The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea (Dutch: Nederlandse Bezittingen ter Kuste van Guinea), was a portion of contemporary Ghana known as the Gold Coast (Dutch: Goudkust), that from 1612 was gradually colonised by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) from the Dutch and Batavian Republics (present-day Kingdom of the Netherlands). The Dutch began trading in the area around 1598, joining the Portuguese which had a trading post there since the late 15th century. Eventually, the Dutch Gold Coast became the most important Dutch colony in West Africa after Fort Elmina was captured from the Portuguese in 1637, but fell into disarray after the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. On 6 April 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast was, in accordance with the Anglo-Dutch Treaties of 1870–71, ceded to the United Kingdom.
History
The Dutch settle on the Gold Coast
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive in contemporary Ghana. By 1471, they had reached the area that was to become known as the Gold Coast because it was an important source of gold. The Portuguese trading interests in gold, ivory and pepper so increased that in 1482 the Portuguese built their first permanent trading post on the western coast of present-day Ghana. This fortress, a trade castle called São Jorge da Mina ('Fort St. George [of the Mine]'), was constructed to protect Portuguese trade from European competitors.
The Portuguese position on the Gold Coast, known as Portuguese Gold Coast, remained secure for over a century. During that time, Lisbon sought to monopolise all trade in the region in royal hands, though appointed officials at Fort St. George, and used force to prevent English, French and Dutch efforts to trade on the coast. After Barent Eriksz successfully sailed to the Gold Coast in 1591, Dutch merchants began trading in the area. Pieter de Marees's publications greatly increased the interest of merchants in the region.
The Twelve Years' Truce between Portugal-Spain and the Dutch Republic, which lasted from 1609 to 1621, disrupted Dutch trade on the Gold Coast, as the Portuguese now had sufficient resources to protect their trade monopoly. Dutch traders then petitioned the States-General of the Dutch Republic to build a fort on the coast. The States-General were receptive of their demands, and sent Jacob Clantius, who was to become the first General on the Coast, to the Gold Coast in 1611. In 1612, after gaining permission of the local rulers through the Treaty of Asebu, he built Fort Nassau near Moree, on the site of an original Dutch trading post that had been burned down by the Portuguese.
After the Twelve Years's Truce ended in 1621, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was established, which tried to seize the Portuguese colonies in Africa and America as part of the Groot Desseyn plan. After failing in 1625, the company managed to capture Elmina Castle from the Portuguese in 1637. Fort San Sebastian at Shama and Fort Santo Antonio at Axim followed in 1640 and 1642 respectively.
Competition with other European powers
The WIC was given the monopoly on trade in the West Indies, including the Gold Coast, in 1621. Mismanagement meant that several disillusioned employees of the WIC left the company to work for another European power. Hendrik Carloff, for example, was a former high-ranking officer in the company, who joined the Swedish Africa Company, founded in 1649 by the Walloon-Dutch industrialist Louis De Geer. In the end, Carloff also left the Swedish company, this time for the Danish Africa Company, which he founded himself with Isaac Coymans and Nicolaes Pancras, also former WIC employees.
Whereas Swedish presence on the Gold Coast turned out to be only temporary, British and Danish settlement in the area proved to be permanent. From 1694 until 1700, the WIC fought the Komenda Wars with the British over trade rights with the Eguafo Kingdom. In addition, Brandenburgers also had forts in the area from 1682 onwards, until they were bought out by the Dutch in 1717. The Portuguese had completely left the area, but still the Gold Coast had the highest concentration of European military architecture outside of Europe.
Relationship with local peoples
The European powers were sometimes drawn into conflicts with local inhabitants as Europeans developed commercial alliances with local political authorities. These alliances, often complicated, involved both Europeans attempting to enlist or persuade their closest allies to attack rival European ports and their African allies, or conversely, various African powers seeking to recruit Europeans as mercenaries in their inter-state wars, or as diplomats to resolve conflicts. Another way conflicts with the local inhabitants were avoided was through marriage. European men often created alliances with the local African people through a practice known as cassare or calisare (Portuguese: casar, lit. 'to marry'). Dutch men and other Europeans would marry African women whose families had ties to the Atlantic slave trade. In this way, Europeans benefited from those marriages by corrupting African individuals in order to maintain the alliances responsible for massive, racial-based enslavement, which fabricated European wealth as much as fabricated African systemic impoverishment. In essence, African individuals profited at the expense of enslavement and impoverishment of African peoples, while European individuals profited as means of consolidating wealth for European peoples. African wives could receive money and schooling for the children they bore by European men. Wives could also inherit slaves and property from their husbands when they returned to Europe or died.
Many coastal ethnic groups in Africa, such as the Ga and Fante, used this system to gain economic and political advantages. These African ethnic groups had been using this practice before the arrival of the Europeans with strangers of a different ethnicity, and extended the same privilege to European men by the late 1400s. Cassare enabled Africans to trust strangers, like the Europeans, when dealing within their trade networks. It made the transition between stranger and trade partner a lot smoother.
