“Creative and… Expedient Misunderstandings”:

Elmina-Dutch Relations on the Gold Coast in the Nineteenth Century

Larry W. Yarak

Texas A&M University/University of Ghana, Legon

On the eve of his arrest by British military forces in March 1873, the Ɛdenahen (King of Elmina)

Kobena Gyan (reigned 1869-96) defiantly stated the reasons why the Elmina people could not

allow the British flag to fly over Elmina “Castle”1 nor allow British officers to occupy it. He did

so in a meeting inside the castle with the commander of British military forces, who demanded

that the king sign a document pledging allegiance to the British government:

This Castle belonged to the Dutch Govt. before, and the people of Elmina

were free men; they are not my slaves to compel them to do anything.

When [British] Governor Pope Hennessy came to take this castle he did

not consult me before the English flag was hoisted; if he had considered

me as the king he would have done so… The king was then asked to take

the oath of allegiance and sign the paper before him; he got very vexed

and excited, struck the table with his fist, and said, “I am not afraid of your

power. You may hang me if you like. I will not sign any paper. Myself

and some of the people of Elmina have taken fetish oath to oppose the

English government coming to Elmina, and we have not broken that oath

yet.”2

1 Built initially by the Portuguese in the late 15

th century, the “castle,” as it has been

known ever since, is located on the historical Gold Coast, today’s Ghana. Elmina Castle was

seized by the Dutch in 1637, and occupied by them until 1872. It is one of more than a score of

European-built fortifications constructed on the coast by various European powers during the

15th

to 18th

centuries. There are two other Gold Coast “castles,” distinguished from other forts

by their size: Cape Coast Castle, headquarters of the British and first capital of the Gold Coast

Colony, and Christiansborg Castle, headquarters of the Danes. Elmina town (Ɛdena, pop. 18-

20,000) stood next to the castle. Its inhabitants are Akan-speaking people, the largest ethnic

group in Ghana today.

2 House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP) 1873 (266-I), 325: “King’s

Statement,” enclosure in Turton to Governor-in-Chief, dd. Elmina, 13 March 1873. The

statement was recorded by Hendrik Vroom, an Elmina-born Euro-African then in British employ.

It was partly a summary of the king’s encounter with the British governor in Elmina Castle,

partly an apparent verbatim account of the king’s words. However, it should be noted that

2

As is well known, the British at this point were equally determined to assert their dominance on

the entire Gold Coast. In the face of Elmina’s determined resistance, they first arrested King

Kobena Gyan and several close advisors, deported them to Sierra Leone, and then bombed the

town of Elmina and its people into submission in June 1873.3

Implicit in the king’s rejection of the British was a particular view of the prior

relationship that existed between Elmina and the Dutch, before the latter’s decision to “cede” its

Gold Coast forts to Great Britain in April 1872.4 To the king’s thinking, and that of many

(though not all) of his fellow citizens, the people of Elmina had been “free men,” so long as the

Dutch were in possession of Elmina Castle. The king was due full consultation by the Europeans

for any change in occupancy of the castle. This straightforward view is at odds with the way that

historians have viewed the position of the Europeans, particularly the British, on the Gold Coast

before the unilateral British declaration of the Gold Coast Colony in 1874, marking the

imposition of British imperial rule in this part of West Africa. Many have regarded the

preceding decades of the nineteenth century as a period of “informal empire,” or “free trade

imperialism,” though the precise meanings of these terms have seldom been made clear.5 Along

these lines it has been argued that Governor George Maclean (1830-43) at Cape Coast Castle

Kobena Gyan was literate and had some fluency in Dutch and English, so it is unclear in which

language or languages the entire exchange took place.

3 On these events, see See J.S. Wartemberg, Sao Jorge D’Elmina Premier West African

European Settlement: Its Traditions and Customs (Ilfracombe, UK, n.d. [1950]), 62-8; R.

Baesjou, An Asante Embassy on the Gold Coast: The Mission of Akyempon Yaw to Elmina,

1869-72 (Leiden, 1979).

4 On the diplomacy and politics of the Dutch cession, see D. Coombs, The Gold Coast,

Britain and the Netherlands, 1850-1874 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963).

5 J. Gallagher and R. Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History

Review, New Series, 6, 1 (1953). See more recently, J. Darwin, “Imperialism and the Victorians:

The Dynamics of Territorial Expansion,” The English Historical Review, 112, 447 (June 1997).

