discovered by a French trader, M. J. Bennat, about 1880. During the period 1880 to 1900 the value of the gold exported varied from a minimum of £32,000 to a maximum (1889) of £103,000. The increased interest shown in the industry led to the construction of a railway (see below) to the chief gold-fields, whereby the difficulties of transport were largely overcome. Consequent upon the taking up of a number of concessions, a concessions ordinance was issued in August 1900. This was followed in 1901 by the grant of 2825 concessions, and a “boom” in the West African market on the London stock exchange. Many concessions were speedily abandoned, and in 1901 the export of gold dropped to its lowest point, 6162 oz., worth £22,186, but in 1902 a large company began crushing ore and the output of gold rose to 26,911 oz., valued at £96,880. In 1907 the export was 292,125 oz., worth £1,164,676. It should be noted that one of the principal gold mines is not in the colony proper, but at Obuassi in Ashanti. Underground labour is performed mainly by Basas and Krumen from Liberia. Of native tribes the Apollonia have proved the best for underground work, as they have mining traditions dating from Portuguese times. A good deal of alluvial gold is obtained by dredging apparatus. The use of dredging apparatus is modern, but the natives have worked the alluvial soil and the sand of the seashore for generations to get the gold they contain.
Communications.—The colony possesses a railway, built and owned by the government, which serves the gold mines, and has its sea terminus at Sekondi. Work was begun in August 1898, but owing to the disturbance caused by the Ashanti rising of 1900 the rails only reached Tarkwa (39 m.) in May 1901. Thence the line is carried to Kumasi, the distance to Obuassi (124 m.) being completed by December 1902, whilst the first train entered the Ashanti capital on the 1st of October 1903. The total length of the line is 168 m. The cost of construction was £1,820,000. The line has a gauge 3 ft. 6 in. There is a branch line, 20 m. long, from Tarkwa N.W. to Prestea on the Ankobra river. Another railway, built 1907–10, 35 m. in length, runs from Accra to Mangoase, in the centre of the chief cocoa plantations. An extension to Kumasi has been surveyed.
Tortuous bush tracks are the usual means of internal communication. These are kept in fair order in the neighbourhood of government stations. There is a well-constructed road 141 m. long from Cape Coast to Kumasi, and roads connecting neighbouring towns are maintained by the government. Systematic attempts to make use of the upper Volta as a means of conveying goods to the interior were first tried in 1900. The rapids about 60 m. from the mouth of the river effectually prevent boats of large size passing up the stream. Where railways or canoes are not available goods are generally carried on the heads of porters, 60 ℔ being a full load. Telegraphs, introduced in 1882, connect all the important towns in the colony, and a line starting at Cape Coast stretches far inland, via Kumasi to Wa in the Northern Territories. Accra and Sekondi are in telegraphic communication with Europe, the Ivory Coast, Lagos and the Cape of Good Hope. There is regular and frequent steamship communication with Europe by British, Belgian and German lines.
Administration, Revenue, &c.—The country is governed as a crown colony, the governor being assisted by a legislative council composed of officials and nominated unofficial members. Laws, called ordinances, are enacted by the governor with the advice and consent of this council. The law of the colony is the common law and statutes of general application in force in England in 1874, modified by local ordinances passed since that date. The governor is also governor of Ashanti and the Northern Territories, but in those dependencies the legislative council has no authority.
Native laws and customs—which are extremely elaborate and complicated—are not interfered with “except when repugnant to natural justice.” Those relating to land tenure and succession may be thus summarized. Individual tenure is not unknown, but most land is held by the tribe or by the family in common, each member having the right to select a part of the common land for his own use. Permanent alienation can only take place with the unanimous consent of the family and is uncommon, but long leases are granted. Succession is through the female, i.e. when a man dies his property goes to his sister’s children. The government of the tribes is by their own kings and chiefs under the supervision of district commissioners. Slavery has been abolished in the colony. In the Northern Territories the dealing in slaves is unlawful, neither can any person be put in pawn for debt; nor will any court give effect to the relations between master and slave except in so far as those relations may be in accordance with the English laws relating to master and servant.
