US Edition LEOPOLD SENGHOR, who has died in Normandy aged 95, smoothly straddled the political divide between African and French cultures as President of Senegal for two decades; but he preferred to be known for his literary achievements, which earned him nomination for a Nobel Prize as well as election as the first black man to the Academie Française.
Senghor is credited both with creating the concept of négritude, the black consciousness movement of the French-speaking world, and ensuring the transition of his West African country from colony to respectful independence.
Since Senegal became a one-party state and his principal rival was locked up under his presidency, he was rightly accused of authoritarianism. Nevertheless, in 1981, Senghor became the first modern African head of state to hand over power voluntarily.
Léopold Sédar Senghor was born at Joal, Senegal, on October 9 1906, the youngest of about two dozen children of a prosperous peanut merchant belonging to a minority Christian tribe. Until he was seven young Leopold was looked after by his mother, a fourth and youngest wife.
But he was whipped by his father, who lived in another village, for wandering off with local shepherds, and was eventually sent away to a school run by French missionaries. Senghor proved so gifted that he began to train for the priesthood at a seminary at Dakar, the capital. However, the principal dismissed his African students as "savages", and considered Senghor unsuitable for the priesthood.
Senghor moved on to the French lycee at Dakar, from which he was the only African to graduate after winning a prize for every subject in his baccalaureate. He then won a scholarship to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris, where he developed a spoken and written French that was purer than that of most Frenchmen.
One of his contemporaries was the future prime minister Georges Pompidou, who converted him to socialism. Senghor progressed to the Sorbonne, where he read for a doctorate in French grammar, and also began to develop the concept of négritude. This then posited that, while white people excelled at rational thought, blacks possessed superior intuitive powers.
Senghor also helped to set up the Association of West African Students, which sought to promote his indigenous culture while assimilating the best of what France had to offer. On completing his doctorate, he took a number of teaching posts near Paris.
Senghor was conscripted into the French Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940. With some black comrades he narrowly escaped being executed by firing squad, and was imprisoned for two years before being released due to illness; he then resumed his teaching career while aiding, he said, the French Resistance.
He had been writing poetry since his days at the Sorbonne, and in 1945 published his first collection, Chants d'ombre (Shadow Songs), which reflected the conflict between French and African culture. This was followed three years later by an anthology of essays on négritude, introduced by Jean-Paul Sartre, and a second book of poems written while he was a PoW; they had been smuggled out of his camp to Pompidou.
In 1948, Senghor was appointed Professor of African Languages and Civilisation at the Ecole Nationale de la France d'Outre Mer, near Paris. Three more volumes of poetry followed, including Chants pour Naeett, containing erotic poems which were largely written in abstract free verse. These were eventually to lead him to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
When the war ended, Senghor embarked on his dual political career in France and Senegal. He was elected to the French National Assembly and to Senegal's General Council; he also established his own political party, Bloc Democratique Senegalais, which was later to evolve into the Parti du Regroupement Africain.
While a member of the French National Assembly and briefly serving as Secretary of State in Edgar Fauré's government, he advocated a political concept known as "Eurafrica". In one speech delivered at Strasbourg, he called for 20 representatives from the French colonial empire to be given seats in the lower house of a European government. The motion was lost.
His practical aim was to create a federation of France's African colonies of which he, naturally, would be president. At the same time, he demonstrated his French loyalties by criticising English-speaking Africans who preferred to attack the war in Algeria rather than look at what was going on in Kenya.
But this political pipedream was rendered impossible by the terms of the French Constitution of 1958, a document which he himself had helped to draft. A brief union between Senegal and French Sudan (now Mali) was established in 1959. The following year Senegal withdrew, installing Senghor as its first President.
The new nation soon experienced problems. The socialist prime minister Mamadou Dia disagreed with Senghor's determination to retain ties with France, and attempted a coup d'état. This resulted in his being jailed for life.
Senghor assumed full control as both President and prime minister, decreeing that the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise was the sole legitimate political party. For the next 18 years he was re-elected in every poll although there were several further attempted coups and an unsuccessful assassination.
He distanced himself further from his socialist past by withdrawing support for an international war crimes tribunal when it proposed to try President Lyndon Johnson for America's role in Vietnam; Earl Russell complained that the Americans had applied pressure on him.
Later, when the student riots spread across Europe, Senghor found himself trapped in a Frankfurt church, where he was receiving a prize, and denounced as a colonialist by the German student leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit (Danny the Red).
But when Senghor came to host the Third World Festival of Negro Arts at Dakar, it only reinforced criticism that he favoured cultural matters over socio-economic concerns, when Senegal was hit first by drought and then the failure of the peanut harvest.
As discontent grew, Senghor attempted to liberalise the political process, releasing Dia, encouraging press freedom and allowing opposition political parties. He finally resigned in 1981.
Throughout his time in office, Senghor still found time to write, producing both essays and poetry and translating T S Eliot into French. After retiring from political life, he lived in Normandy, being elected one of "the immortals" of the Academie Franaise in 1984. Six years later his Collected Poems was published in French and English.
Senghor married, first, Ginette Eboue; he married, secondly, Colette Hubert. By the two marriages there were three sons, two of whom predeceased him.