American Africans in Ghana° Benin
° Cameroon
° Congo
° Cote d'Ivoire
° Gabon
° Ghana
° Guinea
° Kenya
° Liberia
° Mauritania
° Mozambique
° Nigeria
° Senegal
° Sierra Leone
° Somalia
° Tanzania
° Zanzibar
The history of the Gold Coast before the last quarter of the 15th century is derived primarily from oral tradition that refers to migrations from the ancient kingdoms of the western Soudan (the area of Mauritania and Mali). Other than the oral traditions, little is known of the small African kingdoms in the region between the Tano and Volta rivers until the arrival of Europeans in the 15th century.
Portuguese navigators, working their way down the west African coast, reached this area in 1471 and built Elmina Castle as a permanent trading base.
The first recorded English trading voyage to the coast was made by Thomas Windham in 1553. The early cargos were gold.
During the next three centuries, the English, Danes, Dutch, Germans, and Portuguese controlled various parts of the coastal areas. Slaves became the lucrative trade when the Ashanti traded people for muskets.
In 1821, the British Government took control of the British trading forts on the Gold Coast. In 1844, Fanti chiefs in the area signed an agreement with the British that became the legal steppingstone to colonial status for the coastal area.
From 1826 to 1900, the British fought a series of campaigns against the Ashantis, whose kingdom was located inland.
In 1902, they succeeded in establishing firm control over the Ashanti region and making the northern territories a protectorate. British Togoland, the fourth territorial element eventually to form the nation, was part of a former German colony administered by the United Kingdom from Accra as a League of Nations mandate after 1922.
The original Gold Coast Colony now comprises the western, central, eastern, and Greater Accra Regions, with a small portion at the mouth of the Volta River assigned to the Volta Region; the Ashanti area was divided into the Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo Regions; the Northern Territories into the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West Regions; and British Togoland essentially is the same area as the Volta Region.
Formed from the merger of the British colony of the Gold Coast and the Togoland trust territory, Ghana in 1957 became the first sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa to gain its independence.
