Quest for Gold and Slaves
During the 15th century, the Royal House of Portugal sponsored the first successful European expedition to Africa. In 1471, the gold encrusted land of Ghana was discovered by Martim Fernandez and Alvaro Esteves. Not long after the Portuguese began to barter for gold with the natives, King Afonso V dubbed the unclaimed area Mina or "The Mine." (Anquandah, 8)

The Portuguese erected Elmina Castle in 1482, making it the oldest European structure on the continent. From 1490-1560, the Portuguese exported nearly 1000 kgs. of gold from The Mine. (Anquandah, 14) Hence, the region became known as the Gold Coast.

"African slavery, its characteristics, origins, and development are poorly documented. There is no historical evidence that slaves ever existed at Elmina prior to the advent of the European trade. They were, however, being brought to Elmina by the 1470s, prior to the founding of Sao Jorge da Mina....They were used to meet the labor needs of the Portuguese garrison, as well as to help African merchants transport goods to the interior. Between 1500 and 1535 the Portuguese may have imported 10,000-12,000 slaves to Elmina, primarily from the Niger Delta and the Bight of Biafra. It has been estimated that 10 percent of the gold bought by the Portuguese crown at Elmina before 1540 was paid for in slaves. The importance of slaves to Elmina continued into the Dutch period, when...slaves made up an important component of the town's population. Some captives brought to Elmina were obtained in Ghana, but most came from other parts of the West African coast and were linguistically and culturally distinct from the indigenous Akan population." (Christopher DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina, 2001, p.34)

First Hand Experiences at Elmina

Click here to watch a brief video of Elmina. Once at the site, click the "Elmina" video link on the upper right side of page to initiate real player video feed.

December 21, 1999 Elmina Castle Travelogue

"Elmina Castle is....not a fancy castle with ornate furnishings, like those that Rae and I saw in England during our visit there in March 1999. Elmina Castle's focus was as a trading hub, linking the African interior with European traders. Before long, the main traffic through Elmina Castle was that of slaves, bound for Europe and the Americas.

Admission to the castle was $5.00 for non-Ghanaians. It is a haunting and eerily quiet place. We walked through many different places in the castle, including the male and female dungeons, the point of no return (where slaves went past to be loaded onto ships), the Portuguese and Dutch churches, and the room from which no one emerged alive (troublesome slaves and others were placed here and no food or water was given). While our tour gave us some feel for the castle's history, you realize that there is no way we could fully appreciate the train of human misery which passed through those buildings over the centuries. Particularly striking was the proximity, mere feet away, of the churches, where people went to worship God, to the dungeons where unimaginable suffering took place. All in all a very sobering tour, but very informative and worthwhile. Outside the castle a number of young boys swarmed around us, asking for money and wanting to give us their mailing address. They were friendly and not at all threatening, but nonetheless quite insistent."

The Travel Journal of Jacqui and Lars, November 25, 2000

Lecture on Forts and Castles of Ghana by Albert Van Dantzig (author of Castles and Forts of Ghana as a Collective Historical Monument, in Maggie Dodds (ed.), History of Ghana, American Women's Association, Accra, 1974)

"In order to tell you something, though not everything, about the forts and castles in Ghana, I'll try to be short, but it is a subject about which one can write little books and tell a lot in much more than an hour. This evening I'll tell you briefly something about what are trade forts; why they were built here in Ghana; what is their historical importance. I would like to tell something about their common characteristics; then, I cannot avoid it, of course, as an historian, to tell you something which you could call a brief history. And finally I would like to tell you something about what life was like in the forts and around the forts. So, here we go.. . . .

