Île de Gorée (French pronunciation: [ildəɡoʁe]; "Gorée Island"; Wolof: Beer Dun) is one of the 19 communes d'arrondissement (i.e., districts) of the city of Dakar, Senegal. It is an 18.2-hectare (45-acre) island located two kilometres (1.1 nmi; 1.2 mi) at sea from the main harbour of Dakar (14°40′N 17°24′W / 14.667°N 17.400°W), famous as a destination for people interested in the Atlantic slave trade.
Its population as of the 2013 census was 1,680 inhabitants, giving a density of 5,802 inhabitants per square kilometre (15,030/sq mi), 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.
Other important centres for the slave trade from Senegal were further north, at Saint-Louis, Senegal, or to the south in the Gambia, at the mouths of major rivers for trade. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was one of the first 12 locations in the world to be designated as such in 1978.
The name is a corruption of its original Dutch name Goeree, named after the Dutch island of Goeree. The island was also known as Palma, or Bezeguiche in Portuguese.
History and slave trade
Gorée is a small island 900 metres (3,000 ft) in length and 350 metres (1,150 ft) in width sheltered by the Cap-Vert Peninsula. Now part of the city of Dakar, it was a minor port and site of European settlement along the coast.
Being almost devoid of drinking water, the island was not settled before the arrival of Europeans, although the presence of domesticated sheep noted by Portuguese explorers indicates the island was frequented by local peoples of the nearby mainland. The island of Gorée was one of the first places in Africa to be frequented by European traders, as the Portuguese traders established themselves on the island in 1444. According to Valentim Fernandes, the Portuguese established a chapel with dry stone walls and a roof made out of straw on the island. This chapel was visited by Vasco da Gama in 1502 and probably also by Amerigo Vespucci, Tristão da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque in 1501 and 1506, respectively.
Dutch West India Company rule
Due to the destruction of much of the archive of the First Dutch West India Company, it is unknown when and how the Dutch replaced the Portuguese on the island. According to Olfert Dapper, the island was gifted to the Dutch West India Company by the local chief Biram in 1617. This statement is problematic, not the least because the Dutch West India Company was only established in 1621. The first contemporary Dutch account of a landing at Gorée is by Johannes de Laet, who reported that a fleet of Dirck Symonsz van Uytgeest destined for Brazil anchored at Gorée on 20 July 1628. De Laet mentions that the Dutch West India Company had built a fort on the island and had named the island Goeree. This could either be after the Dutch island of Goeree or, as is the case for the Dutch island itself, be an allusion to the quality of the anchorage at the island, as goede reede means "good roadstead" in Dutch.
Possession of Goree was the key to accessing the trade of the entire coast south of the Cap Vert, including the important trading posts at Rufisque, Saly-Portudal, Joal, and Cacheu, in addition to the commerce of the Gambia River, as it served as a warehousing and transshipment point. In addition, it was a convenient stopover on the shortest route from Europe to the Caribbean. Many slaves were shipped through Goree to the Dutch colony of Curaçao in the 1660s and 70s.
The island was attacked by the Portuguese in early 1629, but they were not able to hold it. With this loss, their access to the lucrative coastal trade was cut off, and the importance and wealth of Santiago, Cape Verde, withered. The British also attempted to control this trade, capturing the island with a fleet under Robert Holmes in 1663, but it was soon recaptured by Michiel de Ruyter. Repeated wars weakened the Dutch West India Company, however, and the Third Anglo-Dutch War precipitated the bankruptcy of the company in 1674. In 1677 a French fleet led by Jean d'Estrées defeated the Dutch and captured Goree and their coastal trading posts.
French colonial rule
After the French invasion in 1677, during the Franco-Dutch War, the island remained chiefly French until 1960. There were brief periods of British occupation during the various wars fought by France and Britain. The island was notably taken and occupied by the British between 1758 and 1763 following the Capture of Gorée and wider Capture of Senegal during the Seven Years' War before being returned to France at the Treaty of Paris (1763). For a brief time between 1779 and 1783, Gorée was again under British control, until ceded again to France in 1783 at the Treaty of Paris (1783). During that time, the infamous Joseph Wall served as Lieutenant-Governor there, who had some of his men unlawfully flogged to death in 1782; for these crimes, Wall was later executed in England.
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 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.
After the decline of the slave trade from Senegal in the 1770s and 1780s, the town became an important port for the shipment of peanuts, peanut oil, gum arabic, ivory, and other products of the "legitimate" trade. It was probably in relation to this trade that the so-called Maison des Esclaves was built.
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 the Gambia, and across the Atlantic to France's colonies in the Americas. Métis women, called signares from the Portuguese senhora descendants of African women and European traders, 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. One such signare, Anne Rossignol, lived in Saint-Domingue (the modern Haiti) in the 1780s before the Haitian Revolution.
In February 1794 during the French Revolution, France abolished slavery, and the slave trade from Senegal was said to have stopped. In April 1801, Gorée was captured by the British again.
In January 1804 a small French squadron from Curaçao captured Gorée, but the British recaptured it in March.
In March 1815, during his political comeback known as the Hundred Days, Napoleon definitively abolished the slave trade to build relations with Great Britain. This time, abolition continued.
As the trade in slaves declined in the late eighteenth century, Gorée converted to legitimate commerce. The tiny city and port were ill-situated for the shipment of industrial quantities of peanuts, which began arriving in bulk from the mainland. Consequently, its merchants established a presence directly on the mainland, first in Rufisque (1840) and then in Dakar (1857). Many of the established families started to leave the island.
Civic franchise for the citizens of Gorée was institutionalized in 1872, when it 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.
From 1913 to 1938, Gorée was home to the École normale supérieure William Ponty, a government teachers' college run by the French Colonial Government. Many of the school's graduates would one day lead the struggle for independence from France. In 1925 African-American historian, sociologist, and Pan-Africanist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote of the school "On the picturesque island of Goree whose ancient ramparts face modern and commercial Dakar I saw two or three hundred fine black boys of high school rank gathered in from all Senegal by competitive tests and taught thoroughly by excellent French teachers in accordance with a curriculum which, as far as it went, was equal to that of any European school," while faulting Colonial France for how limited its public education infrastructure was in the country overall and expressing pessimism about further investment.
Post-independence
Gorée is connected to the mainland by regular 30-minute ferry service, for pedestrians only; there are no cars on the island. Senegal's premier tourist site, the island was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. It now serves mostly as a memorial to the slave trade. Many of the historic commercial and residential buildings have been turned into restaurants and hotels to support the tourist traffic.
Gorée is known as the location of the House of Slaves (French: Maison des esclaves), built by an Afro-French Métis family about 1780–1784. The House of Slaves is one of the oldest houses on the island. It is now used as a tourist destination to show the horrors of the slave trade throughout the Atlantic world. As discussed by historian Ana Lucia Araujo, the building started gaining reputation as a slave depot mainly because of the work of its curator Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye, who was able to move the audiences who visited the house with his performance. Many public personalities visit the House of Slaves, which plays the role of a site of memory of slavery. In June 2013, President of the United States Barack Obama visited the building.
The Dakar-Gorée Swim was launched in 1985 as a homage to the victims of slavery who displayed resilience by attempting to swim towards freedom. It has been a recurring event throughout its history, except in 2020 and 2021 when it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Administration
With 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 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 the commune of Gorée was merged 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. 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 (officially, the Commune d'Arrondissement de l'île de Gorée) took possession of the old mairie (town hall) in the center of the island. This 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.
Archaeology of Gorée Island
The island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, since September 1978. Most of the main buildings in Gorée were constructed during the second half of the eighteenth century. The main buildings are the Slave house, 1786; William Ponty School, 1770; Musée de la mer (Maritime museum), 1835; Fort d'Estrées, originally called the northern battery, which now contains the Historical Museum of Senegal, built between 1852 and 1865; palais du Government (Government Palace), 1864, occupied by the first governor-general of Senegal from 1902 to 1907. The Gorée Castle and the seventeenth-century Gorée Police Station, formerly a dispensary, believed to be the site of the first chapel built by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, and the beach are also of interest to tourists.