Dakar: History

Pre-20th-Century History

The history of human habitation in Dakar - at least in documented form - begins on the nearby island of Gorée. When Europeans first began to plunder the African continent, they tended to stick for protection to heavily fortified positions on the coast, or to islands such as Gorée, which was first colonised in 1444. Ownership of the island flipped between the Portuguese and the Dutch for a while until the French took over in 1677, and they held on (except for brief periods of British occupancy when the Lion and the Lily were at war) until Senegalese independence in 1960.

Gorée was a centre of the West African slave trade for some time, although recent historical debate has contested its significance as a slave-trading centre - the island was too small and too dry to be a clearing-house for a significant proportion of the 20 million unfortunates sold out of Africa. Be that as it may, the first Portuguese slave house was established in 1536.

French slave traders based in Bordeaux and especially Nantes grew metaphorically fat (and no doubt in many cases physically so) from the profits of their ignominious commerce: most slaves passing through Gorée ended up in the Caribbean or Louisiana. The French abolished slavery in 1792, but a mere decade later, under pressure from his Creole wife Josephine, Napoleon reintroduced it for 13 years - it was officially abolished in 1815 for reasons of diplomatic expediency, although an unofficial traffic in human souls continued until 1848. By that time, French interest in the area had begun to broaden. The French began to consider other ways to profit from Africa and soon after fell prey to the then-prevalent imperial delusions of grandeur infecting all the great European powers. Gallic involvement in West African affairs developed and by 1857, when its populace numbered 6000, the settlement outgrew the island's parameters. By then the Cape Verde peninsula on which Dakar was built had been militarily pacified, and has been the site of a strong French military presence ever since.

In 1862, Dakar became the capital of French West Africa, while St-Louis to the north was the provincial capital. The city became one of Africa's most strategically significant ports, and its importance was amplified in 1885, when a rail connection was opened to St-Louis, soon followed by a rail link with the interior, then called the French Sudan and now known as Niger.

Modern History

Over the course of the 20th century, Dakar became a victim of its own success. Always the most vibrant city in Senegal, both pre- and post-independence, it urbanised rapidly and lost much of the colonial charm retained by its sleepy northerly neighbour, St-Louis. The boom in Senegal's population in the second half of the century, combined with the post-independence Pandora's box of problems that afflicted much of the developing world, created the chaotic jumble that is modern-day Dakar.

At the same time, however, Dakar became one of the most glittering stars in the African galaxy, particularly at its zenith, the optimistic 1960s, when all the revolutionary post-independence rhetoric still meant something. It was a centre of African intellectual life (the first Senegalese president was a poet of international renown), a pulsing musical mecca (often with distinct US and Cuban influences, but always with a strong local flavour), and one of the world's most glamorous cities, with a nightlife rivalled by few others.

Recent History

Today, the city continues to attract and repulse in equal measure. Unemployed youths still flood in from across the country and, indeed, the entire region, for the port economy and the French military installation propels one of West Africa's rare shining economic lights. Dakar's modern-day problems stem largely from its improvised urban design: this city of several million has its centre at the tip of a narrow peninsula. This unfortunate position causes such planning and traffic nightmares that plans are currently afoot to relocate the national airport and, more hypothetically, to move the entire political and administrative infrastructure to another site altogether - although it seems possible that the choice of a new capital might be motivated more by patronage than by urban planning policy.

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