fell heir to northwest Africa—the area that became French Northand West Africa. This meant becoming an Islamic power, since the over-

a f r i c a

T OD A Y

F R A N C E A S A M U S L I MP OWE R I N WE S T A F R I C A

1 0 6

whelming majority of the inhabitants were Muslim, or fast becomingso. French officials feared Islam, recalling its long history of separationfrom and opposition to Europe and its “incursions” into southwestern andsoutheastern Europe (Etienne 1990). But they had no illusions about roll-ing back the Muslim identity of most of their subjects (Burke 1972). Colo-nial administrators worked to create institutions of control, to establishhegemony as a “Muslim power.”An important initiative came from Jules Cambon, the activist gov-ernor-general of Algeria, who sought to link the North and West Afri-can holdings of the French. He embarked on the conquest and consolida-tion of the Sahara and the establishment of links and boundaries with theFrench Soudan. He sent a number of Algerians to serve as interpreters andguides in the emerging French domains in West and Equatorial Africa. Un-der Cambon’s watch, Xavier Coppolani and Octave Dupont produced alarge study of Muslim brotherhoods and recommended close relation-ships between colonial government and Sufi leaders (Depont and Coppo-lani 1897). Cambon supported Coppolani’s request for an assignment tosurvey the nomadic societies of the Soudan, a project that led to the cam-paigns of “pacification” of Mauritania. One of the governor-general’s mostsignificant achievements was to secure

fatwa,

or decrees, from the leadingauthorities of Mecca stating that submission to European rule was accept-able for Muslims (Ageron 1968:513). The Muslim tradition of the

fatwa

could now be used as an instrument of legitimation for French rule.Morocco presented the strongest ideological challenge for France inNorth and West Africa. Unlike Algeria and Tunisia, it had never been aprovince of the Ottoman Empire. There could be no rationale of “libera-tion” from a foreign yoke; Morocco, in fact, rivaled Istanbul’s stature with-in the Islamic world (Munson 1992; Rivet 1988). The court laid claim tothe south, as far as the Senegal and Niger Rivers. While these claims didnot evoke much local response, they were important in times of crisis.When the French were conquering large amounts of territory, West Afri-cans called upon the Moroccan sultan for assistance (Hanson and Robinson1991:243–8). In all these ways this part of the

dar al-Islam

upped the antefor any would-be “infidel” force. For reasons of stature and location, Mo-rocco was the last part of Northwest Africa to fall to the French. The chal-lenge that it presented would have a significant impact on Islamic practicein West Africa.The emergence of France as a Muslim power in what I call the Sene-galo-Mauritanian zone occurred in the late nineteenth century, partly inresponse to the North African experience, including the conquest of Mo-rocco completed in 1912. The conscious effort to control Islamic societies,establish Muslim leaders and allies, and put a secular and tolerant face onimperialism was essential to whatever success colonial rule enjoyed.In this article I look at the ethnic classification system that theFrench employed in the nineteenth century, the establishment of the prac-tice of relating to Muslim societies, and some of the individuals and fami-