Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Dear Monsieur Administrator”: Student Writing and the Question of “Voice” in Senegal, 1890s–1910s

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Children’s Voices from the Past

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood ((PSHC))

  • 732 Accesses

Abstract

Using students’ examination papers and requests for admission or scholarships linked to three French colonial schools in Senegal, this chapter wrestles with the methodological challenges of locating voices of African children and youth in colonial archives and of interpreting the intent and impact of their written words. It emphasizes the significance of such student writing, while also recognizing the formal conventions, educator expectations, and power imbalances that shaped and constrained it. The chapter contends that, despite these and other limitations, the content, tropes, tone, and even form of student writing can reveal how certain young people positioned themselves vis-à-vis the colonial state, how they understood the people and communities most familiar to them, and how they strategized to meet their own needs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Many school assignments and letters to colonial educators and officials may be found in the Archives Nationales du Sénégal in Dakar (hereafter ANS); I know that they wrote personal letters only because they sometimes mentioned these in correspondence to officials.

  2. 2.

    Christopher J. Lee, “Children in the Archives: Epistolary Evidence, Youth Agency, and the Social Meanings of ‘Coming of Age’ in Interwar Nyasaland,” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 28, 40, https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199009348300.

  3. 3.

    All three of these schools only enrolled boys. Girls accounted for a small minority of all primary and post-primary students in this period, and overall school attendance was very low. By the end of 1911, for example, a total of 3473 boys (232 of them European) and 390 girls (131 of them European) attended a French school in Senegal; 69 boys attended the Ecole Normale. The School for Sons of Chiefs and Intepreters had been suppressed a couple of years before this report was completed. Rapport d’ensemble sur la situation de l’Enseignement au 31 décembre 1911, 2G11/6, ANS.

  4. 4.

    While the School for Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters had a much longer history (it was established in 1855, closed in 1872, and was reopened in 1892), both the Ecole Faidherbe and the Ecole Normale were created as part of the November 1903 reform of education across French WestAfrica. Largely a failed experiment, the Ecole Faidherbe closed in July 1907. Arrêté, 24 November 1903, 1G4, ANS; Letter from Inspecteur de l’Enseignement musulman chargé p.i. du Service de l’Enseignement to Gouverneur Général AOF, 10 January 1908, J10, ANS; Denise Bouche, “L’Enseignement dans les territoires français de l’afrique occidentale de 1817 à 1920” (PhD diss., Université de Paris I, 1974); Yves Hazemann, “Un outil de la conquête coloniale: l’école des otages de Saint-Louis (1855–1871; 1892–1903),” Cahiers du CRA 5 (1987): 135–160; Kelly M. Duke Bryant, “Clothing and Community: Children’s Agency in Senegal’s School for Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters, 1892–1910,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 47, no. 2 (2014): 239–258; Kelly M. Duke Bryant, Education as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s–1914 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015), 93–116.

  5. 5.

    Peter N. Stearns, “Challenges in the History of Childhood,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008): 35–42; Audra A. Diptee and Martin A. Klein, “African Childhoods and the Colonial Project,” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 3–6; Saheed Aderinto, “Colonialism and the Invention of Modern Nigerian Childhood,” in Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories, ed. Saheed Aderinto (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 1–3; Temilola Alanamu, “Transnational Connections and the Making of Modern Childhood in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Review Article,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 3 (2016), Project MUSE; Corinne T. Field et al., “The History of Black Girlhood: Recent Innovations and Future Directions,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, no. 3 (2016): 383–401.

  6. 6.

    Lynn M. Thomas, “The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa,” Journal of African History 47 (2006): 461–490; Jack Lord, “Child Labor in the Gold Coast: The Economics of Work, Education, and the Family in Late-Colonial African Childhoods, c. 1940–57,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4, no. 1 (2011): 86–115; Benjamin N. Lawrance and Richard L. Roberts, eds., Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012); Abosede A. George, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development in Colonial Lagos (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014); Saheed Aderinto, ed., Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

  7. 7.

