African Indigo in the French Atlantic: Michel Adanson’s Encounter with Senegal

Michel Adanson's five-year study of African indigo in precolonial Senegal, conducted near the French fort of Saint-Louis, revealed complex transatlantic exchanges of knowledge and material. His experiments, blending European botany with local Wolof expertise, demonstrated how indigo cultivation and dyeing practices connected West Africa to Caribbean colonies like Saint-Domingue and Guyana. Through herbarium sheets, experimental notes, color samples, and correspondence, Adanson's work exposed the interplay between African indigenous knowledge, French imperial ambitions, and colonial plantation economies. The study highlights the material remnants of these encounters—dyed fabrics, maps, and taxonomies—as critical artifacts in understanding global histories of knowledge production.

Terrall, M. (2023). African Indigo in the French Atlantic: Michel Adanson’s Encounter with Senegal. Isis, 114(1), 2–24. https://doi.org/10.1086/723496