The History of Gambia
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 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.
In the 14th century, the (Manding) Mali Empire of Mali - established by Mandinka, Sundiata Keita, leader of the Malinké people - encompassed the areas from the edge of the Sahara to the forests of the south in what is now Liberia & Sierra Leone. From East to West, it covered all the regions between Takedda beyond the Niger Buckle covering Senegambia on the Atlantic Ocean. This vast empire controlled nearly all the trans-Saharan trade, and contact with the rulers of the Arab states to the north led the Mali rulers to embrace Islam with great enthusiasm.
Though the rise of the Mali empire was swift its decline was slow. By the beginning of the 15th century, the empire had lost its hegemony over the affairs of the Western Sudan and had been reduced into the small area of Kangaba, where it had first originated. By the middle of the 15th century a group of Mandingos drifted into the area of the Gambia River basin and with them came Islam.
The first Europeans to reach the river were the Portuguese in 1455. Captains Luiz de Cadamosto and Antoniotti Usodimare traveled a few kilometres 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.
In the early 15th century, Prince Henry of Portugal began instructing navigators to sail along the west coast of Africa, trying to circumvent the Arab and Muslim domination of the trans-Saharan gold trade, which by that time was at the centerpiece of Portugal's public finances. Although the Portuguese didn't establish a settlement, they continued to monopolise trade along the West African coast throughout the 16th century. In their trading posts, salt, ostrich feathers, iron, pots and pans, firearms and gunpowder were exchanged for ivory, ebony, beeswax, gold and slaves. (It's been suggested that the Gambia River's name originated from the Portuguese word cambio, meaning 'exchange,' or, in this context, 'trade').
By the 1600s the large agricultural and commercial estates owned by Portuguese, in Brazil, needed more labour, 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.
The first European settlement in Gambia was made by Baltic Germans, who built a fort on James Island in 1651. Ten years later, they were ousted by the British, who were themselves ever under threat from French ships, pirates and the mainland African kings. Fort James lost its strategic appeal with the construction of new forts at Barra and Bathurst (now Banjul) at the mouth of the Gambia River, which were better placed to control the movement of ships, though Fort James continued to serve as a slave collection point until the trade was abolished.
The first British traders in the Gambia came in 1587. They began to explore the river in 1618. They eventually got control of St. Andrew's Island 1661. It was renamed James Island after the Duke of York, later King James II, a name it has retained to this day. Trading companies were set up and they tried to control the trade of the river. The companies, such as the Companies of Merchant trading in West Africa, The Royal Adventurers and the Royal African Company traded and controlled the area. By the mid-seventeenth century, the slave trade had over-shadowed all other trade. The British and French competed for the control of the trade of the area.
In 1765, the forts and settlements were vested in the British Crown and for eighteen years what is now The Gambia, formed part of the British Colony of Senegambia, with headquarters in St. Louis at the mouth of the river Senegal. However in 1783, the greater part of the Senegambia region was handed to France. The Gambia section ceased to be a British colony and was again placed under the charge of the African Company.
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 sand bank known as St. Mary's Island. Originally called Banjulo by the Portuguese, Grant named the new settlement, Bathurst after the Colonial Secretary of the time Lord Bathurst.
Britain declared the Gambia River a British Protectorate in 1820 and for many years ruled it from its administrative base in Sierra Leone. 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 Gambia.
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 groundnuts or peanuts are originally South American, were they were grown by Indian communities. (It was introduced to West-Africa (first the Senegambia area) by the Portuguese in the 16th century. Here it spread quickly, though faster in the interior of Africa than along the coast). The harvested nuts are crushed to make oil, which is exported to Europe for use in food manufacture. In the 1950s, Gambia's groundnut production was beefed up as a way to increase export earnings and make the country that much more self-supportive, and today groundnuts remain the chief crop of both Gambia and neighboring Senegal.
The site consists of four large groups of stone circles that represent an extraordinary concentration of over 1,000 monuments in a band 100 km wide along some 350 km of the River Gambia. The four groups, Sine Ngayène, Wanar, Wassu and Kerbatch, cover 93 stone circles and numerous tumuli, burial mounds, some of which have been excavated to reveal material that suggest dates between 3rd century BC and 16th century AD. Together the stone circles of laterite pillars and their associated burial mounds present a vast sacred landscape created over more than 1,500 years. It reflects a prosperous, highly organized and lasting society.
The inscribed site corresponds to four large groups of megalithic circles located in the extreme western part of West Africa, between the River Gambia and the River Senegal. These sites, Wassu, and Kerbatch in Gambia, and Wanar and Sine Ngayene in Senegal, represent an extraordinary concentration of more than 1,000 stone circles and related tumuli spread over a territory of 100 km wide and 350 km in length, along the River Gambia. Together, the four groups comprise 93 circles and associated sites, some of which have been excavated, some of which have revealed archaeological material and human burials, from pottery to iron instruments and ornamentation dating between the 1 st and 2nd millennia to our era. These four megalithic sites are the most dense concentration in the zone and have Outstanding Universal Value, representing a traditional monumental megalithic construction spread out over a vast area, with more than 1,000 stone circles scattered along one of the major rivers of Africa.
The Sine Ngayene complex (Senegal) is the largest site in the area. It consists of 52 circles of standing stones, including one double circle. In all, there are 1102 carved stones on the site. Around 1km to the east, (outside the inscribed property) is the quarry from which the monoliths were extracted and where the sources of around 150 stones can be traced. The site was excavated around 1970, and more recently by Bocoum and Holl. The work established that the single burials appeared to precede in time the multiple burials associated with the stone circles. The Wanar complex (Senegal) consists of 21 circles including one double circle. The site contains 9 ‘lyre’ stones or bifed stones, sometimes with a cross piece strung between the two halves. The Wassu complex (Guinea) consists of 11 circles and their associated frontal stones. This site has the highest stones of the area. The most recent excavations conducted on these megalithic circles date to the Anglo-Gambian campaign led by Evans and Ozanne in 1964 and 1965. The finds of burials enabled the dating of the monuments between 927 and 1305 AD. The Kerbatch complex consists of 9 circles, including a double circle. The site possesses a ‘bifid’ stone, the only known one in the area.
