The Europeans first arrived in the 1400s when the Portuguese arrived and established trade - it was the Portuguese who first introduced the iconinc Baobab tree.

Over time the area was exploited to a greater and greater degrees by colonists from various parts of Europe including, most influentially, the French and British.

During this period much of the natural forrest was cut down, big game was hunted to extinction and humans were taken as slaves and shipped west to the American continent. It was also during this time that the English language was introduced and to a lesser degree the Christian religion.

The main legacy of this time is the European languages that are now used as the official languages or the region (English in The Gambia and French in Senegal) although not everyone speaks them.

The division of the old Mali nation into modern day Mail, Gambia and Senegal was also a result of the colonisation so the links between Gambia and Senegal are usually close as  individual tribes and families live in both countries, so the distinction is not so clear as the map suggests.

You may find some of the use of English quite strange - you might describe the language as 'Gambian English'. Just as in the US the language contains words and sentence structures that were exported from Britain during colonial times. For instance, you might find it surprising for a local to describe his angry state using the word 'vexed'. Some word usages seem to be based on slight misunderstandings - you will hear 'boring' used to mean quiet, or 'lazy' to mean tired.

You may also hear 'toubab', or 'touba' being used to describe a white person. This seems to owe its roots to the English 'Two Bob' - a slang term for two shillings (or 10p in new money). It is likely that the locals once heard the British colonists using the term to describe amounts of money and decided to use the term as a name for them.