Gold Coast (British colony)

This article is about the British colony in West Africa. For other places with the name Gold Coast, see Gold Coast.

Colony of the Gold Coast
1821–1957
Badge of Ghana
Badge
Anthem: God Save the King (1821–1837; 1901–1952)
God Save the Queen (1837–1901; 1952–1957)
The Gold Coast in 1922
The Gold Coast in 1922
StatusColony of the United Kingdom
CapitalCape Coast (1821–1877)
Accra (1877–1957)
Common languagesEnglish (official)
French, Ga, Akan, Ewe language, Dangme, Dagbani, Dagaare, Gonja, Kasena, Nzema widely spoken
Religion
Christianity, Islam, Traditional African religions
Monarchs 
• 1821–1830 (first)
George IV
• 1830–1837 (second)
William IV
• 1837–1901 (third)
Victoria
• 1901–1910 (fourth)
Edward VII
• 1910–1936 (fifth)
George V
• 1936-1936 (sixth)
Edward VIII
• 1936–1952 (seventh)
George VI
• 1952–1957 (last)
Elizabeth II
Governor 
• 1821–1822 (first)
John Hope Smith
• 1949–1957 (last)
Charles Arden-Clarke
LegislatureLegislative Council
History 
• Colony established
1821
• Incorporation of the Danish Gold Coast
1850
• Incorporation of the Dutch Gold Coast
6 April 1872
• Combination with local kingdoms
1901
• Admission of British Togoland
27 December 1916
• New constitution establishing the Legislative Assembly[a]
1951
• Incorporation of British Togoland
11 December 1956
• Independence as the Dominion of Ghana
6 March 1957
Area
1924[2]207,199 km2 (80,000 sq mi)
Population
• 1924[2]
2,080,208
CurrencyGold Coast ackey British West African pound
ISO 3166 codeGH
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Ashanti Empire
British Togoland
Dutch Gold Coast
Danish Gold Coast
Dominion of Ghana
Today part ofGhana
Gold Coast

The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from 1821 until its independence in 1957 as Ghana.[3] The term Gold Coast is also often used to describe all of the four separate jurisdictions that were under the administration of the Governor of the Gold Coast. These were the Gold Coast itself, Ashanti, the Northern Territories protectorate and the British Togoland trust territory.[4]

The first European explorers to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese in 1471. They encountered a variety of African kingdoms, some of which controlled substantial deposits of gold in the soil.[5] In 1483, the Portuguese came to the continent for increased trade.[6] They built the Castle of Elmina, the first European settlement on the Gold Coast. From here they acquired slaves and gold in trade for European goods, such as metal knives, beads, mirrors, rum, and guns.[7] News of the successful trading spread quickly, and British, Dutch, Danish, Prussian and Swedish traders arrived as well.[8] The European traders built several forts along the coastline.[9] The Gold Coast had long been a name for the region used by Europeans because of the large gold resources found in the area.[10] The slave trade was the principal exchange and major part of the economy for many years. In this period, European nations began to explore and colonize the Americas.[11] Soon the Portuguese and Spanish began to export African slaves to the Caribbean, and North and South America. The Dutch and British also entered the slave trade, at first supplying slaves to markets in the Caribbean and on the Caribbean coast of South America.[12]

The Royal Trading Company was established by the British Crown in 1752 and succeeded by the African Company of Merchants, which led British trading efforts into the early 19th century.[13] In 1821, the British government withdrew the company's charter and seized privately held lands along the coast,[14] incorporating them into the British Gold Coast colony and taking over the local interests of other European countries.[15] They purchased and incorporated the Danish Gold Coast in 1850 and the Dutch Gold Coast, including Fort Elmina, in 1872.[16] Britain steadily expanded its colony through the invasion and subjection of local kingdoms as well, particularly the Ashanti and Fante confederacies.[17]

The Ashanti people had controlled much of Ghana before Europeans arrived, and were often in conflict with them.[18] In the 21st century they continue to constitute the largest ethnic community in Ghana. Four Anglo-Ashanti Wars were fought between the Ashanti (Asante) and the British, who were sometimes allied with the Fante.[19]

