During the eighteenth century, a new set of leaders took control of the coast. Alongside these political changes, the social organization of coastal societies transformed as well, due to new relationships of dependency forming among communities within the new political structure. These changes were not caused directly by the activities of European or American traders, who increasingly participated in slave trading on this coast, but rather were indirect consequences of the instability associated with the transatlantic slave trade. As John Mensah Sarbah suggests, people with power attracted people in need of protection during this period. The new government came about through a process of war and destruction that decentralized political power in the region while creating opportunities for new leaders to assume power. The wars are well documented in European accounts. But less documented are the networks of dependency and mutual obligation that formed within African societies during this era. The outcome of the political transformation was greater decentralization of political authority across the coastal region compared to the small “kingdoms” that had existed in the seventeenth century. Yet the region simultaneously became more politically unified through a process of coalition building among previously separate polities.

Wars plagued the coastal polities in the first decades of the 1700s much as they had in the closing decades of the 1600s, except on a larger scale. The kings of Eguafo, Fetu, Asebu, Acron, and Agona lost all their former power in these wars, and those polities ceased to exist as sovereign entities. The wars destroyed the political order of the seventeenth century, which had been centered on “kings” residing in the hinterland capitals of coastal polities. While the institution of kingship was dissolving, however, Borbor Fante warlords grew increasingly influential in trade, diplomacy, and military affairs in the region.

The wars of the early eighteenth century created opportunities for a new cadre of leaders to replace former “kings” as politico-military leaders in the region. The basis of power of the new elite had a distinct military dimension that distinguished leaders of the slave-trade era from their predecessors.