Nancy Kwang Johnson Western Illinois University
COLONIAL LANGUAGE, MEMORY, AND ASSIMILATION:
SENEGAL (1891-1960) AND KOREA (1910-1945)
Nancy Kwang Johnson, Ph.D.
Western Illinois University
Paper presented at the International Political Science Association
July 9-13, 2006
Fukuoka, Japan
Working Paper (Draft)
Please do not cite without author’s permission.
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Nancy Kwang Johnson Western Illinois University
ABSTRACT
COLONIAL LANGUAGE, MEMORY, AND ASSIMILATION:
SENEGAL (1891-1960) AND KOREA (1910-1945)
Nancy Kwang Johnson, Ph.D.
Western Illinois University
This paper examines the politics of language, culture, and assimilation in former French and Japanese colonial territories, Sénégal (1891‐1960) and South Korea (1910‐1945), respectively. The paper suggests that Japanese and French colonial assimilation policies pertaining to language policies were comparable. To what extent did French and Japanese colonizers promote their mother tongues (the colonial language) in Sénégal and Korea, respectively? How, in turn, did colonized populations (the Senegalese and the Koreans) respond to colonial policies pertaining to language and assimilation?
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Nancy Kwang Johnson Western Illinois University
COLONIAL LANGUAGE, MEMORY, AND ASSIMILATION:
SENEGAL1 (1891-1960) AND KOREA2 (1910-1945)
“Even with its universalistic assumption of a common humanity, the French notion of a mission civilisatrice still recognized fundamental ethnic, religious, and cultural differences between the French and their subject peoples. In the long run, recognition of these differences prompted a shift in French colonial policy away from ‘assimilation’ toward ‘association.’ The Japanese, by contrast, could find ethnic, cultural, and religious similarities that propelled them toward ever closer relations with the Koreans. The Koreans might be ‘backward’ or ‘uncivilized,’ but ancient racial and historical ties linked them to the Japanese in a way that the French were not linked to the Arabs of Algeria. By invoking these bonds, historians, anthropologists, and journalists justified domination through annexation and assimilation.”3
INTRODUCTION
As suggested by the opening quotation, there are some important
similarities, and arguably notable differences between how the French and
Japanese conceptualized their mission civilisatrice (“civilizing mission”) in Sénégal
(1891‐1960) and Korea (1910‐1945). This paper has two primary objectives. First,
I will focus on how each colonizer envisioned and implemented various colonial
policies pertaining to language and assimilation in Sénégal and Korea. Second, I
will discuss how each colonized population, in turn, responded to language and
assimilation policies in the French and Japanese empires.
HOW THE FRENCH ENVISIONED EMPIRE IN SENEGAL (1891‐1960)
With respect to the French empire in Sénégal, I argue that the French
employed a technology of nationalism4 in the Four Communes of Sénégal (Saint‐
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Louis, Dakar, Gorée, and Rufisque). As a result, Senegambian5 ethnic and mixed
racial6 populations undermined this technology, and promoted the Wolof
language, rather than the colonial language, French, during the French colonial
period (1891‐1960).
PRÉLUDE: “PEASANTS INTO FRENCHMEN”?7
In Eugen Weber’s text, Peasants into Frenchmen,8 Weber convincingly
delineates the process by which the French peasants were integrated into
Franceʹs national citizenry by the Parisian urbanites during the Third Republic
(1870‐1940). He argues that the French peasants were not viewed as compatriots
of the Parisian urbanites because the peasants’ mother tongues encompassed
non‐French languages such as Italian or Catalon or regional dialects (patois).
Weber emphasizes the striking fact that the French language, at the beginning of
the Third Republic, was a foreign language for about a quarter of France’s
population.9
Standardization in the French instructional system suggested that,
independent of location, students everywhere in France would be reading the
same texts, following the same lesson plans, and speaking the same language—
French. Schools were the vehicles intended to franciser (Frenchify) the peasantry
en masse, and the Third Republican classroom became the secular, civic site of
Francophony. Hence, regional dialects (patois) were circumvented.
