HEART OF BANJUL: THE HISTORY OF BANJUL, THE GAMBIA, 1816 -1965

[Pages:413]HEART OF BANJUL: THE HISTORY OF BANJUL, THE GAMBIA, 1816 -1965 By

Matthew James Park

A DISSERTATION Submitted to

Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of History- Doctor of Philosophy

2016

ABSTRACT HEART OF BANJUL: THE HISTORY OF BANJUL, THE GAMBIA, 1816-1965

By Matthew James Park This dissertation is a history of Banjul (formerly Bathurst), the capital city of The Gambia during the period of colonial rule. It is the first dissertation-length history of the city. "Heart of Banjul" engages with the history of Banjul (formerly Bathurst); the capital city of The Gambia. Based on a close reading of archival and primary sources, including government reports and correspondences, missionary letters, journals, and published accounts, travelers accounts, and autobiographical materials, the dissertation attempts to reconstruct the city and understand how various parts of the city came together out of necessity (though never harmoniously). In the spaces where different kinds of people, shifting power structures, and nonhuman actors came together something which could be called a city emerged. Chapter 1, "Intestines of the State," covers most of the 19th century and traces how the proto-colonial state and its interlocutors gradually erected administration over The Gambia. Rather than a teleology of colonial takeover, the chapter presents the creation of the colonial state as a series of stops and starts experienced as conflicts between the Bathurst administration and a number of challengers to its sovereignty including Gambian warrior kings, marabouts, criminals, French authorities, the British administration in Sierra Leone, missionaries, merchants, and disease. Chapter 2, "The Circulatory System," engages with conflicts between the state, merchants, Gambian kings, and urban dwellers. Through a focus on the circulation of men, materials, debts, lorries, groundnuts, and prisoners in the colony this chapter establishes a fundamental difference between the state and capital. The state attempted to establish a regulated, measured circulation through the city which it could direct towards its own enrichment and growth. Capital, on the other hand, pushed the pace of circulation both in terms of its speed and intensity as well as the area it covered. Merchants attempted to increase their bottom lines by increasing the circulation of capital, the collection of debts, and harvests upriver. Chapter 3, "Dead Meat," tells the story of the single most neglected residents in African cities: urban animals. The forces which

assailed the bodies of urban animals were many: sanitary regulations, pesticides, commodification of their bodies, the trade in exotic animals, hunting, roundups, and hunger. Despite these challenges urban animals continued to scratch existence (and possibly more) out of the city. This chapter not only takes historians to task for writing urban animals out of African history, but it also shows how the history of urban animals in Africa might contribute to the broader historiography of urban Africans and their engagement/disengagement with the wider urban ecosystem. Chapter 4, "Politics of the Belly" takes up the history of labor in the city. This chapter attempts to focus on the places where labor, the state, and capital met. The state understood its role in this tripartite relationship as the "head" which could rationally mediate between the "hands" (labor) and the "heart" (capital). Chapter 5, "The Excretory System" deals with the waste products of the city and the efforts by the administration to banish them from sight and, more significantly, from smell. Taking up the challenge to privilege senses other than sight, the chapter uses the sense of smell to show how sanitary measures in the city were often based not on sound understandings of germ theory, but old ideas about miasmas arising from bad air (smells). The emergence of an aspiring bourgeois class in the city pushed for sanitary reform to ease their sense of smell while the administration encouraged gardening to ensure that Bathurst "blossomed like the rose." Chapter 6, "The Nervous System," plays off the well documented role Muscular Christianity has played in shaping the lives of youths in the West. The chapter shows how colonial officials wavered between denigrating education based on the (animal) bodies of schoolchildren as "monkey ticks" and criticizing education which ignored young bodies as filling heads full of ideas which had no outlet in the colonial setting.

Copyright by MATTHEW JAMES PARK

2016

For Jen. Forever. v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES...............................................................................................vii

LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................... viii

INTRODUCTION: HEART OF BANJUL.................................................................. 1 THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF BANJUL.......................................................... 8 THEORY: THE CITY IS A BODY................................................................. 12 THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: URBAN AFRICA AND THE POLITICS OF DIFFERENCE......................................................................................... 21 THE CITY AND ITS CIRCULATORY SYSTEM: CYCLICAL FLOWS................... 30 ON THE HEART OF A CITY....................................................................... 33 HEART OF BANJUL: WHAT'S IN A NAME................................................... 37 METHODOLOGY.................................................................................... 39 OUTLINE............................................................................................... 41

CHAPTER 1: INTESTINES OF THE STATE: LIFE, DEATH AND SOVEREIGNTY ON THE GAMBIA 1815 -1890.................................................................................... 44

RENDER UNTO CAESAR THE THINGS WHICH ARE CAESAR'S, AND UNTO GOD THE THINGS THAT ARE GOD'S: 1816 -1833...........................................50 THE VICES OF CIVILIZATION: 1857-1880.................................................... 69 LIFE AND DEATH IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA: 1869-1880S............................. 74 GOD MADE ME A WARRIOR: THE DEATH OF GAMBIAN POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE: 1850 -1900......................................................................75 THE BIRTH OF THE ARCHIVE: 1870S-1900................................................... 87 CONCLUSION........................................................................................ 91