    Shula Marks, ed., Not Either An Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Richard Roberts, “Text and Testimony in the Tribunal De Première Instance, Dakar, during the Early Twentieth Century,” Journal of African History 31, no. 3 (1990): 447–463, http://www.jstor.org/stable/182879; Keith Breckenridge, “Love Letters and Amanuenses: Beginning the Cultural History of the Working Class Private Sphere in Southern Africa, 1900–1933,” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 2 (2000): 337–348, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637498; Karin Barber, ed., Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006); Maria Suriano, “Letters to the Editor and Poems: Mambo Leo and Readers’ Debates on Dansi, Ustaarabu, Respectability, and Modernity in Tanganyika, 1940s–1950s,” Africa Today 57, no. 3 (2011): 39–55, Project MUSE; Andreana C. Prichard, Sisters in Spirit: Christianity, Affect, and Community Building in East Africa, 1860–1970 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), 211–233.

  8. 8.

    See, for example, Kenda Mutongi, “‘Dear Dolly’s’ Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960–1980,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 1 (2000): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.2307/220256; Lynn M. Thomas, “Schoolgirl Pregnancies, Letter-Writing, and ‘Modern’ Persons in Late Colonial East Africa,” in Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 180–207; Corrie Decker, “Reading, Writing, and Respectability: How Schoolgirls Developed Modern Literacies in Colonial Zanzibar,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 43, no. 1 (2010): 89–114, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25741398; Prichard, Sisters in Spirit, 211–233. Though her protagonist was an adult woman rather than a child, Catherine Burns explores such ideas in her analysis of the decades-long correspondence between Xhosa healer Louisa Mvemve and the Native Affairs Department in South Africa. See Catherine Burns, “The Letters of Louisa Mvemve,” in Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, ed. Karin Barber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 78–112.

  9. 9.

    On “voice” in letters conforming to rules and expectations in a slightly different context, see Roberts, “Text and Testimony,” 449–450.

  10. 10.

    Cécile Dauphin, “Letter-Writing Manuals in the Nineteenth Century,” in Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, eds. Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau, and Cécile Dauphin and trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 132–133, 145.

  11. 11.

    Affaires traitées par l’Inspection de l’Enseignement depuis le mois de Mars 1907, 25 October 1907, J10, ANS; Hazemann; Duke Bryant, Education, 95–97.

  12. 12.

    Letter from Directeur de l’Ecole Normale to Gouverneur Général AOF, 30 October 1905, J61, ANS; Procès-verbal de la Commission d’examen, 6 and 7 July 1906, J61, ANS; Procès-verbal de la Commission d’examen, 11 July 1907, J61, ANS; Procès-verbal de la Commission d’examen, 9 July 1908, J61, ANS; Examen de fin d’etudes des élèves interprètes, procés-verbal, 8 June 1909, J61, ANS; Renseignements concernant la medersa et l’Ecole des Fils de Chefs, nd [1909], 2G9-6, ANS.

  13. 13.

    Roger Chartier, “Introduction: An Ordinary Kind of Writing: Model Letters and Letter-Writing in Ancient régime France,” in Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, eds. Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau, and Cécile Dauphin and trans. Christopher Woodall (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), 3.

  14. 14.

    French compositions by Sidya Sar, Birahim N’Diaye, and Wendi Dieng, 6 July 1907, J61, ANS.

  15. 15.

    The other two letters lacked salutations entirely. French compositions by: Makoumba Niang, Sidya Sâr, Hamidou Kane, Wendé Dieng, Alioune N’Diaye, Samba Laobé Diop, Abou Taminou Ly, Birahim N’Diaye, Goumbo Touré, Racine Hamet, Amadou Lamine Diao, Abodulaye Kane, Madior Diouf, Sidy N’Diaye, M’Baba N’Diaye, Alioune Fall, Amadou Guedjhe Seck, and Amadou Sall, 6 July 1906, J61, ANS. Amadou Sall, who laid his text out differently in his composition, earned the lowest grade: 6/20.

  16. 16.

    Procès-verbal de la Commission d’examen, 6 and 7 July 1906, J61, ANS.

