Asante (Ashanti) History Much of the modern nation of Ghana was
dominated from the late 17th through the late 19th century by a
state known as Asante. Asante was the largest and most powerful
of a series of states formed in the forest region of southern
Ghana by people known as the Akan. Among the factors leading the
Akan to form states, perhaps the most important was that they
were rich in gold. History of the Ashanti People In the 15th and
16th centuries, gold-seeking traders came to Akan country not
only from the great Songhay empire (in the modern Republic of
Mali) and the Hausa cities of northern Nigeria, but also from
Europe. After the Portuguese built the first European fort in
tropical Africa at El Mina in 1482, the stretch of the Atlantic
coast now in Ghana became known in Europe as the Gold Coast.
Akan entrepreneurs used gold to purchase slaves from both
African and European traders. Indeed, while Europeans would
eventually ship at least twelve million slaves to the Americas
(the estimates vary betw