Samori Ture
| Samory Toure | |
|---|---|
Almamy, Faama | |
 | |
| Wassoulou Emperor | |
| Reign | 1878–1898 |
| Predecessor | position established |
| Successor | position abolished |
| Born | c. 1830 Manyambaladugu |
| Died | June 2, 1900 (aged 71–72) Gabon |
| Religion | Sunni Islam |
Samory Toure (c. 1828 – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, was a
A deeply religious Muslim of the Maliki school of religious jurisprudence of Sunni Islam, he organized his empire and justified its expansion with Islamic principles. Toure resisted French colonial rule in West Africa from 1882 until his capture in 1898.
He was the great-grandfather of Guinea's first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré.[1]
Early life and career
Samory Toure was born c. 1830 in Manyambaladugu, the son of Kemo Lanfia Toure, a Dyula weaver and merchant, and Sokhona Camara. The family moved to Sanankoro soon after his birth.[2]: 12
Toure grew up as
Toure was a troublesome youth, leading a group of local boys who would steal fruit from fields. To put him on a better path, his father bought him some merchandise and sent him off to become a merchant trading
In 1853 Sanankoro was raided by the Cissé clan and Samory's mother was captured by the prince Sere Brahima, whose older brother Sere Bourlaye was king in Madina. He went to Madina to exchange himself for his mother, and served seven years as a warrior for the Cissé. In their service he learned to handle firearms, the arts of war and discipline, and converted to Islam. Brave and intelligent, he moved quickly up the ranks.[2]: 19 Sere Bourlaye died in 1859. Soon afterwards Sere Brahima, who succeeded him, freed Samory and his mother, and they returned to Sanankoro.[2]: 21 According to tradition, he remained "seven years, seven months, seven days" before leaving with his mother.
Rise to power
At the time, the
Battle of Saman-saman
Samory's 1873 capture of Bissandougou represented a declaration of war against Nantenin Famoudou Kourouma, pagan king of Saboudou, who kept his capital at Worokoro. Samori was beaten in their first battle and fell back into the heart of his lands.[2]: 33 The night before battle beneath the walls of Bissandougou, Samory went to negotiate with Jamoro Adjigbe Diakite, one of Kourouma's most powerful lientenants. "I believe that you are wrong to fight against your brother Muslim," he said. "You are Fula and the Fula are Muslim, and I am Touré and the Touré clan are Manden-Mori (Muslim of Mande), and one Muslim can't fight against his brother Muslim. I brought you a few cola for you to stop this war." With that, he gave Diakite a large bribe to switch sides.[5]
The next morning, Diakite's troops fired on Samory's without having loaded bullets into their guns, then turned and helped route Kourouma, who was captured and beheaded. Samory was now
Theocratic alliance with Bate
After his victory in the battle of Saman-saman, in 1875 the
After clearing the immediate environs of Kankan, Samory and the Kaba launched a successful 10-month siege of
To protect his arms caravans, Samory formed a non-aggression pact with
War against the Cissé
While Samory had been conquering in the north of his empire in the years 1875-8, Sere Brema Cissé's nephew Morlaye had pushed into the Sankaran region, exploiting Samory's relative lack of influence there but attacking some of his allies.[2]: 52 The situation now reached a head, and diplomatic outreach came to nothing.