  17. 17.

    French compositions by: Makoumba Niang, Sidya Sâr, Hamidou Kane, Wendé Dieng, Alioune N’Diaye, Samba Laobé Diop, Abou Taminou Ly, Birahim N’Diaye, Goumbo Touré, Racine Hamet, Amadou Lamine Diao, Abodulaye Kane, Madior Diouf, Sidy N’Diaye, M’Baba N’Diaye, Alioune Fall, Amadou Guedjhe Seck, and Amadou Sall, 6 July 1906, J61, ANS.

  18. 18.

    Émile Roux, Manuel à l’usage des administrateurs et du personnel des affaires indigènes de la colonie du Sénégal et des colonies relevant du Gouvernement Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française (Paris: Augustin Challamel, éditeur, 1911), 27–28, 371–372. See also Jean Suret-Canale, French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945, trans. Till Gottheiner (New York: Pica Press, 1971), 80–82, 384; Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 144–145; Donal Cruise O’Brien, “Chefs, saints et bureaucrates: la construction de l’état colonial,” in La construction de l’état au Sénégal, eds. Donal Cruise O’Brien, Momar-Coumba Diop, and Mamadou Diouf (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2002), 19–21.

  19. 19.

    French composition by Amadou Guedjhi Seck, 12 July 1906, J61, ANS.

  20. 20.

    French composition by Sagogno Dieng, 11 July 1907, J61, ANS.

  21. 21.

    French compositions by: Sagongo Dieng, Racine Elimane, Tierno Sall, Amadou Diaw, Ely Manel Fall, Matar Diol, and N’Diougou Bâ, 11 July 1907, J61, ANS.

  22. 22.

    On the exploitation of the peasantry by traditional rulers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Pathé Diagne, Pouvoir politique traditionnel en Afrique Occidentale: essais sur les institutions politiques précoloniales (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967), 135–144; Martin A. Klein, Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968), 17–21; James F. Searing, “God Alone Is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002), 195–196.

  23. 23.

    Anciens élèves maintenus et Candidats admis à suivre les cours du Collège des fils de chefs et d’interprètes pour l’année scolaire 1902–1903, 1G67, ANS; French compositions by Racine Elimane and N’Diougou Bâ, 11 July 1907, J61, ANS.

  24. 24.

    Gail Paradise Kelly, “Learning to Be Marginal: Schooling in Interwar French West Africa,” in French Colonial Education: Essays on Vietnam and West Africa, ed. David H. Kelly (New York: AMS Press, 2000), 189–208.

  25. 25.

    On adapted education and the civilizing mission, see Conklin, Mission, 73–86.

  26. 26.

    French compositions Matar Diol and Moumar Sar, 8 July 1908, J61, ANS. See also French compositions by Amadou Abdoulaye Diop, Amadou Marone, Mamadou Bâ, Ibrahima Alfa, Mahomet N’diane, Magath Niang, Columba Diouf, and Amadou Diaw, 8 July 1908, J61, ANS.

  27. 27.

    Decker, “Reading,” 104.

  28. 28.

    Rapport en Conseil d’Administration, 20 June 1874, 1G26, ANS; Bouche, “L’Enseignement,” Chapter 6; Hazemann, 140; Kelly M. Duke Bryant, “Social Networks and Empire: Senegalese Students in France in the Late Nineteenth Century,” French Colonial History 15 (2014), 40, 44–45.

  29. 29.

    Letter from Abiboulaye Fall to Lieutenant Gouverneur, 11 August 1906, 1G28, ANS; letter from Chef du service, 16 August 1906, 1G28, ANS.

  30. 30.

    Letter from Auguste Huntley to Délégué du Sénégal, 28 November 1905, 1G28, ANS; letter from Auguste Huntley to Maire, 2 March 1906, 1G28, ANS.

  31. 31.

    Letter from Guèye-Mëissa to Président, 11 September 1892, in Sénégal et Dépendances, Conseil Général: Session Ordinaire de 1892 (Saint-Louis: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1892), 31–32; letter from Guèye Maïssa to Gouverneur, 19 September 1893, J7, ANS.

