In 1795 Dakar's Lebou walled off a peninsula and declared a republic
Dakar, Senegal's capital, sits on Cap-Vert, the westernmost point of mainland Africa. Before it was a French colonial showpiece, its Lebou fishing villages rebelled against the ruler of Cayor, built laterite ramparts across the whole peninsula and set up an independent theocratic state with its seat at Ndakaaru.
The Lebu, a seafaring branch of the Wolof, had settled Cap-Vert by the 15th century at the latest, and their first villages, Ouakam, Ngor, Yoff and Hann, remain recognisably Lebou quarters today. Portuguese sailors entered the bay in 1444, and Diogo Gomes established friendly relations in 1456. They named the anchorage after a local ruler, and it became a regular halt for the India fleets of the early 1500s, which repaired ships, drew water and bought food there in both directions. During a stop in 1501, Amerigo Vespucci began forming his idea that America was a new world.
Offshore, Gorée became a slaving base for the Portuguese by 1536. The Dutch seized it in 1588 and gave it its present name after an island at home; after several changes of owner it fell to an English admiral in 1664 and to France in 1677, which held it from then on. Traders of mixed African and European descent dominated its slave business, and the House of Slaves was built there in 1776. In the 17th century a Lebou village called Ndakaaru grew up on the mainland opposite, selling food and water to the European post.
By the 1780s Dakar was among the largest towns of Cayor, a kingdom that had broken from the Jolof Empire in 1549. In 1795 Muslim clerics rose against Cayor's ruler, the Damel, and the Lebou joined them under the Diop family. When the rebels were beaten at Loofe, the Lebou retreated to the peninsula, walled it from Yoff to Hann, and repelled the Damel's troops. Their leader Jaal Joop proclaimed the state the French later called the Lebou Republic, and the Senegalese government still recognises its traditional head, the Serigne of Ndakaaru.
France annexed the mainland in the 19th century, and the port grew until Dakar displaced Saint-Louis as capital of French West Africa in 1902. It was briefly capital of the Mali Federation in 1959 and 1960, then of independent Senegal from 1960. The department has about 1.28 million people and the metropolitan area reached 4 million in 2023.
Source: Dakar
