Throughout the early years of French rule in West Africa, French military contingents had been sent inland to establish new posts.

The African population has resisted French penetration and settlement, even in areas where treaties of protection had been in force.

Among those offering greatest resistance is Samori Touré, who in the 1880s and 1890s is establishing an empire that extends over large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d'Ivoire.

Samori's large, well-equipped army, which can manufacture and repair its own firearms, attracts strong support throughout the region.

The French respond to Samori's expansion of regional control with military pressure.

French campaigns against Samori, which are met with fierce resistance, intensify in the mid-1890s until he is captured in 1898.

The Muslim empire of Kong had been established by the Juula in the early eighteenth century in the north-central region inhabited by the Sénoufo, who had fled Islamization under the Mali Empire.

Although Kong had become a prosperous center of agriculture, trade, and crafts, ethnic diversity and religious discord gradually weakens the kingdom.

The city of Kong is destroyed in 1895 by Samori Touré.