3

initiated “the growth of British jurisdiction” and the establishment of an increasingly intrusive

“protectorate,” a sneaking form of European hegemony over the diverse peoples near the British-

occupied forts and in the southern Akan-speaking interior.6 “Informal empire” led seemingly

inexorably to the declaration of “formal empire” in 1874. And indeed, if one accepts at face

value the statements of British administrators and governors in the decades between 1830 and

1874, one might be led to such a conclusion.

However, a closer examination of the historical record—reading the British and other

European documents “against the grain”—shows that there are problems with this rather

whiggish, Eurocentric view. A number of Gold Coast and Ghanaian scholars have indignantly

pointed to the very real limits to British authority in the years before (and even after) the

declaration of formal British colonial rule in 1874.7 Most of the discussion has centered on the

interpretation of the judicial process at Cape Coast and the record of political interaction between

British authorities and the rulers of the towns adjoining their forts. Yet even the critics tend to

see the years before 1874 as prefiguring the establishment of formal empire. But few scholars

have looked at the parts of the Gold Coast where other Europeans—principally Dutch and

Danish—resided, and certainly not with the same intensity as has been devoted to the towns

surrounding the coastal forts where a handful of Britons lived, traded and engaged with

6 See e.g., D. Kimble, A Political History of Ghana 1850-1928 (Oxford, 1963), 193; R.

Gocking, “British Justice and the Native Tribunals of the Southern Gold Coast Colony,” Journal

of African History 34, 1 (1993); idem., Facing Two Ways: Ghana’s Coastal Communities Under

Colonial Rule (Lanham, MD, 1999).

7 E.g., J. Mensah Sarbah, Fanti National Constitution (London 1968 [1906]); F.

Agbodeka, African Politics and British Policy in the Gold Coast 1868-1900 (London, 1971).

4

indigenous authorities.8 Nor have they employed adequate skepticism, in my view, towards

British officials’ claims of growing “influence” and alleged African deference or somnolence.

In this paper I want to shift the focus to the middle decades of the nineteenth century at

the town of Elmina and the nearby castle, which had housed the Dutch headquarters on the Gold

Coast since 1637. I will elaborate on an argument I made tentatively in a work that appeared in

2004,9 namely that, rather than view European-African relations on the Gold Coast before 1874

from the perspective of what they eventually became—colonies of Great Britain—a more fruitful

and historically sensible approach is to examine those relations empirically, paying careful

attention to events inside and outside the “palaver halls” in the European forts and making

special effort to discern the views and perspectives of Elmina town’s rulers as they were

recorded in the European sources. My approach is influenced by the work of Richard White,

whose innovative contribution to Native American history has rarely been cited in the study of

Africa’s precolonial past. White analyzed the interaction of Indians and Europeans in the North

American frontier during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and developed the seminal

concept of the “middle ground,” a space between empires.10

In this distinctive social and

political space, White writes, “diverse peoples adjust their differences through what amounts to a

process of creative, often expedient misunderstandings.”11

I argue that Elmina (and by extension,

the entire Gold Coast) in the mid-nineteenth century should be seen as constituting an African

8 An exception is R. Baesjou, whose work, “Dutch ‘Irregular’ Jurisdiction on the 19

th

Century Gold Coast,” African Perspectives 2 (1979), whose work I discuss briefly below.

9 L. Yarak, “A West African ‘Middle Ground’: Elmina in the Nineteenth Century,” in

Globalization and Urbanization in Africa, ed. T. Falola and S. Salm (Trenton, NJ, 2004).

10 R. White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes

Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991).

11 Ibid., x.

5

version of a “middle ground.” Below I discuss a number of specific encounters between the

people of Elmina and the Dutch officers in the fort that illuminate both the rhetoric and the

reality of Dutch and Elmina relations.