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Weber’s model illustrates that the French state believed that the rural
masses could “learn to be French.”10 This grand‐scale, nation‐wide “civilizing
experiment” for the rural masses proceeded from two assumptions. First,
compulsory and free primary school was the appropriate vehicle for the
acculturation and grooming of nascent citizens. Secondly, a proper Frenchmen
or Frenchwoman could be produced with exposure to the French metropolitan
educational system, French language, and French culture.
This process of “creating Frenchmen” is the goal of what I term the
technology of nationalism. The technology of nationalism revolves around two
very different axes. The first axis (of this technology) entails acquiring French
citizenship by having French blood (jus sanguinis) or being born on French soil
(jus soli). The second axis involves affiliation with the French metropolitan
educational system.
From the simplest primary school class to the lecture hall of a grande école
(prestigious university‐level colleges with competitive entrance examinations),
assimilation entailed exposure to the French metropolitan school system. The
assimilation process, mediated by the French language and valorization of
French civilization, was achieved at a heavy price, namely the loss of traditional
culture and non‐French mother tongues. In this way, national identity became
equated with national language ‐‐ linguistic nationalism.
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SENEGALESE “INTO FRENCHMEN”?11AXIS ONE: ACQUIRING FRENCH CITIZENSHIP
Nous sommes vis‐à‐vis de ces peuplades, dans la même situation que vis‐à‐vis de nos paysans. Nous leur devons l’instruction comme nous la devons à ces derniers....12Admiral Vallon,13 Governor of Sénégal (1889)
[With regard to these populations, we are, in the same situation as with our peasants. We owe them instruction just as we owe the latter.]
Anticipating Eugen Weber’s francisation model almost a century later,
Admiral Vallon implies that the francisation of the Senegambian population runs
parallel to that of the French peasantry. During the Third Republic, the French
colonial state practiced assimilation policies in its most zealous form beginning
with the creation of the Four Communes (les quatre communes), Saint‐Louis,
Gorée, Rufisque, and Dakar, as French overseas territories. On August 1, 1872, a
decree bestowed on Saint‐Louis and Gorée the “same municipal prerogatives
and rights as French communes.”14 They were later joined by Rufisque in 1880
and Dakar in 1887.
The communes de plein exercice15 status meant that the inhabitants of the
empowered Four Communes, originaires, were not only comparable to their
metropolitan counterparts, French citizens, but were also entitled to send a
deputy16 from Sénégal to the Assemblée nationale in France, vote in French
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elections, fight in the French army, and were adjudicated by the French Civil
Code. In short, the originaires were French extraterritorial citizens.
In the passage below, Marie Louise Poutin Gueye, Senghor’s niece
17describes what it was like to be an originaire.
…J’ai donc vécu la période coloniale comme une Africaine, à ce moment‐là même les Français assimilés des quatre communes étaient des gens privilégiés…Dakar, Saint Louis, Gorée et Rufisque étaient des citoyens Français, on leur avait donné un statut particulier, donc rien ne me différenciait d’une jeune Française en France, que de petites discriminations mais ce n’était rien ça…
Marie Louise Poutin Gueye (Métisse)18
[…During the colonial period, therefore, I lived as an African woman; at a time, when even the assimilated French of the Four Communes were privileged people… [P]eople from Dakar, Saint‐Louis, Gorée and Rufisque were French citizens, they had been given a special status; therefore nothing differentiated me from a young French woman in France, except some discrimination; but that was nothing.]
Marie believes that she was a privileged member of the French empire, a French
citizen (citoyen) or Black Frenchwomen who was comparable to her (white)
French female counterparts in the métropole, with the exception of some
discrimination. Marie can imagine herself belonging to the white French
citizenry.
