Southern Senegambia in the World System Dynamics: from Medieval to the Atlantic Era

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify the shift in the focus of academic scholarship in the use of theoretical and conceptual tools of inquiry in the examination of restructuring world economy within the framework of world system analysis. It further focuses on the rapid social, political, and economic transformation and change as consequence of the Malian political hegemony that led to the reinforcement of Mandinka-speaking cultural and political domination through the establishment of Kabu and other Manding principalities along the banks of The Gambia River prior to the expansion of European capitalist economic advancement in the fifteenth century. It also demonstrates the manifest transformation after the withdrawal of the Malian imperial control and the subsequent rise of the Atlantic trading system, which facilitated the establishment of capitalist world economy that also gave rise to European competition over the control of strategic viable commercial sphere of influence in Southern Senegambia.