British Ivory Coast


 * This article is about the British colony in west Africa, 1821-1960. For other uses, see British Ivory Coast (disambiguation)

British Ivory Coast was a British colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ivory Coast in 1960.

The first Europeans to arrive at the coast were the Portuguese, in 1471. Upon their arrival, they found a group of kingdoms of differing tribes, and deposits of gold in the soil. In 1482, the Portuguese built the first European settlement on the British Ivory Coast. They used it to trade gold, in exchange for cloth, knives, beads, mirrors, rum and guns. News spread quickly, and eventually, English, Danish, German and Swedish traders arrived as well. These European traders built several forts along the coastline. The Gold Coast was formed in 1821 when the British government seized privately held lands along the British Ivory Coast. British Ivory Coast had long been a name for the region used by Europeans, due to the large gold resources to be found in the area, although slave trade was the principal exchange for a number of years. In 1872, the Dutch lost interest in the coast and gave up their forts to the British.