Gold Coast Colony

The Gold Coast Colony was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, established in 1821 and independent as Ghana in 1957. Its name came from the region's abundant gold, which had drawn European traders to the coast since the fifteenth century. In the nineteenth century the British expanded from a chain of coastal forts, signing treaties, buying out rival Dutch and Danish possessions, and defeating the Asante Empire in a series of wars. The colony became a major centre of the Atlantic slave trade before Britain abolished the trade and later slavery itself. Under colonial rule the Gold Coast developed an export economy based on cocoa, gold and timber, supported by railways, roads and harbours. The term Gold Coast could also refer collectively to the four jurisdictions administered by the governor: the colony proper, Ashanti, the Northern Territories and British Togoland. After the Second World War, nationalist movements and constitutional reforms widened African representation. Kwame Nkrumah led the campaign for self-government, and on 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became the independent state of Ghana, the first sub-Saharan African colony to win independence from Britain. Its institutions and boundaries shaped the modern republic.