On the map of the world, due to various historical reasons, a number of countries within a country surrounded by three or even four sides have been formed. There is the church state Vatican, the mountain city country San Marino, but there is only one country made up of one river, and that is the Gambia at the western tip of the African continent.
Geographical location of Senegal and the Gambia
On the map, the Gambia is surrounded on three sides by Senegal, and the two countries resemble a sandwich cake. As the smallest country on the African continent with an area of only about 10,000 square kilometers, the Gambia has one of the best waterways in Africa, the main part of the Gambia River, and its territory is completely distributed along the river: the widest point is no more than 48 kilometers, while the length is more than 300 kilometers inland along the banks of the Gambia River, and the shape of the country is like an earthworm, almost cutting off Senegal.
The Gambian River is about 1120 km long, of which 472 km is in the territory of the Gambia
In addition to their geographical proximity, Senegal and the Gambia are also very similar in terms of ethnicity and religion, and in these respects it seems that the two countries should exist as a whole, and this is also the case historically, when the two countries were for a long time part of the same black empire. However, british and French colonial rule shattered the land, and the Senegambian Confederation established by the two independent countries in the 1980s was short-lived.
Why, then, did Britain and France form staggered spheres of influence in colonial rivalry, and how did the Gambia form a nation on the banks of the narrow Gambia River?
The British colony of Gambia was embedded in French West Africa (blue), including Senegal
The splendor and collapse of the Negro Empire
The northern part of the African continent, sub-Saharan, covered with vast savannahs, was historically home to black people. Two large rivers – the Senegal River to the north and the Gambia River to the south – flow west of the steppe and meander westward into the Atlantic Ocean. The rivers nourish the fertile alluvial plains, hence the names senegal and the Gambia. Some of the blacks who originated inland settled here during their migration and became the masters of this fertile land.
▲ Topographic map of Africa (partial), the Senegal and Gambia rivers are located in West Africa and flow into the Atlantic Ocean
Migration meant the beginning of evolution, with black people living along the Senegal and Gambia rivers forming large and small groups of people linked by blood. However, compared with the inland areas inhabited by blacks, this land was on the periphery, and its communication with other civilizations was blocked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Sahara Desert, and its development was very limited, so it did not form a unified state.
From the seventh century AD, the Arab Empire rose in the Middle East, occupying North Africa and developing a keen interest in gold, ivory, and black slavery in sub-Saharan Africa. In the ninth century AD, Arab merchants opened up trade routes in the vast sand sea and developed a prosperous trans-Saharan trade. Mali, Senegal's eastern neighbor today, was the region with the highest concentration of trade routes at that time, and the local tribes flourished as a result of trade and converted to Islam. By the thirteenth century, they had established their own empire, the Mali Empire.
Trans-Saharan trade routes from the 11th to the 16th centuries AD
The rise of the Mali Empire was accompanied by expansion, with the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers entering its sphere of influence and the spread of Islam to the tribes here. However, the Mali Empire often erupted in civil wars over succession, and by the end of the fourteenth century, the mighty empire was in decline, and a tribe that had been conquered by it took its place, establishing the last black empire in West African history, the Songhai Empire.
▲ The Songhai Empire at its peak in the early sixteenth century AD
In the era of the Songhai Empire, the international landscape changed drastically, Europe ended the dark Middle Ages, Portuguese and Spanish navigators sailed away to become the pioneers of the first generation of colonial empires, and in North Africa after the collapse of the Arab Empire, Morocco had already flourished. For the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers, it was once the backcountry of the Songhai Empire, but now the veil of closure is about to be lifted by invaders.
In 1455 AD, the Portuguese landed at the mouth of the Gambia River, and since ships could go deep along the river inland, they chose to set up trading posts here to engage in the slave trade. However, along the Gambia River, far from the core of the Songhai Empire, the Portuguese's activities did not hurt the basis of its rule, and the fatal blow to the empire came from the sahara desert - Morocco.
Morocco's invasion of the Songhai Empire was no accident, and its rulers had long coveted the wealth that trans-Saharan trade brought to the Songhai Empire. In 1591, as the Songhai Empire descended into civil strife over the throne, Morocco sent an army across the Sahara Desert to destroy the former hegemon of West Africa.
In 1591, the Moroccan Expeditionary Force destroyed the Songhai Empire
However, although moroccan expeditions achieved the goal of plundering wealth, domestic turmoil soon led to the occupation of only a few important cities, and the vast territory of the former Songhai Empire, including along the Senegal and Gambia rivers, fell into a power vacuum. Scattered tribes struggled to effectively defend themselves against foreign enemies, thus opening the door to further invasion by European colonists.
