Chapter 1: The Identity of the Sanancois
"We are very humiliated to be exhibited this way, in huts like savages; these straw and mud huts do not give an idea of Senegal. In Senegal ... we have large buildings, railroad stations, railroads; we light them with electricity. The Bureau of Hygiene does not tolerate the construction of this type of hovel. Those [existing ones] that fall into disrepair are not replaced. -Samba Lawbé, Senegalese Jeweller, on the 1889 Paris Exposition & it's exhibition of colonized peoples.
The Sanancois culture is one based equally in the historical traditions of the ancients, and the modernist identity of a renewed, recrystalised modern African state. Equal parts a society looking back towards it's heritage, be in the Malian Empire or Wolof kingdoms, and the cosmopolitan inter-ethnic identity of a modern, diverse, nouveau Sanankou. This common unity in diversity both of nationality and nationalism is best exemplified in the key principles of Sanancois culture; The Negritude Reineissance, and the ideals of Teraanga and Sanakuya - even being the namesake of the state, which so build and construct a truly Sanancois Sanankou.
First developed in the antiquity of ages, what would become the Sanancois identity never began with such an intention. The Ghanan, Malian and Jolof states bought grandeur and prestige to it's vast citizenry from Africa to Europe and even South America - providing the principle building block of the identity of Sanankou. European imperialist intervention in the native states, firstly from the Portuguese and later the everlasting French would bring such an identity curbed into the soil - yet never far from resurfacing. Without the turmoil of the 1840 movements surfacing this deep in the globe, and any identities of patriotism kept under an iron boot by the French administration, many would look not to ethnic division but to the unity of equal suffrage - from those under the same colonial roof, to those between whom the ancient roads of Mali still ran far and wide.
By the curse of the great war, a cultural colonial thaw had long since struck the French territories aboard, but with greatest of magnitude to the landed elites of the metropoles of Dakar and Hanoi. With particular privileges granted by the state including access to western education in Paris and further afield, these territories served as the hotbeds of countercultural formation in the Empire. In what would become Sanankou, this took the form of the romanticist yet modernist writings and theories of Léon Damas, Gilbert Gratiant, Aimé Césaire and importantly future Sanancois president and seminal founding father Léopold Sédar Senghor. A diverse cast hailing from as far afield as Martinique and Gabon, French-speaking theorists would come together to form the core centrals of self and identity for their respective and oppressed colonies, with Senghor being the primary force in Pan-Africanist and later pan-Malian thought. Although seeing nary but a mention past the 8 Communes of Senegal and Soudan, the idealism of cultural self-determination and a growing consciousness was keenly manifested in recruitment for the First and Second World Wars.
The influence of colonial forces in the Grand Conflicts is not to be understated, both for its' influence in the war effort and it's ever lasting cultural legacy. The The Senegalais Tirailleurs, in truth recruited from across the continent and afar afield as Gabon, quickly became a cultural staple of the burgeoning African identity in France. While a genuine fight for France was a keen belief across the Subsaharan possessions, just as important was the hope that with blood and sacrificial martyrdom could freedom for Africa be secured and their equal state be proved. The culmination of the first saw great credence to this theory, with many Tirailleur regiments being rewarded with great acclaim - although not much else past their prestige - yet by the second, the more bloodthirsty nature of French Imperialism largely waned any support such forces held in favour of independent movements. The Thiaroye Massacre would be the last straw of this over-strained beast of burden - with the murder of men who would've gave their lives for France by French officials permanently and officially severing relations between Paris and Dakar - at least for the time being. This modern movement, one of intellectualism and sacrifce, is the key formation alongside Malian traditionalism that Sanancois culture sees as it's basis.
With just short of 30 years to construct a culture in independence, one would not expect such modern influences to be as wide spread as they truly are in Sanancois. From the rampant diffusion of the beliefs and ideals of Senghor as president across all strata's of society to the rapid development programs of Keita that bought individuals together not only physical through transport but culturally through music and education, a unified Sanancois culture has seen great success in blossoming across the state, across even ethnic lines - an issue that would plague many a bordering state. The theories of Sanghor and the traditional beliefs of the cultures of Sanancois proved a blend most potent to genuine grassroot unity, a combination of traditionalism and cutting edge modernist thought - though not without extreme growing pains. Impartiality across ethnic and more importantly political lines suffered Sanankou the consequences of standardising the state on French as a national language; a policy directly opposed to the anti-colonial beliefs of Senghor, and the support of strict traditional structures in the rural regions of Sanankou - maintaining social inequality in an effort to maintain stability. In a darker age, one most possible in the future once the golden sun finally sets on Sanankou, it is unclear of such decisions will not bring the Federation into the firm grasp of violence and massacre. One can only hope against.
Négritude - Basically telling the French to F&ck off.
