Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0152/01524.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 37KB | 600 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01524}
$Pretitle{374}
$Title{Guinea
Chapter 2A.   Historical Setting}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{George L. Harris}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{french
guinea
west
empire
century
trade
area
africa
modern
peul}
$Date{1973}
$Log{Figure 2.*0152401.scf
}
Country:     Guinea
Book:        Area Handbook for Guinea
Author:      George L. Harris
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 2A.   Historical Setting

     The region of West Africa constituting the present Republic of Guinea has
been inhabited since well before the Christian Era. The earliest dwellers
included the ancestors of some coastal and forest peoples of modern Guinea.
The forebears of the present principal ethnic groups, the Malinke and Peul,
came in considerable numbers, however, only after A.D. 1000. The origins of
the Soussou, the third major group, were still uncertain in the mid-1970s (see
ch. 4).

     The Malinke and the Peul have both played major roles in the history of
West Africa in an area far larger than the territory of the modern state.
These two peoples attained a high degree of social development, and both
created large, centralized political entities. In the case of the Malinke,
political control was expanded into an extensive empire known as Mali, which
at the peak of its power in the fourteenth century encompassed much of the
western Sudan (see Glossary) savanna, including the savanna region of the
present republic. Guineans consider their country's entry into history to have
begun with that empire. Much later, in the latter 1800s, the Malinke of
Guinea helped forge another empire under the leadership of Samory Toure, now
a national hero. This empire, however, was short-lived, being destroyed by the
French during the 1890s.

     The Peul became a major part of Guinean history only in the late
seventeenth century after they conquered the Fouta Djallon, the mountain
region that takes up most of Middle Guinea, and subsequently established there
an independent theocratic Muslim state (see ch. 3). That state maintained its
independence until the end of the 1800s, when sovereignty in the Fouta Djallon
passed into the hands of the French.

     The formation of Guinea as a distinct political entity was made without
the participation of any of the peoples of the modern state in the decision.
It stemmed from the European division of Africa during the great power
scramble for territory of the late 1800s and, more immediately, from the
carving up by the French of their West African conquests into administrative
units of convenience. For over half a century thereafter the French governed
Guinea, utilizing amenable indigenous chiefs (who became little more than
French agents) to assist them. At the same time the French pursued a general
policy of imparting French culture on the theory that at some date in the
future the colony would emerge with Metropolitan France into a single
community.

     World War II engendered new ideas and brought demands for greater
participation by the indigenous population in Guinean affairs. In 1946 a
beginning of local representation was offered-to all French Black
Africa-through membership in the newly established French Union. Thereby
Guinea and the other French overseas territories became integral parts of the
French Republic. World War II also brought a growth of political parties.
Among these was the Democratic Party of Guinea (Parti Democratique de
Guinee-PDG), which evolved, under the leadership of Ahmed Sekou Toure from
the early 1950s, into a mass organization having wide popular support.

     In 1956 France made further concessions to its former colonies that
implied the eventual granting of autonomy. In the following year elections in
Guinea for a territorial assembly having new internal legislative powers
placed de facto control in the hands of the PDG, which had a large majority in
the assembly. Then, in 1958, France offered a new relationship to its overseas
territories in the proposed French Community (Communaute Francaise), an
association of the members of the French Republic in a federation of equals.
Guinea's leaders, however, tended to favor a confederal setup, which would
include a strong federated West African entity that could deal with
Metropolitan France more effectively than its individual members. They also
wished that the basic right to national independence be guaranteed.

     The French president, General Charles de Gaulle, refused to agree to a
strong federation. More important, he strongly implied that independence would
mean total severance from the community. Faced by rejection of what were
considered reasonable requests, the Guinean people, led by the PDG, voted for
independence in September 1958. France immediately dissociated Guinea from the
community, and the former colonial territory began a new course as the
Republic of Guinea.

Prehistory in Guinea

     Through the mid-1970s only limited archaeological studies had been made
of the area of West Africa constituting modern Guinea. Stone tools had been
found in several localities in the country and were identified as belonging to
Late Stone Age cultures, but few of the sites had been dated. Styles of
workmanship indicated that at least some of the early toolmakers had probably
come from the Sahara region to the north and northeast. The time of this
movement was unknown, but it was speculated that changing living conditions
brought on by the gradual desiccation of the Sahara, which had become quite
noticeable by the third millennium B.C., were an important factor in the
migration.

     By A.D. 1000 peoples in the coastal region of present-day Lower Guinea,
believed to have been mainly speakers of West Atlantic languages at that time,
were generally cultivators (see ch. 4). These groups experienced little
pressure from outside their own communities, and the development of political
organization was minimal. Mostly they lived in small, independent or loosely
associated villages and hamlets. The staple crop was rice, which had been
introduced from the Niger River valley sometime during the first millennium
A.D. Fishing was also an important occupation for some, and cured fish and
salt obtained by solar evaporation were probably trade items.

     In the forested areas behind the coastal zone, in parts of the Fouta
Djallon, and in the Forest Region of modern Guinea, other speakers of West
Atlantic languages and presumably some Mande languages roamed as hunters and
gatherers. By A.D. 1000 many such groups had settled in isolated farming
villages in forest clearings, where they also practiced slash-and-burn
agriculture. Their adoption of a sedentary life had been encouraged by the new
knowledge of iron smelting and forging that brought replacement of earlier
stone farming implements by iron ones and made cultivation easier and more
productive. As in coastal areas there was little stimulus for the development
of central political controls, which was further discouraged by the difficulty
of communications.

     In contrast to the coastal and forest areas, the open land of the savanna
was conducive to the early development of settled agricultural communities.
During the first centuries of the Christian Era, technological advances in
agriculture resulted in the growth of such communities in the broad savanna
zone between the upper Niger River basin and the southern limits of the
Sahara-a zone that includes the savanna region of modern Upper Guinea. This
growth was accompanied by the gradual development of more complex societies in
which social classes became differentiated and highly organized political
institutions appeared that evolved into hereditary kingdoms.

Historical Antecedents

     Important in the rise of centralized kingdoms in the savanna area was the
expansion of trans-Saharan trade, between Mediterranean North Africa and the
western Sudan, that occurred after the introduction of the camel at about the
beginning of the Christian Era. Certain carava