Now forts and castles of course we find in many parts of the world. Most of the forts and castles we know outside Ghana are either military forts or left over from the Middle Ages, the Feudal era, and in that case they are often grown out into palaces. An example of the extreme form of palaces growing out of forts is the Versailles Palace near Paris. But the forts and castles outside Europe took mostly the character, particularly if they were built by Europeans, of outposts or strongholds like you have in the United States - like Fort Worth, Fort Duquesne; here in Africa too, such as Fort Lamy, an example of military outpost. What we have in Ghana is rather unique, this whole series of trade forts. The really interesting thing of all the forts and castles of Ghana is not so much the individual buildings which really are, let's face it, less impressive than Versailles or the chateaux along the Loire in France, but rather the forts and castles as a collective historical monument. Because what is really most surprising and interesting is that over less than 300 miles of coastline, in a relatively short period of about three centuries, not less than 60 fortified trade posts of various kinds were built.

(The original text has a simple map of the coast showing the following forts and castles listed from east to west:

Keta (Fort Prindesten),
Ada (Fort Kongesten),
Ningo (Fort Fredensborg),
Prampram (Fort Vernon),
Kpone,
Tema,
Teshie (Fort Augustaborg),
Accra (Christiansborg/Osu Castle,
Fort Crevecoeur/Ussher Fort, James Fort),
Senya Bereku (Fort de Goede Hoop/Good Hope),
Winneba,
Apam (Fort Leydsaamheyd),
Tantumquery,
Amoku,
Kormantin (Fort Amsterdam),
Anomabu (Fort William),
Mori (Fort Nassau),
Cape Coast (Cape Coast Castle),
Elmina (St. George d'Elmina, Fort Conraadsburg),
Komenda (Fort Vrendenbourgh),
British Komenda,
Shama (St. Sebastian),
English Secondi,
Dutch Secondi (Fort Orange),
Takoradi (Fort Witsen),
Butri (Fort Batenstein),
Dixcove, kwidi (Fort Dorethea),
Fort Duma, Takrama (Fort Louise),
Princes Town (Gross Frederichsburg/Fort Hollandia),
Fort Ruychaver, Axim (Fort St. Anthony),
Ankobra (Elise Carthago),
Beyin.

We could in a way see the whole set of forts and castles and trade lodges in Ghana as a kind of huge shopping street - shopping street of a few government-sponsored trading companies which did not sell for money so much as for trade goods from Africa - a kind of barter trade therefore. Although we should not forget that we did have here on the coast a currency in the form of gold dust.

The various establishments of the European companies, the chartered companies, vary greatly in importance, ranging from the big castles - in fact there are only three castles in Ghana; Elmina, which was the headquarters of the Portuguese, later the Dutch; Cape Coast Castle, built by the British; Christiansborg Castle here in Accra, built by the Danes. Those big castles had several hundred big guns, large garrisons, commercial officials and government officials and at a later stage, the real craftsmen. There was a considerable number of castle slaves also - often craftsmen themselves. In many respects these big castles can be seen as mini-cities really but low in the scale we have the ordinary forts. And even the Prussian headquarters at Gross Frederichsburg, at Princes Town, was never called anything other than a fort. Of course it was much smaller than the other three castles. These forts often had up to about fifty guns, a commercial and military commander united in one person, with a few soldiers and few officials for commerce. Then finally there was a large number of so-called lodges which were mostly manned only by civil assistants not by real fighters. Often they were only occupied when ships came to anchor for trade and they mostly had only rudimentary forms of defence with one bastion, two or three guns, or the rather peculiar case of the Dutch lodge at Mount Congh, now called Queen Ann's Point, near Cape Coast, about which it was reported at the end of the 17th century: “We have here one man with an axe.”

