Samori Ture

Samori Ture was Mandinka, born in c. 1830 in Manyambaladugu (in the Kankan region). Kankan is the second capital city located in eastern part of Guinea West, the son of Dyula traders. He grew up as West Africa was being transformed through growing contacts and trade with the Europeans in commodities, artisan goods and products. European trade made some African trading states rich. The trade in firearms changed traditional West African patterns of warfare and heightened the severity of conflicts, increasing the number of fatalities. Early in his life, Ture converted to Islam.[1][2]^: 128

In 1848, Samori's mother was captured in the course of war by Séré-Burlay, of the Cissé clan. He then went to exchange himself for his mother as a result of his love for her. After arranging his mother's freedom, Samori entered into service to the Cissé, and learned to handle firearms. According to tradition, he remained "seven years, seven months, seven days" before fleeing with his mother.

He joined the Bérété army, the enemies of the Cissé, for two years before rejoining his people, the Kamara. Named Kélétigui (war commander) at Dyala in 1861, Ture took an oath to protect his people against both the Bérété and the Cissé. He created a professional army and placed close relations, notably his brothers and his childhood friends, in positions of command.

The French began to expand in West Africa in the late 1870s, pushing eastward from Senegal to reach the upper reaches of the Nile in what is now Sudan. They sought to drive south-east to link up with their bases in Côte d'Ivoire. These actions put them directly into conflict with Ture.

In February 1882, a French expedition attacked one of Ture's armies that was besieging Keniera. Ture drove off the French, but he was alarmed at the discipline and firepower which their troops commanded.

He approached dealing with the French in several ways. First, he expanded south-westward to secure a line of communication with Liberia. In January 1885 he sent an embassy to Freetown, offering to put his kingdom under British protection. The British did not want to confront the French at this time, but they allowed Ture to buy large numbers of modern repeating rifles.

When an 1885 French expedition under Col. A. V. A. Combes attempted to seize the Buré gold fields, Ture counter-attacked. Dividing his army into three mobile columns, he worked his way around the French lines of communication and forced them to withdraw quickly.

Samori's army was well equipped with modern firearms and a complex structure of permanent units. His army was divided into an infantry wing of sofa (Mandinka for infantry, usually slaves) and a cavalry wing. By 1887, Samori could field 30,000 to 35,000 infantry and about 3,000 cavalry, in regular squadrons of 50 each. But, the French did not want to give him time to consolidate his position.

The pauper's grave of French soldiers during the battle of bissandou

In March 1891, a French force under Colonel Louis Archinard launched a direct attack on Kankan. Knowing his fortifications could not stop French artillery, Ture began a war of manoeuvre. Despite victories against isolated French columns (for example at Dabadugu in September 1891), Ture failed to push the French from the core of his kingdom. In June 1892, Archinard's replacement, Colonel Humbert, leading a small, well-supplied force of picked men, captured Ture's capital of Bissandugu.

In another blow, the British had stopped selling breechloading guns to Ture in accordance with the Brussels Conference Act of 1890.[2]^: 134

Ture shifted his base of operations eastward, toward the Bandama and Comoe River in Dabakala after residing in the Kabadougou Kingdom and obtaining extra forces commanded by the faama. He instituted a scorched earth policy, devastating each area before he evacuated it. Though this manoeuvre cut Ture off from Sierra Leone and Liberia, his last sources of modern weapons, it also delayed French pursuit.[5] After the spring of 1893, the French partially succeeded in cutting off Ture's sources of weapons which was supplied by British traders since the late 1880s. Ture tried to negotiate with the British authorities in the Gold Coast to work together against the French, but the British refused to intervene directly against France.[6]

He then tried to build an anti-European alliance with the Ashanti Empire, but this attempt failed when the Ashanti Empire was defeated by the British; several skirmishes between Ture's forces and the Southern Nigeria Regiment occurred in 1897. The fall of other African armies, particularly Babemba Traoré at Sikasso, permitted French colonial forces to launch a concentrated assault against Ture. By 1898, he lost almost all of his territory and fled into the mountains of western Ivory Coast. He was captured on 29 September 1898 by the French captain Henri Gouraud and was exiled to Gabon despite his request to return to southern Guinea. [2]^{: 134–135}

Ture died in captivity on an island in the Ogooué River, near Ndjolé on June 2, 1900, following a bout of pneumonia.[2]^: 135 His tomb is at the Camayanne Mausoleum, within the gardens of Conakry Grand Mosque.

• He is considered a powerful example of resistance to French colonial forces and known for his building collaboration among diverse groups, as well as his war strategies.
• His great-grandson, Ahmed Sékou Touré, was elected as the first President of Guinea after it became independent.

• 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 Bembeya Jazz National commemorated Ture in their 1969 release Regard sur le passé. The album draws upon Manding Djeli traditions 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 Alpha Blondy eulogises Ture in his hit song "Bory Samory" from the Album Cocody Rock.

• 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).
• 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).
• Oliver, Roland, and G. N. Sanderson, eds. The Cambridge History of Africa, Vol. 6: from 1870–1905 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Samory Touré.

• Samori biography
• West Africa; the fight for survival
• New York Times article about his capture