Accra

Accra lies on the Atlantic coast of West Africa in the territory of the Ga people. The name comes from the Akan word Nkran, meaning “ants,” a reference to the conspicuous anthills of the surrounding countryside. In Ga the place and people are called Ga or Gaga, a related name. Sacred fences sometimes surrounded the tall anthills, which communities regarded as links between the living world and the dead. The European spelling Accra and the later capital grew from a landscape in which settlement, trade, ancestor veneration, and fortification were closely intertwined. By the fifteenth century the kingdom of Accra ruled from Ayawaso.

Its coast was not initially the region’s leading commercial center; Ada, Prampram, Dodowa, and Akuse occupied stronger positions in the export and inland trades. A Portuguese fort was destroyed by local inhabitants in 1576, after which business shifted onto the beaches. During the seventeenth century the Dutch built Fort Crèvecoeur, the British built Fort James, and the Swedes established Christiansborg, later held by Denmark. These forts made the coast a contested interface between African polities and competing European traders. Accra was a regional power by 1646, although it depended on the rising Akwamu kingdom’s control of routes into the interior. Civil conflict and the invasion of 1677 shattered Ayawaso: Akwamu’s ruler killed King Okai Koi and drove his son Ofori toward the small settlement beneath Fort Crèvecoeur.

Danish cannon helped the survivors resist, but renewed war in 1681 burned Osu and Small Accra and forced Ofori into exile. The separate settlements around Fort James, Fort Crèvecoeur and Christiansborg later developed into the districts of Jamestown, Usshertown and Osu. Their history reflects the interaction of Ga communities, regional states and Atlantic traders.