The Asante kingdom in Ghana has played big role

 Asante has played a significant role in the freedom of Ghana.

The freedom of the Asante Kingdom started not today, but rather ancient Ghana times and its impact can not be omitted from the History of Africa as a whole and the country Ghana itself.

The first significant Akan country was Bonoman, founded in the 12th century. Bonoman became a regional trading power after Mali’s decline, capitalising on its own rich gold deposits. Other Akan peoples spread out from Bonoman, and centralised political structures formed around other gold mines in the region. In the 17th century, several small Akan kingdoms emerged, including Denkyira, Akwamu, and Akwamuhene.

The asante kingdom in ghana updated 2025

In the mid-1400s, the Portuguese came into direct contact with West Africans. In 1434, the first Portuguese ships rounded Cape Bojador in Morocco, and in 1441, the caravel ship led by Antão Gonçalves returned to Lisbon with slaves and gold. It was the first time Europeans had directly taken slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. The Portuguese started trading on a small scale, which grew over time, with slaves being secondary to other goods. However, by the end of the 15th century, the Portuguese were directly taking captured slaves to their colonies on Atlantic Islands, particularly São Tomé, to grow sugar.

The Portuguese, and other Europeans as they arrived, could not penetrate far into the African interior, and so formed coastal forts with which to trade with the locals. An early Portuguese explorer described the African jungle as being protected by “an angel with a flaming sword” of tropical fevers that hindered Europeans (until the 19th century, 25-75% of Europeans in West Africa would fall and sick and die from diseases like dengue fever). In 1482, the Portuguese established Castelo São Jorge da Mina, or Mina Castle (Elmina), to trade with the Akan peoples in what is now Ghana (it would be seized by the Dutch in 1637). European forts, which came to be known as factories, would become the processing and loading points for millions of slaves as human cargo.

It was the discovery of the New World and the establishment of colonies in North and South America that would see the real birth of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. After 1500, Spanish, French, Dutch, and English traders arrived and began taking slaves in huge numbers. Portugal tried resisting the expansion of other European powers into their West African trading sphere, but had little success. In 1518, the first slaves were taken and shipped directly to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. This was the birth of the Triangular Slave Trade, a new global market that integrated West Africa into the global sphere.

Because Europeans did not have resistance to deadly tropical diseases, they were rarely able to capture slaves directly from the West African coast. Instead, they formed trading relationships with native African tribes, cities, and kingdoms that would capture and sell slaves to the Europeans in exchange for manufactured goods. The influx of European muskets dramatically changed the balance of power in West Africa, as those African states which incorporated muskets into their armies became powerful and ascendant over their neighbours.

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