The First Anglo-Ashanti War (1822–24), was fought over an insult to an Ashanti chief. Sergeant Kujo Otetfo of the British Royal African Colonial Corps, during an argument with an Ashanti trader, "grossly abused the King of Ashanti, and it was this insignificant event that provided the spark that set the whole country in a blaze of war".[20] In the Second Ashanti War (1873–74), the British sacked the Ashanti capital of Kumasi. The Third Ashanti War (1893–94) occurred because the new Ashanti ruler Asantehene wanted to exercise his new title.[21] From 1895 to 1896 the British and Ashanti fought their fourth and final war, in which the Ashanti lost their independence.[22] In 1900, they rebelled in the Ashanti Uprising, but the British suppressed the insurrection and captured the city of Kumasi.[23] The territory of the Ashanti people became a British protectorate on 1 January 1902.[24]

By 1901, the British had established a colony incorporating all of the Gold Coast, with its kingdoms and tribes under a single administration. The British exploited and exported a variety of natural resources: gold, metal ores, diamonds, ivory, pepper, timber, grain and cocoa.[25] The British built railways and a complex transport infrastructure to ship these commodities, which forms the basis for the transport system of modern-day Ghana.[26]

By 1945, in the wake of a major colonial role in the Second World War, nationalists in the Gold Coast stood up to demand more autonomy,[27] sharing power with Britain from 1951 to 1955. By 1956, British Togoland, the Northern Territories protectorate and the Ashanti protectorate were annexed to the Gold Coast.[28] The Ghana Independence Act 1957 constituted the Gold Coast Crown Colony as part of the new dominion of Ghana.[29]