The Elmina Setting

Elmina in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was a complex, pluralistic, and a

decidedly cosmopolitan urban society.12

A Dutch survey of the town and its hinterland in 1858

provides us with the greatest detail of its physical and demographic circumstances. The town

adjacent to the Dutch fort counted over 3,350 “houses”, each inhabited by “five to six” persons,

yielding an estimated total population of “18,000 to 20,000.”13

This made Elmina the largest

town on the entire Gold Coast at the time, and it rivaled the estimated permanent population of

the interior city of Kumasi, the capital of the Asante Empire.14

The Dutch survey also counted

71 subordinate villages of varying size located in the Elmina hinterland. Some of these were old,

relatively autonomous villages inhabited by free citizens; others were more recently established

settlements housing the slaves and dependents of wealthy Elmina townspeople. Elmina’s urban

12 The following description of mid-19

th century Elmina is based on a wide variety of

documents drawn from the Nationaal Archief (NAH, Dutch National Archives) at The Hague,

published traveler’s accounts, and the records of colonial Elmina in the Ghana National Archives,

Accra and Cape Coast Depositories. See also H. Feinberg, Africans and Europeans in West

Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast During the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia,

1989) and C. DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast,

1400-1900 (Washington, 2001).

13 NAH, Archief van het Ministerie van Koloniën, 1850-1900 (hereafter MK2) 956:

verbaal, 25 June 1860, No. 22/44: Nagtglas to Minister, dd. Elmina 7 May 1860, No. 199/39,

enclosure: “Report on the Elmina District,” by J. Scheffelaer and A. Magnin, n.d. (1858). Year

2000 Ghana census found 2,190 houses and 5,362 households, with a total population of 21,100;

average household size was estimated to be 3.9, but each house would have sheltered 9.6 persons.

14 See I. Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), 93, where the

population of Kumasi in the first half of the nineteenth century is estimated at 15-25,000.

6

population was organized into wards, or “quarters” (kwartieren), as the Dutch called them, each

with an elected head, asafohen, today called a supi. To the Elmina people these “quarters” were

asafo, an Akan word that is usually translated into English as “company.” This translation

captures the military and social functions of these groups, in which membership was determined

by patrifiliation, but the term “ward” better captures their spatial dimension. Elmina was

constituted by seven such asafo, and they comprised far and away the majority of the town’s

inhabitants. The origins of Elmina’s asafo are obscure, but it is clear that they did not all have an

equal social standing, suggesting development and expansion over time. Elmina’s inhabitants

also traced descent matrilineally; all Elminans belonged to one of seven matriclans, different

segments of which had recognized heads, male and female. Succession to positions of such

“family” leadership, inheritance of immoveable property (including slaves), and access to arable

rural land were determined by matrifiliation.

Elmina’s government was constituted by a king, who was always a member of the same

asafo, Nyampa. Thus succession to this office passed patrilineally, unlike succession to office

among most other Akan groups. The king was attended by a set of hereditary councilors,

amamfo (called Terregentes by the Dutch); an elected head of the seven asafo, Ekuwesonhen,

whose function was principally military; a council of royal advisors, office-holders,15

whose

members were usually wealthy merchants; and an appointed counselor or “secretary,” in the

Dutch term, who was the king’s chief adviser, and by the later nineteenth century, the king’s

designated successor. Real political power lay disproportionately in the hands of the asafo,

whose members included fishermen, wage-earning canoemen, petty traders, a few substantial

15 Office-holders were and are known in English as “stool-holders”; the symbol of an

office is a commemorative wooden seat or “stool” (agua or adwa), created in honor of the

office’s first inhabitant.

7

merchants, and artisans. Nearly every adult male was a member of one of the asafo and resident

in its ward. Asafo members constituted the main force of the town’s militia, and there are

multiple indications in the documentary sources that gun ownership was widespread; skilled

blacksmiths maintained firearms, but powder and shot were imported items and constantly in

demand. In times of war, Elmina’s leaders, in particular the king, were expected to supply the

asafo with powder and shot.

The presence of at least five other resident groups with distinct identities established the

pluralist and cosmopolitan dimensions of Elmina society. All were the outgrowth of Elmina’s

involvement in the Atlantic economy. The numerical size of each is impossible to establish in

the current state of the evidence, though they were clearly dwarfed by the seven asafo. Two of

these groups came to be increasingly accepted during the nineteenth century as constituting in

effect two additional, if junior, asafo: the first, Brɔfonkoa, was comprised of the descendants of

the old West India Company slaves who were employed as artisans and laborers in the

maintenance of the Dutch forts. In 1818 they were officially manumitted, but given their origins,

they retained a separate, inferior social status compared with Elmina’s long-established asafo.

