What Is the French Policy of Assimilation About, What Did Scholars Like Leopold Senghor Mean by the Term Negritude as a Strategy for Countering That French Policy and What Is the Place of the Two in the Methodology of Ethnic Conflict Management?
Conflict Management and Resolution PLSC 872
What is the French policy of ASSIMILATION about, what did scholars like Leopold Senghor mean by the term Negritude as a strategy for countering that French policy and what is the place of the two in the methodology of ethnic conflict management?
INTRODUCTION
The trajectory of this paper is within the purview of Conflict Resolution and Management. However, it traverses a historical path that takes us back to the era of colonialism in Africa, the Afrocentric Movement leading to independent African states and how this all coalesces into a formula of how to (or rather how not to) deal with differences that have the potential to dynamically incinerate conflicts, both ethnical (or racial) and otherwise. To this end, an exposé of the Policy of Assimilation employed by the French in governing French African colonies shall be succeeded by an analysis of Negritude. The foregoing would then be placed on the stage for examination of how it performs as a methodology for managing ethnic conflicts wherever they may occur.
ASSIMILATION
A cursory search for a definition will qualify assimilation simply as “the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another.” This definition well covers the basics of the concept of assimilation even as it is insufficient for our purposes. Assimilation, as is to be understood here, was an ideological basis of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. At variance with any other colonial ideological foundation, the French sought to homogenise their colonies in such a way that by the latter’s adoption of French language and culture, they were eventually going to became French. It was a policy designed to make the Africans in their colonies rid themselves of their indigenous customs, mores, values, culture and language and become more French through education. In the end, these colonies were going to be much more than outposts of French mercantilisms but extensions of
What is the French policy of ASSIMILATION about, what did scholars like Leopold Senghor mean by the term Negritude as a strategy for countering that French policy and what is the place of the two in the methodology of ethnic conflict management?
INTRODUCTION
The trajectory of this paper is within the purview of Conflict Resolution and Management. However, it traverses a historical path that takes us back to the era of colonialism in Africa, the Afrocentric Movement leading to independent African states and how this all coalesces into a formula of how to (or rather how not to) deal with differences that have the potential to dynamically incinerate conflicts, both ethnical (or racial) and otherwise. To this end, an exposé of the Policy of Assimilation employed by the French in governing French African colonies shall be succeeded by an analysis of Negritude. The foregoing would then be placed on the stage for examination of how it performs as a methodology for managing ethnic conflicts wherever they may occur.
ASSIMILATION
A cursory search for a definition will qualify assimilation simply as “the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another.” This definition well covers the basics of the concept of assimilation even as it is insufficient for our purposes. Assimilation, as is to be understood here, was an ideological basis of French colonial policy in the 19th and 20th centuries. At variance with any other colonial ideological foundation, the French sought to homogenise their colonies in such a way that by the latter’s adoption of French language and culture, they were eventually going to became French. It was a policy designed to make the Africans in their colonies rid themselves of their indigenous customs, mores, values, culture and language and become more French through education. In the end, these colonies were going to be much more than outposts of French mercantilisms but extensions of