Mansa Koli Bojang, the Last King of Kombo and his British Ally: Loyalty meets Neutrality

Abstract

This article reconstructs the pre-colonial intercultural encounter between the warrior-class of the Soninké and the first British settlement in West Africa situated at the mouth of the River Gambia. By framing the vast topic with the diplomatic endeavour of king Koli Bojang to win the British as an ally in his war against the Muslims and with the response of the administration of thesettlement to it in the first half of the 1870s, I will show in reference to the letter-correspondence between the king and the administrators, and by analysing the colonial records and oral traditions that honour based loyalty clashed with biased neutrality. In detail, the Soninké were loyal to their British neighbours, because they considered them as friends in the Manding-meaning of the term; the British on the other hand were disloyal to their long time partners, due to their foreign policy of neutrality, even though the reality proves that the officers on the spot were partial, at their own discretion, being driven by sympathies and ideologies. This biased neutrality though contradicted the warrior ethics of the Soninké, resulting in their rejection of the British offer to mediate, since a mediator, through their prism, had to embody high moral values, e.g. honesty and truthfulness.