#FunFact #TheGambia
The Gambia is the smallest nation on mainland africa and is surrounded by Senegal. Its also called the smiling coast of Africa. Its the 159th largest nation in the world with 10,689 square kilometers (4,127 square miles).
The Gambia is the smallest nation on mainland africa and is surrounded by Senegal. Its also called the smiling coast of Africa. Its the 159th largest nation in the world with 10,689 square kilometers (4,127 square miles).
The Gambia is a very small and narrow country with the border based on the Gambia River. The country is less than 48 kilometers (30 miles) wide at its greatest width. 11.5% of the country is total water by the Gambia river.
The first written records of the region come from Arab traders in the 9th and 10th centuries. The Portuguese reached this area by sea in the mid-15th century, and began to dominate overseas trade.
It was also the only colonie by the dutchy of Kurland (Today Latvia) part of Poland Lithuania (1651-1661). Gambia is long and skinny, just 30 miles across at its widest points. There’s an apocryphal story, rooted in the colonial history of West Africa,
that accounts for The Gambia’s unusual shape and location. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, French and British colonialists were vying for power and resources in this region, which was an economic center for the slave trade, among other industries.
The British were also interested in finding an easy route inland, to Timbuktu and its fabled riches. There are only a few rivers on the coast of West Africa that run from the desert to the coast, and the French controlled the mouth of the more northerly one, the Senegal River.
The Gambia River, farther south, where the British had more control, runs parallel, and, as the story goes, a British warship simply navigated up the river, shooting cannonballs off either side and claiming the land that fell within cannon range.
The result: A river-shaped country made up solely of the strips of land on either side of the water. There’s no evidence that the British ever fired cannonballs off the sides of their ships to establish The Gambia in the middle of French territory.
But it’s not a bad shorthand for what actually did happen. Its biggest export are peanuts and is very suitable for agricultur. It owns less natural ressources.
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