The earliest inhabitants of The Gambia are unknown, but they left behind large shell middens and enigmatic stone circles attesting to diverse subsistence strategies and well-organized, hierarchical societies. In the 13th century, the Mali Empire expanded into the Gambia river valley, where Mandinka warriors and traders founded (or took over) numerous small states.
The first Europeans to visit the Gambia River were the Portuguese in the 15th century. The opening of seaborne trade made the region economically important for Mali and the rival Jolof Empire. When Mali collapsed in 1599, the former vassal kingdoms were free to set their own policy towards each other and the newcomers.
1677 saw the beginning of a century-and-a-half-long struggle between the English and French for control over seaborne trade in the Gambia and Senegal. The English possessions were captured several times by the French, but in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the British rights to the region were recognized by the French, but European physical presence remained limited.
This changed in the early 19th century, when Captain Alexander Grant was sent to re-establish a British presence on the Gambia river. He established Bathurst which was renamed as Banjul after independence in 1965 and the British possessions continued to grow in size through a series of treaties. Mostly administered in conjunction with other colonies, and nearly sold to France on several occasions, it was established as the separate Colony, and Protectorate in 1894.
In 1901, legislative and executive councils were established for the Gambia, and in the 1920s Edward Francis Small led the push for emancipation, founding the Bathurst Trade Union and the Ratepayers' Association, which laid the foundation for local Gambian participation in the colonial government for the first time. Following World War II, the push towards self-government increased its pace, and the House of Representatives was established in 1960. Pierre Sarr N'Jie served as Chief Minister from 1961 to 1962, though following the 1962 election Dawda Jawara became prime minister, beginning the People's Progressive Party's dominance of Gambian politics for the next thirty years. Full internal self-government was achieved in 1963, and following extensive negotiations, the Gambia declared independence in 1965.
In 1970 the country became a presidential republic, with Dawda Jawara elected as the first president. He survived an attempted coup in 1981, and briefly led his country into the Senegambia Confederation. In 1994, Jawara was overthrown in another coup d'état led by Yahya Jammeh, who ruled as a military dictator for two years before being elected president in 1996 and continuing in this role until 2017. In the 2016 election, Adama Barrow was elected president, backed by a coalition of opposition parties. Jammeh's refusal to step down led to a constitutional crisis and the intervention of ECOWAS forces, but he was eventually forced into exile.
Early History There were organized societies in the area that would become The Gambia by at least 2000 BC, when a coastal people made large shell middens were created up and down the coast of Senegambia, from the Casamance to the Senegal delta.
The Gambia hosts numerous stone circles, built as part of a funerary culture stretching from approximately the 3rd century BCE to the 16th century CE. Burial mounds near the Wassu complex have been dated to AD 927–1305, although it is not clear whether the burial mounds were constructed before or after the stone circles. The construction of these large stone monuments indicates a prosperous and organized society that could dedicate significant labor to building such structures. The stones were extracted from laterite quarries using iron tools, with identical pillars made, either cylindrical or polygonal, up to two meters high and weighing seven tons.
There is no consensus among historians and archaeologists as to who built these megalithic structures. The Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop argued that the Serer people built the monuments and many similar ones across the Sahel during a hypothesized migration from the Nile River valley. Wolof and Fula oral traditions also have the Serer as the builders. The Serer themselves, however, credit them to the Soos wee or Soos waa Kaabu, the 'men from the beginning of Kaabu'. These 'Soos' or 'Sose' are, in Serer oral history, the former occupants of the area. Their identity is also a matter of debate among historians. Some believe that they were a group speaking a Mande language who migrated from the Wagadu Empire to flee a drought towards the end of the first millennium CE. According to this theory, the Sose were assimilated or displaced when the Serers of the north arrived in the 11th century, although the newcomers may have adopted their funerary customs. Other historians point out that there is a Serer matrilineage named 'Soos', whose members may have been the first of the immigrants to arrive in the Sine-Saloum region. In any case, the Serer have used funerary houses similar to those found at the Wanar site up until the present.
The Bainuk may have also lived north of the Gambia during this period. A Bainuk kingdom did exist south of the river, ruling from the Gambia to the Cacheu.
The ancestors of the Serer left Takrur in the 11th century, fleeing an increasingly militant Islamization policy directed by king War Jabi and his successors. Upon arriving in the region north of the Gambia river, they may have absorbed their predecessors, giving rise to funerary practices similar to those uncovered at the Wanar stone circle site in Senegal. The construction of the monumental circles and standing stones dates almost exclusively from the 11th to the late 13th century.
