Ghana: The Gold Coast of Africa Essay -- Geography

Ghana: The Gold Coast of Africa The Gold Coast, now known as Ghana, is one of many civilizations of Africa. It was a British Colony until March 6, 1957, when it became independent as the State of Ghana. In 1471, the Portuguese invaded this area and became involved in gold trade, giving the region the name, The Gold Coast. They built forts to protect their monopoly of gold trade from merchants representing other nations. In 1642, the Dutch West India Company captured all Portuguese strong posts and they devoted their interests in slave trading rather than gold trading. In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the Gold Coast was one of the chief West African sources of slave export. At the beginning of the Nineteenth Century the countries involved in slave trading began abolishing it as illegal and immoral. The British abolished it in 1807, the Danish is 1804 and the Dutch in 1814. In 1821, British forts were transferred from private ownership to government control. The Gold Coast became a British colony and the new government was known...