Kingdoms & polities · c. 17th–19th centuries
The Mende frontier
The southward Mende expansion that shaped the northern Vai and Gola country and carried Poro and Sande with it.
Biography
Mende-speaking war-leaders moved south and west from the seventeenth century, absorbing and allying with the peoples already in place. The expansion was slow, town by town, and its instruments were the war-fence (kpaa), the alliance marriage and the initiation society.
Where Mende influence reached, Poro and Sande were reorganised on a Mende model, and the vocabulary of chiefship changed with them. The border country north-west of Cape Mount, contested between Vai, Gola and Mende speakers, is the residue of that movement.
Historical significance
Explains why the northern Liberian border zone is culturally continuous with Sierra Leone, and why Poro looks the same on both sides of a line drawn in 1885.
Timeline
- 17th c.Mende-speaking groups move south from the Sudanic margin
- 18th c.War-fence towns established in the Vai and Gola borderlands
- 19th c.Poro and Sande reorganised on the Mende pattern
Related entries
References
- Abraham, Arthur (1978). Mende Government and Politics under Colonial Rule.
- Jones, Adam (1983). From Slaves to Palm Kernels.
Suggested reading
- Abraham (1978).