During our holiday we visited Fort ‘Good Hope’ which was located close to the village where we stayed. The coast of Ghana, formerly called ‘Gold Coast’ has about 30 forts and castles which are a remnant of the ‘gold fever’ and the flourishing trade between African nations and traders from Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Britain, France, Sweden and Germany.
In 1667, the Dutch built a lodge which was later expanded to a fort. They called it Fort de Goede Hoop, which translates to Fort Good Hope, for they hoped that trade in gold, ivory and slaves would boom. The trade boom in gold did not materialise but the slave trade did. Slaves were necessary for plantations in the New World and West Africa became the most important source of slaves. The Dutch slave trade has its origin in the sugar business by one of the most important traders of the Golden Era: Johannes Maurits van Nassau. When he conquered parts of Brazil from the Portugese between 1630 and 1635 he indicated that he now had sugar plantations but not enough people to work the land. He wrote, ‘Oxes and slaves’ can restart the produce.
An article about the slave trade explains: ‘With the opening of European plantations in the New World during the 1500s, which suddenly expanded the demand for slaves in the Americas, trade in slaves soon overshadowed gold as the principal source of slaves for the New World. The seemingly insatiable market and the substantial profits to be gained from the slave trade attracted adventurers from all over Europe. Much of the conflict that arose among European groups on the coast and among competing African kingdoms was the result of rivalry for control of this trade.'
'The volume of the slave trade in West Africa grew rapidly from its inception around 1500 to its peak in the eighteenth century. Philip Curtin, a leading authority on the African slave trade, estimates that roughly 6.3 million slaves were shipped from West Africa to North America and South America, about 4.5 million of that number between 1701 and 1810. Perhaps 5,000 a year were shipped from the Gold Coast alone. The demographic impact of the slave trade on West Africa was probably substantially greater than the number actually enslaved because a significant number of Africans perished during slaving raids or while in captivity awaiting transhipment. All nations with an interest in West Africa participated in the slave trade. European powers struggled to establish or to maintain a position of dominance in the profitable trade of the Gold Coast littoral. Forts were built, abandoned, attacked, captured, sold, and exchanged, and many sites were selected at one time or another for fortified positions by contending European nations.’
‘During the heyday of early European competition, slavery was an accepted social institution. To be sure, slavery and slave trading were already firmly entrenched in many African societies before their contact with Europe. In most situations, men as well as women captured in local warfare became slaves. In general, however, slaves in African communities were often treated as junior members of the society with specific rights, and many were ultimately absorbed into their masters' families as full members. Given traditional methods of agricultural production in Africa, slavery in Africa was quite different from that which existed in the commercial plantation environments of the New World.’
The Dutch abandoned Fort Good Hope in 1816 and in 1868 it reverted to British rule. Over the years, the fort fell into disuse and by the 1950s was a partial ruin. However, in the 1980s it underwent restoration and part of it is now used as a ‘resthouse’.
It is in Ghana that I (Joke) have been directly confronted with the role of the Dutch in the slave trade which is quite embarrassing and painful. As far as I can remember during our history lessons not much attention was given to the participation of the Dutch in this inhumane trade. The Dutch alone shipped about 550,000 Africans within a period of about 200 years under very awful conditions. It was only in July 1863 that the Dutch were one of the last countries in Europe to abandon the slave trade.
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