Senegal Islands - Gorée Island

Île de Gorée Island is one of the 19 communes d'arrondissement (i.e. "commune of arrondissement") of the city of Dakar, Senegal. It is a 0.182 km (45 acres) island located a mere 1 km. at sea from the main harbor of Dakar.
Its population as of 31 January 2005 official estimates is 1,056 inhabitants, giving a density of 5,802 inh. per km² (15,028 inh. per sq. mile), which is only half the average density of the city of Dakar. Gorée is both the smallest and the least populated of the 19 communes d'arrondissement of Dakar.
Gorée is famous as a former center of the Atlantic slave trade from where many Africans were deported to the Americas.
History and slave tradeGorée is a small island 900 m in length and 350 m in width sheltered by the Cape Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it served for many centuries as one of the principal factories in the triangular trade between Africa, Europe and the Americas. Being almost devoid of drinking water, the island was not settled prior to the arrival of Europeans. The Portuguese were the first to establish a presence on Gorée (c. 1450), building a small stone chapel there and using it as a cemetery.
Gorée is best known as the location of the House of Slaves (French: Maison des esclaves), built by an Afro-French Métis family c. 1780 - 1784, one of the houses of slaves that were used as a holding and transfer point for human cargo during the slave trade. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now a popular tourist destination. Well known in the western world, Gorée was actually just one of the many places from where slave trade was conducted, and in fact it was much smaller than the island of Zanzibar on the East African coast which was the largest center of the slave trade carried out by the Arabs. Zanzibar is arguably the largest slave trading center ever to have existed.
The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be settled by Europeans, the Portuguese setting foot on the island in 1444. Later it was captured by the United Netherlands in 1588, then the Portuguese again, again the Dutch — who named it after the Dutch island of Goeree — the British under Robert Holmes in 1664 and then eventually the French in 1677. The island remained continuously French until 1960 when Senegal was granted independence, with only brief periods of English occupation during the various wars fought by France and England between 1677 and 1815.
Gorée was principally a trading post, administratively attached to Saint Louis, capital of the Colony of Senegal. Apart from slaves, beeswax, hides and grain were also traded. The population of the island (not counting slaves in transit) fluctuated according to circumstances, from a few hundred free Africans and Creoles to about 1,500. There would have been few European residents at any one time. In the 18th and 19th century Gorée was home to a Franco-African Creole, or Métis, community of merchants with links to similar communities in Saint Louis and south to the Gambia and beyond. Métis women, called "signares" from the Portuguese "senhora", were especially important to the city’s business life. The signares owned ships and property and commanded male clerks. They were also famous for cultivating fashion and entertainment.
The first house of slaves was built by the Portuguese in 1536. After the French conquest in 1677, the slave trade from Gorée was essentially in the hands of the rich merchant families of Bordeaux and Nantes in France, alongside other Europeans such as the Dutch. The tremendous prosperity of Nantes in the 18th century was based in a large measure on slave trade. The Black slaves from Gorée were destined essentially to the French colonies in the Caribbean (prominently Haiti) and in Louisiana, as well as to the Spanish colonies (Cuba essentially) and to the Portuguese colonies in Brazil (some of which had been originally settled by the Dutch). It should be noted that contrary to legend, very few African Americans from the U.S. have ancestors who went through Gorée, as the English colonists had other sources of "import" for their slaves. Those who can with most certainty consider Gorée as a transit point for their ancestors are the African Americans whose family are from the south of Louisiana, some of which actually still speak some sort of French (see Louisiana Creole people). As African Americans have migrated a lot throughout the US in the last 100 years, it can be difficult to know with certainty which Black family was originally from French Louisiana. A good rule of thumb is religion: any Black American from the USA whose family is Catholic (traditionally, not recently converted) is very likely descending from Black slaves imported by the French colonists through Gorée.
