The Gambia, a country in West Africa, was a British colony from 1820 until it gained its independence in 1965, and then became a fully independent republic in 1970. Because of the small size of the country (11,300 square kilometers) and its population (1,967,709 in 2015), it has never had a large army. Even under British rule, there was only a small garrison there. Indeed, the British had wanted to swap Gambia with other territories but never managed to reach an agreement. With the country entirely surrounded by the French West African colony of Senegal, most of the economy of Gambia under the British was through the production of groundnuts. Certainly, the population had been badly affected by the slave trade, which had seen many ...