The act of bestowing upon originaires the same political rights as their
French counterparts in the métropole meant that the French colonial
administration viewed the Senegambian population in the rural hinterland as
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having a lower propensity to assimilate (in stark contrast to their urban
counterparts in the Four Communes). Senegambians living beyond the Four
Communes were designated as French subjects (sujets or indigènes). French
subjects fell under the Code de l’indigénat (Native Code), less directly, the
“arbitrary power of the French colonial administration, which most often relied
on traditional chiefs—ethnic leaders or marabouts—to establish its
domination.”19
Establishing the Four Communes as French soil had the effect, in some
cases, of creating an “us” (French citizens or citoyen; originaire) vs. “them”
(French subjects or sujets; indigène) dichotomy within the Senegambian region at
large to the extent that originaires (anyone from one of the Four Communes) had
more in common, in a juridical and administrative sense, with their counterparts
in France, than with their own family members in the Senegambian region—who
resided beyond the Four Communes—beyond the idea of France.
HOW THE JAPANESE ENVISIONED EMPIRE IN KOREA (1910‐1945)
The Japanese empire, on the other hand, shared important similarities and
differences with the French empire. While the Franco‐Prussian War (a French
defeat) had the effect of facilitating a Third Republican campaign throughout the
French countryside and cultivating a nascent national identity based on language
throughout the French empire, the Russo‐Japanese War (a Japanese victory in
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1905) coupled with Japan’s war with China (1937‐1945) had the effect of
implementing assimilation policies in Korea that accentuated, rather than
mitigated, the political differences between Japanese and Koreans.
On the other hand, both France and Japan sought to assimilate colonized
populations through the school systems and immersion in the colonial
languages. However, it is noteworthy that in the French case in 1904 (a year
before the separation of Church and State) the assimilation policies began to
resemble the association policies of the British. Meanwhile, the Japanese
assimilation policies became more strict (in 1919 and 1940, for example) in
response to open rebellions and independence movements in Korea and Japan’s
war with China (1937‐1945).
Long before the colonial period began in Korea, M. J. Rhee proposes that
the Koreans were “proud of their ties to China—larger and more powerful
neighbor. China was the only genuine civilization (munmyŏng).”20 On the other
hand, Rhee highlights that there were Koreans “who shared the Japanese
admiration of the West”21 and “were nevertheless determined to learn from the
West in their own way”22 to the extent that they promoted the “idea of Korea as
an independent nation which could move Korean society towards true
civilization without too much reliance upon foreign powers.”23 In this regard,
Korea—even as a protectorate24 under Japan—considered Japan to be anything
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short of a “civilized nation.”25 Koreans, Rhee argues, believed that the “Japanese
people were ‘barbarians’ (wae) and were some distance from reaching the cultural
level of Korea.”26
In response to the anti‐Japanese and the pro‐China sentiments, the
Japanese had three primary colonial strategies in Korea. First, the Japanese
colonial administration engaged in the Japanization of Confucian values.27
Because Confucianism embraced “filial piety and obligations within the
hierarchical character of society” 28 (that were an integral part of Korean society),
the Japanization of Confucianism suggested that “loyalty to one’s parents”29
meant “loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.”30 Consequently, Rhee notes, “the
Japanese wished to extend moral education to the political domain: for example,
a school textbook known as Shushin was first introduced to politicize individual
Confucian moral values.”31
The second primary colonial objective of the Japanese administration
entailed highlighting the “common heritage of Japan and Korea” with particular
emphasis on the “similar linguistic features in the Japanese and the Korean
languages—to the extent that Koreans were assured that the compulsory
learning of Japanese in schools would therefore not be a burden for their
children.”32 Korean schools were placed under the direct control of the Japanese
authorities. As early as 1905, for example, Korean textbooks were censored (“all
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anti‐Japanese sentiments”33 were removed while new textbooks were imported
from Japan.34 By 1911, the First Educational Ordinance in Korea forced Korean
children to learn Japanese in the schools.35 This ordinance would be followed by
three other educational ordinances as the schools in the Japanese empire would
also become the main acculturating vehicles.