Schley, Jacobus van der, 1715-1779. Island of Gorée and its fortificationsIn February 1794, during the French Revolution, France was the first country in the world to abolish slavery (with the exception of a few precedents set by some US states such as Massachusetts), and so the slave trade from Gorée stopped. However, in May 1802 Napoleon reestablished slavery after intense lobbying from the sugar plantations' owners of the Caribbean départements of France, who found precious support in the very wife of Napoleon, Joséphine de Beauharnais, daughter of a rich plantation owner from Martinique. In March 1815, during his political comeback known as the Hundred Days, Napoleon definitely abolished slave trade in order to ingratiate himself with Britain (Scotland had never recognized slavery and England finally abolished slavery in 1807) and this time the abolition was not reversed. Thus, Gorée officially stopped to be a slave trading point in 1815. In reality, however, the abolition of slave trade was not effectively enforced by the French government, and a clandestine slave trade remained active until 1848, when the newly founded Second Republic finally abolished slavery for good in all the territories under French sovereignty.
As the trade in slaves declined, Gorée converted to legitimate commerce. The tiny city and port were however ill situated for the shipment of industrial quantities of peanuts which began arriving in bulk from the continent. Consequently, its merchants established a presence directly on the mainland, first in Rufisque (1840) and then in Dakar (1857) and many of the established families started to leave the island.
Civic franchise for the citizens of Gorée was institutionalized in 1872, when it (along with its dependency of Dakar until the latter was detached in 1887) became a French “commune” with an elected mayor and a municipal council. Blaise Diagne, the first African deputy elected to the French National Assembly (served 1914 to 1934) was born on Gorée. From a peak of about 4,500 in 1845, the population fell to 1,500 in 1904. In 1940 Gorée was annexed to the municipality of Dakar.
Gorée is connected to the mainland by regular 30-minute ferry service-pedestrians only; there are no cars on the island. It is Senegal’s premier tourist site and became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It and now serves mostly as a memorial to the slave trade. The built-up urban core of the island is entirely geared to tourism and many of the historic commercial and residential buildings have been turned into restaurants and hotels.
Administration
Map of GoréeWith the foundation of Dakar in 1857, Gorée gradually lost its importance. In 1872, the French colonial authorities created the two communes of Saint-Louis and Gorée, the first western-style municipalities in West Africa, with exactly the same status as any commune in France. Dakar, on the mainland, was part of the commune of Gorée, whose administration was located on the island. However, as early as 1887, Dakar was detached from the commune of Gorée and was turned into a commune in its own right. Thus, the commune of Gorée became limited to its tiny island.
In 1891, Gorée still had 2,100 inhabitants, while Dakar only had 8,737 inhabitants. However, by 1926 the population of Gorée had declined to only 700 inhabitants, while the population of Dakar had increased to 33,679 inhabitants. Thus, in 1929 it was decided to merge Gorée with Dakar. The commune of Gorée disappeared, and Gorée was now only a small island of the commune of Dakar.
In 1996, a massive reform of the administrative and political divisions of Senegal was voted by the Parliament of Senegal. The commune of Dakar, deemed too large and too populated to be properly managed by a central municipality, was divided into 19 communes d'arrondissement to which extensive powers were given. The commune of Dakar was maintained above these 19 communes d'arrondissement, and it coordinates the activities of the communes d'arrondissement, much as Greater London coordinates the activities of the London boroughs.
Thus, in 1996 the commune of Gorée was resurrected, although it is now only a commune d'arrondissement (but in fact with powers quite similar to a commune). The new commune d'arrondissement of Gorée, which is officially known in French as the Commune d'Arrondissement de l'île de Gorée, retook possession of the old mairie (town hall) in the center of the island, which had been used as the mairie of the former commune of Gorée between 1872 and 1929.
The commune d'arrondissement of Gorée is ruled by a municipal council (conseil municipal) democratically elected every 5 years, and by a mayor elected by members of the municipal council.
The current mayor of Gorée is Augustin Senghor, elected in 2002.
Island historical sitesOther attractions on the island include three museums, one dedicated to women, one to the history of Senegal and one to the sea; the seventeenth century Gorée Police Station, Gorée Castle and a small beach.
The island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Archaeological research on the historical occupation of Gorée has been recently undertaken by Dr Ibrahima Thiaw (Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Institut Fondamental d’Afrique Noire (IFAN), and the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, Senegal), Dr Susan Keech McIntosh (Professor of Archaeology, Rice University, Houston, Texas), and Raina Croff (PhD candidate at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut). Dr Shawn Murray (University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SWCA Environmental Consultants, Inc) also contributed to the archaeological research at Gorée through a modern study of the local and introduced trees and shrubs of the island, which aids in identifying the ancient plant remains found in the excavations.
Wikipedia - Gorée Island