ABSTRACT
Dutch and English settlements developed within the Gold Coast (Ghana) from the seventeenth century, primarily in association with the slave trade. The United Kingdom formally annexed the territory as a colony in 1871. Tribes associated with the Ashanti Union violently resisted British efforts to pacify them until 1901. France subjected West African coastal territory later identified as the Ivory Coast to protectorate status in the 1840s and to occupation after 1882. The Rassemblement Democratique Africain, a multinational political party, opposed continued French rule within West Africa after World War II but generally opposed the use of violence toward this end. The United Kingdom's colony and protectorate of Sierra Leone grew from settlements established on the western coast of Africa as early as 1788. The territory experienced little serious political violence in the early twentieth century except for an easily suppressed rebellion led by the self-styled Islamic prophet Idara in 1931.