The third colonial objective encompassed a campaign to alienate Korea
from its closest geopolitical neighbor—China – and simultaneously entailed
promoting the annexation of Korea, in principle, to Japan. Rhee notes that the:
Japanese argued that Yi Korea [1362‐1897] was a traditionally dependent and divided society—dependent on China and divided by internal string among competing factions—and therefore highlighted the failure of Kojong’s short‐lived Great Han Empire [1897‐1905]…36
By emphasizing the shortcomings of the Han (Chinese) empire, Japan oft‐
referred to as the “Inner Land”(naichi—the inner land, the homeland, the
metropole37) proceeded with the theoretical annexation of Korea henceforth
referred to as the “Outer Land” (gaichi—the exterior or the outer lands).38 With
respect to assimilation policies, it is arguable that Japan’s notion of an annexed
Korea was not at all similar to France’s perception of the Four Communes in
Sénégal. Both empires promoted colonial language and assimilation policies
throughout the educational systems in their colonies albeit with dramatically
different outcomes.
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HOW THE FRENCH EMPLOYED THE TECHNOLOGY OF NATIONALISM IN SENEGAL: AXIS TWO: EXPOSURE TO THE METROPOLITAN SCHOOL SYSTEM FRÈRES DE PLOËRMEL (1841‐1904) The pre‐colonial ethnie‐scape was transformed, in a racial and socio‐
political sense, with the advent of European contact. The European presence
(Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch) between the period from 1444 to 1659,39 contact
with the French (1659‐1817), and the comparatively momentary and fleeting
interludes with the British in Saint‐Louis (1758‐1778, and 1809‐1817) and Gorée
(1759‐1763, 1779‐1783, 1800‐1817) engendered a mixed racial population that
emerged as a result of slaving, inter‐racial marriage and concubinage.
After regaining possession of the colony from the British (1817), the
French government attempted to promote French civilization in the instructional
system. The métropole during this time period was in the midst of pedagogical
warfare: mutual instruction (enseignement mutual), in which the most advanced
student served as the monitor and was in charge of instructing his fellow
students. Religious instruction (enseignement religieux), on the other hand was
instruction by the brotherhoods and sisterhoods and there were no
intermediaries.
Mutual instruction was initially used to replace the Koranic form of
education operating in the colony. Koranic schools were intended to craft good
Muslims (bon musulmans) out of Senegambian boys who were sent at a young age
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(roughly 7‐8 years old) to study the Koran under the direction of a master.
Once mutual education did not procure the desired results, good citizens
(bons citoyens), the French colonial administration subsequently invited religious
organizations established in France, such as the Soeurs de lʹImmaculée Conception
and the Frères de Ploërmel, to extend their educational activities to Sénégal. The
French colonial administration sought the assistance of religious brotherhoods
and sisterhoods as a means of creating good or moral men (les bons hommes)
rather than polygamous, good Muslims (les bons musulmans) produced by the
Koranic schools.
From 1841 to 1904, the Frères de Ploërmel congregation, compared to other
congregations, supplied the majority (roughly 70‐80%) of public schoolteachers.40
In 1904, the Frères de Ploërmel, however, would return to the métropole literally a
year before the separation of Church and State. Other congregations such as
Immaculate Conception remained.
SÉNÉGAL: FRANCE’S BLACK BRITTANY?
With the departure of the Frères de Ploërmel in 1904, the French technology
of nationalism required new agents who would expose the originaire population
in the Four Communes to the French metropolitan educational system. In the
passage below, Malick Diop,41 a Senegalese monitor and a schoolteacher, recalls
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the techniques used in his class to suppress the local Senegambian vernaculars
such as Wolof.
Le symbole était utilisé dans les écoles pour obliger les enfants à parler Français, à ne plus parler le Wolof. C’était, en général, un morceau de bois ou bien une bôite qui circulait dans la classe. [A]lors ce morceau de bois appelé symbole était donné à celui qui, par mégarde, parlait sa propre langue. Alors si un camarade le surprend en train de parler Wolof, il lui donne le symbole jusqu’au moment où, lui aussi, il trouve un autre qui parle Wolof, il le lui remettait. Ainsi, il était souvent difficile de voir des enfants dans une classe parler le Wolof ou autre langue. Ils ne parlaient que le Français.
