The Samorian state was a short-lived West African state that existed from roughly 1860 until 1898, although dates vary from source to source. It spanned from what is now southwestern Mali and upper Guinea, with its capital in Bissandugu; it expanded further south into Northern Sierra Leone and east into northern Ivory Coast before its downfall.
Name
The state founded by Samory Toure did not have an official name. Scholars often refer to it as 'Samory's state/empire' or a version thereof. At the time the inhabitants commonly called the state Samoridugu, roughly translating to 'Samori's home', for lack of a better name. This name, however, originated from 's memoirs of his time as a French colonial officer and was derived from his conflation of Samory Toure's larger empire and Wassoulou, a historical region conquered by Toure and his army. With his Kaba allies, Toure conquered Kouroussa, Norassoba, Baro and other important towns. He also established diplomatic relations with Aguibou Tall (son of Umar Tall) of Dinguiraye in 1878, then an alliance with the almamy of the Imamate of Futa Jallon Ibrahima Sory Dara in 1879.
The army captured the Bure gold mining district on the border of Mali and Guinea to become more financially stable and continue trade, and by 1878 Toure had declared himself Faama (Emperor), with Bissandugu as his capital. He took up the Islamic title of Almamy in 1884.
In the aftermath of Samaya, some of the leaders of Bamako began making overtures to Toure. The French, eager to possess this key strategic town on the Niger, rushed a force to establish a fort there on February 1, 1883. Kebe Brema, Samori's brother, led a force to Bamako to lure the French out of their defenses. They fought two battles at Woyo Wayanko creek in early April, with Kebe Brema winning the first but eventually being forced to retreat.
In 1885, Toure sent men to Freetown in Sierra Leone to propose that the empire become a British protectorate. The British rejected the offer in order to avoid conflict with France, but allowed increased trade in the form of selling more rifles to Samory's army.
When an 1885 French expedition attempted to seize the Buré gold fields by capturing Niagassola, Toure counter-attacked. Dividing his army into three columns, he quickly forced them to withdraw. The French were compelled to negotiate the Treaty of Kenieba Koura, signed on March 28, 1886. This pact recognized the Niger as far upstream as Siguiri as the border between the French and Samoridugu.
War with Kenedougou
At roughly the same time, the frontier on the Bagoe river between Samoridugu and the Kenedougou Kingdom was descending into violence as forces from both sides raided into the other, and Tieba Traore's army sought to spark a rebellion in the Wassoulou region. With famine and instability widespread, when Samory's forces started forcing conversion to Islam and destroying local sacred sites in 1885, the populace rebelled. Rebels massacred sofa garrisons at Siondougou and Fulala. By the end of the 1887 dry season, the last holdouts had been starved into submission.
In March 10, 1891, a French force under Colonel Louis Archinard set out from Nyamina for a surprise attack on Kankan. He expected to subdue Samory in a few weeks with a lightning campaign. Knowing his fortifications could not stop French artillery, Toure began a war of manoeuvre and scorched earth. Archinard had little trouble capturing Kankan on April 11 and then a deserted Bissandougou, but Toure had left little worth taking.
Archinard's replacement, Colonel Humbert arrived in Kankan in January 1892 and led a small, well-supplied force of picked men on another attack on Bissandougou. The French installed garrisons at Bissandougou and Kerouane. Samory convened another council at Frankonedou on May 9, 1892 where they decided to move east and rebase the empire in Kabadougou, devastating each area before evacuating it to delay French pursuit.
During the first months of 1893, the French, although unable to corner Toure's armies in Guinea, did manage to capture Faranah and block resupply routes to Liberia and Sierra Leone, the army's primary source of modern weaponry. This left Samory reliant on a longer route through the Gold Coast. His vassals in Kissidougou and the rest of the western- and southernmost parts of the empire surrendered. Samory Toure's empire in the Manding region was now gone.
Kong and Bouna
thumb|Ruins of Samori Ture's residence at [[Bondoukou]]
Samory moved his base out of Kabadougou toward the Bandama and Comoe River to Dabakala in February 1895. His objective, and the key to the whole region, was the ancient Dyula trading city of Kong. The French sought to secure the city by putting together a column led by Col. Monteil in August 1894, but it did not leave Grand Bassam, however, until February 1895. Its passage sparked a popular resistance movement. Monteil stumbled onto the sofas on March 2; in a battle on the 14th, the French were forced to retreat and abandon Kong, which pledged fealty to Samory in April. The new empire in the east would enjoy nearly two years without significant French intervention.
The fall of the Kenedougou capital of Sikasso on May 1, 1898 permitted French colonial forces to launch a concentrated assault against Toure. He was forced to migrate once again, this time towards Liberia. Hoping to live off the land while marching, a combination of the unfamiliar mountainous territory of western Ivory Coast, hostile locals, and colonial attacks turned the campaign into a disaster. Thousands died of starvation. Using information from sofa deserters, the French captain Henri Gouraud surprised Toure's forces at Guelemou on September 29, 1898, and captured the Almamy without a fight.
While this was a groundbreaking and potentially revolutionary solution to one of Samory's key challenges, namely access to modern weaponry without having to draw down the human or capital reserves of the empire, the domestic arms industry did not fully resolve the problem. Despite the large-scale organization, the blacksmiths were never able to provide the quantity of guns necessary to supply the entire army. Samoridugu also did not have the technology to build blast furnaces, and without this the casting of artillery was impossible, and making quality gun barrels was also very difficult. Importation from British Sierra Leone remained a critical source of weaponry for Samory Toure.
Society and religion
Particularly after the 1884 codification of Islam as the state religion, it was an important structure and model for building the empire and uniting its diverse inhabitants. Mosques were built in many conquered areas, a judicial system based on Islam principles was put in place, and animist practices were suppressed. The state sponsored Quranic schools throughout the empire, and Samory Toure would often inspect schools in areas he passed through, interviewing students, rewarding good teachers and publicly reprimanding bad ones. In strongly animist areas, the population found this Islamization to be a threat to their cultural traditions and after 1885 revolts became more common; these had to be put down on top of fighting a war against the French. Overall, Samory Toure's heavy-handed methods of proselytization largely failed, and these animist communities converted to Islam only after the fall of the Samorian Empire.