▲ After the collapse of the Songhai Empire, the tribes within the territory of the original Empire became a scattered sand
Ii. The division of British and French power
In Europe at the end of the sixteenth century AD, the embryonic emergence of capitalism stimulated people's pursuit of wealth, and the black slave trade was an important way for them to complete the primitive accumulation of capital. At that time, the early colonial empire of Portugal was in decline, the emerging Britain, the Netherlands and France were already in full swing, and the banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers after the collapse of the Songhai Empire had become important targets for them.
The banks of the Senegal and Gambia rivers (at the red box) played an important role in the era of the slave trade
Due to the fragmentation of indigenous groups along the Senegal and Gambia rivers, European colonists could easily hunt large numbers of black slaves, and the geographical characteristics of the place minimized the cost of their trade: it was located at the westernmost tip of the African continent, and ships could sail along the shortest route to the destination, the American continent. Thus, in the era of the bloody slave trade, the Senegal and Gambia rivers were the largest centers of the black slave trade in Africa and were fiercely contested by colonizers of different countries.
In 1588, the British bought trade rights along the Gambia River from the Portuguese, while the Dutch chose to start from the Cape Verde Peninsula between the Senegal and Gambia rivers and establish their own colonial strongholds along its coast. Later, the French landed at the mouth of the Senegal River in the north, and then built castles and fortresses in 1659 as bridgeheads for their colonial expansion.
▲ The Cape Verde Peninsula is deep into the Atlantic Ocean and is a natural haven
While the land along the Senegal and Gambia rivers was limited, the ambitions of the colonists were unlimited, and wars over spheres of influence were inevitable. In 1677, the French marched south from the mouth of the Senegal River and drove the Dutch forces out of the Cape Verde Peninsula. However, the hungry French were not satisfied with this, and they set their sights on the Gambia River further south. Thus began a tug-of-war between France and England.
▲ Senegal estuary, the earliest French colonial stronghold in Africa
The conflict over the Gambia soon spread to the vicinity of the Senegal River, and in 1765, the upper hand of the British seized almost all of their French colonial strongholds. However, France soon got the chance to turn the tables. In 1775, the American Revolutionary War broke out, Britain was busy dealing with the war in the New World, and France took the opportunity to make a comeback, not only recapturing the lost strongholds, but also compressing british power in a narrow area on both sides of the Gambia River, which also laid the rudiments of the future division of power between the two countries.
From 1775 to 1783, during the American Revolutionary War, France gave great support to the United States
In 1783, with the end of the war in North America, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Versailles, Britain recognized French rule near the Senegal River, and France also recognized the British occupation of the Gambia River, and the two places were ruthlessly separated from each other legally. Soon, with the development of large-scale machine industry, Britain and France abolished the black slave trade, and a new round of colonial expansion aimed at resources and commodity markets gradually began.
In this expansion from the coast to the interior, the French took advantage of their proximity to North Africa, starting from Senegal and Algeria in North Africa, respectively, and by the end of the nineteenth century, they had pocketed the western half of the african continent, almost north of the equator. Britain, far from Africa, could only rely on its superiority in sea power to seize strategic locations and important raw material production areas in a targeted manner, including Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria, and of course, the wedge-Gambia embedded in the French colony.
It is not difficult to imagine that the Gambia has become a thorn in the side of the French, who want to exchange other colonies with the British to make it a complete connection with Senegal, but the British do not want the French to touch this strategic place. After the quarrel, France had to sign an agreement with Britain in 1889 to formally confirm the border between Senegal and the Gambia on the basis of the 1783 peace treaty, which is the basis for the demarcation of the senegalese and Gambia borders today.
In the frenzy of imperialist partition of Africa, France became the big winner
Third, different suzerainty, differentiated development
The Gambia, which covers an area of only about 10,000 square kilometers, lacks both mineral resources and a population that does not have enough people to serve as a market for goods, has lost its economic significance to Britain since the abolition of the slave trade. But geographically, the Gambia had no land borders with the british colonies in Africa, and to maintain this strategic location, Britain had to take steps to consolidate its rule.
In view of the characteristics of the distribution of the Territory along the River in the Gambia, the British adopted a divide-and-rule approach, although they established a central government in the Gambia, but only the Gambian estuary where the British were concentrated, while the vast inland areas still retained the traditional tribal structure, and the British sent only a few representatives to supervise the implementation of government policies and laws, so it was called a protectorate. Although the colonists had less interference in the protectorate, it did not mean that the rule here was loosened, and it was tied to the British by a crop - peanuts.
