Samory Touré

Samory Touré (circa 1830-1900), West African empire builder and fighter against French colonialism. Born into the Touré clan in the Beyla region of present-day Guinea, he became a soldier in the local conflicts that ravaged the area around the middle of the 19th century and soon began to exploit the situation to his own ends. By 1870 he had forged a large private army, with which he eventually conquered an area reaching from the Fouta Djallon (Futa Jallon) in the west to the Ashanti country of present-day Ghana in the east. Establishing his capital at Bissandougou in what is now the Côte d'Ivoire, he tried at first to hold off the encroaching French by diplomacy and negotiations but later waged a brilliant, although ultimately unsuccessful, guerrilla war against them. Captured by the French in 1898, Samory Touré died two years later in exile in Gabon. He was the great-grandfather of Sékou Touré, the first president of modern Guinea.