During the period of French rule, there were almost no official controls on settlement by French nationals into the colonies. The European community of Dakar was ruled by the French, but also including Whites from outside France. French men in the colonial administration looked down on the rest of the European population. Aside from the administrators, the French population in Senegal during the period between the world wars contained rich merchant families from Bordeaux as well as smaller traders and their employees, as well as a large transient population of missionaries and travellers. The French required no identity cards or passports to travel in Senegal, making it easy to assume false identities and creating significant difficulties in policing them. Administrators expressed frustration with the influx of criminals and other "undesirables" from metropolitan France, which ran counter to what they saw as the French "civilising mission" to present "morally upright" role models for Africans to emulate. During the Independence of Senegal, there were estimated to be 40,000 French people in the country, three-quarters in Dakar alone in 1960. Though Dakar in particular featured a far higher proportion of non-indigenous population than many surrounding African countries in which racial conflict had become apparent, inter-ethnic relations there were characterised by an "apparent absence of any colour problem". It had been expected that most French citizens would soon return to France after independence, but a decade later, there were still 29,000 living in the country, involved with French aid and capital investment; their presence reflected the continued dependence of France's African colonies on the métropole. Some Senegalese people of French descent had illnesses of meningoencephalitis, staphylococcal infection of the skin, and the like, worsened by their failure or inability to seek medical attention. There are still some of the French who remained in Senegal.
