Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain and the Senegambia Region: Networks in the 19th Century

In his magisterial Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Prof. Boubakar Barry argued for the historical unity of the greater Senegambia region, and described political and commercial connections between Futa Jallon and the Upper Niger (highlands and interior) and the Sierra Leone-Guinea plain, including Freetown (lowlands and coast). This paper builds on Barry’s work by examining specific networks (nodes and flows) formed by inter-regional traders and representatives of Muslim states and communities and of the Sierra Leone Colony during the 19th century. It argues that tracing such networks illustrates how the dimensions and qualities of the greater Senegambia changed over time. Furthermore those networks illuminate how the Senegambian region was linked into the wider Atlantic world during the eras of the slave trade and so-called “legitimate” trade, and also how Freetown, often thought of as a British colonial enclave, was linked into the Senegambian Islamic world.