Samory Touré

Who is Samory Touré?

Samory Touré was a Mande warrior-ruler born in the Sanankoro region of what is now upper Guinea. Beginning as a trader and soldier, he built one of the most formidable states in nineteenth-century West Africa, the Wassoulou (Mandinka) Empire, through a combination of military organization, Islamic administration, and shrewd diplomacy. From the 1870s onward he led a prolonged and determined resistance against French colonial expansion across the region that today spans Guinea, Mali, and Ivory Coast, repeatedly outmaneuvering French forces for nearly two decades through mobile warfare and strategic retreats. His army was notable for producing its own firearms and for disciplined organization rare among contemporary West African states. He was finally captured by the French in 1898 and exiled to Gabon, where he died in 1900. He is remembered across the region, and especially in Guinea, as a symbol of African resistance to colonial conquest, and he was the great-grandfather of Guinea's first president, Ahmed Sékou Touré.

Sources: Yves Person, Samori: une révolution dyula (Institut Français d'Afrique Noire, 1968-1975) · Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Samory Touré"