A History of the Gambia

Abstract

Mr Gailey's History of the Gambia is a useful addition to the scanty material available on this small but significant area of West Africa. Today, when the Gambia emerges as an independent State, a comprehensive historical study which focuses on the political evolution of the country up to the eve of independence is timely. No previous work exists on the constitutional or political development of the Gambia. Sir John Gray's history, published in I940, and long out of print, was a monumental work concerned with European explorers, traders and administrators in the area from the fifteenth century to the creation of a British protectorate in the late nineteenth century. Gailey's primary object is to bring Gray's book up to date; but, relying as he does on Gray as his main source (even when original records are available) for the early history of the Gambia, little that is new emerges before the modern period. The first part of the book is a straight history of four centuries of European contacts with the Gambia, which, by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had become a flourishing base for an entrep6t trade in slaves, ivory, gum, with Europe; a significant factor in Anglo-French rivalry. With the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain established a military base at the mouth of the river to intercept slavers. This became the Colony area. The vicissitudes of legitimate trade, determined largely by a disturbed hinterland beyond British jurisdiction, and the problems of a limited revenue, were the major issues of the nineteenth century. Faced with the dilemma of involvement in internal wars, which took on a new dimension in thejihad, the British Government entered into negotiations with the French for an exchange of territory. Thus the decline of traditional authority in the River precipitated the delimitation of the boundary, and the creation of a British protectorate. The story this far is European oriented; this, Gailey explains, is because 'the centrum of power ... for four hundred years rested outside the territory'. It is not a convincing argument for ignoring the significant role of liberated Africans, or of mulattoes, or indeed of British merchants in the Gambia, in the development of the colony in the nineteenth century. The Christian missionary factor in this period is not considered; and the approach to the Islamic wars has inevitably by-passed some of the major issues involved. His discussion of the question of Exchange (a subject recently covered by Professor Hargreaves) is incomplete without emphasis on African opinion. It is in the second part of the book that Gailey moves on to firmer ground, and makes a useful contribution to our knowledge of contemporary Gambia. As an American in a neglected British territory, he is painstaking in his analyses of ordinances, government reports, etc.; and examines the effects of British administration with a fresh, uninhibited approach. For unofficial material he has made use of interviews (though not of local newspapers); but perhaps a too brief visit is responsible for inaccurate generalizations such as that the 'Bathurst Wolofs ... have emerged in the last fifty years as the native intellectual and economic leaders in the Gambia'. 428

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