[The symbol was used in the schools to force children to speak French, not Wolof. Generally, it was a piece of wood or even a box, which was passed around the class. The piece of wood called symbol was given to whoever accidentally spoke his mother tongue. If a classmate catches someone speaking Wolof, he gives that person the symbol, who keeps it until the moment when, he in turn finds another person speaking Wolof. It was hard to catch children speaking Wolof or another language in class. They only spoke French.]
Here, it is especially noteworthy that, Malick, a Senegalese monitor and
schoolteacher who enforced this French practice, rarely found Senegalese
students speaking their mother tongues in the classroom. The symbol practice
not only de‐legitimized languages such as Wolof,42 but also publicly humiliated
anyone who spoke non‐French languages in the confines of the classroom.
This practice of punishing students speaking non‐French languages with a
“symbol” was also used in the métropole—especially in the three departments of
Lower Brittany,43 where “Breton was hunted out of the schools.”44 Eugen Weber
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notes that:
A favorite punishment, inherited from the Jesuits (who had ironically used it to enforce Latin on their French‐speaking charges), was the token of shame to be displayed by the child caught using his native tongue. The token varied. It could be a cardboard ticket (Dorres, Pyrénées‐Orientales), a wooden plank (Err and Palau, Pyrénées‐Orientales), a bar or a stick (Angoustrine, Pyrénées‐Orientales), a bar or a stick (Angoustrine, Pyrénées‐Orientales), a peg (Cantal), a paper ribbon or metal object (Flanders), or a brick to be held out at arm’s length (Corrèze). A child saddled with such a “symbol” kept it until he caught another child not speaking French, denounced him, and passed it on. The pupil left with the token at the end of the day received a punishment. In the country schools of Brittany the symbol of shame was a sabot.45
For the Frères, Sénégal represented a sort of Black Brittany or “Bretagne noire”46
and would explain why they consistently used the symbol practice from 1841 to
1904. In the context of the symbol practice in Brittany and Sénégal, it is
arguable that the Third Republican tactics in the metropole were comparable to
those used in the French colony. What is particularly striking, however, is that
the French technology of nationalism in the colony is employed by Malick
Diop—a Senegalese schoolteacher and monitor.
THE JAPANIZATION OF THE KOREAN SCHOOL SYSTEM (1910‐1940): RACE, ETHNICITY, AND LANGUAGE IN THE JAPANESE EMPIRE Given the racial, ethnic, and linguistic homogeneity in colonial Korea, it is
noteworthy to what degree the Japanese colonial administration implemented
and enforced various ordinances that were intended to undermine or pre‐empt,
if you will, the idea of a Korean nation and a Korean language. In this regard,
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there are four critical periods in colonial Korea that highlights the magnitude of
the Japanization campaigns in Korea. The first critical period 1919‐1920, many
Korean studies scholars argue, demarcates the origins of the first nationalist
movement undertaken by students—the March First Independence Movement.
In response to an open rebellion against Japanese colonial occupation, the
Japanese colonial administration not only crushed the student revolt but also
changed its assimilation policies to encompass “cultural policies” that permitted
the publication of two Korean newspapers: (a) Chosun Ilbo (March 5, 1920) and
Tong‐a Ilbo (April 1, 1920).47
The second critical period was 1932. During this particular year, Japanese
scholars began working on a thirty‐eight volume historical study of Korea
entitled The History of Chosun.48 Rhee notes that this particular project was “ used
as a vehicle for reinforcing the Japanese vision of Korea as a divided, dependent,
and uncivilized society .”49 Interestingly enough, the “textbook controversy”
(Japanese historiography and the Japanese historicizing of its empire) continues
to be a topical issue in post‐independent Korean historiography circles.
