MAPS OF HISTORY · HISTORY OF · Guinea

ONE LAND · 3 ATLASES

Guinea, on the map of history

What was Guinea before it was Guinea? Below, every era of this land in the Maps of History collection — who ruled it, what it was called, and when control changed — each line linked to the dated map that shows it. Modern borders stand in as an honest approximation; every atlas says so on the map itself.

Guinea · The Great War, 1914–1918

OPEN WWI ON THE LIVING MAP →

Guinea · The Cold War, 1945–1991

OPEN THE COLD WAR ON THE LIVING MAP →

Guinea (Fr.) · The Decolonization of Africa, 1945–1994

French Guinea alone voted “Non” to de Gaulle’s Community in 1958, and Sékou Touré paid for it: France stripped the country of everything it could carry. “We prefer poverty in freedom to riches in slavery.” Guinea’s defiant survival helped push the rest of French Africa to full independence within two years — and then calcified into one of the era’s harsher one-party states. A symbol of both courage and its costs.

OPEN THE DECOLONIZATION OF AFRICA ON THE LIVING MAP →