#samoritoure #guinea🇬🇳 #malinke #WassoulouEmpire #cleric #leader #fighter In 1868 Samori, a member of the Mande group, proclaimed himself a religious chief and led a band of warriors in establishing a powerful chiefdom in the Kankan region of Guinea. Samori established the Wassoulou Empire, an Islamic empire that was in present-day north and south-eastern Guinea and included part of north-eastern Sierra Leone, part of Mali, part of northern Côte d'Ivoire and part of southern Burkina Faso. The empire only lasted from 1878-1898. In the 1870s the French began expanding in West Africa on into the upper reaches of the Nile into Sudan. One account says that Around Feburary 1882 a French expedition attacked one of Ture's armies at Keniera. His troops drove the French soldiers off. Another says that he first fought the French in 1883, when they occupied Bamako on the Niger River. In January 1885 he sent an embassy to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone and a Crown Colony of the British, offering to put his kingdom under British protection. The British had no intentions of fighting the French at that time so they simply sold Samori rifles. For the next few years the French exploited the fact that some of the people that Samori had conquered weren't happy about being subordinates, so they were able to expand due to that. The people had no intentions on converting to Islam and wanted to keep their indigenous ways, so rebellions were often. The French expansion into the non Islamic territories forced Samori to sign treaties between 1886-89. Around 1891, they began fighting again. In 1897, he tried to start an alliance with the Ashanti empire, but they were defeated by the British. By 1898, he'd fled into the mountains. He was captured on September 29,1898 by the French captain Henri Gouraud and was exiled to Gabon despite his request to return to southern Guinea. Ture died in captivity on an island in the Ogooué River, near Ndjolé on June 2, 1900, following a bout of pneumonia. His tomb is at the Camayanne Mausoleum, within the gardens of Conakry Grand Mosque. How ironic that countries presently are preparing to kick France out today. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8xMyLGBh5d/?igshid=luy3iuih3gk1
