Situated along the Senegal River, the Kingdom of Waalo was the smallest of the Wolof states of Senegal, but it illustrates the broader consequences of a shift from trans-Saharan to trans-Atlantic commerce during a time of competing European, Muslim, and indigenous African forces. From the establishment of a French trading post in 1659 to the early nineteenth century, the history of Waalo was closely tied to French interests in St. Louis, popular revolutionary Islamic movements, and internal riva