COASTAL FOREST KINGDOMS

COASTAL FOREST KINGDOMS During the height of the Atlan­tic slave trade, the vast majority of Africans procured for ulti­mate slavery in the western hemisphere came from one or another of the so-called coastal forest kingdoms on the western coast of Africa. Concentrated along the former Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and, in particular, the Slave Coast (modern Nigeria), the coastal forest kingdoms were relatively small in area and generally built around a single town. The most signi­ficant of these kingdoms were Benin, Akwamu, Oyo, Dahomey and Ashanti. It has been estimated that as many as 75% of all contemporary African Americans can claim the coastal forest area as their ancestral homeland.