The third critical episode in colonial Korea takes place three years after
Japan’s attack of Nanking, (1940). Rhee notes that the:
…Japanisation of Korea is intensified—Koreans are obliged to change their family names (February 11, 1940) to standard Japanese names; and soon afterwards Korean language teaching is abolished despite attempts in the 1920s and 1930s by some language teachers to present
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Korean as a living and developing language.50 In August of 1940, the publication of two Korean‐language newspapers came to a
close.51 It is particularly noteworthy how Japanese assimilation policies became
more oppressive during the latter stages of the Japanese colonial period (1910‐
1945. On the other hand, the Senegalese case study demonstrates how French
language and assimilation policies undertaken in the Four Communes (1891‐
1960) not only became more flexible after the separation of Church and State
(1905) but also resembled the assimilation policies of their British counterparts
(association).
In the context of the 1940 period, Mayo notes that the:
…Forced integration, or the making of imperial subjects, presented to local nativists the absurdity of becoming one in a hierarchy dominated by Japan. A Korea or a Taiwan united with Japan could only be a Korea or a Taiwan without national or ethnic identity. By 1940, it was a Korea of lost family names and of lost public language, as Japan required the taking of Japanese names for registration and made its language compulsory in the schools and media. In Taiwan, too, where measures were somewhat less severe and some elite Taiwanese families volunteered to take Japanese names, Japan was nevertheless intent on eradicating a prior identity and refashioning a Toyo (Japan supraidentity)…52
Moreover, Mayo notes that both Korea and Taiwan “…increasingly confronted
cultural policies of kominka), juxtaposed to “forced transformation into loyal and
obedient imperial subjects, and doka (assimilation into Japanese).53 Here, it is
especially noteworthy how the Japanese colonial administration separated
cultural and assimilation policies— intertwined policies in the French empire.
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The last critical period for colonial Korea demarcated the arrest of the
leaders of the Korean Linguistic Society (September 1, 1942).54 In the context of
Korea’s racial and ethnie‐scape, “linguistic integration with ethnic segregation”55
coupled with ambiguous colonial policies undertaken during the early stages of
Japanese colonial period accounted for a slower rate of assimilation in Japan’s
empire. Dennis McNamara proposed that:
…fostering a cultural domination through assimilation policies such as Japanese language training, respect for the Japanese emperor, and so on, proved more difficult than establishing initial political control, or advancing economic integration between agriculture in the colonies and markets in the home islands. The slower pace of cultural integration in the early colonial period was due to both the ambiguity of the administrations’ policies and especially to the depth of precolonial indigenous ethnic identities.56 Here, it is interesting to note the impact race and ethnicity had on the
Japanization campaign in colonial Korea. The politics of language, culture, and
assimilation in the Senegalese case study, for example, was further complicated
by race and ethnicity. While the colonial Korean case study was comprised of a
homogeneous racial and ethnic core that shared linguistic features with the
colonial language, it is clear that the Koreans were not considered extraterritorial
citizens of Japan in a political or cultural sense.
McNamara attributes the slow rate of assimilation in Korea (and Taiwan)
to the authoritarian regimes during Korea’s first critical period—1919.
McNamara states that few Koreans “…subjected through 1919 to the
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authoritarian regimes of Terauchi and Hasegawa… saw hope for eventual
representation in a Japanese state. ”57 According to McNamara, the assimilation
policy entailed the:
loss of indigenous ethnic identity in return for gaining recognition as members of the empire. But what would membership in the empire mean for nonethnic Japanese? While the administrations in both colonies [Korea and Taiwan] promoted cultural assimilation on the one hand, on the other they ruled out political enfranchisement, and carefully maintained distinctions between Japanese residents and the indigenous populations. It was obvious from the early colonial period that Koreans and Taiwanese were not to be accorded political and economic rights comparable to ethnic Japanese.58
Here, McNamara highlights the limitations of the assimilation policies for
Koreans and Taiwanese within the Japanese empire. At this juncture, it is
important to recapitulate the similarities and differences between the French and
Japanese empires in Sénégal (1891‐1960) and Korea (1910‐1945).
