Guinea

5 Pages 1199 Words

Guinea is one of the most diverse and, and potentially one of the most successful, countries located within Africa. It is located on the western edge of the continent, bordered principally by Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Mali. Its history is fairly turbulent by western standards, but when compared with its neighbors, it has been a relatively peaceful nation. In its earliest days, it was considered a section of Ghana, and then part of the Mali Empire. But beginning in the mid 1400’s, European explorers, most notably the Portuguese, began to travel to Africa’s western coast and one of the frequent ports lay in what is now Guinea. Soon, French, British and the Portuguese all were visiting the region in search of Africa’s most in demand supply at the time, slaves. The European slave traders took a large portion of their victims from general geographical region that Guinea now lays within, in fact one of the principal slave trading stations was located in the port city of Fida. It is estimated that over 400,000 slaves taken from their land came from what is now Guinea, most bound for Brazil or conquered nations within the Spanish Empire. But by the end of the 19th century, the slave trade was mostly out of business, and the European traders came to realize the other assets that the nation was able to offer, palm oil and peanuts being chief among these.
At that point, however, French power was at its peak and they claimed the area as their own, naming it French Guinea in 1891. For the next 50 years, the country was ripe with strife, as was the case of most occupied nations and did not enjoy any major cultural or economic growth. But with the onset of World War II, the rich mineral deposits within Guinea began to be exploited for the military industrial complex. The most sought after mineral both at that time and in modern Guinea was bauxite, the ore most essential to the production of aluminum. With the newfound prosperity being most...