The first Europeans to visit Gabon were the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century when Diego Cam explored the region. They gave Gabon its name when they named the mouth of the Como River as gabão, Portuguese for “cloak”, after the shape of the estuary.
The French arrived in the region in the early nineteenth attracted by the slave trade. In 1839, local rulers in the coastal region signed away sovereignty to the French. The French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza led his first mission to the Gabon-Congo area in 1875 increasing French control and founded the town of Franceville in 1880. France officially occupied Gabon in 1885 and in 1910, Gabon became one of the four colonies of French Equatorial Africa.
During the Fourth French Republic (1946–58), Gabon became an overseas territory with its own assembly and representation in the French Parliament. In 1958 Gabon voted to become an autonomous republic within the French Community.
On August 17th 1960, Gabon gained its independence and became an independent republic joining the other three territories of the French Equatorial Union who also gained their independence in the same month.
The first president of Gabon, elected in 1961, was Léon M’ba.
After the nation gained independence, France established a new dynamic with Gabon partly motivated by the West African nation’s uranium wealth which was key to France’s nuclear programme.