Editing History of Guinea (section)

==Colonial era==
[[File:Carte de l'Afrique-Occidentale française, 1914.svg|thumb|Map of [[French West Africa]] circa 1913]]
Guinea's colonial period began with French military penetration into the area in the early to mid-19th century, as France replaced Portugal as the dominant European power in the region. The French exerted control by building forts and occupying coastal towns, then gradually expanding inland. The French Empire first administrated the territory as part of its Senegalese colony, later establishing the colony of [[Rivières du Sud]] in 1882 and finally the colony of [[French Guinea]] in 1891.<ref>Suret-Canale, Jean. Guinea in the Colonial System, in Essays on African History. Translated, Hurst (1980) pp 111-147.</ref> French domination was assured by the defeat in 1898 of the armies of [[Samori Touré]], the Mansa (or Emperor) of the [[Ouassoulou]] state and leader of Malinké descent, whose defeat gave France control of what today is Guinea and adjacent areas.<ref>Ajayi, J.F. Ade, ed. (1989). ''UNESCO General History of Africa''. Vol. VI: Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s. Berkeley: University of California Press. {{isbn|978-92-3-101712-4}}</ref>

France negotiated Guinea's present boundaries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with other nations, namely the British colony of [[Sierra Leone]], Portuguese colonial Guinea (now [[Guinea-Bissau]]), and the United States-backed [[Liberia]].