Editing The Gambia (section)

==== Slavery ====
As many as three million people may have been taken as [[slavery|slaves]] from this general region during the three centuries that the [[transatlantic slave trade]] operated. It is not known how many people were taken as slaves by intertribal wars before the transatlantic slave trade began. Most of those taken were sold by other Africans to Europeans: some were prisoners of intertribal wars; some were victims sold because of unpaid debts, and many others were simply victims of kidnapping.<ref>{{cite book |last=Park |first=Mungo |edition=1887 Cassell & Company |title=Travels in the Interior of Africa |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5305 |volume=II |chapter=Chapter XXII – War and Slavery |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090924192512/http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5305 |archive-date=24 September 2009 |via=Project Gutenberg }}</ref>

[[File:James Island and Fort Gambia.jpg|thumb|A map of [[James Island (Gambia)|James Island]] and [[Fort Gambia]]]]

Traders initially sent people to Europe to work as servants until the market for labour expanded in the [[West Indies]] and North America in the 18th century. In 1807, the United Kingdom abolished the [[History of slavery|slave trade]] throughout its empire. It also tried, unsuccessfully,{{Clarify|date=July 2024}} to end the slave trade in The Gambia.{{Citation needed|date=January 2025}} Slave ships intercepted by the [[Royal Navy]]'s [[West Africa Squadron]] in the Atlantic were also returned to The Gambia, with people who had been slaves released on [[MacCarthy Island]] far up The Gambia River where they were expected to establish new lives.<ref name=xyz>{{cite journal |doi=10.2307/3060072 |jstor=3060072 |title=Guests of the Crown: Convicts and Liberated Slaves on McCarthy Island, the Gambia |journal=The Geographical Journal |volume=160 |issue=2 |pages=136–142 |year=1994 |last=Webb |first=Patrick |bibcode=1994GeogJ.160..136W |author-link=Patrick Webb (nutritionist) }}</ref> The British established the military post of Bathurst (now [[Banjul]]) in 1816.