CHAPTER 2: THE CIRCULATORY SYSTEM: STATE AND CAPITAL 1870S -1930S ..........94 ARTERIES, CAPILLARIES, AND POWER: AN INTRODUCTION........................ 94 THE LAWS OF ECONOMICS: MERCHANTS IN THE CITY 1816-1900.................. 98 VICIOUS CYCLES AND REVOLVING DOORS: DEBT AND IMPRISONMENT IN BATHURST........................................................................................ 106 REVOLUTION, DISCIPLINE, AND PUNISHMENT: THE GAOL 1857-1900............ 112 WARRIOR KINGS AND CAPITAL...............................................................118 THE MEASURE OF COMMERCE: NUTS AND CURRENCY 1870S- 1930S.............122 THE SHAPE OF THE CITY: ROADS, INFRASTRUCTURE, AND URBAN CIRCULATION,1870S-1950S.......................................................................128 QUEUING UP: WARTIME REGULATIONS AND THE CIRCULATION OF GOODS.................................................................................................. 133 BACK TO THE LAND: INDUSTRY AND CIVILIZATION.................................. 136 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 140

CHAPTER 3: DEAD MEAT: SANITATION, SEGREGATION, AND SLAUGHTER IN BATHURST C. 190-1950S.................................................................................... 142

MOSQUITOES, GANGSTERS, AND WARRIOR KINGS.................................... 152 PARIAH DOGS........................................................................................162 TAME LAMBS, MARAUDERS, AND MUSLIMS............................................. 166 HUMANE KILLING: CATTLE AND THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE...........................171

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RAT-MEN.............................................................................................. 181 FOWL TYPHOID: THE ORIGINS OF FACTORY FARMING............................... 186 GERMANS AND COLONIES OF BATS......................................................... 188 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 190

CHAPTER 4: POLITICS OF THE BELLY: "FREE" AND UNFREE LABOR, 1870S -1950S..... 193 WOMEN AT WORK: LATE 19TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURY..................................195 SHEARING THE LAMB: 1900-1929.............................................................. 198 UNFREE LABOR 1920S-1940S.................................................................... 209 LABOR AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR................................................... 214 LEAN STOMACHS AND BRIDLED TONGUES: THE COST OF LIVING, 1936-1947............................................................................................... 228 HEALTHY MINDS IN HEALTHY BODIES: THE POLICE AND PRISONS SERVICE IN THE LATE COLONIAL PERIOD................................................ 234 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 242

CHAPTER 5: THE EXCRETORY SYSTEM: THE POLITICS OF SANITATION, 1900 -1950S...................................................................................................... 244

CLOACA MAXIMA: ORIGINS OF THE SANITARY STATE, LATE 19TH EARLY 20TH CENTURIES.......................................................................... 251 THE POLITICS OF SHIT............................................................................ 259 THE FLOOD: 1930S.................................................................................. 266 THE COLONIAL SLUM: LATE 1930 -1950S................................................... 274 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 286

CHAPTER 6: THE NERVOUS SYSTEM: MORAL PANIC AND THE CITY'S YOUTHS, 1880S -1950S..................................................................................................... 289

ORIGINAL AND UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES: FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION IN THE CITY: LATE 1800S-1917................................................................ 292 MUSCULAR ISLAM 1920S-WORLD WAR II.................................................. 301 JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: 1930S-1950S...................................................... 312 THE ASCENDANCY OF YOUTH................................................................. 330 CONCLUSION......................................................................................... 335

CONCLUSION: MADNESS IN THE HEART OF THE SONS OF MEN............................. 338 LIFE, DEATH, AND THE LOGIC OF THE COLONIAL STATE............................ 338 ANIMALS.............................................................................................. 341 COLONIAL DISCOURSE AND AFRICAN SOULS............................................ 342 PROGRESS AND CHANGE........................................................................ 344 LESSONS FROM THE COLONIAL STATE..................................................... 348

APPENDIX....................................................................................................... 350

BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................... 392

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LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Larval Index for Bathurst 1913-1918............................................................... 156 Table 2: Cases of Malaria Treated in Bathurst 1918-1934................................................. 157 Table 3: Employment of Prisoners Prior to Incarceration, 1946.......................................... 213 Table 4: Employment Change in Bathurst, November 14-30, 1942...................................... 226 Table 5: Family Requirements According to the Labor Advisory Board, 1941........................ 232 Table 6: Daily Food Requirements According to the Labor Advisory Board, 1941.................... 232 Table 7: Staff and Prisoner Offenses Recorded in the Prison, 1938-1955............................... 240 Table 8: Child Mortality in Bathurst, 1910-1919............................................................ 259 Table 9: Development Projects Implemented Under the Bathurst Town Development Program......278 Table 10: Results of an Exam Given to Gambian Schoolchildren, 1905................................. 296 Table 11: Juveniles Tried and/or Imprisoned in Bathurst, 1948-1956.................................... 316 Table 12: Court Ordered Juvenile Floggings, 1940-1954.................................................. 318

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