The Dosso Kingdom is a precolonial state in what is now southwest Niger which has survived in a ceremonial role to the modern day. Early history The Djerma people of Niger are believed to have migrated from what is now the Fula region around Lac Debo, Mali during the Songhai Empire, and settled first in Zarmaganda in the 16th century. In the 18th century, many Djerma resettled south to the Niger River valley, the Fakara plateau and Zigui in what is now Southwest Niger near Niamey. Forming a number of small communities, each led by a Djermakoy, these polities soon found themselves pressured from the north by the Tuareg and the Fula from the southeast, as well as other ethnic groups in the area. While Djermakoy Aboubacar founded the Dosso state from his own Taguru clan around 1750, it remained a small collection of villages in the Dallol Bosso valley until the 1820s, when it led much of the resistance to the Sokoto Caliphate. While Dosso fell under the control of the Amir of Gando (a sub division of Sokoto) between 1849 and 1856, they retained their Djermakoy and the nominal rule of a much larger Djerma territory, and were converted to Islam. Under Djermakoy Kossom (r. 1856-65), Dosso united all of the eastern Djerma, and left a small state stretching from Tibbo and Beri in the north, to Gafiadey in the south, and to Bankadey and Tombokware in the east. French colonialism French colonial forces first entered the area in the 1890s and found Dosso allied with local Fula communities and small states like Kebbi against other Djerma states, the Dendi, the Gourounsi (in modern Burkina Faso) the Hausa states to the east (in what is now southern Niger), and still struggling to retake the territory it held in 1865. Zarmakoy Attikou (r.1897-1902) took the military help offered by the French forces based in Karimama (now Benin), but found that after the military conquest of his enemies in 1898, the French forces were stationed in Dosso, where they would stay for the next 60 years. Attikou had delegated the negotiations to his prince Awta, and this future Zarmakoy hitched his star to French power. Despite tensions, the French found one of their few allies in the region, and this alliance of necessity came to benefit Dosso as much as it hurt them. With French aid, Zarmakoy Awta (r.1902-13) retained