The Age of Mali In the early 13th century, Sundiata Keita defeated Soumaoro Kante and established the Mali Empire, with a heartland in the Niger River valley. During his reign, campaigns westwards brought much of Senegambia under his control. According to oral tradition, Tiramakhan Traore was sent to avenge a diplomatic insult by the King of Jolof, and moved into the sparsely inhabited but fertile lands ruled by the Bainuk people with a large, armed following. Traore defeated and killed the Jolof buurba in a battle on the north bank of the Gambia River, then crossed the river and founded numerous towns on the south bank. Among Traore's followers was supposedly the semi-legendary first king of Wuli, Mbari Kajo Wali. Traore and the main force, meanwhile, moved south. He defeated the Bainuk, and his descendants established the province of Kaabu along the headwaters of the Gambia, Casamance, and Cacheu Rivers.
There were Mande traders and immigrants all throughout the region, but they had up until this point mostly been politically and demographically dominated by local hosts of other cultures. Backed by the military might of the Mali Empire, Mandinka kingdoms conquered and ruled the savannah. Meanwhile, the swampy areas near the coast were still dominated by the natives. As in many places that saw Mandinka migrations, much of the native population was dominated or assimilated, with slaves either eventually being integrated into Mandinka society or sold via the trans-Sahara trade routes to Arab buyers. Although the rulers of Kaabu were Mandinka, many of their subjects were from ethnic groups who had resided in the region before the Mandinka invasion. Mandinka became a lingua franca used for trade.
Some modern-day historians have proposed that the Mandinka elite the Gambian kingdoms did not, in fact, immigrate from the Manding region but may have come much earlier, from Bambouk and the upper Senegal River valley. The migration story may be a dramatization of what was actually a gradual process of ethnic transformation under Mali's cultural and political hegemony.
Rise of the Jolof Empire In the 1360s, during a struggle over the Malian throne, Ndiadiane Ndiaye broke away to form the independent Jolof Empire in what is now northern Senegal. The other states in the region were quickly conquered or joined willingly, with their ruling classes and populations gradually 'Wolofized'. Oral traditions emphasize that the empire started as a voluntary confederacy of states rather than through military conquest, an explanation accepted by many historians.Unesco. International Scientific Committee for the Drafting of a General History of Africa. "Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century." (Volume 5 of General history of Africa). Edited by Bethwell A. Ogot. James Currey Publishers (1999), p. 138. (accessed 4 Feb 2026)Oliver, Roland, "The African Experience: From Olduvai Gorge to the 21st Century." Routledge (2018), p. 121, (accessed 4 Feb 2026)Ayittey, George. "Indigenous African Institutions." Martinus Nijhoff Publishers (2025), p. 202. (accessed 4 Feb 2026)Mwakikagile, Godfrey (2010). "The Gambia and Its People: Ethnic Identities and Cultural Integration in Africa." p. 94. (accessed 4 Feb 2026) Others, however, believe that these traditions mask a more difficult reality, and that the process of imperial growth may not have been peaceful.
Taking advantage of Mali's weakness, Buurba Biram Njeme Eler, was likely responsible for subduing the Mandinka states on the northern bank of the Gambia, including Niumi, Baddibu, Nyani, and Wuli. Control over these kingdoms gave the Buurba some access to the growing commerce there.
Opening of European Trade Beginning in the 1440s, Portuguese ships first arrived on the coast of West Africa, initially looking only to capture slaves. In 1446 Nuno Tristao may have reached the Gambia, or perhaps the Saloum Delta. His raiding party was ambushed by thirteen Niuminka canoes with some 80 armed men and killed by poisoned arrows.João de Barros (1552–59) Décadas da Ásia: Dos feitos, que os Portuguezes fizeram no descubrimento, e conquista, dos mares, e terras do Oriente. Vol. 1 (Dec I, Lib.1-5)Gomes Eanes de Zurara (1453) Crónica dos feitos notáveis que se passaram na Conquista da Guiné por mandado do Infante D. Henrique or Chronica do descobrimento e conquista da Guiné. [Trans. 1896–99 by C.R. Beazley and E. Prestage, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, London: Halykut]
It wasn't until 1455 that the Portuguese tried again. A Venetian called Alvise Cadamosto and a Genoese trader called Antoniotto Usodimare , working for the Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator, arrived off the mouth of the Gambia River with a fleet of four heavily armed ships. As his caravels moved up the river, the Portuguese were attacked by a fleet of war-canoes. Despite their initial shock at the range and power of the European cannon, the locals (Malian subjects) attempted to board the smallest caravel before finally being driven off. When he tried to negotiate, Cadamosto was told that the Malians believed that the white men were cannibals who had come to kidnap and eat Africans. He fled the river without capturing and slaves or trading.
The next year the Portuguese abandoned their slave raiding in favor of trade and negotiation. Cadamosto successfully conducted business with the Gambians, learning they were subjects of the Mansa of Mali and that their marines were the ones who had forced his retreat the previous year. Diogo Gomes also arrived with orders from the Portuguese crown to end hostilities with the Jolof Empire and Mali Empire and set up normal trade. He sailed some 250 miles upriver, reaching as far as the major market town of Cantor, an entrepot of the gold trade.