Paper short abstract:

The paper examines the unveiling of the Faidherbe Statue in Saint-Louis (Senegal) in 1887 and the process of memory-making, including the selection of the events and republican values worth remembering.

Paper long abstract:

In 1886, the colonial and municipal authorities in Saint-Louis-du-Senegal took the decision to build a statue in memory of former Governor Léon Faidherbe (1854 - 1861; 1863-65 and justified their decision in terms of his achievements during his tenure as governor. Indeed, he was credited for having transformed disparate trading posts and fifteen African polities into a unified colony through a series of alliances and wars of conquest; for being the "creator" of Senegal, the "builder" of Saint-Louis, and an effective administrator who organized the colonial bureaucracy, the colonial army, the economic and financial institutions, and a printing press. This paper examines the unveiling of the Faidherbe Statue in Saint-Louis in 1887. The main argument in this paper is that the unveiling of the Faidherbe Statue, like the other main festivities of the Third Republic in Senegal, pursued both civic and didactic purposes. They offered a platform for celebrating critical Republican values, honoring an inspiring hero, communicating central political messages (sovereignty, narrative of French West African empire, and legitimacy), and, above all, educating the audience, through civic acculturation efforts, memory-making, and amusements, about the link between the legacies of France of and since 1789 and the Third Republic.