Economic Change, Islamic Militancy, and the British in Senegambia

The purpose of this work is to analyse the history of The Gambia within the context of trade by Muslim peasant farmers and producers of the new export crop of peanuts, on the one hand, and the animist Soninke aristocracy who insisted on the old order of production and taxation, on the other. The Muslim peanut growers, who became favoured by the new world economic system following the abolition of the slave trade, resisted the old order by mobilizing around the solidarity offered by the Islamic religion to offer aggressive militancy leading to social upheavals. The animist in turn employed all forms of exclusionary policies and practices such as land alienation, imposition of taxes and political marginalisation in their struggle to retain dominance of politics and economic lives and keep the Muslims in perpetual subservience.