Esquisses Sénégalaises by David Boilat
In the 19th century, at the height of European imperial conquests, a new scientific discipline called anthropology emerged. Its original purpose was to study the cultures of so-called primitive societies, which were often perceived as backward or incapable of producing a modern civilization. To establish itself, anthropology relied heavily on travel accounts, reports, and field notes written by explorers, missionaries, and colonial administrators. These colonial actors were among the first to produce detailed descriptions of non-European peoples, from the standpoint of an external gaze. One of the founding figures of anthropology, James George Frazer, for example, relied on the writings of missionaries and colonial officials to produce his foundational comparative study of world mythology and religion, titled The Golden Bough1.
In the early days of anthropology, it was uncommon for individuals from colonized societies to author ethnographic studies about their own cultures. That said, there were exceptions. Among the most notable African intellectuals who engaged in this kind of study were the Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, who spent much of his life documenting Fulani oral traditions and West African cosmologies; the Pan-African thinker Edward Wilmot Blyden, who wrote extensively on African religion and cultural life in West Africa; and the lesser-known David Boilat, who compiled detailed observations on Senegalese societies in his important 1853 work, Esquisses sénégalaises.
Boilat was born in Saint-Louis on April 23, 1814, to a Signare mother and a French father. In 1841, alongside Jean-Pierre Moussa and Arsène Fridoil, he was ordained into the catholic priesthood as part of a broader initiative to train an African clergy that could evangelize local populations2. Nonetheless, Boilat’s mission in the region extended beyond religious ritual and also included education and ethnographic study, both intended to support the expansion of Catholic missions in Senegal.
His seminal work, Esquisses sénégalaises, is a medley of literary forms. The text combines illustrations, travel writing, speeches, ethnographic observations, letters exchanged with colonial administrators, priests, and elements of social critique. The result is a wide-ranging portrait of what it meant to live and work as an African missionary in the 19th century. Boilat occupies a liminal position throughout the text. He constantly negotiates his deep ties to the local populations with his allegiance to the colonial administration and the catholic church. His dual position is evident in the many passages where he recounts his friendships with local marabouts, his regular visits to the homes of the Signares, and his regular correspondence with the French administration and fellow missionaries.
Throughout Esquisses, Boilat highlights the distinctiveness of Saint-Louis and Gorée, as these two regions had long been in contact with Christian missionaries and European traders before French colonization. He also provides detailed descriptions of the landscapes, religious practices, superstitions, clothing, and physical appearances of the various peoples that comprise Senegal. Many of these insights were provided by local informants, whom Boilat does not fail to name, unlike most European reports of the time.
Besides ethnographic study, Boilat presents strong arguments and concerns for education in Senegal in the text. He emphasizes instruction in French for both boys and girls as essential to the advancement of civilization in Senegal and is particularly invested in the teaching of French and Latin. He views the instruction of these languages as foundational to a meaningful education. Without these languages, he argues, school instruction would merely “fill students’ memories with an infinity of useless words.” Boilat’s views on education echo those of Léopold Sédar Senghor, who also insisted that African students needed to master French to become what he called “des nègres nouveaux3.”
Boilat’s interest in languages was not limited to European languages. He conducted studies on indigenous Senegalese languages and was, in fact, the first Senegalese writer to produce a detailed linguistic survey of Wolof, in a groundbreaking work titled La Grammaire de la langue Wolof. Eventually, the colonial administration will dismiss the study he carried out in this book as too “native” in its attention to phonology4.
In Esquisses Sénégalaises, Boilat also strongly advocated for the reopening of a secondary school he had created in Senegal. He believed that advanced education could equip local populations with civilization and expose them to career paths in science, agriculture, and commerce at a time when trade was considered the only viable occupation for an indigenous person in Senegal. He also hoped that the newly educated would, in turn, promote the French language and its ideals throughout Senegal..
Boilat yearned for a new class of African intellectuals, like those of the past, whom he described as “the first lights of the world, the Church Fathers, whose scholarly works still stir our imagination today”. Among those, he cites and reclaims as African, Saint Augustine, who is now regarded as a foundational figure in the Western philosophical tradition.
Although David Boilat worked in close partnership with the colonial administration, his position within that system was complex and often contested, as seen in the closure of his secondary school and the rejection of his linguistic study of Wolof. Boilat did not envision Senegal as a land destined for subjugation under imperial rule but as a society capable of embracing civilization and actively participating in its shaping. Therefore, his ethnographic study of the Senegalese people in Esquisses Sénégalaise was intended to help fulfill this goal. It rejected the fixation of Africans into a premodern or “primitive” past and proposed ways of integrating them into the modern present.