Ëbrié Lagoon

The Ébrié Lagoon lies within the forested coastal world of Ivory Coast. Its early history must be understood through that wider region, rather than through the later cities on its banks. Before the sixteenth century, migrations brought ancestors of several present coastal peoples southward, absorbing or displacing earlier inhabitants. In the southern forest belt, settlements commonly consisted of villages or groups of villages. Agriculture and hunting sustained these communities, while long-distance merchants mediated their contacts with more distant societies. The large states associated with the trans-Saharan trade belonged chiefly to the north; Mali's territory in the later Ivory Coast reached only its northwestern corner. Along the coast, European contact developed unevenly. A French mission appeared at Assinie in 1687, but remained precarious, and lasting French establishment followed much later. These are regional developments surrounding the lagoon, not traces that its individual shores shared one ruler or that the Assinie mission stood here.