The Metis of Senegal

Reviews / Votes

[This] book brings welcome new emphasis to family and gender dynamics, as viewed, for example, through the material life of metis households. [The author's] use of marriage contracts and genealogies, as well as documents she located in Bordeaux, has helped her to advance existing scholarship.85.1 Feb. 2015

(Africa) Jones's book is the result of extensive research in state, parish, and private archives and newspapers in Dakar and St Louis, Bordeaux, and Paris. . . The book expands the recent historiography on the meanings of the term 'metis' beyond the perspectives of French colonial society. Furthermore, Jones makes the important contribution of arguing for the ways in which women and household politics continued to influence the public sphere even as the French bolstered African men and state institutions as the locus of political power and wealth.55.3 Nov.2014

(Journal of African History) [T]his well-documented and well-written book represents a compelling case study for understanding the nature of the colonial encounter between Africans and Europeans in French West Africa.

(International Journal of African Historical Studies) The metis (mixed-ancestry community of Saint-Louis has played an important role in Senegal's history. The most prominent descended from signares, successful female entrepreneurs and high-status 'companions' of European men. Historian Jones . . . rescues the metis from lingering voluptuary associations, exploring their 18th-century origins and how they created a distinct communty identity. . . . Recommended.

(Choice) Overall, Jones's book represents an important contribution to studies of the French colonial presence in Africa, exploring that presence through a new and productive perspective that offers nuanced and often surprising insights.

(Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies) [T]his is an immensely successful first book, and we can only hope that Jones will delve deeper into some of these topics in her future work.

(American Historical Review)