First Mandingo War 1883-1886

Throughout the early years of French rule, French military contingents were sent inland to establish new posts. The African population resisted French penetration and settlement, even in areas where treaties of protection had been in force. Among those offering greatest resistance was Samori Touré, who in the 1880s and 1890s was establishing an empire that extended over large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire. Samori's large, well-equipped army, which could manufacture and repair its own firearms, attracted strong support throughout the region. The French responded to Samori's expansion of regional control with military pressure. French campaigns against Samori, which were met with fierce resistance, intensified in the mid-1890s until he was captured in 1898.

The Muslim empire of Kong was established by the Juula in the early eighteenth century in the north-central region inhabited by the Sénoufo, who had fled Islamization under the Mali Empire. Although Kong became a prosperous center of agriculture, trade, and crafts, ethnic diversity and religious discord gradually weakened the kingdom. The city of Kong was destroyed in 1895 by Samori Touré.

Malinke, also called Maninka, Mandingo, or Manding, are a West African people occupying parts of Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau. They speak a Mandekan language of the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo family.

Samory [ b. c. 1830, near Sarranko, Upper Guinea [now in Guinea]; d. June 2, 1900, Gabon, French Congo [now Gabon] ] in full SAMORY TOURÉ Muslim reformer and military adventurer who founded a powerful kingdom in West Africa and resisted French colonial expansion in the late 19th century.

A member of the Mandingo tribe, Samory in 1868 proclaimed himself a religious chief and led a band of warriors in establishing a powerful chiefdom in the Kankan region of Guinea. A gifted commander and administrator, he expanded his rule until at its height in the early 1880s it extended from the Upper Volta region in the west to the Fouta Djallon in the east.

Samory opposed French ambitions to build an empire in West Africa. He first fought the French in 1883, when they occupied Bamako on the Niger River. After the French carried out a successful offensive in 1886, Samory accepted their protection with the Niger as his frontier. In the late 1880s, after failing to expand to the east at the expense of Tieba, the king of Sikasso (in present-day southern Mali), he renewed his war with the French in 1891. When his forces were ejected from the Sudan by a military column, he tried to establish his kingdom in the upper Côte d'Ivoire colony, where he pillaged Kong (1895) and Bondoukou (1898). Pursued by French troops, he was captured on the upper reaches of the Cavally River on Sept. 29, 1898. He died in exile.

References

How to Stop a War; Ivory Coast - A Country Study; Malinke; Samory.

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