Gaye Sowe and Maria Saine 2. Historical Background It is undisputed that The Gambian legal system and most of its laws are indelibly marked by colonial rule. The legal regime on citizenship in The Gambia is also unable to escape the trappings of its colonial history. To better understand the citizenship regime of The Gambia, its historical context needs to be looked at. The historical evolution of citizenship law in The Gambia needs to be looked at from two different periods – the period of colonial rule and the post-independence period. 2.1 Pre-colonial and colonial era Before the establishment of British colonial administration in The Gambia, the inhabitants (i.e. the Mandinka, Fula, Wolof, Jola, Serahuli and Serer etc.) had an indigenous system of administration of justice administering both customary and sharia laws.3 Customary law, which is unwritten, is indigenous to the said tribes and was the only applicable law before the advent of Islam in The Gambia. Sharia law on the other hand was written but it was not indigenous to the people of The Gambia. Both laws (i.e Customary and Sharia), however, applied to the said communities side by side. By the 15th Century, the area now known as The Gambia started seeing the arrival of Europeans who were involved in trading. This was followed by the arrival of European missionaries. The Portuguese were the first to arrive, followed by the British, French, Dutch and Courlanders (from today’s Latvia). The arrival of these Europeans led to the final occupation of the area now referred to The Gambia by the British, and the establishment of the British colonial administration in the last two decades of the 19th Century. At first, the British colonial administration was limited to the crown colony it established at James Island, George Town and Banjulo Island, now referred to as Banjul. The British declared a protectorate over the hinterland when they realised the need to maintain order and abolish slave trade in the hinterland. While The Gambia Colony was administered directly, The Gambia Protectorate was administered by and through traditional representatives of the people. The indigenous and traditional administrative institutions hence served as a link between British colonial administration and the natives of the protectorate. The colonial administration passed a series of ordinances to strengthen their control of the Colony and the Protectorate. One of such ordinances was the 1894 Protectorate Ordinance which recognised the applicability of customary law and procedure throughout the Protectorate in so far as such was not “repugnant to natural justice, equity and good conscience” nor inconsistent with any written law from the time being in force in the Colony or Protectorate. This ordinance established the Protectorate over the hinterland. The Protectorate was divided into provinces and each province was made up of administrative districts. While the application of customary law remained limited to the indigenous tribes in the provinces, the application of local colonial legislations and received English law was extended to the provinces following constitutional and political developments. 3 See generally: Flora Ogbuitepu, ‘Guide to Gambian Legal Information’, Hauser Global Law School Program, New York University, 2012 available here: https://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Gambia.html; Patience Sonko-Godwin, ‘Ethnic Groups of the Senegambia: A Brief History’, Banjul: Sunrise Publishers, 1988; Patience Sonko-Godwin, ‘Social and Political Structures in the Precolonial Periods (Ethnic Groups of the Senegambian Region)’, Banjul: Sunrise Publishers, 1997; and Fafa Edrissa M’bai, A Senegambian Insight, S.l., 1992. 2 RSCAS/GLOBALCIT-CR 2021/7 © 2021 Author(s)