g the colonial period was marked by forms of racial and
social segregation—often expressed in terms of health and hygiene—which
continue to structure the city today. Following a plague epidemic in 1914, the
authorities forced most of the African population out of old neighborhoods, or
"Plateau", and into a new quarter, called Médina, separated from it
by a "sanitary cordon". As first occupants of the land, the Lebou
inhabitants of the city successfully resisted this expropriation. They were
supported by Blaise Diagne, the first African to be elected Deputy to the
National Assembly. Nonetheless, the Plateau thereafter became an
administrative, commercial, and residential district increasingly reserved for
Europeans and served as model for similar exclusionary administrative enclaves
in French Africa's other colonial capitals (Bamako, Conakry, Abidjan,
Brazzaville). Meanwhile, the Layene Sufi order, established by Seydina
Mouhammadou Limamou Laye, was thriving among the Lebou in Yoff and in a new
village called Cambérène. Since independence, urbanization has sprawled
eastward past Pikine, a commuter suburb whose population (2001 est. 1,200,000)
is greater than that of Dakar proper, to Rufisque, creating a conurbation of
almost 3 million (over a quarter of the national population).
In its colonial heyday Dakar was one of the major cities of the French Empire,
comparable to Hanoi or Beirut. French trading firms established branch offices
there and industrial investments (mills, breweries, refineries, canneries) were
attracted by its port and rail facilities. It was also strategically important
to France, which maintained an important naval base and coaling station in its
harbor and which integrated it into its earliest air force and airmail
circuits, most notably with the legendary Mermoz airfield (no longer extant).
During the Battle of Dakar, which took place off the coast of Dakar on
September 23–25, 1940,
