This paper was commissioned by the Program of African Studies (PAS) as a complement
to the new edition of Dahomean Narrative that was published by Northwestern University Press
as part of the celebration of the PAS’s fiftieth anniversary. The new forward to the volume
places Dahomean Narrative within the history...
This paper explores the relationship between the French state and francophone Africa since
decolonization, rather than narrating the history of French-African policies (Domergue-Cloarec 1994;
Wauthier 1995) or providing an introduction to the full range of cultural, social, and political relations
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(Manning 1988; Chipman 1989; Andereggen 1994). The focus is...