In:
Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, PERSEE Program, Vol. 61, No. 225 ( 1974), p. 542-571
Kurzfassung:
For a long time a colony with prevailing animistic beliefs, the Ivory Coast seemed to remain apart, free from the Islamic question with which the French Administration was confronted in the major part of French West Africa. Very soon, however, the Ivory Coast was to be affected and involved : confronted with the rapid spread of the Islamic faith resulting from the immigration of followers from other colonies (Senegalese or Sudanese soldiers and merchants), the local administration with poor resources and little experience, attempted to apply, often at the wrong moment, the general directives laid down by Dakar. According to whether Islam was considered a civilizing factor or a ferment for subversion the authorities in Dakar and Bingerville would range between a clearly favourable position, at the beginning of the conquest, and a downright hostile attitude in the years between 1905 and 1930. On the whole, it was a bureaucratie and defensive policy, often encouraged by unreasonable fears : its efficiency was finally rather mediocre, since Moslem immigration grew and took root unceasingly. After 1930, economic problems and the new imperial outlook made a compromise necessary with a Moslem community which in Ivory Coast as in the rest of French West Africa, had become a reality difficult to ignore. This recognition of a " Moslem Ivory Coast " was accompanied by an attempt at moral support made spectacular by the officiai visits of the Grand Marabout Seydou Nourou Tall. At all events, on the eve of the second World War, the obsession wxth Islam was fairly well overcome, on the administrative level, and replaced by others fears. This new Moslem community in the Ivory Coast, rather commercial than literate, founded almost wholly by outside immigration, came to join up with the older, more lethargie settlements in the North of the colony. In less than half a century it accomplished a marked progress in numbers which, while still remaining moderate, began a process still in progress to-day.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
0300-9513
DOI:
10.3406/outre.1974.1799
Sprache:
Französisch
Verlag:
PERSEE Program
Publikationsdatum:
1974
SSG:
8
SSG:
8,2
SSG:
6,23
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