Why did the forts and castles spring up here in Ghana in such great density, one may ask. There are several reasons for this and one of the more important is perhaps simply of geography. Both east and west of Ghana - the Ivory Coast and into Togo, Dahomey and Nigeria area - we have only low sandy coasts backed by a system of lagoons with generally rather dangerous surf; no natural harbours; whereas only in this area from the Volta to roughly Cape Three Points we have this quite different type of coast with many natural harbours - little bays and coves with promontories very useful for building forts which were aiming at defending the sea-roads in front of a certain area which was developed as a trading area. Then another advantage of the Gold Coast was that gold was found and mined at fairly close distance from the coast, which we don't find either east or west. Furthermore, in the period in which the forts were built - between the 15th and 18th centuries - Europe had an insatiable demand for gold. Finally, perhaps one of the most important reasons that so many forts were built, is that so many companies could settle here yet none of these European nations colonized the Gold Coast as they did other parts of the world. This can partially be explained by the fact that African society here was simply too well organized already before the arrival of the Europeans to allow simply the taking into possession, as happened for instance in many parts of America. In fact the African chiefs, coastal chiefs, and the traders from the interior to the coast, were very quick to recognize the advantages of this competition between the various European companies.

So Ghana has indeed a fairly unique history if you look at the general colonial history of the world, because this is one of the rarer areas where for 300 years European and non-Europeans had been trading basically on a foot of equality. And even afterwards, in the 19th century, in the great era of imperialism, there was really no room in Ghana for the type of colonial exploitation that we find in such areas as the Congo. The famous Fante Bond of 1844 is indeed one of the earliest types in Africa of a modern independence movement. These forts and castles did in fact give a sense of security to both Europeans and Africans. To the African they gave the security that the Europeans were not likely to “break out” from their forts. But on the other hand, by treaty also, Europeans were compelled to come to the defence of the coastal states in which they established these forts in case these states were attacked from the interior. I must of course call your attention to the fact that the Europeans did not always come to their aid, particularly here in Accra at the time of Akwamu invasions, Akim invasions, Asante invasions, against which Europeans, in spite of all these beautiful treaties didn't do anything. Perhaps the forts and castles also, to a considerable extent satisfied the “Territorial Imperative”, to speak with the words of Ardrey of the Europeans themselves. They did feel a certain kind of safety within those walls of forts and castles which were really built on territory they only rented from the local chiefs. Finally, the local chiefs also brought of their own free will many of their so-called palavers to the castles and forts, known in Fante as Aban. The Aban became the basis of later politics in Ghana and there is still, in Fante the word Aban, used to describe “government.” Such informal jurisdiction developed particularly in the early stages in Elmina; later in and around Axim; and of course there is the famous case of the 1830s of Governor Maclean who did the same thing around Cape Coast and then into the interior.

So to summarize my introduction I think it is a bit shortsighted to say about the forts and castles - “Well it may be a tourist attraction of Ghana but let's not stress it too much because they are just European leftovers of colonial days.” The forts and castles can with sufficient reason, to some extent, be regarded not only as monuments to the slave trade because they were used for slave trade, but also to a long history, a long tradition of Ghanaian independence. Surprisingly and paradoxically as it may sound, they could be regarded to some extent even as monuments of freedom - monuments at least, of equality. (If you disagree please let me know in the question hour!)

Something about the common characteristics we find in the various forts and castles which of course individually are quite different yet we can recognize some basic features. Generally the basic pattern is a square surrounded by curtain walls which end in pointed bastions. Within this square of curtain walls and bastions are built one or sometimes more than one, generally two storied buildings; in the bigger forts sometimes three stories or a tower. Also in virtually all the forts we find, below the central square, the cisterns, or in smaller courts, one cistern. The ground floor of the forts and castles is generally used for storerooms - there is no ventilation on the outside, only on the inside - or for rooms for the garrison for the lower officials. The top floor is for residence for high officials, for officers, and for the “palaver halls” which we find in most forts and castles. The bastions are sometimes solid, like the curtain wall, but also often we find hollow bastions which were used for instance as powder magazines, or in the days of the slave trade - and I need not tell you that slave trade was developed rather late here compared to other parts of Africa - these hollow bastions were often used for slave prisons or slave holds.

