Gorée
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Island of Gorée* | |
|---|---|
| UNESCO World Heritage Site | |
 |
|
| State Party |  Senegal |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | vi |
| Reference | 26 |
| Region† | Africa |
| Inscription history | |
| Inscription | 1978 (2nd Session) |
| * Name as inscribed on World Heritage List. † Region as classified by UNESCO. |
|
Île de Gorée (i.e. "Gorée Island") (pronounced /goʀe/) is one of the 19 communes d'arrondissement (i.e. "commune of arrondissement") of the city of Dakar, Senegal. It is a 0.182 km² (45 acres) island located a mere 1 km. at sea from the main harbor of Dakar ( ).
Its population as of 31 January 2005 official estimates is 1,056 inhabitants, giving a density of 5,802 inh. per km² (15,028 inh. per sq. mile), which is only half the average density of the city of Dakar. Gorée is both the smallest and the least populated of the 19 communes d'arrondissement of Dakar.
Gorée is famous as a destination for people interested in the Atlantic slave trade though in fact few Africans were transported to the Americas from there. The important centers for the slave trade in Senegal were north, at Saint-Louis, Senegal or to the south in Gambia.
Contents |
[edit] History and slave trade
Gorée is a small island 900 m in length and 350 m in width sheltered by the Cape Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it was a minor port and site of European settlement along the coast. Being almost devoid of drinking water, the island was not settled prior to the arrival of Europeans. The Portuguese were the first to establish a presence on Gorée (c. 1450), building a small stone chapel there and using it as a cemetery.
Gorée is best known as the location of the House of Slaves (French: Maison des esclaves), built by an Afro-French Métis family c. 1780 - 1784. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now a popular tourist destination which serves to illustrate the horrors of the slave trade throughout the Atlantic world. Well known in the west because of this museum, Gorée was actually relatively unimportant in the slave trade. Probably no more than a few hundred slaves a year were ever embarked here for transportation to the Americas, and those not on large slave ships but as incidental passengers on ships carrying other cargos. After the decline of the slave trade from Senegal, in the 1770's and 1780's, the town became an important port for the shipment of peanuts, peanut oil, gum arabic, ivory, and other products of the "legitimate" trade, and it is probably for this purpose that the "Maison des Esclaves" was built.
The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be settled by Europeans, the Portuguese setting foot on the island in 1444. Later it was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, then the Portuguese again, again the Dutch — who named it after the Dutch island of Goeree — the British under Robert Holmes in 1664 and then eventually the French in 1677. The island remained continuously French until 1960 when Senegal was granted independence, with only brief periods of English occupation during the various wars fought by France and England between 1677 and 1815.
Gorée was principally a trading post, administratively attached to Saint Louis, capital of the Colony of Senegal. Apart from slaves, beeswax, hides and grain were also traded. The population of the island fluctuated according to circumstances, from a few hundred free Africans and Creoles to about 1,500. There would have been few European residents at any one time. In the 18th and 19th century Gorée was home to a Franco-African Creole, or Métis, community of merchants with links to similar communities in Saint Louis and south to the Gambia and even across the Atlantic to France's colonies in the Americas. Métis women, called "signares" from the Portuguese "senhora", were especially important to the city’s business life. The signares owned ships and property and commanded male clerks. They were also famous for cultivating fashion and entertainment. One such "signare", Anne Rossignol, was resident in Saint-Domingue, the modern Haiti, in the 1780's before the Haitian Revolution.
In February 1794, during the French Revolution, France was the first country in the world to abolish slavery (with the exception of a few precedents set by some US states such as Massachusetts), and so the slave trade from Senegal stopped. However, in May 1802 Napoleon reestablished slavery after intense lobbying from the sugar plantations' owners of the Caribbean départements of France, who found precious support in the very wife of Napoleon, Joséphine de Beauharnais, daughter of a rich plantation owner from Martinique. In March 1815, during his political comeback known as the Hundred Days, Napoleon definitively abolished the slave trade in order to ingratiate himself with Britain (Scotland had never recognized slavery and England finally abolished the slave trade in 1807) and this time the abolition was not reversed.
As the trade in slaves declined in the late eighteenth century, Gorée converted to legitimate commerce. The tiny city and port were however ill situated for the shipment of industrial quantities of peanuts which began arriving in bulk from the continent. Consequently, its merchants established a presence directly on the mainland, first in Rufisque (1840) and then in Dakar (1857) and many of the established families started to leave the island.
