Ghana Empire Quotes

Ghana was a particularly relevant example for us subjects in the remaining colonies and dominions of the British Empire. There was a growing confidence, not just a feeling, that we would do just as well parting ways with Her Majesty’s empire. If Ghana seemed more effective, as some of our people like to say, perhaps it was because she was smaller in size and neat, as if it was tied together more delicately by well-groomed, expert hands.

Over the course of nearly a half-century, Cuba, Congo, Ghana, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Namibia, Mozambique, Chile, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and even tiny Granada, among many others, were interpreted by U.S. strategists as battlegrounds with the Soviet empire.

The Ashanti conquered forests to build an empire, but they knew nature was from whence they came and to nature they would return. They would tame the land, but they would know when Asase Yaa needed her rest. Their most sacred duty was to ensure harmony and peace between the community, the earth, and the ancestors; to ensure justice. To the community, the Ashanti pledged loyalty. To the earth and the ancestors, they made sacrifices -- to each their due. But harmony is a fragile thing, and so is justice. They bend and break easily. We bend and break them with greed, with violence, with lies and obscurations. The people sold into slavery are modern-day Ghanaians' ancestors too. Their backs and hearts broke under whip and weight. The incomplete story Ghana tells about slavery is a breach. Ashanti culture was breached by colonization. My family broke before and I knew it might break again. The earth broke from the force of a meteoroid, which sent shock waves in every direction.

During his reign, which began in 1307 and lasted twenty-five years, he doubled the land area of Mali. Known as the khan of Africa, Musa governed an empire as large as all of Europe, second in size only to the territory at the time ruled by Genghis Khan in Asia.

During his travels in the Malian empire, Ibn Battuta wrote about his observations of the people, their ruler, their customs and beliefs. He gave one of the highest compliments to a nation of people about justice: Of all peoples the Negroes are those who most abhor injustice. The Sultan pardons no one who is guilty of it. There is complete and general safety throughout the land. The traveler here has no more reason than the man who stays at home to fear brigands, thieves or ravishers … The blacks do not confiscate the goods of any North Africans who may die in their country, not even when these consist of large treasures. On the contrary, they deposit these goods with a man of confidence … until those who have a right to the goods present themselves and take possession.

But there were great kingdoms in the Western Sudan waiting to be discovered. Once knowledge of these old empires resurfaced, some claimed that Jews, who had rebelled against the Romans in Cyrenaica (Libya), had migrated to the Western Sudan around A.D. 115 and built these civilizations. Another group pushed the theory that Sudanese achievements were the results of Arab invasions and the coming of Islam. Some even suggested that African accomplishments were the result of visitors from outer space. Any wild idea was more acceptable than to admit that Africans had the intellect and ingenuity to develop and control well-ordered empires. The purpose of all these erroneous theories was simply to justify slavery and attitudes of racial superiority.

13.5

By and large, only behind the most obscure doors of high academe can one unearth a mention of the great African empires and polities of antiquity like Kush, Benin, Meroe, Djenne, Ghana, and Songhay.

The movement of India towards independence in 1947 heralded the break-up of the British Empire. Self-government for Africans could not be far behind. In British West Africa, the movement towards independence was led by the colony of Gold Coast, soon to become the independent state of Ghana.

Just as African societies took aggressive advantage of the economic opportunities presented by the slave trade, they did the same with legitimate commerce. But they did so in a peculiar context, one in which slavery was a way of life but the external demand for slaves had suddenly dried up. What were all these slaves to do now that they could not be sold to Europeans? The answer was simple: they could be profitably put to work, under coercion, in Africa, producing the new items of legitimate commerce. One of the best documented examples was in Asante, in modern Ghana. Prior to 1807, the Asante Empire had been heavily involved in the capturing and export of slaves, bringing them down to the coast to be sold at the great slaving castles of Cape Coast and Elmina. After 1807, with this option closed off, the Asante political elite reorganized their economy. However, slaving and slavery did not end. Rather, slaves were settled on large plantations, initially around the capital city of Kumase, but later spread throughout the empire

He pictures Brits in the remaining colonies—Nigeria, Burma, Kenya, Ghana, Sudan, Malaya, Jamaica—sitting by their radios, nervous, because Britain is soon to lose the jewel in the crown, and the sun that never sets on the British Empire is about to do so.