Why The Gambia follows a river

A river, not a territory

In the 17th century British, Dutch and French trading companies competed along this coast, sometimes clashing over islands at river mouths.^[3] In 1816 Captain Alexander Grant bought Banjul Island from the king of Kombo and built a base to control the river, and the town of Bathurst, now Banjul, grew up around it.^[2]

For most of the 19th century Britain held the river and a few small settlements, but not the land on either side. After 1826 it also held a one-mile strip along the north bank.^[3] Meanwhile France was building its colony of Senegal around it, and by 1880 France controlled Senegal.^[2] Twice in the 1870s Britain tried to trade the Gambia to France, but opposition at home and in the Gambia stopped it.^[2]

1889: six miles either side

At a conference in Paris in 1889 France ceded control of the Gambia River to Britain, and the present borders were drawn.^[2] The starting point was a line six miles north and south of the river, reaching east to Yarbutenda, the farthest navigable point on the river.^[3]

An Anglo-French boundary commission arrived in 1891 to mark the line and met resistance from local rulers whose lands it was dividing. According to the colony’s 1906 official handbook, men and guns from three British warships were landed on the banks “as a hint of what the resisters had to expect.”^[3]

A popular story says a British warship sailed upriver firing cannonballs to either side and claimed everything within range. There is no evidence for it, but it is a fair picture of how the strips were drawn.^[3]

Living inside Senegal

Britain expected the Gambia to merge with Senegal eventually, but granted it independence in February 1965.^[2] In 1981 Senegalese troops helped put down an attempted coup in Banjul, and afterwards the two countries formed the Senegambia confederation. It combined parts of their military and economic resources but was dissolved in 1989.^[2]

The Gambia also cuts Senegal in two: the quickest way from northern Senegal to its southern region of Casamance is through The Gambia.^[3][4] For decades the river crossing meant a ferry or a long detour. A bridge between the north and south banks opened to traffic in January 2019, more than 40 years after it was first proposed.^[4]