History of West Africa in this ancient volume clearly show the "Gum Coast", "Grain Coast", "Ivory Coast", and "Gold Coast". Malachy Postlethwayt writes "It is melancholy to observe that a country, which has near ten thousand miles sea-coast, and noble, large, deep rivers, should yet have no navigation; streams penetrating into the very center of the country, but of no benefit to it, innumerable people, without knowledge of each other, correspondence, or commerce." In the Scramble for Africa in the 1880s the Europeans started to colonise the inland of West Africa, they had previously mostly controlled trading ports along the coasts and rivers. Samory
West Africa it between France and Britain following First World War due to the Treaty of Versailles. Only Liberia retained its independence, at the price of major territorial concessions. Following World War II, nationalist movements arose across West Africa. In 1957, Ghana, under Kwame Nkrumah, became the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve its independence, followed the next year by France's colonies (Guinea in 1958 under the leadership of President Ahmed Sekou Touré); by 1974, West Africa's nations were entirely autonomous. Since independence, many West African nations have been submerged under political instability, with notable civil wars in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and