  1. ^ "The Gold Coast Experiment", The Times, 17 February 1951, p7, Issue 51928
  2. ^ a b "The British Empire in 1924". The British Empire. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  3. ^ "One-Man Policy—A Curse to West Africa", The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness, Routledge, pp. 54–59, 13 September 2013, doi:10.4324/9781315033044-11, ISBN 978-1-315-03304-4
  4. ^ Chipp, Thomas Ford (1922). Forest officers' handbook of the Gold Coast, Ashanti and the Northern Territories. London [etc.]: Waterlow & sons limited. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.45233.
  5. ^ "Gold Coast", African American Studies Center, Oxford University Press, 7 April 2005, doi:10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.41463, ISBN 978-0-19-530173-1
  6. ^ "57. How It Came About That Children Were First Whipped", African Folktales, Princeton University Press, pp. 209–211, 2015, doi:10.1353/chapter.1546551, ISBN 978-1-4008-7294-7
  7. ^ Irwin, Graham W. (1971). "Gold and Guns on the Gold Coast – Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600–1720. A Study of the African Reaction to European Trade. By Kwame Yeboa Daaku. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970. Pp. xviii + 219; maps. £2.50". The Journal of African History. 12 (2): 330–331. doi:10.1017/s0021853700010744. ISSN 0021-8537. S2CID 155038059.
  8. ^ Sutton, Angela (3 July 2015). "The Seventeenth-century Slave Trade in the Documents of the English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Prussian Royal Slave Trading Companies". Slavery & Abolition. 36 (3): 445–459. doi:10.1080/0144039x.2015.1067975. ISSN 0144-039X. S2CID 143085310.
  9. ^ Corliss, Timothy (26 September 2015), "New World Trading of Old World Markets: European Derivatives", Master Traders, Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., pp. 242–262, doi:10.1002/9781119205043.ch12, ISBN 978-1-119-20504-3
  10. ^ Chalmers, AlbertJ. (1900). "Uncomplicated Æstivo-Autumnal Fever in Europeans in the Gold Coast Colony, West Africa". The Lancet. 156 (4027): 1262–1264. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(01)99958-1. ISSN 0140-6736.
  11. ^ Klein, Herbert S. (2010), "Major slaving ports of the Gold Coast and the Bights of Benin and Biafra", The Atlantic Slave Trade, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiii, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511779473.003, ISBN 978-0-511-77947-3
  12. ^ "Time On The Coast", From Capture to Sale: The Portuguese Slave Trade to Spanish South America in the Early Seventeenth Century, Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 72–100, 2007, doi:10.1163/ej.9789004156791.i-373.17, ISBN 978-90-04-15679-1, S2CID 128336362
  13. ^ Gelder, M. Van (2009), "Introduction", Trading Places Trading Places: The Netherlandish Merchants in Early Modern Venice, Brill Academic Publishers, pp. 1–20, doi:10.1163/ej.9789004175433.i-246.10, ISBN 978-90-04-17543-3
  14. ^ "10. Crown and Charter", Crown and Charter, University of California Press, pp. 310–340, 31 December 1974, doi:10.1525/9780520338456-011, ISBN 978-0-520-33845-6
  15. ^ Horton, James Africanus Beale (2011), "Self-Government of the Gold Coast", West African Countries and Peoples, British and Native, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 104–123, doi:10.1017/cbo9780511983146.010, ISBN 978-0-511-98314-6
  16. ^ Feinberg, H. M. (1970). "An Incident in Elmina-Dutch Relations, The Gold Coast (Ghana), 1739–1740". African Historical Studies. 3 (2): 359–372. doi:10.2307/216221. ISSN 0001-9992. JSTOR 216221.
  17. ^ "Atta, Nana Sir Ofori, (11 Oct. 1881–24 Aug. 1943), Omanhene (Paramount Chief) of Akyem Abuakwa; an Unofficial Member, Executive Council of Gold Coast, since 1942; Provincial Member of the Legislative Council, Gold Coast Colony; President of the Provincial Council of Chiefs, Eastern Province, Gold Coast Colony; Member of the Board of Education, Gold Coast Colony; Director of Akim, Limited; Member of District Agricultural Committee, Akim Abuakwa", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 1 December 2007, doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u222064
  18. ^ Giles, Jim (2007). "Before settlers arrived, California's wildfires were much worse". New Scientist. 196 (2628): 9. doi:10.1016/s0262-4079(07)62754-7. ISSN 0262-4079.
  19. ^ "Who were the Gentry?", The Medieval Gentry : Power, Leadership and Choice during the Wars of the Roses, Bloomsbury Academic, 2010, doi:10.5040/9781472599179.ch-002, ISBN 978-1-4411-9064-2
  20. ^ Busia, K. A. (16 August 2018), "British Rule and the Chief", The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti, Routledge, pp. 139–164, doi:10.4324/9781351030823-7, ISBN 978-1-351-03082-3, S2CID 233065561
  21. ^ Brackenbury, Henry, Sir (1873). Fanti and Ashanti. W. Blackwood and Sons. doi:10.5479/sil.204747.39088000128199.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. ^ "The Ashanti Expedition". The Lancet. 146 (3768): 1246–1247. 1895. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(00)31670-1. ISSN 0140-6736.
  23. ^ Armitage, Cecil Hamilton; Montanaro, Arthur Forbes (2011), "Shut up in Kumasi", The Ashanti Campaign of 1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 34–44, doi:10.1017/cbo9781139058032.006, ISBN 978-1-139-05803-2
  24. ^ Thompson, Larry (1995), "Ashanti soll geheilt werden", Der Fall Ashanti, Basel: Birkhäuser Basel, pp. 12–50, doi:10.1007/978-3-0348-6006-2_1, ISBN 978-3-0348-6007-9
  25. ^ Milburn, Josephine (1970). "The 1938 Gold Coast Cocoa Crisis: British Business and the Colonial Office". African Historical Studies. 3 (1): 57–74. doi:10.2307/216480. ISSN 0001-9992. JSTOR 216480.
  26. ^ "Figure 2.20 Transport infrastructure spending has been below OECD average". doi:10.1787/888933318975. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  27. ^ Drew, Allison (1 November 2014), "The Nation in Formation: Communists and Nationalists During the Second World War", We are no longer in France, Manchester University Press, pp. 110–144, doi:10.7228/manchester/9780719090240.003.0006, ISBN 978-0-7190-9024-0
  28. ^ McKay, Vernon; Bourrett, F. M. (1950). "The Gold Coast: A Survey of the Gold Coast and British Togoland, 1919–1946". The American Historical Review. 55 (2): 345. doi:10.2307/1843737. ISSN 0002-8762. JSTOR 1843737.
  29. ^ Howe, Russell Warren (1957). "Gold Coast into Ghana". The Phylon Quarterly. 18 (2): 155–161. doi:10.2307/273187. ISSN 0885-6826. JSTOR 273187.


Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).