Fort James
*On this date, in 1659, Fort James was built. This was a slave-holding fort located in Accra, Ghana.
It was built by the Royal African Company of England (RAC) as a trading post for both gold and slaves in 1673, where it joined the Dutch Fort Crêvecœur (1649) and the Danish Fort Christiansborg (1652) along the coast of the then Gold Coast.
Fort James was named after the then Duke of York, later King James II, who was Governor of the RAC at the time it was built, and after whom the adjacent town of Jamestown in Accra was also named. The fort stood next to Jamestown Lighthouse and served as a prison from the colonial era up to 2008. Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, was imprisoned from 1950 to 1951 with the ordinary criminal population. It is a historic castle and serves as a tourist site.