While marching to confront Morlaye, Samory passed through Kankan and asked the Kaba to contribute troops. With the Cissés being fellow Muslims as well as relative by marriage, and feeling sidelined in the alliance, they refused, breaking the accord of Tintioule. Samory left his brother Keme Brema to besiege Kankan while he marched to face the Cissé. He captured Morlaye at Sirinkoro, and then defeated the army sent to rescue him. Soon he had trapped Sere Brema in Worokoro, which soon fell.[2]: 58
Meanwhile, an effort to relieve the siege of
First battles with the French
The French began to expand into the heart of West Africa in the late 1870s, pushing eastward from
After fleeing his native Kankan, Daye Kaba had made contact with the French, who had a garrison at Kita in present-day Mali. The commander Gustave Borgnis-Desbordes sent an envoy to Samory Toure to announce that Kiniéran, where Kaba was sheltering, was now a French protectorate. Unimpressed, Toure sacked the town on February 21, 1882. A French relief column arrived too late, but pursued the Wassoulou army, which turned and fought at Samaya on the 26th. The sofas traditional frontal charges became a slaughter when faced with the latest French weaponry, but Samory quickly pivoted by adopting effective guerilla tactics and hit-and-run cavalry attacks. They harassed the French back to the Niger.[2]: 63–4 This victory won Toure a reputation as the African leader who could stand up to the invading toubab, massively boosting his prestige and recruitment, as well as providing a blueprint for future engagements.[4]
In the aftermath of Samaya, some of the leaders of Bamako began making overtures to Toure. The French, eager to possess this key strategic town on the Niger, rushed a force to establish a fort there on February 1, 1883.[2]: 76 Kebe Brema, Samori's brother, led a force to Bamako to lure the French out of their defenses. They fought two battles at Woyo Wayanko creek in early April, with Kebe Brema winning the first but eventually being forced to retreat.[7]
In January 1885 Toure sent an embassy to Freetown, offering to put his kingdom under British protection. While the British did not want to risk angering the French, they allowed Toure to buy large numbers of modern repeating rifles.[citation needed]
When an 1885 French expedition under Col. A. V. A. Combes attempted to seize the Buré gold fields by capturing Niagassola, Toure counter-attacked. Dividing his army into three mobile columns, he worked his way around the French lines of communication and quickly forced them to withdraw.[8] Already embroiled in conflict with Mahmadu Lamine and the Toucouleur Empire, the French were compelled to negotiate the Treaty of Kenieba Koura, signed on March 28, 1886. This pact recognized French hegemony over the left bank of the Niger as far upstream as Siguiri, and Samory's control of Bure and the Manding region.[2]: 80–1 As part of the agreement, Samory's eldest son and heir Djaoulen-Karamo was sent on a diplomatic/fact finding/goodwill mission to France.[9][10]
War with Kenedougou
While Samory had been nominally fighting for Islam since the alliance with the
As the Wassoulou region came back under his control, Samory looked to shore up his northern flank. On March 23, 1887, he signed the treaty of Bissandougou with the French. The terms were similar to the treaty signed the year before, although he did accept a French protectorate that Samory saw as unenforceable, as the colonial army was engaged in a campaign to take
During this period the army was well equipped with modern firearms and boasted a complex structure of permanent units. It was divided into an infantry wing of
The siege marked the high water mark of Toure's power and the beginning of his decline. The Tata of Sikasso was one of the most well-developed defensive systems in West Africa at the time, and Samory had no artillery. His supply lines relied on porters to bring food and ammunition from Bissandougou through still-hostile Bambara territory. Roads became quagmires during the rainy season, and dysentery struck the army, devastating the men and killing Kebe Brema among other important leaders. Meanwhile the French, far from acting as allies, had built a fort at Siguiri and were blocking all trade with the Sahel or Senegal.[2]: 88–9 As the siege dragged on, anyone living near the road to Bissandougou was forced into service as porters or had their food appropriated by the soldiers. When a rumor began that Samory himself was dead, another massive rebellion broke out. By the end of the 1888 rainy season, he was forced to abandon the siege. His starving, desperate troops again brutally sacked Wassoulou, massacring any rebels they found.[11]: 273 [2]: 90–1
Fall of Kankan and Bissandougou
In February 1889 Samory and the French signed yet another treaty, this time at Niako, that pushed colonial control further south. The Almamy was in a relatively weak position after the debacle at Sikasso, and the French were still focused on Segou. They soon broke some of the verbal promises that had been made at Niako relative to the return of fugitives and rebels.[9]: 266 In another blow, the British had stopped selling breechloading guns in accordance with the Brussels Conference Act of 1890.[4][3]: 134
