ABSTRACT
The campaign of 1863 and 1864 had been such a failure from the British point of view that both Downing Street and the Fante began to give up hope that British rule could ever give the coast proper protection against the Ashanti. In October 1864 the British Government appointed Colonel Ord, R.E., to visit the four West African colonies. In 1867 the British and Dutch Governments arranged to exchange some of their forts in order to divide the coastline into a Dutch and a British stretch, and to get rid of the inconvenience of having Dutch and British forts mixed together. The transfer was to take effect on 1st January, 1868, and in the early days of January the four eastern Dutch forts were duly handed over to the British without any trouble. But when the joint Anglo-Dutch commission moved beyond Elmina and tried to transfer the four British forts, trouble began at once.
