By Bennett Ross, Johns Hopkins University
Hi, everyone! My name is Bennett Ross and I’m from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m a junior at Johns Hopkins, where I’m majoring in International Studies. Some of my biggest interests/hobbies are listening to ‘90s hip-hop, making beats, watching good movies, exploring different cuisines, playing rugby (though injuries may mean I have to stop), and learning about African history.
This summer, I am conducting research on the Senegambia Confederation, a short-lived political union which existed between Senegal and its much smaller neighbor, The Gambia, in the 1980s. To date, there has been fairly little scholarship on the subject, with most authors attempting to explain the confederation’s 1989 collapse as a failure of formal economic integration between the two countries.
Instead of focusing on the failure of the venture, however, my project is concerned with the official narratives about the confederation which the Gambian and Senegalese regimes advanced through government/party newspapers. In particular, I am interested both in the ways in which the two governments’ conceptions of the union differed, and in how newspaper coverage breathed life into the confederation, even as little tangible progress towards integration occurred on the ground.
I first became aware of the Senegambia Confederation when I was reading about the newly formed Confédération des états du Sahel between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. It immediately struck me as a fascinating subject, and something I wanted to dig further into, especially because I found so little information in my initial searches.
This summer, I will be traveling to Senegal and The Gambia to conduct research at the Archives nationales du Sénégal and the National Records Service of The Gambia. At these archives I hope to examine official newspapers from the period of the confederation, including Le Soleil and The Gambia News Bulletin.
I am very excited to embark on this journey, which will be my first time conducting any archival research and my first time in The Gambia (second in Senegal). However, there are some things I’m pretty nervous about. This is my first time traveling internationally alone which is a little nerve wracking in and of itself, and it is also to two destinations which are not the easiest to navigate outside of tourist infrastructure. In Senegal, especially, I worry that the language barrier may make things difficult, but I also welcome the opportunity to practice my French. The archives themselves have been responsive for the most part, which has put me somewhat at ease, at least in terms of the research itself.
In order to make the most of my time in these two countries, I’m planning on spending my time outside of the archives exploring, hopefully mostly on foot, and doing as much as I can. Some of the things I hope to do are visiting the IFAN museum and Musée des civilisations noires in Dakar, and maybe making a stop at one of The Gambia’s world-renowned beaches. Additionally, in Dakar, I will be staying with a host family who I was connected with through one of my professors, which I think will be far better than some Airbnb.
Anyway, I’m nervous and excited, and ready to dive in!
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