The Dakar-Djibouti mission, a founding stage of French colonial ethnology

Upon his return to France in February 1933, the Dakar-Djibouti mission had collected more than 3,600 objects, 200 birds, thousands of insects, and compiled around 15,000 thematic sheets. In addition, there are 6,000 photographs and tens of hours of film on film, as well as hundreds of pages of notes taken by the members of the mission: before a French scientific mission had reported so much information. As the anthropologist Éric Jolly (CNRS), associate commissioner of the exhibition “Mission Dakar-Djibouti” underlines. “Professional ethnology in France later began that in other European countries”, And this mission aimed to make up for the delay while “Institutionalizing French ethnology». Carried by Marcel Griaule, an ethnologist specializing in Africa, the project of a large -scale scientific mission was presented in 1930 at the Institute of Ethnology (attached to the Ministry of Colonies as early as its creation in 1925). Griaule is inspired by the famous “black cruise” of Citroën (1924-1925), an emblematic car expedition of the colonialist spirit of the time, but its project is based on scientific bases: it is not a question of browsing more or less virgin territories by car, but of accumulating knowledge. The two “sponsors” of the mission are the Institute of Ethnology and the Museum of Ethnography of the Trocadéro (future Museum of Man), two public institutions linked to the colonial policy of the French government.

The imprint of colonialism

Because from its origin the mission received the support of the government and the colonial administration, and exceptional funding: in March 1931, Griale obtained 700,000 francs [près de 475 000 € actuels] Of the two chambers of Parliament, which gives the mission an official and legitimate status. This support by legislative means is “Unique in the history of French ethnology”, reports Éric Jolly, and testifies to a “Scientific lobbying” effective. Indeed, Griaule and his colleagues use the press to publicize their project, with the active participation of the Museum of Ethnography which brings together various patrons and sponsors. When she left France for Dakar on May 19, 1931, the mission made up of eleven researchers is therefore perfectly legitimate in the eyes of the government and the colonial administration in Africa, even if Griaules would keep doubts about the relations to maintain with the latter.

Before the start, Griale wrote with the writer, art critic and ethnologist Michel Leiris a series of instructions for colonial administrators to facilitate the work of collection in the field: did Griale put the administration at the service of the mission instead of serving the colonial administration? The fact remains that the colonial context weighs heavily on collection methods, whether inputs on thematic sheets or the status of local informants. On the sheets, the identity of the manufacturer or producer of the object collected never appeared, unlike that of the owner (tribe chief, member of a secret company). Likewise, according to the exhibition commissioners, “The ethnic group remained the main criterion to determine the origin of objects”as it was in colonial administration to categorize individuals. Even if the team surrounded many African interpreters and assistants, the mission, notes Éric Jolly, “Always remain at a distance from those she studies”respecting the colonial hierarchy. And above all, out of the fourteen countries crossed from west to east of Africa, only Ethiopia was independent and not colonized: the whole mission was marked by the imprint of colonialism.

Ritual objects, acquired by force or lie

Certain subjects studied by scientists also reveal the influence of colonialism, such as focusing on rituals and secret societies: members of the mission very quickly concentrated their collection efforts on ritual objects, in the idea that “African societies would be supposed to protect themselves from the outside world by their culture of secrecy” Because threatened in their identity by modernity, as recalled by the exhibition commissioners. Ethnology would therefore have the duty to ” save “ These cultures of forgetting by collecting the maximum of objects before their disappearance and by observing social structures, languages ​​and artifacts, including in intrusion. Hence the transition from a broad and methodical collection to a targeted collection, as in Dogon countries (current Mali) where it is the objects and outfits linked to the rituals that are reported at the end of a stay of several months. Likewise, the duration of the stay in Ethiopia (five months in Gondar) reveals a fascination for Christian rites and the frescoes of churches, as well as for manuscripts (from the 15th to the 18th century) of which more than 370 are reported in France. As Leiris revealed in 1934 in Ghost Africa (Gallimard), some of the objects have been acquired by force or lie, which is hardly surprising in a colonial context, but this revelation will cause the break with Griale.

Finally, the collection of animal and plant samples is also imbued with colonialism, even a “Collection frenzy”as Didier Houénoudé, Associate Commissioner and Professor at Abomey-Calavi University (Benin) say, who cites the very numerous calabashes reported in France (fruit of a very common cucurbit in Africa). In reality, this mission was connoted as colonial even before its beginning, since the research material had been exhibited in 1931 at the international colonial exhibition in Paris.

A lasting heritage subject to contemporary rereading

Upon returning to France, the material collected is transferred to the Museum of Ethnography of which it constitutes the base of the collections, and of which it serves the modernization project. From June 1933, the museum exhibited a selection of mission objects and documents in a large “black Africa” room, then created a black Africa department led by Leiris. A large part of the museum’s collections is now preserved at the Quai Branly-Jacques-Chirac museum, including the collection of the Dakar-Djibouti mission. The intellectual heritage of the mission is sustainable in France, including in details: the thematic sheet with nine criteria developed during “Dakar-Djibouti” remains the model of ethnologists in the field until the end of the 20th century. A multidisciplinary observation of studied societies and organized collection constitute the foundation of ethnological work as visited at the time.

This mission gives birth to other French African missions until the Second World War, which take up the same methods. If Leiris criticized some of these processes in 1934, it was only from the 1980s and 1990s that the mission was the subject of reassessments in university circles. Gaëlle Beaujean, head of the Africa collections at the Quai-Branly and general commissioner of the exhibition, specifies that “The critical look at this mission emerged in the 1990s, with the reissue in 1995 of Ghost Africaan edition with a critical ceremonial and extracts from Leiris’ correspondence ”. Several exhibitions in Europe follow which take a new look at “Dakar-Djibouti”, and many articles by African researchers who examine this mission from a local view, from a postcolonial perspective. More recently, this mission was criticized as part of the debate on restitutions because part of the objects collected have been acquired in an illegal manner: France is currently educating the request for restitution presented by Mali where 80 objects of the mission appear whose provenance poses a problem.