Education as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s-1914 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780299303044)

In 1914, Blaise Diagne was elected as Senegal's first black African representative to the National Assembly in France. Education as Politics reinterprets the origins and significance of this momentous election, showing how colonial schools had helped reshape African power and politics during the preceding decades and how they prepared the way for Diagne's victory.
Kelly M. Duke Bryant demonstrates the critical impact of colonial schooling on Senegalese politics by examining the response to it by Africans from a variety of backgrounds and statuses-including rural chiefs, Islamic teachers, and educated young urbanites. For those Africans who chose to engage with them, the French schools in Senegal provided a new source of patronage, a potentially beneficial connection to the bureaucratizing colonial state, a basis for claims to authority or power, or an arena in which to debate pressing issues like the future of Qur'anic schooling and the increasing racism of urban society under colonial rule.
Based on evidence from archives in Senegal and France, and on interviews Duke Bryant conducted in Senegal, she demonstrates that colonial schooling remade African politics during this period of transition to French rule, creating political spaces that were at once African and colonial, and ultimately allowing Diagne to claim election victory.


Author: Kelly M. Duke Bryant
ISBN-10: 0299303047
ISBN-13: 9780299303044
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Language: English
Published: 05/19/2015
Pages: 254
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.84lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.58d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2016