The second group, Maworɛfo, included the descendants of a large body of slaves owned by a

wealthy eighteenth-century Elmina merchant who had held the position of chief “broker”

(makelaar) for Dutch trade at Elmina.16

Most of this group lived in two villages located a short

distance from the town. Clearly of a lower social status because of their servile origins, members

of these two groups nevertheless participated in public affairs alongside the seven senior asafos.

Today these groups have virtually disappeared.

16 Feinberg, Africans and Europeans, 109-111.

8

A third group was comprised of the male and female descendants of European officers

and soldiers and their Akan wives. To the Dutch these people were known as vrijburgers (“free

citizens”), Tapoeyers, or “mulattos”; in the local Akan language, such a person was apparently

called Abrɔba, though by the twentieth century the group were known as Akrampafo. In the

recent historical literature they are usually referred to as Euro-Africans or Afro-Europeans. This

was a highly varied group: probably most were raised in their mother’s wards, and so they did

not occupy a separate physical space within the town precincts, unlike the asafo. The Dutch

favored them for employment in the lower ranks of the fort administration as soldiers, artisans

and laborers. A number acquired limited literacy and fluency in Dutch and English, the trade

languages at Elmina, and a few, who appear mostly to have been the sons and grandsons of high-

ranking Dutch officers, became highly literate, well-traveled, wealthy traders and influential

players in the public affairs of the town. The more privileged and well-to-do Euro-Africans sent

their children (most often male, but some females as well) to the Netherlands and England for

schooling. Male Euro-Africans often served as junior officers in the Dutch fort administration

for varying lengths of time after their return to the Gold Coast. Examples of such men include

Carel Hendrik Bartels, the son of a Dutch governor and his Akan wife; Bartels’ many daughters

and sons, who played similar roles in the years after their father’s death in 1850; Jacob

Huydecoper, grandson of a Dutch governor, who became envoy and agent of the Dutch

government to the Asante court in the late 1830s; and Jacob Simons, of paternal Dutch ancestry,

also a Dutch envoy to Asante and highly successful independent merchant. All of these

individuals were cultural hybrids: they were literate, fluent in English and Dutch as well as

Akan; they corresponded with and often worked as agents for trading firms based in the

Netherlands, Great Britain, France, and the United States; all married women who were born

9

locally, though, like the Dutch officers, they generally preferred Euro-African women as

marriage partners; many came to profess Protestant Christianity by mid-century. Interestingly,

Euro-African women born in this period were sometimes also sent to Europe for schooling, and

some came to exercise prominent roles in public affairs. The more prosperous families built

large homes outside of the traditional confines of Elmina, across the Benya lagoon to the north of

town, along and near the road leading to Cape Coast. This area was referred to in Dutch sources

as the “Garden” (Tuin), and locally Tirimu, because it lay in the vicinity of the small farm

maintained by the Dutch government. In a sense these wealthy Euro-Africans constructed their

own (suburban) Elmina ward during the nineteenth century.

A fourth distinctive group was comprised of the pensioned ex-servicemen who had

returned from careers in the Dutch East Indies army.17

Their story began in the early 1830s

when the Dutch first recruited young men at Elmina for service in the Dutch East Indies. During

two principal periods of recruitment, 1831-1842 and 1855-1872, some 3,000 men were enlisted

and shipped to Java where they served in the Dutch colonial military throughout the Indonesian

archipelago. Most were slaves whose freedom was purchased by the Dutch in exchange for their

signing an enlistment contract of twelve years. When such a soldier was incapacitated (by

disease or battle injury) or reached the end of his service contract, he was given the option of

retirement, often with a modest pension, in either the East Indies (where some had acquired

Indonesian wives) or at the Gold Coast (to which they returned via the Netherlands, with travel

expenses paid for by the Dutch government). Scores of pensioned soldiers opted to return to

Elmina. Many took up residence on a hill located across the Benya lagoon, not far from the area

17 See L. Yarak, “New Sources for the Study of Akan Slavery and Slave Trade: Dutch

Military Recruitment in the Gold Coast and Asante, 1831-72,” in Source Material for Studying

the Slave Trade and the African Diaspora, ed. R. Law (Stirling, Scotland, 1997).

