Senegambia Confederation - History

History

Senegambia, as a political unit, was created by dueling French and English colonial forces in the region. Competition between the French and the English began in the 16th century when both started to establish trading centers in the region – with French trade centered on the Senegal River and in the Cap-Vert region and English trade on the Gambia River (although there was some overlap in their areas of influence). This region became more important for both growing empires because West Africa allowed for a convenient way station for trade between Europe and their American colonies and a warehouse for the African Slave Trade. As colonialism became more and more lucrative, both France and England took greater measures to define their spheres of influence. From 1500 to 1758, the two powers used their naval power to try to remove each other from the region. In 1758, the British were successful in capturing major French trading bases along the Senegal River area and formed the first Senegambia – a crown colony. The unified region collapsed in 1779, when the French recaptured Saint Louis and burned the major British settlement in the Gambia region, leading to the end of the unified region in 1783.

The Treaty of Versailles (1783) (signed along with the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the American Revolution) created the current Francophone-Anglophone balance in the region: Saint Louis, l’île de Gorée, and the Senegal River region were restored to France and the Gambia was left to the British. In the 1860s and 1870s, both nations began to consider a land trading proposal to unify the region, with the French trading another West African holding for the Gambia, but the exchange was never completed. While the areas were in separate, competing hands, an official border between the French and British Senegambian colonies did not appear until 1889 when the French agreed to accept the current border between the two countries and remove its border trading posts. This choice left the future Senegal (which gained its independence in 1960) and the Gambia (independent in 1965) with a large problem: how to successfully maintain two separate countries in a region with shared yet diverse cultural values and an international border which wedges one country into the middle of the other.