As the name suggests, the country's borders follow the river Gambia and not much else.

And in spite of it being a European colonial invention, its people having a lot in common with the Senegalese.

And both nations leaders at one point actively wanting to unite, the Gambia are still an independent nation.

Which raises the question, why?

Why does the Gambia exist as an independent state?

To begin, what's now the Gambia was in the 15th century a part of the Mali Empire.

Like many other African states at this time, Mali was visited by Europeans.

In this case, it was the Portuguese who quickly became an important trade partner.

However, Portugal was soon troubled with a spot of non-existence when it was conquered by Spain.

The Portuguese royal family in exile quickly sold the rights to trade with Gambia to England.

Which promptly began exploring the area and they built some forts along the mouth of the river, but the English presence there was minimal until the 18th century.

At this point, England was now a part of the United Kingdom and the UK had a long-standing rivalry with France.

Which was also trying to monopolize trade in the region.

When the Seven Years War started, the British seized all of French Senegal.

This was reversed after Britain's defeat during the American Revolutionary War and Britain only retained the lands either side of the river.

And after the Napoleonic Wars were done, Britain was slightly confused about what to do with the region.

It had primarily been used for the export of slaves to the new world.

But since that was on the decline, it seemed that the only reason for keeping the Gambia would be to annoy France.

As such, new plan, get rid of it.

In the late 19th century, Britain and France discussed what Gambia would be swapped for.

In return for Britain abandoning the Gambia, France would renounce its claim to the north of Sierra Leone.

This never happened though, because France soon found itself at war with Prussia.

This mattered because one, the French were kind of busy and so didn't have much time to negotiate the transfer of these lands.

And two, giving France a valuable port whilst it was at war with Prussia would be seen by those in Berlin as Britain giving its support to France.

As such, no deal.

After France's defeat and its changing government, another proposal was put forward.

The Gambia would merge with Senegal in return for France giving up the Ivory Coast.

This was a much better deal for Britain and so obviously the government was for the trade.

The problem was that France was still seen as a potential enemy and importantly, many feared that setting the precedent of just giving away a colony would mean that no one would want to invest in them.

As such, the Gambia remained under British control until its independence in 1965, half a decade after Senegal.

The new governments of these nations sought to build close ties and in the early 1980s, both formed the Senegambian Confederation.

The problem was that while Senegal saw it as a bridge to unification, the Gambians saw it as an easy way of not having to pay for their own defense.

Both sides discussed further integration, but the Gambian government didn't want to lose their own power or give up their economic policy.

And in 1989, Senegal withdrew from the Confederation.

And thereafter, the Gambia remains an independent nation.

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