TRANSFORMATION OF
ELMINACASTLE
Introduction Construction Ownership Operation Transformation Links

 

 

Elmina Castle was transferred to the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board in 1972. The castle is listed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO. The historical museum features an exhibit, "Images of Elmina Accross the Centuries." (Kwesi Anquandah, Castles and Forts of Ghana, Ghana Museums & Monuments Board, Atalante/Paris (1999)) Click photo for further description of museum and its impact on visitors.

 

"The new Elmina Java Museum opened in Elmina, Ghana, in February, with the dual goals of highlighting the legacy of Dutch presence in Elmina and promoting public service and philanthropy. Located in Elmina Castle, the museum chronicles the history of the Dutch during its rule of the Cape Coast colony, including the active slave trade in which many slaves were shipped not to the Western Hemisphere but to the Dutch colonies in the East Indies. It also examines the interactions (and intermarriages) between Dutch governors and the Ashanti people. The museum is funded by the Edward A. Ulzen Memorial Foundation in memory of Edward A. Ulzen, a founder and first registrar of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and later lectured in the Universities of Zambia, Botswana and Lesotho. Mr. Ulzen later served as project coordinator for the Family Health Broadcast Programme of the Union of National and Television Organizations of Africa. The Ulzen family traces its roots to the 18th century Dutch occupation of Ghana (then known as Dutch Guinea), when Dutch soldier Jan Ulsen was assigned to Elmina. The museum also aims to support local tourism and educational projects; the Ulzen family, which includes a branch in the United States, plans to turn all proceeds to the Elmina community, with the goal of supporting general education (including higher education scholarships), public health and the arts." http://www.synergos.org/globalgivingmatters/briefs/0305roundup.htm#4

 

Click above photo for details on the Archaeologic dig at Elmina supervised by Professor Christopher DeCorse of Syracuse University.

Professor Christopher R. DeCorse wrote An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (2001). Excerpts from his book are as follows:

"Elmina is today a settlement of more than 17,000 people ....Fort Coenraadsburg, built by the Dutch in the seventeenth century and recently refurbished, commands a view of much of the town....The castle still dominates the eastern end of the peninsula, as it has for the past 500 years." (p.44)

"The amount and variety of trade materials recovered at Elmina are unparalleled in excavations at any other West African settlement. The fragments of imported ceramics (6,801), glass (13,906), imported tobacco pipes (3,911), metal artifacts (4,607), small finds (1,421), and the 39,131 European trading beads outnumber artifacts of local manufacture." (p.149)

"The trade materials found at Elmina are not a trope for the European influence on Elmina culture, nor are they simply an expression of an Elmina cultural ideal. Rather, they are representative of all the complexities of contact, misunderstanding, reinterpretaion, and economic structures that came together in the meeting of very different cultural groups." (p.174)

"The data available indicate that the Elmina people exhibited a great deal of continuity with an African, largely Akan, cultural tradition." (p.175)

 

Introduction Construction Ownership Operation Transformation Links