  32. 32.

    Letter from Lieutenant Gouverneur Sénégal to Gouverneur Général AOF, 17 August 1907, 13G76, ANS.

  33. 33.

    Duke Bryant, Education as Politics, 100–104.

  34. 34.

    Letter from Amadou Kane to Inspecteur des Affaires Indigènes, 31 October 1903, J59, ANS; letter from Amadou Kane to Gouverneur Général, 10 July 1903, J59, ANS; letter from Amadou Kane to Gouverneur Général, 23 July 1903, J59, ANS; letter from Amadou Kane to Directeur des Affaires Indigènes, 1 December 1903, J59, ANS; telegram from Sénégambie to Administrateur Dagana, 18 January 1904, J59, ANS. For a more extended discussion of Amadou Kane, see Duke Bryant, Education as Politics, 107–110.

  35. 35.

    Letter from Cissé Amadou to Gouverneur, 24 August 1906, 1G28, ANS.

  36. 36.

    Letter from Théophile Konté to Directeur et Professeurs de l’école Normale, 28 February 1912, J54, ANS; letter to Lieutenant Gouverneur Senegal, March 1912, J54, ANS; letter from Théophile Konté to Directeur de l’école Normale, 9 March 1912, J54, ANS; letter from Théophile Konté to Inspecteur Général de l’Enseignement en AOF, 9 March 1913, J55, ANS.

References

  • Archives nationales de la République du Sénégal, Dakar, Senegal (ANS) Sous-Série 1G: Enseignement (Sénégal). Sous-Série 2G: Rapports périodiques des gouverneurs, administrateurs, et chefs de services depuis 1895. Sous-Série 13G: Sénégal: Affaires politiques, administratives et musulmanes (1782–1959). Série J: Enseignement jusqu’en 1920 (AOF).

    Google Scholar 

  • Aderinto, Saheed. “Colonialism and the Invention of Modern Nigerian Childhood.” In Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories, edited by Saheed Aderinto, 1–18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Aderinto, Saheed., ed. Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alanamu, Temilola. “Transnational Connections and the Making of Modern Childhood in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: A Review Article.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 3 (2016). Project MUSE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barber, Karin, ed. Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bouche, Denise. “L’Enseignement dans les territoires français de l’afrique occidentale de 1817 à 1920.” PhD diss., Université de Paris I, 1974.

    Google Scholar 

  • Breckenridge, Keith. “Love Letters and Amanuenses: Beginning the Cultural History of the Working Class Private Sphere in Southern Africa, 1900–1933.” Journal of Southern African Studies 26, no. 2 (2000): 337–348. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637498.

  • Burns, Catherine. “The Letters of Louisa Mvemve.” In Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, edited by Karin Barber, 78–112. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chartier, Roger. “Introduction: An Ordinary Kind of Writing: Model Letters and Letter-Writing in Ancient régime France.” In Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau, and Cécile Dauphin and translated by Christopher Woodall, 1–23. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Conklin, Alice L. A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cruise O’Brien, Donal. “Chefs, saints et bureaucrates: la construction de l’état colonial.” In La construction de l’état au Sénégal, edited by Donal Cruise O’Brien, Momar-Coumba Diop, and Mamadou Diouf, 17–28. Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dauphin, Cécile. “Letter-Writing Manuals in the Nineteenth Century.” In Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau, and Cécile Dauphin and translated by Christopher Woodall, 112–157. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Decker, Corrie. “Reading, Writing, and Respectability: How Schoolgirls Developed Modern Literacies in Colonial Zanzibar.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 43, no. 1 (2010): 89–114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25741398.

  • Diagne, Pathé. Pouvoir politique traditionnel en Afrique Occidentale: essais sur les institutions politiques précoloniales. Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967.

