Solo darboe, former diamond dealer: Transnational connections and home politics in the twentieth-century Gambia

This chapter takes its cue from the life trajectory of Solo Darboe, a former diamond dealer born in the upper Gambia in the 1930s, to illustrate early transnational aspect of twentieth-century Gambian history. I collected Solo’s life reminiscences in 2008, met many of Solo’s mates and supplemented oral sources with the available written evidence. By probing into the micro-level of Solo’s life trajectory, the analysis attempts to introduce a transnational dimension into the study of the late colonial and postcolonial Gambia, a country that many scholars tend to overlook precisely because of its small size. In so doing, the crucial role of the first twentieth-century waves of international migrations in the very process of African nation-building comes to the limelight.