Early history.
Modern-day Ghana, formerly known as the Gold Coast, was named after the ancient Ghana Empire, a gold-rich culture that existed to the north in the area that comprises parts of modern-day Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania. Ancestors of modern-day Ghanaians may have entered the area as early as the tenth century. Akans and other ethnic groups migrated south from below the Sahara desert, and over the next five hundred years, settled into homelands in a continuing series of migrations, consolidations and political realignments.
Away from the coast, the isolating effects of the dense central rain forest helped consolidate scattered Akan peoples into a number of separate states along the southern fringes of the trans-Saharan trade routes. They grew wealthy trading gold panned or mined in their territory. Eventually, trade introduced the Akans to European firearms and New World crops such as banana and cassava, while news of the Akan gold fields found its way to Europe along the same routes.
European era.
The European era in the region that is modern-day Ghana was marked by intense commercial and political rivalry. Fifteenth-century Europeans called the area, "Gold Coast," because of the lucrative gold wealth known from the Saharan trade. Portugal established the first European base in sub-Saharan Africa in the 15th century but was unable to protect its monopoly against later competition from England and the Netherlands — and subsequently, France, Spain, Denmark, and Germany.
Early in the 16th century, Gold Coast wealth expanded to comprise other commodities — including a lucrative trans-Atlantic trade in slaves. At the same time, European colonies in the New World began to require labor to work on the rapidly expanding number of plantations there. Thus, slaves, traded from the interior and shipped across the Atlantic, quickly surpassed gold as the principal source of Gold Coast wealth and profit.
Increasing demand and huge profits intensified competition among the European powers to control the Gold Coast slave trade, causing armed conflict among European trading posts over the next two centuries.
However, by the time Britain gained control of the Gold Coast in the 1870s, it had abolished slavery at home and was using its naval power and diplomatic influence to abolish the slave trade internationally. Britain's first moves to annex inland territory were intended to suppress local slave traders who continued to deal with its European rivals.
British control.
In the1870s, the British began to challenge Asante authority and continued involvement in the slave trade. They bought out the remaining Dutch commercial interests on the coast, thereby depriving Asante of their last outlet to the overseas trade. They repelled an Asante invasion of the coast, seized some Asante lands, and declared the coastal area with the newly-seized land a Crown Colony in 1874.
Over the next thirty years, Britain extended its control inland by a war of attrition and economic deprivation that weakened the Asante's power and influence. The Asante refused repeated British demands to surrender the golden stool, finally staging a nine-month long revolt that ended with Asante annexed into the Crown Colony in 1901. Only in 1925, when the Gold Coast began to move towards home rule, did the golden stool resurface.
Independence and Nkrumah era. In the 1920s, African nationalists were demanding home rule and legislative representation for the Gold Coast. From the early 1950s, self-government was introduced with elections in 1951, 1954, and 1956. Building on the groundwork of earlier nationalists, British- and American-educated politician Kwame Nkrumah emerged as a leader of the people and successfully led his party to victory in all three polls, becoming prime minister in 1954. Nkrumah negotiated a new constitution with the British, and led his country into independence three years later.
In 1957, Ghana became the first nation in sub-Saharan Africa to become independent of colonial rule. Four broad regions — the coast, interior rain forest region, far north, and the neighboring eastern strip of land from the former German colony of Togoland — were incorporated into the Republic of Ghana.
Between 1957 and 1966, Ghana moved from a multiparty state to presidential republic to single-party state. A pan-African hero and active proponent of the belief that African nations should unite against capitalist interests, Nkrumah felt that Ghana, as the first independent black African nation, had an important role to play in pan-African pursuits. He also built strong ties to the Soviet Bloc and China. Over time, however, he became increasingly authoritarian, restricting freedoms and declaring himself president for life in 1964.
Military rule and Rawlings. Nkrumah was removed by a military coup in 1966, and Ghana endured 15 years of military coups and economic declines before a group of young revolutionaries under Air Force Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings seized power in 1981. Under Rawlings, Ghana's long-neglected economy began to grow, and the country started to move toward democracy. Despite initial reports of such strong-arm methods as secret trials and executions to rid Ghana of corruption and profiteering, Rawlings became very popular among Ghana's impoverished masses. He founded the National Democratic Congress, successfully ran for president under the new, multiparty constitution of 1992, and stepped down at the end of his elected term.
Aperian Global (2015)