Kingdoms & polities · c. 1235–c. 1600
The Mali Empire and the forest frontier
The western Sudanese empire whose southern commercial frontier reached the northern edge of the Liberian forest.
Biography
Mali never governed the Liberian rainforest. What it did was pull it into a system: gold, kola and cloth moving north, salt and horses and Islam moving south, with Mande-speaking traders — Dyula and their successors — running the intermediate towns.
The Mande migrations that placed Vai, Kpelle, Loma, Mano and Gio populations in what is now Liberia are the demographic residue of that pull. When the empire contracted after the sixteenth century, the commercial road it had built did not close; it was inherited by the successor states, and ultimately by Bopolu.
Historical significance
Establishes that the Liberian interior was a province of a continental economy centuries before the Atlantic reached it.
Timeline
- c. 1235Mali consolidated under Sundiata
- 14th c.Kola and gold trade links the forest to the Sudan
- 15th–16th c.Mande migrations into the forest belt
- c. 1600Imperial authority gone; the trade roads remain
Related entries
References
- Levtzion, Nehemia (1973). Ancient Ghana and Mali.
- Person, Yves (1961). 'Les Kissi et leurs statuettes de pierre.'
Suggested reading
- Levtzion (1973).