History

• Early history

  There are signs that among the first people to settle in The Gambia were the Jola. The banks of The River Gambia have been inhabited continuously for many thousands of years. There are indeed pottery fragments that have been found and have been dated to about 5,500 years old. There is some historical evidence that some of the ancient peoples of Europe were in continuous contact with the West Africa region. The first known written record about The Gambia is a notation in the writings of Hanno, the Carthaginian, of his voyage down the west coast of Africa in about BC 470. These links came to an end with the decline of the Roman Empire and the rise and the subsequent expansion of Islam from North Africa.

  As far back as AD 500, towns and villages based on agriculture and the knowledge of iron were scattered across West Africa. As we move into the first millennium, trade and commercial activities increased substantially between the areas north and south of the Sahara. It is assumed that between the 5th and 8th centuries most of the Senegambian area was populated by the tribe of the Serahule, and their descendants represent about 9% of today’s Gambian population.

  The first written records of the region come from Arab traders in the 9th and 10th centuries. Arab traders provided the first written accounts of the Gambia area in the ninth and tenth centuries. During the tenth century, Muslim merchants and scholars established communities in several West African commercial centers. Both groups established trans-Saharan trade routes, leading to a large export trade of local people as slaves, also gold and ivory, as well as imports of manufactured goods. By the 11th or 12th century, the rulers of kingdoms such as Takrur, a monarchy centered on the Senegal River just to the north, ancient Ghana and Gao had converted to Islam and had appointed to their courts Muslims who were literate in the Arabic language. At the beginning of the 14th century, most of what is today called The Gambia was part of the Mali Empire. The Portuguese reached this area by sea in the mid-15th century and began to dominate overseas trade.

  In medieval times, the region was dominated by the Trans-Saharan trade and was ruled by the Mali Empire. In the 16th century, the region came to be ruled by the Songhai Empire. The first Europeans to visit the Gambia River were the Portuguese in the 15th century, who attempted to settle on the river banks, but no settlement of significant size was established. Descendants of the Portuguese settlers remained until the 18th century. In the late 16th century, English merchants attempted to begin a trade with the Gambia, reporting that it was “a river of secret trade and riches concealed by the Portuguese.”

• European Contacts

  The first Europeans to reach the river were the Portuguese in 1455. Captains Luiz de Cadamosto and Antoniotti Usodimare traveled a few kilometers upstream before being repulsed by the angry local inhabitants. In 1456 the same group returned and this time managed to travel 20 miles up-river and came across what was later re-named James Island. It is said they had named the island St. Andrews Island after a sailor who had passed away and was buried there. The name was later changed by European colonialists. Trade possibilities in the next two centuries drew English, French, Dutch, Swedish, and Courlander trading companies to western Africa. In 1588, the claimant to the Portuguese throne, António, Prior of Crato, sold exclusive trade rights on the Gambia River to English merchants. Letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I confirmed the grant.

  By the 1600s the large agricultural and commercial estates owned by Portuguese, in Brazil, needed more labor, which the Portuguese began to transport from West Africa. Although slavery had existed in Africa for many centuries, the Portuguese developed the trade on a large scale and had a virtual monopoly on it until the mid-16th century, when Britain joined the trade. The success of Portuguese exploration encouraged other Europeans to enter The Gambia River and trade with the local inhabitants. James Island which was to become the main settlement of the Europeans frequently changed ownership. Thus from the Portuguese, its ownership switched to the Duke of Courland, the Dutch and finally the British. By the 1650s, Portugal had been largely ousted by the French and British. In 1618, King James I of England granted a charter to an English company for trade with the Gambia and the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Between 1651 and 1661, some parts of the Gambia were under the rule of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and were bought by Prince Jacob Kettler.

  The Courlanders remained dominant until 1659 when their possessions were handed over to the Dutch West India Company. In 1660, the Courlanders resumed possession, but the next year was expelled by the newly formed Royal Adventurers in Africa Company. In 1667, the rights of the Royal Adventurers to the Gambia were sublet to the Gambia Adventurers but later reverted to the new Royal African Company. 1677 saw the beginning of a century-and-a-half-long struggle between the English and French for supremacy over the Gambia and Senegal. The English possessions were captured several times by the French, but in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the British rights to the region were recognized by the French. In the mid-18th century, the Royal African Company began having serious financial problems and in 1750, Parliament divested the company of its rights in the region. In 1766, the Crown gained possession of the territory, and it formed part of the Senegambia colony. In 1783, Senegambia ceased existing as a British colony.