Now most of the forts were greatly expanded, particularly in the 18th century. At a later stage they developed so-called spurs. These were outer walls forming a kind of triangle in front of the main gate. Sometimes they became virtually a part of the fort as they did at Cape Coast or Dixcove. Other times they were simply thin walls surrounding service areas which in case of war were also used to provide shelter for the towns-people against invading enemies. Sometimes these spurs became very big, bigger than the fort itself, as we have for instance in Apam and in small forts where trade did not develop very well and where the Europeans decided to use these forts more as service forts rather than trade forts. So we find a big carpentry shop, a cat yard, as we have at Elmina and other Dutch forts, yards where civet cats were reared who produced a kind of liquid which was very important for the perfume industry. The cisterns played a very important role not only for the supply of drinking water to the inhabitants of the fort but particularly for supply of drinking water to passing ships, because these forts were not only trade forts but were also supply forts. They were stations midway in the long voyage that the ships made. Ships were often serviced near the ports themselves where there was a kind of natural harbour. And castle gardens supplied fresh vegetables and fruits for the crews of the ships. Again in the days of slave trade large quantities of millet and corn, as well as palm oil, were also bought locally.

Then I shall try to be as brief as possible on this most complicated subject - “a brief history” of the forts and castles, where I may refer to books and booklets on the subject. Of course the first fort was Elmina, built in 1482 by the Portuguese. The Portuguese and Spanish had a tradition of fighting Islam since, in fact, the 8th Century A.D. By the middle of the 15th century the success of the Portuguese and the Spanish against Islam in the Iberian Peninsula was quite great. By the middle of the 15th century an important event took place when, in the last Christian outpost in the east, the city of Constantinople was taken by the Turks. It is really from that date that we see particularly the Portuguese getting keen on discovering a sea route to the Indies around the coast of Africa - the work of Prince Henry the Navigator.

So in 1471 the first Europeans arrived here on the Guinea Coast, an event, which in fact, two years ago was celebrated with a special historical conference. Hardly ten years later, 1481, Diogo d'Azambuja negotiated with the local chief at Elmina for the construction of a fort - San Jorge d'Elmina. The name of the chief with whom Diogo d'Azambuja negotiated is Caramança. This Caramança is often said to have been one of the first chiefs of Elmina, by name of Kwamena Ansah. Very nice, but modern historians more or less agree that by 1482 there were not yet any Fante on this coast. So how come that in 1482 the “chief of Elmina” had a Fante name? Somehow it doesn't fit! Now in a 17th century booklet written for Louis XIV to support some claims he thought to have on the Gold Coast, we find the description of these earliest contracts of d'Azambuja with not only Caramança but also “another Mansa”. This is quite interesting because mansa is also a sort of Mande or Arab title for traders. So developed this more modern idea that actually the spelling of Caramança in Portuguese was perhaps a bit misleading, that it was really Kara Mansa - a mansa named Kara - who negotiated with Diogo d'Azambuja. This would make the early history of Elmina much clearer and much more understandable because there is also this confusion about the origin of the word “Elmina”. El is a particle, but in Spanish, not in Portuguese, and the Spanish had never had anything to do here. Elmina people would say, “the mine”. But that would be A Mina. In Arabic, on the other hand, we have Mina meaning “the port” and that does make sense. When the Portuguese arrived here they found one mansa called Kara and when they asked him “what is the name of this place?” he replied, “the port - El Mina”. And that is why the Portuguese named the place Elmina and not A Mina. Moreover there were gold mines but at a considerable distance from Elmina, not at Elmina itself. It also explains perhaps why the Portuguese went out straightaway to build such a big castle. Of course the original castle was not as big as the present one but even the original one, which we find in that part which is around the old courtyard - the small courtyard - was of considerable size. The architects when they look at it have often been struck by the fact that it looks so much like a crusaders' castle - “krak”- in the Middle East. And it is very well possible that the Portuguese, arriving here for the first time, meeting Muslim traders, thought that in fact the great Islamic Empire of northern Africa extended as far as this part of the coast. They therefore decided to build a crusaders' castle to establish themselves firmly and to christianize the people around them. For which purpose indeed they set out straightaway.

