That all changed, however, in 1867. That’s the year when the United Kingdom turned all of those ethnic groups into one British colony. They named this new colony the Gold Coast, and that’s a name that was kept for nearly 100 years! Before the British arrived and declared the nation theirs, there had been other Europeans coming in sporadically over the years. The Portuguese also made colonization attempts, but they didn’t entirely take over the region that we now know as Ghana.
Under British rule, Ghanaians had fewer rights and liberties than they had enjoyed previously. Like in other colonies, the people grew resentful of the empire that oppressed them; Ghana has many natural resources, but the British exploited those resources in order to grow wealthier. The Ghanaians, on the other hand, were paid little and taxed heavily. Because of the British occupation, English became the main language spoken by anyone doing business in Ghana. It also became the official language taught in schools. Most Ghanaians still speak their own regional languages, however, and each Ghanaian’s mother tongue is the language that he uses when he speaks to his countrymen.
During British occupation, the slave trade flourished. Slavery came before colonization, but it happened on a much smaller scale! Prior to colonialism, most of the slave trade happened across the Sahara Desert or between Africa and the Middle East. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, on the other hand, required crossing huge distances and included millions of slaves.
You probably know that most of those slaves were African, but something you might not know is that a large percentage of those slaves came through Ghana on their way to the Caribbean or the Americas.