    Google Scholar 

  • Diptee, Audra A., and Martin A. Klein. “African Childhoods and the Colonial Project.” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 3–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duke Bryant, Kelly M. “Clothing and Community: Children’s Agency in Senegal’s School for Sons of Chiefs and Interpreters, 1892–1910.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 47, no. 2 (2014): 239–258.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Education as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s–1914. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Social Networks and Empire: Senegalese Students in France in the Late Nineteenth Century.” French Colonial History 15 (2014): 39–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Field, Corinne T., Tammy-Charelle Owens, Marcia Chatelain, Lakisha Simmons, Abosede George, and Rhian Keyse. “The History of Black Girlhood: Recent Innovations and Future Directions.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 9, no. 3 (2016): 383–401.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • George, Abosede A. Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labor, and Social Development in Colonial Lagos. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hazemann, Yves. “Un outil de la conquête coloniale: l’école des otages de Saint-Louis (1855–1871; 1892–1903).” Cahiers du CRA 5 (1987): 135–160.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, Gail Paradise. “Learning to Be Marginal: Schooling in Interwar French West Africa.” In French Colonial Education: Essays on Vietnam and West Africa, edited by David H. Kelly, 189–208. New York: AMS Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, Martin A. Islam and Imperialism in Senegal: Sine-Saloum, 1847–1914. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawrance, Benjamin N., and Richard L. Roberts, eds. Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women and Children in Africa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, Christopher J. “Children in the Archives: Epistolary Evidence, Youth Agency, and the Social Meanings of ‘Coming of Age’ in Interwar Nyasaland.” Journal of Family History 35, no. 1 (2010): 25–47. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199009348300.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lord, Jack. “Child Labor in the Gold Coast: The Economics of Work, Education, and the Family in Late-Colonial African Childhoods, c. 1940–57.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 4, no. 1 (2011): 86–115.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Marks, Shula, ed. Not Either an Experimental Doll: The Separate Worlds of Three South African Women. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mutongi, Kenda. “‘Dear Dolly’s’ Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960–1980.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 1 (2000): 1–23. https://doi.org/10.2307/220256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prichard, Andreana C. Sisters in Spirit: Christianity, Affect, and Community Building in East Africa, 1860–1970. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roberts, Richard. “Text and Testimony in the Tribunal De Première Instance, Dakar, During the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of African History 31, no. 3 (1990): 447–463. http://www.jstor.org/stable/182879.

  • Roux, Émile. Manuel à l’usage des administrateurs et du personnel des affaires indigènes de la colonie du Sénégal et des colonies relevant du Gouvernement Général de l’Afrique Occidentale Française. Paris: Augustin Challamel, éditeur, 1911.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searing, James F. “God Alone is King”: Islam and Emancipation in Senegal: The Wolof Kingdoms of Kajoor and Bawol, 1859–1914. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sénégal et Dépendances. Conseil Général: Session Ordinaire de 1892. Saint-Louis: Imprimerie du Gouvernement, 1892.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stearns, Peter N. “Challenges in the History of Childhood.” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008): 35–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suret-Canale, Jean. French Colonialism in Tropical Africa, 1900–1945. Translated by Till Gottheiner. New York: Pica Press, 1971.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suriano, Maria. “Letters to the Editor and Poems: Mambo Leo and Readers’ Debates on Dansi, Ustaarabu, Respectability, and Modernity in Tanganyika, 1940s–1950s.” Africa Today 57, no. 3 (2011): 39–55. Project MUSE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomas, Lynn M. “The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa.” Journal of African History 47 (2006): 461–490.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Schoolgirl Pregnancies, Letter-Writing, and ‘Modern’ Persons in Late Colonial East Africa.” In Africa’s Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self, edited by Karin Barber, 180–207. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA

    Kelly Duke Bryant

Authors
  1. Kelly Duke Bryant
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kelly Duke Bryant .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

    Kristine Moruzi

  2. Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy, VIC, Australia

    Nell Musgrove

  3. University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Carla Pascoe Leahy

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Duke Bryant, K. (2019). “Dear Monsieur Administrator”: Student Writing and the Question of “Voice” in Senegal, 1890s–1910s. In: Moruzi, K., Musgrove, N., Pascoe Leahy, C. (eds) Children’s Voices from the Past. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-11895-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-11896-9

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation