Ghana Captured by Great Britain

Through the nineteenth century the British, established on the coast of the Gold Coast in present-day Ghana, came into repeated conflict with the powerful inland Ashanti Empire, a wealthy and well-organized Akan state centred on its capital at Kumasi. A series of Anglo-Ashanti wars resulted from rivalry over trade and control of coastal peoples.

In 1874, during the campaign led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, a British expeditionary force advanced inland and captured Kumasi, burning the city before withdrawing. The southern coastal region was organized as the British Gold Coast Colony.

Ashanti power was not fully broken until later. In 1896 the British occupied Kumasi again and exiled the Asantehene, Prempeh I, and after a final uprising in 1900 the kingdom was formally annexed and made a British protectorate in 1901. The territory remained under British rule until it gained independence as Ghana in 1957, the first sub-Saharan African colony to do so.