The story of Jamestown began with the erection of James fort by the British in 1673 – 74.
The British fort was the last European trading post to be erected in Accra.
It was the smallest of the 3 forts and was built about one and half miles from the Dutch fort. It stood in a village called Soko owned by the Ajumaku and Adanse clans.
The site for the fort was leased in 1672 to the Royal African Company by the Ga Mantse Okaikoi.
King James I of Great Britain granted a royal charter to the company to build the fort and gave permission to name it after himself.
Jamestown’s cosmopolitan mix of peoples started literally at its birth.
The British brought slaves and labourers from the Allada kingdom in Nigeria.
Allada was a major regional market for slaves and the word Alata, a corruption of Allada, entered the Ga language to describe people from Allada and survived to identify Yorubas in general.
Before the British created Ngleshie Alata there was already in Accra an Alata community residing in Osu.
The neighborhood Osu Alata is still in existence.
Ga and Fanti workers joined the work force at James fort beside the Alata as artisans and labourers.
A leader emerged out of this work force.
His name was Wetse Kojo. He was an unusual man who rose from lowly beginning to great wealth and royal status.
He was to have a huge impact on the history of his times. There is considerable controversy about his origins.
According to the records of the Royal African Company he was born in Allada and worked for the company as an indentured servant.
This version is challenged by historians from Ngleshie Alata who insists that he was an Adangme from Prampram where he was engaged as a foreman in James fort.
His outstanding skills as a negotiator came to the notice of his employers who entrusted him with more responsibilities.
He rose to become a makelaar or trading agent for the company then its chief broker.
He traded both for the company and for himself and became immensely wealthy.
He owned so many slaves that he became one of the most powerful merchants on the coast.
The Ga Mantse Okaikoi made political decisions between 1673 and 1677 that had profound impact on the fortunes of Jamestown.
He wanted the Ga to have complete monopoly in Accra over the slave trade.
At the height of the trade he tried to prevent merchants from the forest kingdoms from direct contact with the European forts on the coast.
He decreed that all commerce between Europeans and the inland merchants should be conducted through Ga middlemen at a market called Abonse located several kilometers from the coast.
The decisions infuriated the Akwamu who were the principal trading nation for the Ga in the 17th century.
They and the Akyem, another trading nation, retaliated by mounting slave raids on Accra territories and trying to destabilize the kingdom.
A series of wars began that ended in the defeat of Okaikoi’s armies in 1677.
The king was captured and beheaded.
The invasion succeeded with the connivance of some of Okai Koi’s generals and asafo leaders who considered him a tyrant and did not forgive him or his father Mampong Okai for allowing Europeans to establish permanent presence on the coast.
They detested him as much as they had hated his mother, the Obutu princess and regent Dode Akai who was killed by her generals in a bloody coup d’etat.
Another factor for the defeat was the considerable turmoil in Accra concerning the successor the ill fated royal family.
This struggle for succession destroyed any unity amongst the Ga.
The remnants of the Ga army led by Ofori, Okaikoi’s son, continued fighting until 1680 when the Akwamu succeeded in conquering the entire kingdom.
By the end of the war Ayawaso, the capital of the Ga kingdom was in ruins, destroyed and its inhabitants chased into exile or enslaved.
The royal family found refuge in Glidgi in present day Togo and in Aprang (Ussher town) under the protection of the Dutch and the other forts.
The Akwamu achieved their war aims of direct access to the European forts and control of the
trade routes into Accra. They did not interfere much in the city’s political or trade arrangements.
They recognized and accepted the Ga as experienced negotiators with the Europeans and permitted them to trade as before.
In 1680 the Akwamu was the dominant military and mercantilist power on the slave coast.
They had vanquished the Ga and were powerful enough to exact rent from the Europeans occupying the forts.
They demonstrated this power in 1695 when they expelled the Danes from Christiansborg and held the castle for more than a year.
The Akwamu appointed a viceroy in Accra to oversee their interests and collect tributes.
He was Otu, a nephew of the king of Akwamu, and lived in Accra as the resident Akwamu ambassador.
He stayed in a village called Otublohum an enclave in the town where Akwamu and Fanti merchants had their town residences.
After the Akwamu conquest of Accra, both Wetse Kojo and his British masters realized the need to consolidate their position on the volatile new political landscape.
In the absence of a substantive central authority, they sought recognition from the representative of the Akwamu king, his ambassador in Otublohum.
They did not need political endorsement from Otublohum but they required closer commercial links.
They also wanted to learn the art of Akan statecraft.
Otu helped Wetse Kojo to establish an Akan style court and today Ngleshie Alata is the only Akutso in Accra that celebrates the Akan festival of Odwira.
Ngleshie Alatas position was further strengthened when it was joined by the Akutchei of Sempe and Akumayi.
The three Akutchei collectively formed Jamestown.
Ngleshie Alata was recognized as the dominant member of this coalition due to its wealth and the power of Wetse Kojo.
The decision by Wetse Kojo and the British to establish a special trade relationship with the Akwamu would haunt the politics of Accra for the next three centuries.
In the chaotic aftermath following the Akwawu conquest, the alliance was perceived in the court of the defeated Ga king as a betrayal.
This conclusion was encouraged by allies of the Ga king, the Dutch who understood and anticipated the potential trade and political advantages available to the British in this new alliance.
The two European nations were bitter rivals.
In the 18th century alone they fought 4 major wars against each other.
Their enmity easily seeped into the relationship between the two Ga Akutsei and contaminated it for centuries.
In 1884, at the end of the 19th century it would lead them close to civil war in the Agbutsota.
In the early colonial period and through most of the 20th century this hostility led to innumerable confrontations in courts of law over land and sovereignty.
To be continued…
