Only the Four Communes had French law, applied from 1889 onward

Evidence

The Four Communes were the only exception. There, since the promulgation of a law on April 15, r889, French criminal and commercial law was applied to all residents through an organized system of French courts, over which a professional magistrature presided. French civil law, in contrast, applied only to non-Muslims of the Four Communes (unless they preferred French law); the French had as early as r857 granted the Muslim elite of Saint-Louis their own courts for civil litigation, and these courts were still active when Roume arrivedY Technically, the law of April I 5, I 889, introducing French justice, applied to all of Senegal, because it did not distinguish between the Four Communes and the protectorate areas. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 302

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the special status of the Four Communes as the cradle of French republican empire in West Africa, central to the reader’s goal.