At Elmina, the Dutch had inherited from the Portuguese a system in which tribute was paid to the Denkyira, who were the dominant power in the region. After the Battle of Feyiase (1701), the Ashanti Empire replaced the Denkyira as the dominant power, and the Dutch began paying tribute to the Ashanti instead. Although the existence of the so-called "Elmina Note" is often questioned, the Dutch generally paid two ounces of gold per month to the Ashanti as tribute. This bond between the Dutch and the Ashanti, who through the port of Elmina had access to trade with the Dutch and the rest of the world, deeply affected the relations between the Dutch, the other local peoples and the British. The latter were increasingly tight with the Fante, to which the Denkyira and thus also Elmina were culturally and linguistically close. Several Ashanti-Fante wars followed and the rivalry between the two peoples were key in the events surrounding the transfer of the Dutch Gold Coast to Britain in 1872.
After the Dutch managed to dislodge the Swedes from Butre and began building Fort Batenstein at that site, the leaders of the WIC thought it beneficial to negotiate a treaty with the local political leadership in order to establish a peaceful long-term relationship in the area. The local Ahanta leaders found it equally beneficial to enter into such an agreement, and thus on 27 August 1656, the Treaty of Butre was signed. This treaty established a Dutch protectorate in the area, and established diplomatic ties between the Dutch Republic and the Ahanta. The treaty's arrangements proved very stable and regulated Dutch-Ahanta diplomatic affairs for more than 213 years. Only after the Gold Coast was sold to Britain in 1872 were the provisions of the treaty abrogated.
On 18 February 1782, as part of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the British attacked Elmina. Although this attack failed, Britain seized Fort Nassau, Fort Amsterdam, Fort Lijdzaamheid, Fort Goede Hoop and Fort Crêvecoeur from the Dutch. The Dutch Republic only managed to seize Fort Sekondi from the British. In the Treaty of Paris of 1784, all forts returned to their pre-war owners.
Disestablishment of the WIC and the abolition of slave trade
In 1791, the WIC was disestablished, and on 1 January 1792, all territories held by the company reverted to the rule of the States-General of the Dutch Republic. During the French occupation of the Netherlands between 1810 and 1814, the Dutch possessions on the Gold Coast held the rather unusual position—together with the island of Deshima in Japan—of being the only Dutch territories not occupied by either France or Great Britain.
The British Slave Trade Act 1807 effectively ended all slave trade from the Gold Coast. William I of the Netherlands took over this abolition when he issued a royal decree to that effect in June 1814 and signed the Anglo-Dutch Slave Trade Treaty in May 1818. The abolition of slave trade was coupled with the arrival of Herman Willem Daendels as Governor-General. Daendels was a Patriot who played a major role in the Batavian Revolution, and subsequently became Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies for the Batavian Republic in 1807. This republican and revolutionist background made him controversial in the Kingdom of the Netherlands established in 1815, which effectively banned him from the country by assigning to him the rather obscure governorship of the Gold Coast in 1815.
Daendels tried to redevelop the rather dilapidated Dutch possessions as an African plantation colony driven by legitimate trade. Drawing on his experience in building the Great Post Road on the island of Java in the Dutch East Indies, he came up with some very ambitious infrastructural projects, including a comprehensive road system, with a main road connecting Elmina and Kumasi in Ashanti. The Dutch government gave him a free hand and a substantial budget to implement his plans. At the same time, however, Daendels regarded his governorship as an opportunity to establish a private business monopoly in the Dutch Gold Coast.
Eventually none of the plans came to fruition, as Daendels died of malaria in the castle of St. George in Elmina, the Dutch seat of government, on 8 May 1818. His body was interred in the central tomb at the Dutch cemetery in Elmina town. He had been in the country less than for two years.
Recruitment of soldiers for the Dutch East Indies Army
In the remainder of the 19th century, the Dutch Gold Coast slowly fell into disarray. The only substantial development during this period was the recruitment of soldiers for the Dutch East Indies Army. This recruitment of the so-called Belanda Hitam (Indonesian for "Black Dutchmen") started in 1831 as an emergency measure as the Dutch army lost thousands of European soldiers and a much larger number of "native" soldiers in the Java War (1825–1830), and at the same time saw its own population base diminished by the independence of Belgium (1830). As the Dutch wanted the number of natives in the Dutch East Indies Army to be limited to roughly half the total strength to maintain the loyalty of native forces, the addition of forces from the Gold Coast seemed an ideal opportunity to keep the army at strength and loyal at the same time. It was also hoped that the African soldiers would be more resistant to the tropical climate and tropical diseases of the Dutch East Indies than European soldiers.
In 1836, the Dutch government had decided to recruit soldiers via the King of Ashanti. Major General Jan Verveer arrived for this purpose in Elmina on 1 November 1836, and went to the Ashanti capital of Kumasi with a delegation of about 900 people. After long negotiations, an agreement with King Kwaku Dua I was reached. A recruitment depot was established in Kumasi, and furthermore the king sent the young Ashanti princes Kwasi Boachi and Kwame Poku with General Verveer to take with him to the Netherlands, so that they could receive a good education. Kwasi Boachi later received education at the forerunner of the Delft University of Technology, and became the first black Dutch mining engineer in the Dutch East Indies. Dutch author Arthur Japin wrote a novel about the life of the two princes with The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi (1997).