CONCLUSION
Both France and Japan envisioned a mission civilisatrice (“civilizing
mission”) in their respective colonies that promoted the colonial languages in the
school system. In this regard, both colonizers designated their schools as
acculturating vehicles whereby schoolteachers were the civic agents. While the
French case study promoted the linkage between language and civility, the
Japanese case study engendered the linkage between language and the polity
(polis) whereby the colonial administration literally policed the usage (or lack
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thereof) of the Japanese language in the schools, among student organizations, in
Korean‐language newspapers, and in Korean linguistic societies.
Both case studies, however, have varying outcomes with regard to their
colonized populations’ extraterritorial status. Here, I make reference to the fact
that the French promoted a technology of nationalism to the extent that it is
arguable that the French intended to “create” Black Frenchmen and women in
the Four Communes. For example, populations born in the Four Communes (jus
soli) or having French parentage (jus sanguinis), who were exposed to the French
metropolitan educational system in the Four Communes, had the same political
rights as their metropolitan counterparts.
The Japanese case study, however, suggests that the disjoint cultural and
assimilation policies coupled with the Japanese supraidentity engendered a
colonial population in Korea that did not have the same political and economic
rights as ethnic Japanese. In this regard, it is noteworthy how the Japanese
implemented more oppressive cultural and assimilation policies when they were
responding to open rebellions (1919) or engaging in war (1940).
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ENDNOTES 1 Excerpts of this paper pertaining to the Senegalese case study have been taken from Nancy Kwang Johnson, “Senegalese ‘into Frenchmen’? The French Technology of Nationalism in Sénégal,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Boulder, CO), Volume 10, No. 1, Spring 2004 (special issue) and Nancy Kwang Johnson, “Senegalese ‘into Frenchmen’? The Politics of Language, Culture, and Assimilation (1891‐1960).” Cornell Dissertation (2001). Funding, for this project, as well as research conducted at Harvard University, was made possible by the Office of Sponsored Projects and the College of Arts and Sciences (Faculty Mentor Grant) at Western Illinois University. 2 The author is indebted to Laura Farwell Blake, Research Librarian at the Harvard Widener Library for her assistance pertaining to the Korean case study, as well as Gabriel and Virginia for their tireless paging endeavors and assistance in the Harvard Library Phillips Reading Room. Moreover, the author is grateful for the assistance of her various Korean relatives who shared their various oral histories (that will appear in subsequent revisions of this working paper). 3 Peter Duus. The Abacus and the Sword; the Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1859‐1910. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 413. 4 For a more detailed account of the French technology of nationalism in Senegal, see 2004 Johnson, Nancy Kwang, “Senegalese ‘into Frenchmen’? The French Technology of Nationalism in Sénégal,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Boulder, CO), Volume 10, No. 1, Spring 2004 (special issue). 5 Boubacar Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 3. In the following excerpt, Boubacar Barry makes reference to “Senegambia” as a geographical, socio‐political and economic unit that was intact before the French and British colonial conquest of Sénégal and Gambia, respectively. Barry notes that: “Senegambia, bordered by the Senegal River in the north, the Kolonté in the south, and the foothills of the Futa Jallon plateau to the east, has a natural geographical coherence... By the fifteenth century, Senegambia had acquired an identifiable form as a demographic, economic unit, as well as in all aspects of political organization. It kept that identity, broadly speaking, until the onset of colonial conquest in the late nineteenth century.” 6 George E. Brooks, Eurafricans in Western Africa; Commerce, Social Status, Gender, and Religious Observance from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2003). The mixed racial population in the Four Communes would comprise the socio‐political elite in the Four Communes. 7 Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen; The Modernization of Rural France, 1870‐1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974). 8 Ibid. 9 Weber, p. 67. 10 W. Bryant Mumford, Africans Learn to Be French (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1970). 11 12 Augustin Challamel, Éditeur, Congrès Colonial International de Paris (Paris: Bibliothèque Des Annales Économiques, 1889), p. 91. 13 Governor Vallon was the governor of Sénégal (1889‐1893). 14 Mamadou Diouf, “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Globalization Project in Development
