African American Colonialism Summary

“People who are powerless make an open theater of violence” says the American essayist, Don DeLillo. Colonialism had been a devastating phenomenon that almost the entire African continent underwent during the nineteenth century. It was a social, political and economic debasing process for the African societies. The colonial system was well-structured and hardly defeated. Therefore, a tremendous means was demanded in order to decline the colonial power and its impacts; violence, either psychological or physical, was the only weapon that the power-deprived Africans could use to break down the fierce system. Senegal was among the African countries that resorted to violent methods to enable the access to freedom. Located in West

The “French citizens” were the Senegalese living in the four communes: Goree, Dakar, Rufisque and Saint-Louis. The rest of the population was seen as indigenous. This scission within the community sparked the peaceful situation off. The indigenes were victims of dehumanization and their rights were persistently violated whereas the “French citizens” had almost the same status as French. Although non-violent techniques were utilized sometimes to reach independence, the use of violence ignited the process of re-humanization and access to independence. In other words, the indigenous population affected by the politics of assimilation used violence in order to safeguard their culture and dignity, to fight for their rights, their land, and ultimately to facilitate independence from French

Indeed, colonialists wanted to take over the lands in order to strengthen their ascendancy on the country. The land is an important aspect of people’s identity as Fanon asserts, “for a colonized people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and above all dignity” (the wretched of the Earth). Hence the possession of the lands by the Europeans would dispossess the Senegalese from a part of their culture. That’s why the population fought for to manage their lands. As an illustration, the Queen Ndate Yalla Mbodj combatted against the annexation of her kingdom, Waalo. Even if she was once defeated by the French army, she kept fighting until her death because it was a question of dignity. She led an army, organized several battles against the colonial administrators and openly opposed the white man’s policies on her land (matricien). For instance, in one of her letters to Faidherbe, the white governor of Saint-Louis at that epoch, she wrote, “the goal of this letter is to let you know that the island of Mboyo belongs to me, from my grandfather down to me today. There is nobody who can claim that that country belongs to them; it belongs to me only. I did not sell this country to anybody. I did not