The Kingdom of Fouladou
1867 – 1903 · Kolda
After the fall of Gaabu at Kansala in 1867, the Firdu province was led by the Mandinka chief Karabunting Sané, whose tata stood at Kansonko. In August 1869 Molo Egué, the future Alfa Molo Baldé, called on the Fulani to free the Firdu: Kansonko was attacked at dawn and burned. He set up his capital at Ndorna, where he built his tata, and founded the kingdom of Fouladou in Upper Casamance. At his death in 1881, at Dandu, his son Moussa Molo succeeded him. In 1886, allied with the French, he repelled Mamadou Lamine Dramé’s attack on Fort Bakel. From May 1903, under growing pressure from the French administration, he took refuge in the Gambia with British help. After a brief exile in Sierra Leone in 1919, he lived at Kesserkounda, in Gambian territory, until April 1931.
Sources
- Persée — J. Girard, « Note sur l’histoire locale du Fouladou » (Journal de la Société des Africanistes, 1964)
- Persée — « Portraits de chefs casamançais du XIXe siècle » (Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 1971)
- Ch. Roche, Histoire de la Casamance : conquête et résistance, 1850-1920 (Karthala)
- Cairn — D. T. Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest, ch. XVI « La chute de Kansala »
- M. M. Sow, Histoire du Fouladou (Casamance) : des Molo aux élites politiques modernes, 1867-1963 (Dakar, 2023)
Kingdom fact sheet : Le royaume du Fouladou.