Only later on they discovered they had built rather too big a castle for the simple purpose of trade. Indeed the following two forts they built at Axim and at Shama, at natural outlets of the gold trade of the Ankobra River and the Pra River, were much more modest in size. Also in 1482 it was only 30 years after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and it is known that by that time the western European Christians were deeply impressed by the heavy cannon the Turks had used to breach the walls of Constantinople. Again we recognize something of this at Elmina Castle where still we have, on the land side, the northwest bastion which is indeed quite formidable. The Portuguese probably did expect at any time after the construction of the fort that the Turks would march up with their great field-cannon.

During the 16th century we find the first signs of competition coming from the French and English traders who tried to penetrate in this official monopoly area of the Portuguese and at that time it became necessary for the Portuguese to build defences to the seaward rather than to the landward. It appeared soon that the feared Muslims would not march up to drive them out and as a matter of fact relationships with the Africans became quite friendly. Elmina itself even, shortly after the establishment of the castle, got Portuguese city rights. But the greatest problem soon seemed to be the competition on the sea - how to keep away these competitors from other parts of Europe. And then we see Elmina castle extending toward the sea with a whole new courtyard and with heavy guns covering the Elmina Roads. We find the same thing in Axim now, a bastion pointing toward the sea, and in Shama. The competition of the English and the French was not as dangerous as that of the Dutch in the later 16th century because the Dutch decided to revolt against their overlords Philip II of Spain, and that when the Dutch were the main suppliers of trade goods to the Portuguese. They traditionally were redistributors of trade-goods coming from Asia and Africa to Lisbon from where they redistributed them all over the rest of Europe. But they sold at the same time to the Portuguese traders in order to sell again overseas their manufactured products such as cloth, which played a very important role in the overseas trade. All that sort of broke up in a few years, at the end of the 16th century - the Portuguese monopoly on the Gold Coast. Not only did the Dutch revolt against their overlord, the king of Spain, in 1580 Spain and Portugal were also united under one crown with the result that Portugal also became officially the enemy of the Dutch.

After 1580 we see Dutch shipping on the Gold Coast increase enormously. The Dutch were able to supply goods at a lower price than the Portuguese and by 1612 finally one of the local chiefs, the one of Asebu; broke the spell by openly inviting the Dutch, sending in fact two ambassadors to Holland to ask the Dutch to build a fort at Mori. This fort unfortunately has nearly completely disappeared although we can still see some ruins of which the most striking feature perhaps is the great quantity of Dutch bricks we find in the walls. Because traditionally the Dutch built in bricks, and moreover this was the first time they had built outside of Holland in fact they thought it safer to bring the building material from Holland rather than to rely on the local people who as yet were not fully dependable to the Dutch - as officially they had treaties with the Portuguese. Soon they began to extend their influence. In 1624, shortly after the establishment of the Dutch West Indian Company they made a treaty with a chief of a then newly arrived group of Fantes - a treaty which did not very much impress, apparently, this chief, Ambro-Braffo, of the Borbor-Fante; in 1631 they made a similar treaty with the English who had established themselves at Kormantin. With the growing Dutch and also the English competition the Portuguese were finding it very difficult to get their gold and made some attempts to mine gold themselves in a hill near Komenda - Abrobi Hill - an attempt which ended in total disaster. The mine collapsed and shortly afterwards they tried again in the interior, in the Ankobra Valley at the confluence of the Duma and Ankobra Rivers where again it is said they were surprised by an earthquake which I believe is an erroneous interpretation because from some research I conducted, perhaps they did find gold but also some silver or electrum, which was a sign in traditional Akan mining that the spirits were against them and that is probably the reason why they suddenly interrupted the rest of their activities. In 1637 the Dutch made, from Brazil, their final great assault, after a few failures of earlier days, on the Portuguese chief castle at Elmina, putting their guns on Saint Iago Hill which they later fortified with Coenraadsburg Fort. Very shortly afterwards, in 1642, the Portuguese were completely expelled from the whole Gold Coast. However the Dutch had never had as much a monopoly as the Portuguese had had because already we have seen the English had established themselves at Kormantin and very soon the Dutch found the problem of competition from other nations often in the form of so-called “interloper companies” the Dutch sailors who united foreign flags and tried to compete in that way with those who were involved in the official charter company -the West India Company.

