Timeline of Ghanaian history
Open-knowledge reference entry
Ghana gained independence from the British on 6 March 1957. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. The country became a republic on July 1, 1960.
History
Prior to Independence, Ghana was known as the Gold Coast. The currency used before Independence was the British West African pound and in 1958 it was changed to Ghanaian pound. The Ghanaian pound was used between 1958 and 1965 and afterwards changed to Ghanaian Cedi.
Major years and events
1480- The king of Portugal commissioned the construction of Elmina castle
1482 - the Portuguese become first Europeans to set up trading settlement in Ghana and Sub-Saharan Africa.
1598 - the Dutch joined the Portuguese in trading gold to establish Dutch Gold coast.
1701 - The Battle of Feyiase marks the rise of the Ashanti Empire
1874 - the British declare coastal area of the Gold Coast as a colony as British Gold coast.
1946 - First legislative council elections take place.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8050972. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1957, 1960, 1958 and 1965.
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This entry incorporates text from “Timeline of Ghanaian history” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.