The state of Ashanti, of the components that will later make up present-day Ghana, is to have the most cohesive history and will exercise the greatest influence.

The Ashanti are members of the Twi-speaking branch of the Akan people.

The groups that come to constitute the core of the Ashanti confederacy move north to settle in the vicinity of Lake Bosumtwi.

Before the mid-seventeenth century, the Ashanti begin an expansion under a series of militant leaders that lead to the domination of surrounding peoples and to the formation of the most powerful of the states of the central forest zone.

Under Chief Oti Akenten (r. ca. 1630-60), a series of successful military operations against neighboring Akan states brings a larger surrounding territory into alliance with Ashanti.

Other Akan groups fleeing the Ashanti in the mid-eighteenth century, establish a Baoulé kingdom at Sakasso and two Agni kingdoms, Indenie and Sanwi, in east-central Cote d'lvoire.

The Baoulé, like the Asante, elaborate a highly centralized political and administrative structure under three successive rulers, but it finally splits into smaller chiefdoms.

Despite the breakup of their kingdom, the Baoulé strongly resist French subjugation.

Osei Tutu (d. 1712 or 1717) becomes asantehene (king of Asante) at the end of the seventeenth century.

Under Osei Tutu's rule, the confederacy of Asante states is transformed into an empire with its capital at Kumasi.

Political and military consolidation ensue, resulting in firmly established centralized authority.

Osei Tutu is strongly influenced by the high priest, Anokye, who, tradition asserts, caused a stool of gold to descend from the sky to seal the union of Asante states.

Stools already functioned as traditional symbols of chieftainship, but the Golden Stool of Asante represents the united spirit of all the allied states and establishes dual allegiance that superimposes the confederacy over the individual component states.

The Golden Stool remains a respected national symbol of the traditional past and figures extensively in Asante ritual.

Osei Tutu permits newly conquered territories that join the confederation to retain their own customs and chiefs, who are given seats on the Asante state council.

Osei Tutu's gesture makes the process relatively easy and nondisruptive because most of the earlier conquests had subjugated other Akan peoples.

Within the Asante portions of the confederacy, each minor state continues to exercise internal self-rule, and its chief jealously guards the state's prerogatives against encroachment by the central authority.

A strong unity develops, however, as the various communities subordinate their individual interests to central authority in matters of national concern.

By the mid-eighteenth century, Asante is a highly organized state.

The wars of expansion that bring the northern states of Mamprusi, Dagomba, and Gonja under Asante influence are won during the reign of Asantehene Opoku Ware I (d. 1750), successor to Osei Tutu.

By the 1820s, successive rulers have extended Asante boundaries southward.

Although the northern expansions link Asante with trade networks across the desert and in Hausaland to the east, movements into the south bring the Asante into contact, sometimes antagonistic, with the coastal Fante, Ga-Adangbe, and Ewe peoples, as well as with the various European merchants whose fortresses dot the Gold Coast.

The coastal people, primarily some of the Fante and the inhabitants of the new town of Accra, who are chiefly Ga, come to rely on British protection against Ashanti incursions, but the ability of the merchant companies to provide this security is limited.

The British Crown dissolves the company in 1821, giving authority over British forts on the Gold Coast to Governor Charles MacCarthy, governor of Sierra Leone.

The British forts and Sierra Leone will remain under common administration for the first half of the century.

MacCarthy's mandate is to impose peace and to end the slave trade.

He seeks to do this by encouraging the coastal peoples to oppose Kumasi rule and by closing the great roads to the coast.

Incidents and sporadic warfare continues, however.

MacCarthy is killed, and most of his force is wiped out in a battle with Ashanti forces in 1824.

An Ashanti invasion of the coast in 1826 is defeated, nonetheless, by British and local forces, including the Fante and the people of Accra.

When the British government allows control of the Gold Coast settlements to revert to the British African Company of Merchants in the late 1820s, relations with Ashanti are still problematic.

From the Ashanti point of view, the British have failed to control the activities of their local coastal allies.

Had this been done, Ashanti might not have found it necessary to attempt to impose peace on the coastal peoples.

MacCarthy's encouragement of coastal opposition to Ashanti and the subsequent 1824 British military attack further indicate to Ashanti authorities that the Europeans, especially the British, do not respect Ashanti.

Ashanti, the most powerful state of the Akan interior during most of the nineteenth century, seeks to expand its rule and to promote and protect its trade.

The first Ashanti invasion of the coastal regions takes place in 1807; the Ashanti move south again in 1811 and in 1814.

These invasions, though not decisive, disrupt  trade in such products as gold, timber, and palm oil, and threaten the security of the European forts.

Local British, Dutch, and Danish authorities are all forced to come to terms with Ashanti, and in 1817 the African Company of Merchants signs a treaty of friendship that recognizes Ashanti claims to sovereignty over large areas of the coast and its peoples. 

