This paper forms part of a larger project designed to chart the manner in which state repertoires have been shaped in crucial ways by the societies in which they are embedded. The manner in which the nation and belonging have been configured is quite significantly different in the Senegambia and Ghana respectively, which has its roots in the mutual constitution of the colonial state and African societies over the course of the twentieth century. In the case of Ghana, the nation has historically been conceived of as a sum of many parts. The Gold Coast was built on the idea of the ‘native state’ which retained areas of sovereignty upon which the state was not expected to encroach. Southern Gold Coasters were not even directly taxed until the era of decolonization. Although Kwame Nkrumah attempted to establish the state as the centre-piece, this project ultimately failed. The result is that Ghanaians today have a very distinctive notion of what it means to be part of the nation. That is, without belonging to a specific locality one can never really be a part of the nation. This means that ethnicity does not contradict the premises of nationhood, but directly underpins it. It also means that citizens who have no such local roots, such as Lebanese who have naturalized, have difficulty in asserting their claims to belonging.
In the Senegambia, conceptions of the nation have been built on quite different foundations. Although the British ruled the Gambia with some of the same precepts as in the Gold Coast, the viability of the colony turned on having a highly mobile population. While chiefs were important, the locality was never invested with the same properties as in Ghana. The Gambia today retains a remarkably flexible approach towards who may be part of the nation. In Senegal, the French attempted to deny any claims to local autonomy and exported the vocabulary of republican imperialism that was later domesticated by the political elite at the time of independence. In official discourse, the nation is constituted by the state which is the sole legitimate arbiter of the distribution of common assets, notably land. Expressions of ethnicity are frowned upon. However, the uneven reach of the state historically meant that the Casamance was never fully subordinated to these state logics. The struggle in the Casamance today is a belated manifestation of the clash between the official discourse of nationalism and attempts to defend the primacy of local interests, typically using the language of ethnicity.