• The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade

  During the late 17th century and throughout the 18th century, the British Empire and the French Empire struggled continually for political and commercial supremacy in the regions of the Senegal River and the Gambia River. The British Empire occupied the Gambia when an expedition led by Augustus Keppel landed there following the Capture of Senegal in 1758. The 1783 First Treaty of Versailles gave Great Britain possession of the Gambia River, but the French retained a tiny enclave at Albreda on the river’s north bank. With the British abolition of the Slave Trade in their settlements in 1807, they tried to look for a suitable location in The Gambia from where they would be able to monitor the river and stop ships from entering and leaving with slaves.

  Alexander Grant, sent out from Goree for this purpose, found the fort at James Island to be too far inland and in ruins. He, therefore, entered into a treaty with the Chief of Kombo in April 1816 for the cessation of the detached sandbank known as St. Mary’s Island. Originally called Banjul by the Portuguese, Grant named the new settlement, Bathurst after the Colonial Secretary of the time Lord Bathurst. This was finally ceded to the United Kingdom in 1856. As many as three million people may have been taken as slaves from this general region during the three centuries that the transatlantic slave trade operated. It is not known how many people were taken as slaves by intertribal wars or Muslim traders before the transatlantic slave trade began.

  Traders initially sent people to Europe to work as servants until the market for labor expanded in the West Indies and North America in the 18th century. In 1807, the United Kingdom abolished the slave trade throughout its empire. It also tried, unsuccessfully, to end the slave trade in the Gambia. Slave ships intercepted by the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron in the Atlantic were also returned to the Gambia, with people who had been slaves released on MacCarthy Island far up the Gambia River where they were expected to establish new lives. The British established the military post of Bathurst (now Banjul) in 1816.

  The only Europeans were traders who existed in a few settlements on the river banks, such as Pisania. Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander Grant was sent to re-establish a presence in the Gambia. He established Bathurst and the British possessions continued to grow in size through a series of treaties. It was administered from Sierra Leone until 1843 when it was given its own Governor, but in 1866 merged again with Sierra Leone. British domination of the riverine areas seemed assured after 1857, but the increasing importance of peanut cultivation in Senegal prompted a new imperialism.

• Colonial British

  By 1880 France controlled Senegal; in the 1870s the British attempted twice to trade the Gambia to France, but opposition at home and in the Gambia foiled these plans. Complicating matters was the series of religious conflicts, called the Soninke-Marabout Wars, lasting a half century. Only one Muslim leader, Maba, emerged who could have unified the various kingdoms, but he was killed in 1864. By 1880 the religious aspect had all but disappeared, and the conflicts were carried on by war chiefs such as Musa Mollah, Fodi Silla, and Fodi Kabba.

  In 1886, Gambia became a crown colony, and the following year France and Britain drew the boundaries between Senegal (by then a French colony) and the Gambia. The session of the Gambia to France was proposed in the late 19th century but was met with considerable protest in both the Gambia and in England. In 1888, the colony regained its own government structure, and in 1894 the Gambia Colony and Protectorate were properly established along the lines it would continue to hold until independence. With the slave trade at an end, the British were forced to come up with a new source of wealth to support the fledgling protectorate, which led to the planting of groundnuts. The harvested nuts are crushed to make oil, which is exported to Europe for use in food manufacture.

  In 1900 Britain imposed the indirect rule on the interior, or protectorate (established in 1894), dividing it into 35 chiefdoms, each with its own chief. The real power was concentrated in the British governor and his staff at Bathurst. The Gambia received its own executive and legislative councils in 1901, and it gradually progressed toward self-government. Slavery was abolished in 1906, and following a brief conflict between the British colonial forces and indigenous Gambians, British colonial authority was firmly established. Gambian soldiers fought in World War I, and in the 1920s Edward Francis Small led the push for emancipation, founding the Bathurst Trade Union and the Rate Payers’ Association. During World War II, the Gambia Company was raised to a regiment, and notably fought in the Burma Campaign in the latter years of the war. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s visit to the Gambia in 1943 was the first visit by a sitting US President to the African continent.

• The Independent Gambia

  Following the war, the pace of reform increased, with an economic focus on the production of the groundnut and a failed programme called the Gambia Poultry Scheme by the Colonial Development Corporation. The push towards self-government increased its pace, and the House of Representatives was established in 1960. Pierre Sarr N’Jie served as Chief Minister from 1961 to 1962, though following the 1962 election Dawda Jawara became Prime Minister, beginning the People’s Progressive Party’s dominance of Gambian politics for the next thirty years. Full internal self-government was achieved in 1963.

