Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the political, social and symbolic role of travel permit which were issued by the “Mussulmen affairs office” in order to control all movements of educated Muslims in colonial French West Africa.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the implementation and utilization of travel permits for educated Muslims. By "educated Muslims", I include all those persons who knew Islamic written texts. In a time, when colonial control over Africans had still been relatively weak, the mobility of these people was considered as a threat to the colonial project, paving the way for "Islamic anticolonial and anti-French propaganda". With the objective to fight these movements, the colonial administration adopted special travel permits for "educated Muslims" in 1906. Religious leaders, "marabouts", teachers of Koran schools and other "educated Muslims" had always have a special authorization of the local governor, when they wished to travel beyond their circonscription. In my research, I consider the period from 1906, when the "Mussulmen affairs office" was created, to 1946. This office, which was responsible for issuing the travel permits and controlling the mobility of educated Muslims, marked this period. On a theoretical level, my research is inspired by the studies of Gérard Noiriel on the history of French passports from the First to the Third Republic. Noiriel suggests that the passport was used to control the territory and to represent a continuous authority of the state. This paper thus argues that the travel permits for educated Muslims were contributing to the production of a "homogenous" territory, which excluded all forms of multiple spatial configurations.