In March 10, 1891, a French force under Colonel
Samory organized a great assembly in August 1891 in Missamaghana, inviting his son in law Mangbe-Amadou Toure of the Kabadougou Kingdom, also called Kabassarana. The empire was put on a war footing, collecting metal to melt into bullets, stocking granaries, recruiting soldiers etc.[2]: 96 While the best-armed troops resisted the French using French-made repeater rifles, those armed with the bolt-action chassepot conquered new territory to the east to use as a strategic reserve, and men with flintlocks served as the home guard or internal security. With this system, Samory could fall back into territory already conquered and organized, leaving no food for the French, for the next seven years.[9]: 267–8
Archinard's replacement
During the first months of 1893 the French, although unable to corner Toure's armies in Guinea, did manage to capture Faranah and block resupply routes to Liberia and Sierra Leone, Wassoulou's primary source of modern weaponry. This left Samory reliant on a longer route through the Gold Coast.[9]: 269 The Wassoulou vassals in Kissidougou and the rest of the western- and southernmost parts of the empire surrendered, and the French looked to rebuild profitable colonies in the wartorn lands rather than push further.[2]: 102–3 Samory Toure's empire in the Manding region was now gone, but he still commanded some 12000 infantry, 2000 cavalry, and had a moving retinue of some 120,000 people as he pushed east.[10]
The Second Wassoulou Empire
Capture of Kong
Encouraged by
: 111His objective, and the key to the whole region, was the ancient
Consolidating control
Samory's sofa forces has been depleted by war and the wholesale migration east. His defeat of Babemba Traore at Kaloua in September 1894, however, boosted his prestige among the
Toure accorded the city of Kong numerous privileges, but the local Dyula merchants' commerce with the coast, dominated by the French, had slowed since their absorption into the Wassoulou empire. When Samory, looking to push further east into the Gold Coast to secure new sources of guns, retreated rather than fight a French force, they sought to take advantage of his weakness by intercepting arms caravans and opening channels to invite the French back.[2]: 116–7 When the discontent eventually broke into open revolt, Samory destroyed the city on May 23, 1897.[10]
The force that the sofas had encountered was part of France's efforts to control Bouna while keeping Samory and the British apart. Capt. Paul Braulot came south from the Niger bend to attempt to negotiate another protectorate but was rebuffed, as Toure wanted only to live apart from the French. In April 1897, British Governor William Edward Maxwell of the Gold Coast tried to intimidate Saranken Mori, Samory's son and the commander in the region, into abandoning Bouna. When this failed, a force of the Southern Nigeria Regiment under Henderson marched on the town but were defeated at Dokita, then later routed and Henderson was captured at Wa.[2]: 117–8
Knowing this setback would prompt an aggressive British response, the French again sent Braulot, at the head of an armed column, to try to acquire Bouna by negotiation. Saranken Mori initially accepted.[2]: 117–9 But when Braulot arrived at Bouna, he was killed and his column destroyed outside the city on August 20, 1897, restarting the war between the French and Samory Toure.[13]
Last stand
The fall of the
Exile and death
Samory Toure was brought to Kayes, and on December 22, 1898, was condemned to exile, despite his wish to return to southern Guinea.[3]: 134–135 His wife Saranken Konate, who had often ruled as regent during his absences from Bissandougou, refused to accompany him.[2]: 128–9 Emotionally devastated, he was taken to Saint-Louis, Senegal on January 4, 1899. He attempted suicide the night before he was scheduled to be deported to Gabon but survived and finally embarked on February 5.[10]
The prison camp where Samory Toure spent his last years, the small island of Missanga in the middle of the Ogooué River near Ndjolé, was known as the 'dry guillotine' due to the death rate among prisoners.[9]: 271 He died there of pneumonia on June 2, 1900, at 4:45 pm.[10][3]: 135
Legacy
In the first decades of colonial domination in southern Mali and northeastern Guinea, the French framed their conquest as having delivered the locals from the violence and insecurity of the Samory years, and therefore that the communities owed their lives and allegiance to them. During the interwar period, however, African intellectuals began to rehabilitate Toure's memory. He became a hero and rallying cry for anti-colonial parties in Guinea and Mali, but was also used by their opponents.[11]: 266–7 Since independence, Samory Toure has been generally remembered as a hero and martyr of African resistance to European colonialism. In some communities in southern Mali that suffered brutal repression under his rule, however, he is remembered as a tyrant.[11]: 262
Samory's great-grandson,
In popular culture
- Massa Makan Diabaté's play Une hyène à jeun (A Hyena with an Empty Stomach, 1988) dramatizes Samori Ture's signing of the 1886 Treaty of Kéniéba-Koura, which granted the left bank of the Niger to France.
