Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T12:38:30.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Social and Economic Setting

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2017

Get access

Summary

Chapter 1 provides the socioeconomic context to the political events analyzed in subsequent chapters. A physical description of The Gambia is provided first, followed by a review of the available demographic data and a description of the major ethnic groups of the country. Religious beliefs, educational development, and the labor force are then examined from a historical perspective. Finally, the structure of the economy is outlined and its prosperity (or otherwise) assessed chronologically.

Physical Description

The Gambia is one of the smallest countries in Africa, having a total area of approximately 11,000 square kilometers (4,361 square miles). It consists of strips of land about 10 kilometers wide (about 6 miles) either side of the River Gambia (one of the most navigable rivers in West Africa) and extends 470 kilometers (292 miles) into the interior of Africa from the Atlantic Ocean. A former British colony, it was known as either “Gambia” or “the Gambia” until independence in 1965; to avoid confusion, we have used the former term when referring exclusively to the colonial period. The Gambia's northern, eastern, and southern borders, which are all shared with Senegal, were defined by a wide-ranging Anglo-French Convention of 1889 and demarcated between 1891 and 1905 (its eastern border was slightly modified in 1976).

The 1889 treaty with France considerably expanded the size of Gambia. The British Crown Colony consisted of a few scattered settlements along the River Gambia with an estimated total area of only 110 square kilometers (69 square miles). St. Mary's Island at the mouth of the river, on which the capital, Bathurst (now Banjul) was located, was purchased in 1816; MacCarthy Island, 241 kilometers (150 miles) up river, was acquired in 1823; the “Ceded Mile,” a tract of land on the north bank of the river 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in breadth and 58 kilometers (36 miles) in length, was ceded in 1826 (and extended in 1832); British Kombo (which was later called Kombo St. Mary), an area of 40 square kilometers (25 square miles) to the west of Bathurst was ceded in 1840 (and extended in 1853); Albreda, a trading post on the north bank of the river, was exchanged by France in 1857; and a few other districts were annexed in the 1880s.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×