▲ The Gambia under British rule has a very backward social outlook
As early as the mid-nineteenth century, the British found the soil of the Gambia suitable for growing peanuts, and gradually turned it into their own peanut plantation. In order to maximize peanut production, the British restricted the cultivation of grain in the Gambia, resulting in this region with sufficient hydrothermal conditions even relying on imports of food to meet basic needs, and its economic lifeline was firmly controlled by the British.
The fragile monocultural economy brought the Gambia, in addition to the famine of the dry season, a weak infrastructure: Britain wanted to sustain government spending with the colony's own taxes, rather than planning to subsidize it separately. Thus, during the colonial era, the Revenue of the Gambia was stretched thin to build cities at the mouth of the Gambia River, and the vast protected areas received little development.
Contrary to British rule in the Gambia, France built Senegal as a homeland. In fact, this is inseparable from Senegal's position in France, which is both a transportation hub for France's trade in resources and goods in West Africa and a forward base for its colonial expansion inland.
By the time of World War II, the Gambia was still economically backward, relying almost entirely on the Gambia River for inland transportation, while Senegal already had railways, banks and higher education. The huge development differences have caused the two places with the same roots to be artificially separated not only geographically, but also created a gap in economy and culture. It can be said that even if they move from colonies to independence, it is difficult for them to go back to the past.
▲ Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is known as the "Little Paris of West Africa" because of its prosperity
Fourth, a family before the colonization, a good neighbor after independence
In the power struggle between Britain and France, the Gambia and Senegal rivers were divided into two suzerainties, and this separation was also brought to the independence of the two countries in the future. In 1960, Senegal was the first to gain independence, and the leaders who grew up under french colonial education maintained close ties with France and began a peaceful development process, becoming one of the few countries in Africa that did not undergo a coup d'état, but the Gambia was very different.
▲ Senegal's first president, Senghor, had close relations with France during his term of office
Due to economic and educational backwardness, the national independence forces of the Gambia are particularly weak, and its independence is more dependent on the international trend of decolonization. For the British, it was pointless to continue to maintain colonial rule in the Gambia, so in 1951 the coastal cities of the Gambia began to appear as political parties and participate in the administration of the government, but this was still not enough for independence. In 1959, the advent of the Protectorate political parties and the spread of political participation brought the Gambia's independence into the fast lanes.
In 1965, Britain agreed to the gambia's independence, but still held foreign, defense and fiscal powers, and it was not until five years later that it became a truly independent country. However, the joy of independence did not last long, the economy was backward, the government was corrupt, and a crisis was quietly brewing.
In 1981, while the President was abroad to attend the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana in the United Kingdom, the Gambia opposition staged a coup d'état and soon occupied some government offices. Unable to suppress the coup, the President of the Gambia had to turn to Senegal, and to his delight, the President of Senegal, fearing that the chaos in the Gambia would affect the stability of his country, sent troops to help the Gambia quell the coup.
▲ Gambian President Jawara (first from right) in 1981 was rumored to be an international joke when he came to power
Senegal's helping hand brought the two countries of the same roots together quickly, and in 1982, Senegal and the Gambia formed the Senegambian Confederation and sought to achieve eventual reunification. However, the differences between the two countries that have been separated by the colonizers for hundreds of years are obvious, the official language of the Gambia is English, and Senegal is French, and the degree of economic development between the two countries is very different. In addition, with the President of the Confederation being the President of Senegal and the Key Branches of government such as Foreign Affairs, Defence and Transport also held by the Senegalese side, the Gambia feared that its own interests would be undermined, making it difficult for the two countries to reach a consensus on a unified course.
▲ In 2018, the main data of Senegal and the Gambia were compared, which shows that the gap between the development level of the two countries is obvious
Just seven years later, the Confederacy of Senegal moved toward disintegration, and the situation of separation has remained the same. However, the historical blood connection has allowed the two countries to maintain good diplomatic relations, in order to facilitate north-south transportation, Senegalese vehicles are allowed to cross the territory of the Gambia, and the history of the slave trade has also made the two countries a place for black Americans to find their roots and become a continuous tourist route. Looking at the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Gambia River today, visitors may recall the tragic experiences of their ancestors and may recall that the country born of the river was frozen in this history.
▲ The mouth of the Gambia River, the place where black Americans find their roots
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Longtime author | Pippi Man
The University of Science and Technology of China is a doctor of engineering | a lover of history
Responsible editor| Thomas
Graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science| Editor-in-Chief of the Global Intelligence Officer