- Guinean band Djelitraditions and consists of two recordings that recount Ture's anti-colonial resistance and nation-building.
- Author Ta-Nehisi Coates references Ture in his book Between the World and Me when explaining to his son where his name Samori came from.
- Ivorien reggae superstar Cocody Rock.
- Italian band Classica Orchestra Afrobeat directed by Marco Zanotti produced Regard sur le Passe in 2014, which is a 3 act musical suite which tells the epic story of Ture with two on-stage griots - Sekouba Bambino and Baba Sissoko.
Footnotes
- ^ Webster, James & Boahen, Adu (1980), The Revolutionary Years; West Africa Since 1800, p. 324.
- ^ ISBN 9782708706781. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ OCLC 70750153.
- ^ a b c d "Quand les empires se faisaient et se défaisaient en Afrique de l'Ouest : le cas Samory Touré". La Revue d'Histoire Militaire (in French). 20 December 2018. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ Kante, Souleymane. History of Samory Toure (in Malinke). p. 64.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link) - ISBN 978-0-19-027773-4. Retrieved 11 September 2021.
- ^ Person, Yves (1968). Samori. Une révolution dyula. Mémoires de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire. Archived from the original on 2017-08-28.
- ^ Gueye, Mbaye; Albert Adu Boahen (1984). "West Africa: the fight for survival". The UNESCO Courier. XXXVII (5): 27–29. Retrieved 20 October 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Suret-Canale, Jean (1968). Afrique noire : occidentale et centrale (in French). Paris: Editions Sociales. p. 251. Retrieved 24 September 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g Ba, Amadou Bal (11 February 2020). "L'Almamy Samory TOURE (1830-1900), résistant et empereur du Wassoulou". Ferloo (in French). Retrieved 30 September 2023.
- ^ S2CID 155012842. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
- ^ Asante, p. 235.
- ^ Fournier, L. (1934). Historique du 2e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais : 1892 – 1933. p. 61. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
Sources
- Ajayi, J.F. Ade, ed. (1989). UNESCO General History of Africa. Vol. VI: Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-92-3-101712-4.
- Asante, Molefi Kete, The History of Africa: The Quest for Eternal Harmony (New York: Routledge, 2007).
- Boahen, A. Adu, ed. UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. VII: Africa Under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
- Boahen, A. Adu (1989). African Perspective on Colonialism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 144 pages. ISBN 0-8018-3931-9.
- Boahen, A. Adu (1990). Africa Under Colonial Domination, 1880-1935. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 357 pages. ISBN 0-520-06702-9.
- Gann, L. H., and Peter Duigan, eds. Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960, Vol. 1: The History and Politics of Colonialism 1870–1914 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
- Ogot, Bethwell A. (1992). Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. California: University of California Press. p. 1076 pages. ISBN 0-520-03916-5.
- Oliver, Roland, and G. N. Sanderson, eds. The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 6: from 1870–1905 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
- Person, Yves (1968–1975). Samori, Une révolution Dyula. Vol. 3 volumes. Dakar: IFAN. p. 2377 pages. A fourth volume of maps published in Paris in 1990. Monumental work of history perhaps unique in African literature.
- Piłaszewicz, Stanisław. 1991. On the Veracity of Oral Tradition as a Historical Source: – the Case of Samori Ture. In Unwritten Testimonies of the African Past. Proceedings of the International Symposium held in Ojrzanów n. Warsaw on 07-08 November 1989 ed. by S. Piłaszewicz and E. Rzewuski, (Orientalia Varsoviensia 2). Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. [1]
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