In the years between 1648-1659 we see particularly the activities of the notorious renegade official of the Dutch West India Company, a Pole by birth called Caerlof. Caerlof who first under Swedish flag established a large number of trade lodges and forts, next door as you can say, to the existing Dutch forts, then returned to Europe, made use of the fact the King of Sweden got himself involved in a war with the Kingdom of Denmark, and returned to the Gold Coast a second time under Danish flag and promptly “conquered” his own establishments! In the end the Dutch inherited back from the Danes most of these trade posts. One of the major results of this episode was the proliferation of new forts. Caerlof built a foundation for Cape Coast Castle - Carolusburg - originally named after Charles X, then King of Sweden; also a fort at Takoradi, Butri, Anomabu and at Osu, the foundation of modern Christiansborg Castle. The episode of Caerlof also led to that extraordinary episode of the Dutch Fort Ruychaver (excuse me for pronunciation) when the Dutch built very far inland, in fact about 40 miles from the coast, a small fort on the right bank of the Ankobra in the middle of the richest gold producing area known then, near modern Prestea, still an important mining town, where they did for sometime a profitable trade. But soon it appeared the trade post was much too isolated. The commander of the fort got into a palaver with some of the chiefs and in the end saw no other solution, since he could not communicate quickly with the coast, than to blow his attackers, together with himself, up! Which was the untimely end of Fort Ruychaver!

Again after the episode of Caerlof quietness did not last for a long time; soon the Dutch had to face another competition That was when the English decided to set up shop in a bigger way after the Restoration when the new King of England, Charles II, with his friends, decided to dabble a bit in overseas expansion. The early English companies had not been very successful but now they had full financial support and of course, full political support. The result of this was that in 1664 having been annoyed on several occasions by the Dutch, the English decided to send a surprise fleet not only to the Gold Coast but also to the Dutch possessions in America, under one Admiral Holmes. Indeed they were taken by surprise and many of the forts were taken with the exception of Elmina Castle of course. But the Dutch too had their surprise in store for the English because before the English could prepare themselves properly to ward off a counter-attack - all this took place in official peace time! - the Dutch sent Admiral De Ruyter who quickly recovered most of the lost forts and also conquered the original English headquarters at Kormantin, leaving however to the English the former Swedish fort of Carolusburg at Cape Coast.

It's a very essential episode that happened in 1664-1665 and that affected also you Americans. Because it was in that same naval war that the Dutch also lost New Amsterdam which was named after the Duke of York, brother of Charles II, later James II, who played an important role in overseas expansion as I've said. So New Amsterdam became New York and in revenge the Dutch named the former English fort at Kormantin after Amsterdam - perhaps to make up for the loss of “New Amsterdam”! The Duke of York indeed continued to interest himself in the African enterprise. It was he also who first encouraged the striking of the famous Guineas, the gold coins made of Guinea gold, which were so pure that in fact they became worth more than the official pound sterling. Until quite recently the English used the term “Guinea” to denote the equivalent of 21 shillings.

In 1672 the Africa trade was put on a new and sounder footing in England with the foundation of the Royal African Company which became the great competitor of the Dutch West Indian Company in this part of the world. It was this Royal Africa Company which also built here in Accra, James Fort.

