Senegambia

The Senegambia (other names: Senegambia region or Senegambian zone,^[1] Senegàmbi or Senegàmbiya in Wolof) is, in the narrow sense, a historical name for a geographical region in West Africa, which lies between the Senegal River in the north and the Gambia River in the south. However, there are also text sources which state that Senegambia is understood in a broader sense and equated with the term the Western region. This refers to the coastal areas between Senegal and Sierra Leone, where the inland border in the east was not further defined.^[2]

Geographically, the region lies within the tropical zone between the Sahel and the forests of Guinea, with Senegal and Gambian Rivers underpinning the region's geographical unity.^[1] The region encompasses the modern states of Senegal, The Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau, as well as portions of Mauritania, Mali, and Guinea. It should not be confused with the recent Senegambia Confederation, which was a loose confederation between The Gambia and Senegal from 1982 to 1989, set up just after The Gambia's 1981 coup d'état where the Senegalese government intervened to reinstate the democratically elected Gambian government.

Spanning beyond the borders of the Senegambia Confederation, the Senegambia region was described by the Senegalese historian and scholar Professor Boubacar Barry of UCAD^[3] as historically "the main gateway to Sudan, the cradle of the great empires of Ghana, Mali and Songhai" and "the centre of gravity for West Africa."^[4]^[5]

^ ^a ^b Barry, Boubacar, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, (Editors: David Anderson, Carolyn Brown; trans. Ayi Kwei Armah; contributors: David Anderson, American Council of Learned Societies, Carolyn Brown, University of Michigan. Digital Library Production Service, Christopher Clapham, Michael Gomez, Patrick Manning, David Robinson, Leonardo A. Villalon), Cambridge University Press (1998) p. 5, ISBN 9780521592260 [1] (Retrieved 15 March 2019)
^ London 1878: Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel. p. 111: Western Sudan or Senegambia
^ Barry, Boubacar, and Laurence Marfaing. Interview Avec Prof. Boubacar Barry, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar: Mobilité Des Nomades Et Des Sédentaires Dans L'espace CEDEAO. Regions & Cohesion / Regiones y Cohesión / Régions Et Cohésion, vol. 3, no. 3, 2013, pp. 155–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26452282.
^ Barry, Boubacar, La Sénégambie du XVe au XIXe siècle: traite négrière, Islam et conquête coloniale, L'Harmattan (1988), p. 26, ISBN 9782858026708
^ "The historical perspective of Senegambia: The prospects and the way forward". The Standard. 5 June 2014. Archived from the original on 11 June 2017. Retrieved 3 September 2018.

[Barry_slave-1] Barry, Boubacar, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, (Editors: David Anderson, Carolyn Brown; trans. Ayi Kwei Armah; contributors: David Anderson, American Council of Learned Societies, Carolyn Brown, University of Michigan. Digital Library Production Service, Christopher Clapham, Michael Gomez, Patrick Manning, David Robinson, Leonardo A. Villalon), Cambridge University Press (1998) p. 5, ISBN 9780521592260 [1] (Retrieved 15 March 2019)

[2] London 1878: Stanford's Compendium of Geography and Travel. p. 111: Western Sudan or Senegambia

[3] Barry, Boubacar, and Laurence Marfaing. Interview Avec Prof. Boubacar Barry, Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar: Mobilité Des Nomades Et Des Sédentaires Dans L'espace CEDEAO. Regions & Cohesion / Regiones y Cohesión / Régions Et Cohésion, vol. 3, no. 3, 2013, pp. 155–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26452282.

[4] Barry, Boubacar, La Sénégambie du XVe au XIXe siècle: traite négrière, Islam et conquête coloniale, L'Harmattan (1988), p. 26, ISBN 9782858026708

[:0-5] "The historical perspective of Senegambia: The prospects and the way forward". The Standard. 5 June 2014. Archived from the original on 11 June 2017. Retrieved 3 September 2018.

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