  The desire of the people of The Gambia to rule themselves gradually developed after the World War II. Political parties were formed in the colony and some later extended to the Protectorate. On the 18th of February 1965, The Gambia gained political independence from Britain. Although Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II remained as titular head of state. It was strongly felt that The Gambia would not be able to stand on her own and there were talks of forming a federation with Senegal. But this did not materialize at the time. Around the same time, two events occurred that enabled the tiny nation to survive and even prosper. For a decade after independence, the world price for groundnuts increased significantly, raising the country’s GNP almost threefold. The second event had an even more resounding effect – the Gambia became a significant tourist destination.

  On April 24, 1970, The Gambia became a republic following a majority-approved referendum. Until a military coup in July 1994, The Gambia was led by President Dawda Kairaba Jawara, who was re-elected five times. The relative stability of the Jawara era was broken first in a violent coup attempt in 1981. The failed coup was led by Kukoi Samba Sanyang, who, on two occasions, had unsuccessfully sought election to parliament. After a week of violence, which left several hundred dead, Jawara, in London when the attack began, appealed to Senegal for help. Senegalese troops defeated the rebel force. In 1982, in the aftermath of the 1981 attempted coup, Senegal and The Gambia signed a treaty of confederation. The Senegambia Confederation aimed to combine the armed forces of the two states and to unify their economies and currencies. After just seven years, The Gambia permanently withdrew from the confederation in 1989.

• Struggle For Democracy

  In July 1994, Yahya Jammeh led a coup d’état that deposed the Jawara government. Between 1994 and 1996, Jammeh ruled as head of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC) and banned opposition political activity. The AFPRC announced a transition plan for a return to democratic civilian rule, establishing the Provisional Independent Electoral Commission (PIEC) in 1996 to conduct national elections. After a constitutional referendum in August, presidential and parliamentary elections were held. Jammeh was sworn into office as president on 6 November 1996. On 17 April 1997, the PIEC transformed into the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

  Jammeh won both the 2001 and 2006 elections. He was re-elected as president in 2011. The People’s Republic of China cut ties with the Gambia in 1995 after the latter established diplomatic links with the Republic of China (Taiwan). the Gambia was elected to a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council from 1998 to 1999. On 2 October 2013, the Gambian interior minister announced that the Gambia would leave the Commonwealth of Nations with immediate effect, stating that they would “never again be part of a neo-colonial organization”. In December 2014, an attempted coup was launched to overthrow President Jammeh. The presidential election of 2016 saw the surprising victory of the opposition candidate Adama Barrow, who defeated Jammeh with 43,3% of votes.

  However, Jammeh refused to recognize the result of the election and refused to leave office, instead proclaiming a state of emergency. Barrow abandoned the country and fled to Senegal, where he was sworn in as the new president at the Gambian embassy in Dakar on 19 January 2017. On the same day, ECOWAS launched a military intervention in the Gambia in order to forcefully remove Jammeh from power (Operation Restore Democracy); the move was authorized by United Nations Security Council with UNSC Resolution 2337. On 21 January 2017 Jammeh announced stepped down as president and abandoned the country and went to exile in Equatorial Guinea. On 27 January 2017 Barrow returned to the Gambia and officially took office. On 6 April 2017 parliamentary elections were held, which saw the victory of Barrow’s United Democratic Party, scoring 37,47% and winning 31 of the 53 seats of the National Assembly.

• Source:

  https://www.export.gov/article?id=Gambia-Banking-Systems

  https://www.scholaro.com/ed/Countries/Gambia/Education-System

  https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/unexploited-manufacturing-opportunities-the-gambia/764/

  http://www.giepa.gm/node/87

  https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/gambia/overview

  file:///C:/Users/alems/Downloads/sector_report_2006.pdf

  http://www.accessgambia.com/information/financial-sector.html

  https://www.encyclopedia.com/places/africa/gambian-political-geography/gambia#INDUSTRY

  https://www.britannica.com/place/The-Gambia#ref279015

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gambia#Ethnic_groups

  https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ga.html

  http://www.accessgambia.com/information/history.html

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Gambia

  http://www.world-guides.com/africa/western-africa/the-gambia/the_gambia_attractions.html

  https://www.gambia.co.uk/blog/top-10-things-to-do-in-the-gambia-for-first-time-visitors

  https://www.lonelyplanet.com/the-gambia/attractions/a/poi-sig/355669