Amadou Cissé on the ‘dangers’ of millet: A microhistory of colonial power, colonized agency, and agricultural knowledge in the schools of colonial Senegal, 1911–14

In 1914, a Senegalese school director named Amadou Cissé wrote an article on ‘the dangers of monoculture’ for the colonial French teacher journal, the Bulletin de l’enseignement de l’Afrique occidentale française . In this article, he describes his attempt to convince a small community of Senegalese farmers to adopt more ‘modern’ farming practices, namely, the cultivation of peanuts in a Sahelian region historically dominated by millet farming. An educator seemingly turned farming expert, Cissé’s efforts to change the Sahelian agricultural landscape were met with considerable resistance from local residents. Yet within Cissé’s account of his frustrations emerges an unintentional description of the environmental knowledge systems of colonized populations as well as individual instructor agency in colonial schools. In short, Cissé’s article demonstrates the ways that colonial and colonized communities claimed to know the land around them. The present article shows how Amadou Cissé’s attempt to disrupt generations of millet farming mirrors the ways that the French colonial system sought, and often failed, to alter the West African landscape. By examining the conflicting narratives at work in Cissé’s article, this study gives insight into the complex intersections of agriculture, education, and epistemological resistance in colonial-era French West Africa.