Pre-Colonial Senegambia
The Senegambia region comprises autonomous and semi-autonomous kingdoms and more decentralized societies similar to the political arrangement in other African regions. What has traditionally been called the Senegambia before colonization is a perfect example of the regional rather than state groupings. The Senegambia as a region encompassed Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau and parts of Mali, Mauritania, and Guinea.
Agriculture was the bedrock of the Senegambia region’s traditional economy. It is a transition zone between savannah and forest habitats. Agriculture is a primary economic activity in the region, which forms the livelihood of peoples and an essential factor for the emergence of states and empires as the case everywhere in the world. In the words of Evans – Pritchard, “the initial evolution that transformed the human economy gave man control over their own food supply, folks began to plant, grow and enhance by selection of herbs, roots and trees.” Shifting cultivation and crop rotation characterizes the agricultural practices in pre-colonial Senegambia, due to mainly land tenure practice and lack of knowledge of highly mechanized agriculture. There are natural issues such as erosion, drought, pests and diseases. These issues are addressed at the local level, depending on the various communities and the nature of such disaster. For example, setting traps to catch birds and vermin on farms and canals were also dug to drain the water to check floods. Wetting of farms during the drought had been an ancient agricultural practice among Senegambians.
In the pre-colonial Senegambia, farmers relied hugely on local instruments such as the hoe, machete, and sickles. In the south of The Gambia for instance, rice is the main staple food, whereas to the north and north-east, pearl millet and sorghum are the main staples, except in areas near rivers where fishing and other river borne activities are prevalent. Agriculture in the savannah zone requires more and better organized labour, because of the shorter cultivation season and steeper labor peaks.
West Africa is believed to be one center of indigenous rice species, and rice was grown on the annually flooded banks of The Gambia and Senegal Rivers long before Europeans arrived. As rice production is rather labor intensive, it presupposed some degree of political stability and labour supply, and it is thus no coincidence that the Wuli Empire (now in modern Gambia Upper River Region) was centred in an area well fitted for rice production. Rice provided a high yielding and nutritional food staple and a trade commodity, while the empire could provide political stability and a labor force of slaves.
Fishing was an important economic activity in the former Senegambia region. Its activities consisted of courses both inland and coastal water and was of wonderful economic value to the precolonial Senegambians. The fish was one of the most critical items of trade. Fish of numerous types were either sun dried or smoked to preserve them for long or short market. Hunting can be considered as one of the leading economic activities in the pre-colonial Senegambia region. Prey hunting supplied bush meats of various kinds such grass cutters, antelopes, rabbit, squirrel, etc which met their basic food requirements.
Of all trades, iron works was critical to the economic and political development in the pre-colonial period. The Iron Age was the period in which the Senegambia began to actively dominate and control their environments. The discovery of iron led to the manufacture of iron tools such as hoes, knives, swords, spears, local guns, axes, and the highest productivity impact on handicrafts, agriculture, fisheries and hunting which transformed the traditional society. The possession of iron weapons influenced the military buildup and the subjugation of weaker communities by strong ones, as exemplified in the build–up to the Kaabu and Fulladu empires.
It is established that the first written historical accounts of the Senegambia region were given by Arab traders and travellers during the pre-colonial era around the 9th to 11th centuries, a period that coincided with the advent of Islam in the region, thanks to the trans-Saharan trade that opened the leeway for such external contacts in the 5th century with the Western Sudan.
During the pre-colonial period, what is today’s Gambia was part of the successive great West African empires: Ghana created by the Soninke, also known as Serahule; after which there was the Mali Empire epitomized by the great emperors like Mansa Musa and Sundiata Keita; and Songhai. There were also small kingdoms such as the Wolof ones of Walor and Jollof, which was run like the modern confederate state, consisting of Walor, Cayor, Baol, the Serere Sine and Saloum. There were also small kingdoms such as the Serere Sine and Saloum, the Tukulor kingdom of Tekrur (symbolized by the leadership of Alhaji Umar), the Mandinka kingdom of Kaabu, and the much later Fulladu Kingdom of 1870 of Musa Molloh.
In the 16th century, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to circumnavigate the African continent on their way to Asia and thus came into contact with the native Africans on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
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