Again there are few Americans who realize that James Fort and New York are actually named after the same person. As if the situation wasn't complicated enough, in the 1680s we get again a new nation establishing itself - the Brandenburg African Company, in fact, another Dutch interloper company, which established a fairly large fort at Princes Town and a few minor stations in Ahanta; highly annoying for the Dutch who up to that time thought the Ahanta area, closest to the gold producing area, was entirely theirs. All this competition was bound to lead to turmoil, also within the interior of the Gold Coast and this we see happen indeed after 1690 when particularly the English and the Dutch got involved in their endlessly complicated series of wars known as the Komenda wars, centered around Komenda where both Dutch and English built a fort within shooting range of each other. Komenda was also described in a famous book by William Bosman which shows how this cut-throat competition not only led to a general involvement of the English and the Dutch in the politics of the immediate interior but also led to a gradual decline in the supply of gold. So that by 1700 in fact the gold trade was so much in decline that Europe had to look also to the Gold Coast for that other great “commodity” from Africa - commodity in quotation marks - slaves. It was only after 1700 that the slave trade became important on the Gold Coast, which, by the Portuguese and also for a long time by the Dutch, was always regarded as unfit for the slave trade. For slave trade you needed war and with war trade paths from the gold mines to the coast could not remain open. We recognize this episode, the chapter of the slave trade, also the construction of the forts with the relatively new extensions in the form of hollow bastions, slave prisons, of which we still find this notorious example in Cape Coast Castle - the dungeons. Around 1700 also, although their competition continued to be unsuccessful, we've seen attempts of the French to penetrate - much feared by the English and Dutch and the Danes and Brandenburgers. Though planned with great grandeur nothing comes out of it but a small wooden fort which lasted only two years. In the late 18th century we find still a number of forts built at the extremes of the Gold Coast - the English at Beyin in Nzima area, the Danes at Keta, Ada, and also a small British fort at Prampram. But the great age of fort building was really over by that time.

In the 19th century we see again an entirely new development which in a way is back to “square one”! The Portuguese started by building defences mainly on the landside. We see that it again became necessary to build defences on the landside, this time against the invading Asante or, in the case of Elmina, against the Fante, who were the great enemies of Elminas. So around Cape Coast and Elmina we see in the 19th century the construction of a number of fortifications which are really not meant for trade but purely for protection. In fact Coenraadsburg Fort, built in 1665, in the days of Holmes and De Ruyter, is the only fort which was built for defence purposes and not for trade among the forts of Ghana. In the 19th century also we find some attempts for the foundation of plantations. But on the other hand the African trading elite became independent and we see established centers in such places as Axim or Cape Coast or Sekondi of the grand houses of the first independent African traders. The smaller forts began to fall into decay. The castles themselves became now mainly government offices - very little trade is really done there - or army barracks. Cape Coast first was actually, after the departure of the Dutch in 1872, the capital of the Gold Coast. But in 1876 the English moved their capital to Accra and made Christiansborg the seat of government which is what it is up to this very day. Other forts are turned into post offices or rest houses but it's only in around 1950 the state begins again to become officially interested in these buildings and monuments. Now in the 1970s we are getting to the stage where all these forts are being restored. In Cape Coast Castle a museum is going to open very soon, Elmina Castle will be turned into a tourist hostel and most of the other forts will serve as rest houses.

I think it is nearly time that I stop. But still I would like to say a few words . . . “Stop looking at your watch!” . . . a few words about life in and around the forts because that is something which people visiting these places don't always realize - what was life really like in these forts.

They are sometimes called ships permanently at anchor in the days of the companies. The whole organization of social life in the forts was very much like that on a ship. Very important, central for the fort, was the flag - very essential that the flag was hoisted very early in the morning and lowered late at night. And also, if you were a trader, to make sure that you went to the right place. Between Cape Coast and Anomabu you had five forts of two or three different nations. If you were just half a mile wrong you could expect to be shot at by the enemy. So it was indeed essential that you clearly showed yourself by your colours. That is also why you find on those old engravings those unbelievable big pieces of textile hanging over these forts.

