Rethinking Africa in the Age of Revolution
The evolution of Jean-Baptiste-Léonard Durand’s Voyage au Sénégal
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12737874 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Rogé (0000-0002-4476-9909, University of Pittsburgh, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 389-406 |
| Publication date | 2016-07-02 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Atlantic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1478-8810 • E-ISSN: 1740-4649 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14788810.2016.1181519 |
| OpenAlex | W2474792901 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 36 |
In the Age of Revolution, the idea that Europe should help a “savage” Africa attain civilization through colonization was on the rise. When explaining how such views came about, scholars have looked at the ways in which the production and reception of travel literature and natural histories of Africa shaped, and were shaped by, evolving ideas of race in eighteenth-century Europe. Though insightful, these studies ignore the impact of the encounter with Africa itself as well as the geopolitical context within which it took place. This article argues that the idea of a ‘savage’ Africa in need of civilization through colonization was linked to Europeans’ inability to easily advance their commercial enterprises in Africa at a time when European colonization in the Americas was eroding. Through a study of Jean-Baptiste-Léonard Durand’s activities in Senegal during his directorship of the French Compagnie de la gomme du Sénégal in the mid-1780s and of his published account of these experiences in the Voyage au Sénégal in 1802, the paper shows that Durand’s struggle to negotiate French commercial interests in Senegal on his own terms, and his deep frustration with gum and slave merchants along the Senegal River, contributed to his subsequent depiction of Africans as “savage” and in need of civilizing. The paper also suggests that the changing geopolitical context in Europe and the Americas during the Age of Revolution further shaped Durand’s call for the civilizing of Africa
Archaeology · Art · Civilization · Context (archaeology · Depiction · Ethnology · Geopolitics · Literature · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy · Law
The Color of Liberty
The Routledge History of Western Empires
Fragmens d'un voyage en Afrique, fait pendant les années 1785, 1786 et 1787, dans les Contrées occidentales de ce Continent, comprises entre le cap Blanc de Barbarie … et le cap de Palmes …
Moral Capital
Intégration républicaine des colonies et projets de colonisation de l'Afrique
Inscribing Race in the Revolutionary French Antilles
The Seven Years’ War in West Africa
Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade
The Anatomy of Blackness
West African Slavery and Atlantic Commerce
Black Poor and White Philanthropists
Arab France
Desert Frontier
Les établissements français sur la côte occidentale d'Afrique de 1758 à 1809
The French Encounter with Africans
Naval power and the Province of Senegambia, 1758–1779
The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c.1760–1840
La clef de commerce’—The changing role of Africa in France's Atlantic empire ca. 1760–1797
An Age of Imperial Revolutions
The French Enlightenment and Its Others
Till these Experiments be Made
Eurafricans in Western Africa; Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
The Evolution of the Idaw al-Hajj Commercial Diaspora
The «Régénération of Africa». An Important and Ambiguous Concept in 18th and 19th Century French Thinking about Africa
Economic Change in Pre-Colonial Africa
French Dreams of Colonial Empire under Directory and Consulate
| Citations per year | 0.45 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2022 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |