ABSTRACT
Re-inscribing Blaise Diagne into the anticolonialism to which he contributed despite his frequent support of colonization and obligatory labor, this chapter examines the ways in which he contradicted his self-defeatist, elitist, and condescending views about indigenes by sometimes defending the rights of tirailleurs in unflinching ways. It shows how Diagne was a paradoxical black intellectual who was so obsessed with his cosmopolitan loyalties to France. He was willing to tolerate the suffering of members of his own race and birth-country for the benefit of an empire that was bitterly struggling to control its West African dominions. A major problem in African studies is the critics' neglect of Diagne's role in black anticolonialism even if this leader did not resist French imperialism in the same ways in which Du Bois, Garvey, Touvalou, Padmore, and the two Senghors did. Diagne's cosmopolitanism is also apparent in his view of merit and dignity as the main factors that define individual worth and character.