Life in the fort was furthermore like on ship - regulated by bells and the hour glass. Bells one may find only in a few places still extant but many of these forts still have bell towers that are now empty - for instance the round tower of Elmina Castle on the northeast side. Then very important like on ships was the firing of salutes. Every time a ship arrived salutes were fired. It is interesting to know that some forts in fact had such excellent natural defences or were so unimportant that they have never fired anything but salutes. Places like Butri had something like twenty cannon but those cannon had never been used for anything other than firing salutes. The commercial and political hierarchy in the forts was parallel to and sometimes coincided with the military hierarchy. Of the companies the West Indian Company was the most permanent - and personally I can tell you more and I feel more confident on that subject rather than on that of the Danish, German or English companies. For the day-to-day government at Elmina the Director-General was assisted by a Council consisting the chief merchant, the fiscal bookkeeper-general, some chief factors; and then he was assisted outside Elmina by factors and sub factors who commanded the minor forts. The council, consisting of the aforementioned, decided on policy of trade and general politics also, as much as it involved making treaties with local chiefs. In fact the director-general and council did constitute a kind of real government and had considerable power, much greater power than any modern trading company acting in this country. Scribes of course had extremely hard work before the days of the typewriter. All important letters had to be made at least in triplo, one copy for the local file, one copy for the directors in Amsterdam - the so-called assembly of 10; and one copy for one of the various chapters of the West Indian Company concerned. The Company was sub-divided in 5 chambers representing the major trading cities in the Netherlands. Also the communications with the Netherlands were extremely slow, particularly the outwards mail from the Gold Coast to Europe which sometimes took more than 1½ years because ships could not sail but from the upper coast to the lower coast with the current and the prevailing winds. All of you have been swimming sometimes in the sea here and know that the current is always from the west to the east. When you are looking at the airport all the planes are always taking off against the nearly permanent western winds. So letters from Gold Coast to the Netherlands had to go all the way to the West Indies and sometimes to North America before they reached home.

And so for instance I sometimes found references to well-known events - for instance to the death of Queen Ann which I believe was in 1714, which was commemorated in a letter written in 1718 because that was the first time they had heard she died - after more than three years! Another incident which is interesting to note how essential it was indeed to sail from the west to the east not the east to the west - in 1641 when the Dutch tried to conquer Axim, where, the Portuguese were still holding out after the Dutch had captured Elmina they sent a small fleet - unwisely in the rainy season when the winds and the current are strongest - in order to capture Axim. But after 4½ weeks the commander of this fleet decided to return because he had reached only Takoradi!

Furthermore social life at the forts must have been extremely dull really. The only way of amusing oneself was drinking and that is probably what has also given the Guinea Coast the name “white man's grave”! - not that the climate was so unhealthy but that people drank themselves to death! Life was extremely, severely regulated. The gates of the castle closed at night at seven; the drawbridges, if they were there, were drawn up. And yet all these preventive measures, did not prevent the rise of a mulatto class. Of course one should not be too hard on the men of those days because there were very few European women around and those that did come either died or were indeed hardly attractive as I understand from descriptions. These women sometimes occupied their free time, and they had lots of free time, with the distribution of large quantities of bibles which I'm afraid were not very much read! There were of course attempts to establish schools in the castles, particularly at Cape Coast and Elmina but again it was not very successful and to my surprise, even in modern works on Ghanaian education, this is stressed far more, these early failures of the early castle schools, than the much more important training which was given in the courtyards - these workshops where many Africans were trained in such useful crafts as carpentry, ship repairing, and gardening. Gardening again was mainly done for the inhabitants of the forts or for the supply for the ships. But at least they had the effect in this country that many new crops were introduced, such as tomatoes, maize, some people even say the better qualities of yam. And these must have originally come from these castle gardens.

Well I've tried to stay within the limit of time. I'm not sure how clear I've been but at least I hope I've been clear enough to arouse some questions in you."