Samori Ture

Samori Ture was a West African military and political leader who built the Wassoulou Empire in the late nineteenth century and resisted French colonial expansion for more than a decade. Using mobile warfare, trade networks and a disciplined army, he controlled territories across parts of present-day Guinea, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire before sustained French campaigns forced his retreat eastward.

Samori created a disciplined army and mobile state across parts of present-day Guinea, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire. He fought successive French campaigns for more than a decade before his capture in 1898.

Thomas Pakenham’s The Scramble for Africa: The White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 moves across the Congo basin, the Nile valley, West Africa, Ethiopia and southern Africa to show that partition required diplomacy, deception and repeated military conquest. African rulers and commanders—including Menelik II, Samori Ture and Lobengula—negotiated, resisted or adapted under extreme pressure, while the Mahdist state and the Fashoda confrontation reveal the intersection of African politics with European rivalry.