The Asante have supplied enslaved people to British and Dutch traders on the coast from the beginning of the eighteenth century; in return, they receive firearms with which to enforce their territorial expansion.

After the death of the powerful Osei Tutu in either 1712 or 1717, a period of internal chaos and factional strife has ended with the accession of Opoku Ware (reigned from about 1720 to 1750), under whom the Asante will reach its fullest extent in the interior of the country.

Bono, an Akan state of West Africa, located between the forests of Guinea and the savannas of the Sudan in what is now Brong-Ahafo Region in the Republic of Ghana, had probably been founded about 1450, and its rise was undoubtedly connected with the developing gold trade of Bighu, a Malian Muslim or Dyula commercial center forty miles (sixty-four kilometers) to the northwest.

From there Muslim traders came to Bono soon after its foundation, and many members of the royal household were later converted to Islam.

The kings of Bono are said to have played a major role in the gold-mining industry: both Obunumankoma (flourished from about 1450–75) and 'Ali Kwame (flourished from about 1550 to 60) are thought to have introduced new mining techniques from the western Sudan to the Akan fields, and Owusu Aduam (flourished around 1650) is reported to have completely reorganized the industry.

The gold from the Akan fields, passed through the entrepôts of the western Sudan along the trade routes of the Sahara to the terminal ports of North Africa and from there to Europe and elsewhere.

Bono has engaged in wars with Sumalia Ndewura Jakpa of Gonja and is finally subjugated in 1722–23 by Opoku Ware of the Asante empire.

Tacky (Akan spelling: Takyi), the eponymous leader of the 1760 rebellion in Jamaica, originally from the Fante ethnic group in West Africa, had been a paramount chief in Fante land (in the Central region of present-day Ghana) before being enslaved.

He, along with the Asante Queen Nanny or Nana, both plan to take over Jamaica from the British to be a separate Black country, but for themselves and not as allies.

Before being a slave, he had been a king of his village.

He himself recalled selling his rivals of the Ashanti, Nzema and Ahanta; other Akan states, off into slavery as spoils of war to the British, but ironically, he had become enslaved himself when a rival state defeated his army in battle and sold him off to Jamaica as well.

According to J.A. Jones, who claimed to have met him while being held captive by Tacky while trying to get an interview with him, in his memoirs he wrote that Tacky spoke very fluent English (which is indeed common for the ruling class of Fantes at this time).

Also according to Jones, he was discovered in a cave a year before the rebellion took place, planning with his comrades: Quaw(twi Yaw), Sang, Sobadou(twi Sobadu), Fula Jati and Quantee(twi Kwarteng). all except Fula Jati being of Akan descent.

Sometime before daybreak on a Monday in May, Tacky and his followers began the revolt and easily took over the Frontier and Trinity plantations while killing their masters.

Bolstered by their easy success, they make their way to the storeroom at Fort Haldane where the munitions to defend the town of Port Maria are kept.

After killing the storekeeper, Tacky and his men steal nearly four barrels of gunpowder and forty firearms with shot, before marching on to overrun the plantations at Heywood Hall and Esher

By dawn, hundreds of other slaves hav joined Tacky and his followers.

At Ballard's Valley, the rebels stop to rejoice in their success.

One slave from Esher decides to slip away and sound the alarm.

Obeahmen (Caribbean shamans) quickly circulate around the camp dispensing a powder that they claim will protect the men from injury in battle and loudly proclaim that an Obeahman cannot be killed.

Confidence is high.

Soon there are seventy to eighty mounted militia on their way along with some Maroons from Scott's Hall, who are bound by treaty to suppress such rebellions.

When the militia learn of the Obeahman's boast of not being able to be killed, an Obeahman is captured, killed and hung with his mask, ornaments of teeth and bone and feather trimmings at a prominent place visible from the encampment of rebels.

Many of the rebels, confidence shaken, return to their plantations.

Tacky and twenty-five or so men decide to fight on.

Tacky and his men run through the woods being chased by the Maroons and their legendary marksman, Davy.

While running at full speed, Davy shoots Tacky and cuts off his head as evidence of his feat, for which he will be richly rewarded.

Tacky's head is later displayed on a pole in Spanish Town until a follower takes it down in the middle of the night.

The rest of Tacky's men are found in a cave near Tacky Falls, having committed suicide rather than going back to slavery.

Other rebellions break out all over Jamaica, many of which are rightly or wrongly attributed to Tacky's cunning and strategy.

It will be months until peace is restored.

Over sixty white people lose their lives as well as four hundred or so black slaves, including two ringleaders who are burned alive, and two others who are hung in iron cages at the Kingston Parade, until they starve to death.

