This section will give a brief overview of the history of the Casamance region. It is important to know some of the events that happened in the region in order to understand in which context this research has been done and the socio-political context in which the participants of this research live.

This section will cover some important events of the Casamance’s history, such as the first European records of the region through the Portuguese with its former kingdoms, the colonial period after the late 19th century, the post-colonial period after the 1960s and more recent events.

As will be explained, the region has been an important cultural crossroad in Western Africa with a rich history of resistance towards outside forces, which I argue still holds relevancy to this day and can also help to explain the current Casamance Conflict.

The Casamance region has a long and diverse history, with the Bainuks being the first people to settle the region. Little is documented about the precise history of the Casamance before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1645, who sailed up the river Casamance and established a trading post in Ziguinchor (de Jong, 1994). The arriving Europeans took note of the people who lived in the region, making a distinction between who they referred to as the Bainuks and the Falupos, which the French would later refer to as the Floups, roughly translating to “swamp people” due to the mangroves that cover most of the lower Casamance (de Jong, 1994). These Falupos from the southern bank of the Casamance gradually moved to the north into Bainuk territory, causing the latter group to lose terrain. De Jong (1994) notes that this Falupo expansion did not happen through conquest but mostly through cultural assimilation between the two peoples. 

The region has historically also been part of the state of Kaabu, initially being a strong military province of the Mali empire before becoming an independent kingdom after the fall of the Mali Empire in the sixteenth century. The state of Kaabu managed to survive until the 19th century, keeping many of the values from the Mali empire within their society, covering the current Gambia, Casamance and Guinea-Bissau (Canós-Donnay, 2019). According to Green (2019), the federation had a fierce warrior aristocracy, knows as the Nyantios, whose power and influence would influence the area for the upcoming centuries. Although Kaabu was referred to as a kingdom, it should be seen as a confederation of territories and people linked by ties of collaboration and subordination often prone to dynamic change, giving each province relative autonomy (Canós-Donnay, 2019). 

When the Portuguese first arrived in the area of the Casamance, they were not welcomed with open arms. The Casamance was known in the early 17th century as a place where ships would routinely get robbed and their crews held for ransom by the people living in the area (Green, 2019). Nevertheless, as mentioned before, the Portuguese established a trading post in what is now Ziguinchor in 1645. Reports are conflicting about the origins of the city, with de Jong (1994) mentioning that it was a Portuguese trading post but other sources such as the city hall of Ziguinchor claiming that the town was founded by the Izguicho, a sub-group of the Bainuks and that the name of the city means “land of the Izguicho”, with “-or” being a suffix meaning “land of”. Another possible origin of the city’s name is based on a Portuguese phrase meaning “I descended and they cried”, although the city of Ziguinchor states that this is a less likely origin (Histoire De Ziguinchor  | Mairie Ziguinchor, 2024).

During the early 19th century, the Portuguese present in the Casamance reported that almost all the inhabitants of the Lower Casamance were Falupos (de Jong, 1994). During the 1840s, the region experienced some social and religious change. Historically, the region has been following local animist religions but this changed during the 1840s when Muslim influence from the North slowly crossed the Gambia and reached the territories of the Northern Casamance (Nugent, 2007). This led to clashes between the Mandika from the Gambia, who were predominantly Muslim, and the Jolas from the Casamance, who followed animist beliefs. According to Nugent (2007), these battles, which were fought between the northern bank of the Casamance and the southern bank of the Gambia, lasted for three decades with little gain on either side. This power struggle stopped around 1875, when the last Sonkike king from the Gambia was forced to convert to Islam. However, this conversion created a new type of Muslim warlords, who carried out raids against the Jola populations in the Casamance. One of the most notable warlords was Fondé Sylla, from current-day Gambia.

These raids were cyclical in nature, with warlords raiding Jola villages during the harvest season when the crops were ripe and the cattle were fat, allowing warlords to capture significant amounts of food and people (Nugent 2007). Sylla captured villages as well, building mosques in the new territories and posting talibés to spread Islamic values. This caused tensions with the British and the French, who had their own interests in the region.