Transient Transactions: Making Urban Life in Colonial Dakar, 1902-1944

FAIN: FT-285576-22

Rachel Petrocelli
Santiago Canyon College (Orange, CA 92869-4512)

Research and writing leading to a book about the values that defined Dakar as a major colonial city at the turn of the twentieth century.

Transient Transactions: Making Urban Life in Colonial Dakar, 1902-1944, is a socioeconomic history of Dakar, French West Africa’s capital, during key years of its development. Over four decades, Dakarois developed practices defined not by its colonial designers but by its inhabitants. This book introduces the concept of local transactional culture – norms city dwellers devised to make urban life feasible under colonial rule. The central element of Dakar’s transactional culture was transience, which permeated trade, work, housing, and interaction with the state. This work reveals that economic relationships in Dakar were shaped by people negotiating the city for their own purposes. As the French colonial state strived for control, the local transactional culture adapted. Transient Transactions’ innovative approach to urban African history uses deep analysis of court cases, state reports, and oral histories to offer new theorization of movement and the rich value of justice archives.