The Gambia President Adama Barrow changed the name back to "Republic of The Gambia". Arab traders provided the first written accounts of the Gambia area in the ninth and tenth centuries. During the tenth century, Muslim merchants and scholars established communities in several West African commercial centres. Both groups established trans-Saharan trade routes, leading to a large export trade of local people as slaves, also gold and ivory, as well as imports of manufactured goods. By the 11th or 12th century, the rulers of kingdoms such as Takrur, a monarchy centred on the Senegal River just to the north, ancient Ghana and
History of the Gambia Gambia. The colony assumed an importance to the French as a possible trade route, proposed cession of the Gambia for some other part of West Africa was first mooted in 1861. It was seriously discussed again during 1865 and 1866. In 1870 and 1876, negotiations were entered into between the French and British government over the proposed cession of the Gambia in exchange for other territories in West Africa. However, the proposal aroused such opposition in Parliament and among various mercantile bodies in England, as well as among the native inhabitants of the Gambia, that the British government was unable