For administrative purposes the colony is divided into three provinces under provincial commissioners, and each province is subdivided into districts presided over by commissioners, who exercise judicial as well as executive functions. The supreme court consists of a chief justice and three puisne judges. The defence of the colony is entrusted to the Gold Coast regiment of the West African Frontier Force, a force of natives controlled by the Colonial Office but officered from the British army. There is also a corps of volunteers (formed 1892).
The chief source of revenue is the customs and (since 1902) railway receipts, whilst the heaviest items of expenditure are transport (including railways) and mine surveys, medical and sanitary services, and maintenance of the military force. The revenue, which in the period 1894–1898 averaged £244,559 yearly, rose in 1898–1903 to an average of £556,316 a year. For the five years 1903–1907 the average annual revenue was £647,557 and the average annual expenditure £615,696. Save for municipal purposes there is no direct taxation in the colony and no poor-houses exist. There is a public debt of (December 1907) £2,206,964. It should be noted that the expenditure on Ashanti and the Northern Territories is included in the Gold Coast budget.
History.—It is a debated question whether the Gold Coast was discovered by French or by Portuguese sailors. The evidence available is insufficient to prove the assertion, of which there is no contemporary record, that a company of Norman merchants established themselves about 1364 at a place they named La Mina (Elmina), and that they traded with the natives for nearly fifty years, when the enterprise was abandoned. It is well established that a Portuguese expedition under Diogo d’Azambuja, accompanied probably by Christopher Columbus, took possession of (or founded) Elmina in 1481–1482. By the Portuguese it was called variously São Jorge da Mina or Ora del Mina—the mouth of the (gold) mines. That besides alluvial washings they also worked the gold mines was proved by discoveries in the latter part of the 19th century. The Portuguese remained undisturbed in their trade until the Reformation, when the papal bull which had given the country, with many others, to Portugal ceased to have a binding power. English ships in 1553 brought back from Guinea gold to the weight of 150 ℔. The fame of the Gold Coast thereafter attracted to it adventurers from almost every European nation. The English were followed by French, Danes, Brandenburgers, Dutch and Swedes. The most aggressive were the Dutch, who from the end of the 16th century sought to oust the Portuguese from the Gold Coast, and in whose favour the Portuguese did finally withdraw in 1642, in return for the withdrawal on the part of the Dutch of their claims to Brazil. The Dutch henceforth made Elmina their headquarters on the coast. Traces of the Portuguese occupation, which lasted 160 years, are still to be found, notably in the language of the natives. Such familiar words as palaver, fetish, caboceer and dash (i.e. a gift) have all a Portuguese origin.
An English company built a fort at Kormantine previously to 1651, and some ten years later Cape Coast Castle was built. The settlements made by the English provoked the hostility of the Dutch and led to war between England and Holland, during which Admiral de Ruyter destroyed Appearance of the English. (1664–1665) all the English forts save Cape Coast castle. The treaty of Breda in 1667 confirmed the Dutch in the possession of their conquests, but the English speedily opened other trading stations. Charles II. in 1672 granted a charter to the Royal African Company, which built forts at Dixcove, Sekondi, Accra, Whydah and other places, besides repairing Cape Coast Castle. At this time the trade both in slaves and gold was very great, and at the beginning of the 18th century the value of the gold exported annually was estimated by Willem Bosman, the chief Dutch factor at Elmina, to be over £200,000. The various European traders were constantly quarrelling among themselves and exercised scarcely any control over the natives. Piracy was rife along the coast, and was not indeed finally stamped out until the middle of the 19th century. The Royal African Company, which lost its monopoly of trade with England in 1700, was succeeded by another, the African Company of Merchants, which was constituted in 1750 by act of parliament and received an annual subsidy from government. The slave trade was then at its height and some 10,000 negroes were exported yearly. Many of the slaves were prisoners of war sold to the merchants by the Ashanti, who had become the chief native power. The abolition of the slave trade (1807) crippled the company, which was dissolved in 1821, when the crown took possession of the forts.
Since the beginning of the 19th century the British had begun to exercise territorial rights in the towns where they held forts, and in 1817 the right of the British to control the natives living in the coast towns was recognized by Ashanti. In 1824 the first step towards the extension of British authority beyond the coast region was taken by Governor Sir Charles M’Carthy, who incited the Fanti to rise against their oppressors, the Ashanti. (The Fanti’s country had been conquered by the Ashanti in 1807.)
