POLICY OF ASSIMILATION
By Wambiji Isaac
Definition
It is a policy based on the idea of expanding French culture to the colonies outside France that is to ‘‘civilize’’ Africans by turning them into french men, then French citizens when they met certain quilifications.
Qualifications
1. being born in one of 4 communes in Senegal gives automatic french citizen
2. having a merited position in french service
3. having good character and means of existence
4. being decorated with legion of honor
Why turn the Africans into Frenchmen
-cut down cost as they replaced french workers with Africans
-created the illusion that colonies were profiting by becoming civilized
- to have patriotic Africans (thankful)to duties and who needed to fight and produce for france, in return for civilization
Advantages were
3. Could commute forced labor by paying french gov money
4. Could be appointed to any post in france of the colony
Assimilation to Association, Why then?
By 1930 only 80,000 africans became french citizens and 78,000 of them only qualified because they were born in one of the four communes, as a result assimilation was abandoned and Association was introduced.
Association
Assimilation was abandoned because the french did not want to have to deal with barbaric, uneducated africans who were only french because of birth place, association basically put the educated Africans at the top with the most authority. Kept the superiority of the French civilization.
Administration
->Each colony headed by lt. governor
->Colonies were divided into regions/circles, ruled by commandants du cercles
->Cercles into subdivision, controlled by cheifs of subdivision
->Subdivisions---> cantons, African cheifs
Distinguishing features of the Rule included,
1. African cheifs cannot be local government authorities
2. African cheifs cannot be leader of their people
3. African cheifs appointed not by birth but by education
4. African cheifs could be transferred from one province to another
Example and Manifestation of the Policy
Assimilation in practice in the colonies were in Senegal's Four Communes, they were: Gorée, Dakar, Rufisque and Saint-Louis.
The purpose of the theory of assimilation was to turn African natives into "French" men by educating them in the language and French culture and hence become French citizens or equals.
During the French Revolution of 1848 to 1860, slavery was abolished and the four communes were given voting rights and they were also granted the right to elect a Deputy to the Assembly in Paris.
In the 1880s France expanded their rule to other colonies at which point there was opposition from the French locals and so the universal law did not apply to the new colonies.
The residents of the Four communes were referred as the "originaires’’ and had been exposed to assimilation for a long period of time that they had become a typical French citizen...he was expected to be everything except in the color of his skin, a Frenchman.They were "African Elite."One of those elites was Blaise Diagne, who was the first black deputy in the French assembly. He "defended the status of the originaires as French citizens.
During his service as deputy, he proposed a resolution which would allow the residents of the 4 communes all the rights of a French Citizen, which included being able to serve in the Army. This was especially important during World War I. The resolution passed on October 19, 1915. The Four Communes remained the only French colony where the Indigènes received French citizenship until 1944.
Adenda
France treated the colonies as parts of the metropolitan country and Africans were told that they would be treated as equal subjects of France.
In theory, Africans who were French had the same rights as other French citizens.
The Africans History was totally disregarded and the French tried to erase African tradition and replace with French (type of ethnocentric idealism to the extreme)