The scarcity of documents makes it hard to outline the dynamics of political, social, and economic life in Senegambia in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. At that time the region was coming into direct contact with Europe by way of the Atlantic. Senegambian societies shared a common civilization in which political and social systems were closely knit, and both were based on an autonomous subsistence economy.

Politically, societies here were initially organized along kinship lines. Later they shifted to a monarchical system based on violence and inequality. The caste system which supported the hierarchical ordering of social life served to rationalize this inequality. On the whole, however, the selfsufficient domestic subsistence economy did much to attenuate peasant exploitation by an aristocracy often excluded from long-distance trade.

Political and social organization: the system of castes and orders

Senegambia contained two types of societies. The first, egalitarian in outlook, derived political power from lineage. The second, hierarchical in outlook, imposed monarchical power upon the lineage-based system. This was done within the rigid framework of Kafu or Lamanat authority, or under the authority of the Ardo. Under the Kafu and Lamanat systems, land rights were linked to political or religious power under the authority of a territorial chief. That same chief functioned as a community head. For nomadic peoples like the Peul, or for populations forced into migration, the Ardo was primarily the head of a community on the move, prior to its settlement on a given territory.