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Nancy Kwang Johnson Western Illinois University and Change, Vol. 29 (1998), p. 673. 15 Lord Hailey, An African Survey (Revised 1956); A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 543. Lord Hailey notes that the “decision of 1833” gave the originaires, the same civil rights as were enjoyed by the citizens of metropolitan France.” 16 The mixed racial population, the socio‐political elite of the Four Communes, was often referred to as a “mulattocracy.” See G. Wesley Johnson, The Emergence of Black Politics in Senegal; The Struggle for Power in the Four Communes, 1900‐1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1971). G. Wesley Johnson notes that the deputy, sent to the National Assembly in Paris, came from the community of mixed racial originaires (1789‐1914) until the election of Blaise Diagne; the first Black African deputy in Sénégal. 17 18 This is my personal interview with Marie Louis Poutin Gueye on December 21, 1995 (Dakar, SÉNÉGAL). Marie is of mixed racial descent, and is related to Léopold Sédar Senghor on her mother’s side. Senghor is her mother’s cousin, and therefore, her uncle. 19 Mamadou Diouf, “The French Colonial Policy of Assimilation and the Civility of the Originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A Nineteenth Globalization Project in Development and Change, Vol. 29 (1998), p. 674. 20 M.J. Rhee, The Doomed Empire: Japan in Colonial Korea. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 1997. 21 Ibid, p. 10. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Once the Russo‐Japanese war ended, Japan declared Korea as its protectorate (1905‐1910). 25 Ibid. 26 Rhee, p. 10. 27 Ibid., p. 12. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., p. 7‐8. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid., p. 13. 37 Marlene J. Mayo (ed.), J. Thomas Rimer with H. Eleanor Kerkham. War, Occupation, and Creativity: Japan and East Asia 1920‐1960. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001, p. 4.
38 Ibid. 39 Maxime Petit, Les colonies françaises; petite encyclopédie coloniale (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1902), Vol. I, p. 562. Maxime Petit notes that by 1626, Sénégal was considered to be a true colony under the direction of Compagnie Normande et de Rouen. 40 Ibid., p. 13. 41 This is an excerpt from my personal interview on December 27, 1995 (Saint‐Louis, SÉNÉGAL) with Malick Diop, a monitor and schoolteacher. 42 Enforcing the symbol practice, in the classrooms, and establishing the Four Communes as
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Nancy Kwang Johnson Western Illinois University zones of Francophony, enabled the French to isolate, linguistically and culturally, the originaires, who were Wolof and French speakers, from their Wolof‐speaking counterparts in the rural hinterland. 43 Weber, p. 313. 44 Ibid. 45 Weber, p. 313. 46 See also Pierre‐Jakez, Hélias, Le cheval d’orgueil; mémoires d’un breton du pays bigouden (Paris: Plon, 1975). Some of my interviewees not only recounted how they could commit to memory France’s 89 departments at the expense of learning about the various regions of Sénégal, but also remembered reciting the following phrase, “Our ancestors, the Gauls,” a phrase their counterparts in France also recited. For a discussion on how Third Republican ideologies were represented in French textbooks in the métropole and throughout the French empire, see Dominique Maingueneau, Les livres d’école de la république 1870‐1914 (discourse et idéologie), (Paris: Le Sycamore, 1979). 47 Andrew C. Nahm and James E. Hoare. Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea. Lanham: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2004.
48 Rhee, p. 9. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 9. 51 Nahm, p. xxix. 52 Mayo, p. 5. 53 Ibid, p. 7. 54 Nahm, p. xxx. 55McNamara, Dennis L. McNamara “Comparative Colonial Response: Korea and Taiwan.” Korean Studies 10 (1986), p. 60.
56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., p. 61. 58 Ibid.
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