Abstract
Old urban areas or centres, developed during the colonial period in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa, are characterised by specific toponymy, largely exogenous, as a considerable part is inherited from the colonial period. The naming of roads and streets in the colonial urban environment was carried out by an official act or more often by a decree from the colonial Governor during a management-board meeting and published in the Journal Officiel of the territory. A systematic analysis of the minutes of the period, which we undertook for each territory of French West Africa (AOF), and also the analysis of the minutes of appropriate sessions of management boards – enable us to reconstitute the toponymic history of the capital cities of the AOF. This ‘top-down’ study of place-naming policy is intended to analyse the situation towards the end of the colonial period, that is, the period of decolonisation when the countries became independent, and had the choice to accept or reject these marks of forced integration into an empire.
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Notes
- 1.
This contribution was originally published in French under a similar title in La ville européenne outre mers: un modèle conquérant (15 e -20 e siècles), edited by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Odile Goerg (Paris: l’Harmattan, 1996). Reprinted by permission of behalf of l’Harmattan. English translation, minor stylistic changes and further annotations were made by the Editor of this volume.
- 2.
The AOF (Afrique Occidentale Française), that is the federation of French West Africa, was created in 1895, alongside the neighbouring, later, federation of French Equatorial Africa (AEF). The aim was to facilitate the centralist decision-making process in Paris. The AOF’s overall territory amounted to 4,633, 985 km2, and included eight colonies: Senegal, French Sudan (today’s Mali), French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Dahomey (today’s Benin), Upper Volta (today’s Burkina Faso), Niger and Mauritania. Following the First World War, Togo, a Mandate territory, was included as well. Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945 (London: Hurst & Co., 1971), p. 308 [the Editor].
- 3.
Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Histoire des villes d’Afrique noire: des origines à la colonisation (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), ch. 1.
- 4.
Jacques Soulillou (ed.), Rives colonials: architectures, de Saint-Louis à Douala (Paris: Parenthèses/ORSTOM, 1993).
- 5.
The capital of the kingdom of Dahomey, which is situated in present-day Benin and whose official language is Fon – the same as the name of the population that founded it. S. Agninikin, Etude sur l’évolution historique sociale et spatiale de la ville d’Abomey (Cotonou: URBANOR, 1986), p. 13. See also: Michael Houseman, Blandine Legonou, Christiane Massy and Xavier Crepin, ‘Note sur la structure évolutive d’une ville historique: l’exemple d’Abomey (République populaire du Bénin), Cahiers d’études africaines, 26, 104 (1986), pp. 527–546.
- 6.
Agninikin, Etude sur l’évolution historique , p. 19.
- 7.
In Hausa, ‘Zongo’ signifies ‘a camp’, with temporary or permanent housing. See Rose Koupaki, ‘Histoire de la ville de Cotonou de 1920 à 1945’, PhD dissertation (Dakar: Université de Dakar, 1986), which includes an in-depth study of the toponymy of Cotonou’s quarters. With the establishment of the colonial regime, migrants – such as railway workers – were also displaced from the coastal regions into Zongo-s within the northern Sahelian towns [the Editor].
- 8.
Journal Officiel du Dahomey, decree dated 19 August, 1912 (p. 270).
- 9.
Annuaire Vert, 1955. Notice that in Conakry there are three layers of naming systems that are currently in use in the ex-colonial city centre (Kaloum): the colonial system, comprised of proper names; the post-colonial system, which embraced numerical system for most of its orthogonal streets, leaving the colonial names of some main boulevards only; and the World Bank’s Urban Development Program which introduced, in the 1990s, a new numerical system throughout the grid network. The following part of the paragraph refers indeed to a fourth method, partly formal, based on postboxes [the Editor].
- 10.
This is clear from an on site experience versus consulting the series of plans of these formerly colonial cities, with differing importance, held by the Department of Maps and Plans of the French National Library.
- 11.
For Dakar see: Annuaire Vert, 1955; For Abidjan see: Guide d’Abidjan, no date (published in the early 1960s). File classified Ge FF 17479, French National Library.
- 12.
Houlet Gilbert, Les Guides bleus: Afrique occidentale française, first edition (Paris: Édition Hachette, 1958).
- 13.
Indeed, the reference to the Revolution in the colonial situation is somewhat unexpected, as this situation was characterised by a false fraternité, a denied égalité, and an sbsence of liberté – as noticed Paul Rabinow in his French Modern (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), p. 278. It seems, however, that in the early stages of the policy of assimilation in French West Africa, and especially before the First World War, there was no apparent contradiction in such notions, and Africans were expected to love France and Africa simultaneously. For this question see Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 248–249 [the Editor].
- 14.
Francis Simonis, ‘Une communauté française expatriée, les Européens de la region de Ségou au Mali’ (PhD thesis, Paris VII University, 1993).
- 15.
Scrutinising the doctrine of assimilation per se is beyond the scope of this chapter. For more on this French colonial policy, and its successor policy of association, see these ‘classical’ sources: Raymond F. Betts, Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); Conklin, A Mission to Civilize; Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal: The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900–1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971); Martin D. Lewis, ‘One Hundred Million Frenchmen: The Assimilation Theory in French Colonial Policy, in Robert O. Collins (ed.) Problems in the History of Colonial Africa, 1860–1960 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1970), pp. 165–78 [the Editor].
- 16.
Victor Franco, Au Senegal, series guides à, (Paris: Hachette, 1983), pp. 126–127.
- 17.
As noted by Francis Simonis regarding Segou: Simonis, ‘Une communauté française.’
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d’Almeida-Topor, H. (2016). The Colonial Toponymic Model in the Capital Cities of French West Africa. In: Bigon, L. (eds) Place Names in Africa. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32485-2_7
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