Civic franchise for the citizens of Gorée was institutionalized in 1872, when it (along with its dependency of Dakar until the latter was detached in 1887) became a French “commune” with an elected mayor and a municipal council. Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy elected to the French National Assembly (served 1914 to 1934) was born on Gorée. From a peak of about 4,500 in 1845, the population fell to 1,500 in 1904. In 1940 Gorée was annexed to the municipality of Dakar.
Gorée is connected to the mainland by regular 30-minute ferry service---pedestrians only; there are no cars on the island. It is Senegal’s premier tourist site and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It and now serves mostly as a memorial to the slave trade. The built-up urban core of the island is entirely geared to tourism and many of the historic commercial and residential buildings have been turned into restaurants and hotels.
[edit] Administration
With the foundation of Dakar in 1857, Gorée gradually lost its importance. In 1872, the French colonial authorities created the two communes of Saint-Louis and Gorée, the first western-style municipalities in West Africa, with exactly the same status as any commune in France. Dakar, on the mainland, was part of the commune of Gorée, whose administration was located on the island. However, as early as 1887, Dakar was detached from the commune of Gorée and was turned into a commune in its own right. Thus, the commune of Gorée became limited to its tiny island.
In 1891, Gorée still had 2,100 inhabitants, while Dakar only had 8,737 inhabitants. However, by 1926 the population of Gorée had declined to only 700 inhabitants, while the population of Dakar had increased to 33,679 inhabitants. Thus, in 1929 it was decided to merge Gorée with Dakar. The commune of Gorée disappeared, and Gorée was now only a small island of the commune of Dakar.
In 1996, a massive reform of the administrative and political divisions of Senegal was voted by the Parliament of Senegal. The commune of Dakar, deemed too large and too populated to be properly managed by a central municipality, was divided into 19 communes d'arrondissement to which extensive powers were given. The commune of Dakar was maintained above these 19 communes d'arrondissement, and it coordinates the activities of the communes d'arrondissement, much as Greater London coordinates the activities of the London boroughs.
Thus, in 1996 the commune of Gorée was resurrected, although it is now only a commune d'arrondissement (but in fact with powers quite similar to a commune). The new commune d'arrondissement of Gorée, which is officially known in French as the Commune d'Arrondissement de l'île de Gorée, retook possession of the old mairie (town hall) in the center of the island, which had been used as the mairie of the former commune of Gorée between 1872 and 1929.
The commune d'arrondissement of Gorée is ruled by a municipal council (conseil municipal) democratically elected every 5 years, and by a mayor elected by members of the municipal council.
The current mayor of Gorée is Augustin Senghor, elected in 2002.
[edit] Island historical sites
Other attractions on the island include three museums, one dedicated to women, one to the history of Senegal and one to the sea; the seventeenth century Gorée Police Station, Gorée Castle and a small beach.
The island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Archaeological research on the historical occupation of Gorée has been recently undertaken by Dr Ibrahima Thiaw (Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN), and the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal), Dr Susan Keech McIntosh (Professor of Archaeology, Rice University, Houston, Texas), and Raina Croff (PhD candidate at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut). Dr Shawn Murray (University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SWCA Environmental Consultants, Inc) also contributed to the archaeological research at Gorée through a modern study of the local and introduced trees and shrubs of the island, which aids in identifying the ancient plant remains found in the excavations. [1]
[edit] Notable residents
Gorée is the hometown of the father of French rapper Booba (born Elie Yaffa). In his song "Garde la Peche" he mentions the island, saying "Gorée c'est ma terre" (Gorée is my land/hometown). Goree is also the hometown of Djembe musician Latyr Sy.
[edit] References
- ^ View results of their research at Goree Archaeology http://goree.rice.edu.
- Camara, Abdoulaye & Joseph Roger de Benoist. Histoire de Gorée. Maisonneuve & Larose, Paris (2003).
[edit] External links
- UNESCO page on Gorée
- Photos of Goree on Flickr
- Marie de Gorée (FR)
- George W. Bush's Visit
- Archaeological Research on Goree
- Noted historian discussing the actual role of the slave trade in Gorée's history
|
|||||||