Towards the start of the rebellion, it had been discovered that slaves in Kingston had elected a female Ashanti slave named Cubah (a British misnomer of the Akan day name "Akua") the rank of 'Queen of Kingston'.

Cubah (Akua) sat in state under a canopy at their meetings, wearing a robe and a crown.

It is unknown whether there was any direct communication between Cubah's people and Tacky's but when discovered, she had been ordered to be transported from the island for conspiracy to rebel.

While at sea, she had bribed the captain of the ship to put her ashore in western Jamaica where she had joined the leeward rebels and remained at large for months.

On being recaptured, she is executed.

The first Anglo-Ashanti War begins in 1823.

The British had been drawn into three earlier wars in the Gold Coast:

In the Ashanti-Fante War of 1806–07, the British had refused to hand over two rebels pursued by the Ashanti, but eventually handed one over (the other escaped).

In the Ga-Fante War of 1811, the Akwapim had captured a British fort at Tantamkweri and a Dutch fort at Apam.

In the Ashanti-Akim-Akwapim War of 1814–16, the Ashanti had defeated the Akim-Akwapim alliance.

Local British, Dutch, and Danish authorities all had to come to terms with the Ashanti.

By 1817, the Ashanti, who had an army of twenty thousand, had become the strongest power in West Africa, so the (British) African Company of Merchants had signed a treaty of friendship that recognized Ashanti claims to sovereignty over much of the coast.

The African Company of Merchants was dissolved in 1821 and the British assumed control of the Gold Coast.
 
By the 1820s the British had decided to support one of the other tribes, the Fante, enemies of the Ashanti.

Inland, the Ashanti kings who ruled from the Golden Stool—said to have come from their great god guardian of the Ashanti soul, "Nyame"—will not allow themselves to be governed by the British.

Economic and social friction play their part in the causes for the outbreak of violence.

The immediate cause of the war happens when a group of Ashanti kidnaps and murders an African sergeant of the Royal African Corps.

A small British group is led into a trap that result in ten killed, thirty-nine wounded and a British retreat.

The Ashanti try to negotiate but the British governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, rejects Ashanti claims to Fanti areas of the coast and resists overtures by the Ashanti to negotiate.

This starts the First Anglo-Ashanti War, which will run until 1831.

British governor Sir Charles MacCarthy, after organizing the defenses of Cape Coast, had set out with an expedition of some eighty men of the Royal African Colonial Corps (RACC), one hundred and seventy men of the Cape Coast Militia, and two hundred and forty Fanti tribesmen under their local chiefs.

He is accompanied by a captain and an ensign of the 2nd West India Regiment, as aides-de-camp, a surgeon of the same regiment, and J. T. Williams, his colonial secretary.

This is not the only part of his force; three other groups of infantry are in the region, one of six hundred regulars of the RACC and three thousand native levies, one of one hundred regulars and militia and two thousand levies (under Major Alexander Gordon Laing), and a third of three hundred regulars and militia and six thousand levies.

The plan is for the four groups to converge and then engage the enemy with overwhelming force.

On the night of the 20th, still without having joined forces with the other three groups, MacCarthy's force had camped by a tributary of the Pra River.

The next day, at around 2pm, they encounter a large enemy force of around ten thousand men; believing that the Ashanti army contained several disaffected groups whose chiefs are willing to defect, MacCarthy instructs the band to play the God Save the King loudly.

The Ashanti respond by approaching closer, beating war drums, and his beliefs are swiftly dispelled.

Fighting starts shortly thereafter; the two sides are separated by a sixty foot (eighteen meter)-wide stream, which the Ashanti attempt to cross by felling trees for bridges.

The British at first shoot the Ashanti who try to cross the exposed tree trunks.

However, the British forces are lightly supplied; the bearers bringing the supplies up in the rear, which include most of the gunpowder and ammunition, mostly flee after hearing the firing in the distance and encountering deserters straggling back.

Four cases of supplies arrive; the first is opened and the shot inside is distributed, but the other three are found to contain only macaroni.

As the British run out of ammunition, the Ashanti advance across the river.

Most of the Fante militia flee, and the British who stand and fight are overwhelmed in hand-to-hand combat.

MacCarthy, along with the ensign and his secretary, attempts to fall back; he is wounded by gunfire, however, and kills himself rather than be taken prisoner.

The Ashanti behead MacCarthy's body, then, out of respect for his courage, they cut out his heart and eat it.

MacCarthy's gold-rimmed skull will be later used as a drinking-cup by the Ashanti rulers.

Ensign Wetherell is killed while trying to defend MacCarthy's body, and Williams taken prisoner.

On his return, he will relate that he had only survived through being recognized by an Ashanti chief for whom he had done a small favor, and was spared; he will be held prisoner for several months, locked in a dwelling which he shares with the severed heads of MacCarthy and Wetherell, kept as trophies of war.