Although French colonial rule was clearly not the first or only rupture with the past that the region of Nioro du Sahel has experienced, it was, in many ways, deeply transformative. Indeed, the French conquest of what was to become the Soudan français in the last decade of the nineteenth century ushered in a variety of profound social transformations in this region. While the full complexity of such transformations is beyond the scope of this study, I focus here on some of those transformations associated with the colonial project that helped to shape Nioro as a social, political and religious space. In doing so, I want to stress the importance of understanding colonialism not only as a political and economic project, but also as a social and cultural one (cf. Dirks 1992) that also must be understood in comparative perspective.

As I will show, some of the transformations outlined here are similar to those that occurred in other colonial contexts, including other Muslim societies and North Africa in particular. However, I will suggest that some of these changes have been specific to the colonial encounter in French West Africa and the colonial policies towards Islam and Muslims there. Early in the twentieth century, Nioro was the setting for the development of a new Islamic institutional form, the Hamawiyya, a branch of the Tijaniyya that flourished under colonial rule. Although the history of the Hamawiyya will be discussed in detail in the next chapter, here I consider some of the general changes, some subtle and others not so subtle, associated with the colonial conquest, colonial rule, and political economy that have left their mark on Nioro. I highlight some of the intended and unintended consequences of colonial rule and policies, the perceptions and misperceptions on the part of the coloniser and colonised, and the reactions of both groups to each other in what was, and is, a socially and ethnically heterogeneous town. Such a discussion points to some of the ambiguities and contingencies of colonial rule, and sets the backdrop for the rise of the Hamawiyya and the later expansion of the public sphere (see Chapter 8).