The Akan Peoples

Akan is the name of a language spoken in many dialects by related groups of people living in the south-central forest zone and coastal areas of Ghana and in southeastern Ivory Coast. The Asante and Fante are probably the best known Akan groups of Ghana, and the Ivory Coast Akan groups include the Baule and Agni peoples. Stimulated by trade, Akan leaders founded the Asante state in what is now Ghana around 1700 as a confederacy of five smaller states. By 1750, the Asante confederacy had developed into an aggressive trading state centered on the inland city of Kumasi.

A genuine empire by 1800, Asante incorporated many non-Akan peoples and was ruled by a divine king and his wealthy court, who made lavish use of gold and gold-plated regalia and were supported by a standing army, royal spies, and diplomats, all nourished by military conquest and control of the lucrative gold and slave-trading routes to the north and south. Like other powerful West African states of the 18th and 19th centuries, the Asante eventually threatened European gold and slave-trading facilities at the coast.

A series of conflicts between the British, who had replaced other Europeans at the coast, and the Asante led to the eventual defeat of the Asante in 1900 and its annexation as part of Britain's Gold Coast colony. Renamed Ghana, the Gold Coast colony became the first independent post-colonial African state in 1957.

Akan territory contains the richest alluvial goldfields in Africa, except for those in South Africa. Before the appearance of Islamized northern African traders in their territory, however, the Akan seem to have made little use of gold. In response to northern demand, they learned to pan placer gold from streams, to win alluvial gold from pits dug into compacted sediment, and, finally, to crush gold-bearing quartz and separate the gold by washing. Panning for gold was and still is done by women, who also wash gold-bearing earth and crush rock for gold. Men dig the pits and unearth the gold-bearing quartz. In some villages, children still go out with pans to pick placer gold out of the compacted-earth streets after a hard rain.

Akan gold, exchanged for salt, textiles, leather, weapons, brass ingots, and manufactured brass wares, was taken north by trans-Saharan camel caravan, and before the advent of the Portuguese on the Gold Coast in 1472, supplied much of the European demand for gold. By 1482, the Portuguese had built Elmina (The Mine), the first of many European coastal gold-trading forts, to circumvent Islamic control of the European gold supply at the source. A parade of Europeans from many countries soon followed, each group building one or more forts on the coast, and trans-Saharan trade routes declined as the northerly flow of gold reversed itself, going south to European traders at the coast instead. The gold trade grew until the slave trade overtook it around 1750. When British prohibition of slave trading began to be enforced by her navy off the West African coast around 1825, the gold trade revived for several decades, finally ending about 1900.

Akan peoples excel in metalworking with non-ferrous metals because of the gold trade and its heavy influence from Islamized North Africa. A North African influence underlies Akan lost-wax casting and hammering techniques in brass and gold, as well as the types of things produced and much of the stylistic vocabulary. Later European influences appeared on this broad North African-Islamic base, which also supplied the framework for the system of weights and measures employed by the Akan in the gold trade.