10

occupied by the wealthy Euro-African merchant families; this hill became known in the middle

of the nineteenth century, as it still is today, as “Java Hill” (locally, Yafer Kokoado). Others

were scattered in the villages surrounding Elmina. The Java veterans recognized one of their

own as head of their community. Several appear to have been Muslims, perhaps those who had

been so prior to their enslavement, though it is possible that some converted to Islam as a result

of their military careers in the East Indies.

The fifth group in Elmina which added to its cosmopolitan character were the Europeans

themselves: the civilian and military employees of the Dutch government, most of whom resided

in the fort, and a handful of European merchants who built houses or rented those built by Euro-

Africans in the “Garden.” In the nineteenth century the number of Dutch officers and private

merchants residing at Elmina seldom exceeded twenty. Virtually every European who survived

the first few months of the Gold Coast’s disease environment would sooner or later marry locally.

By the middle decades of the nineteenth century, they clearly preferred to marry the daughters of

prominent and wealthy, Euro-African families. These “country marriages” were usually not the

stereotypical relationship of European male and African concubine that is often conjured up in

the modern Western mind. Rather, the records indicate that these were unions that offered

considerable material as well as emotional benefit to both parties, with well-established mutual

obligations. The historical evidence is not as full as one would like, but there is at least one vivid

account of the public ceremony and procedures that accompanied the 1838 marriage of a Dutch

officer with a Euro-African woman—they conformed to Elmina’s indigenous marriage

practices—and the material advantages that accrued to the woman who agreed to the marriage.18

18 H. Tengbergen, Verhaal van den reistogt en expeditie naar de Nederlandsche

bezittingen ter westkust van Afrika (kust van Guinea) (‘s Gravenhage, 1839), 68.

11

There is also the unusual case of a Dutch officer, W. G. F. Derx, who retired to the Netherlands

in 1850 with his three sons after his wife, Jacoba Araba Bartels, daughter of a wealthy Euro-

African merchant, had died in childbirth. Derx’s Euro-African sons went on to distinguished

public service careers, two of them in the colonial service of the Dutch East Indies.19

Marriage,

of whatever form, along with commercial and political interest, drew the few Europeans at

Elmina intimately into the social, political and economic world of Elmina society. There was in

fact no separate European realm on the Gold Coast; the European residents were forced to

accommodate to the social life of the coast if they were to succeed in their work—or even

survive physically.

It is evident that Elmina was a socially, culturally and politically complex urban society.

Although a formally constituted monarchy, the king (ohen) and other major officeholders were

constrained by the diversity of interests of the town’s constituent groups. Governance was a

constant balancing act between the varied demands of these groups. Conflict resolution usually

required careful negotiation and compromise, with the result that there was always someone that

felt disadvantaged or injured by any settlement reached. Some injured parties were tempted to

reach out to “external” actors—the Kingdom of Asante, located in the forest interior of the Gold

Coast, or neighboring Fante states, or the Dutch authorities in Elmina castle—for redress, further

complicating the process of dispute settlement. Authority was dispersed, rather than

concentrated in the hands of a few, and sovereignty shared.

19 Personal communication from Michel Doortmont, University of Groningen, the

Netherlands.

12

Relations by Contract

Perhaps uniquely among Europeans on the Gold Coast, the Dutch relations with the people of

Elmina were officially regulated by a “contract” (Pen en Contract) with the town’s ruling class.20

The first dated from the earliest years of the Dutch presence,21

and it was frequently updated and

supplemented through the nineteenth century. The contract of 1844 has 31 main articles and two

supplementary ones. On the occasion of its signing, the document was read and translated into

Akan by the official translator in Dutch employ, who was always a Euro-African from Elmina.

It will never be clear exactly how the Dutch words and phrases were translated into Akan, that is,

which Akan terms corresponded to the Dutch ones, but the basics are clear in the Dutch version.

Among other things, the contract outlawed the Atlantic export slave trade, broadly delineated

legal jurisdiction between Elmina and Dutch officials with regard to specific criminal acts, set

the level of “stipend” (kostgeld) paid regularly by the Dutch to the Elmina ruling groups and

individuals, forbade violent disputes between the asafos and the practice of panyarring (seizure

of individuals to force the repayment of debt), and required notification and approval of the

Dutch governor in the event of any changes in the personnel of the Elmina government. More

difficult to assess are article one, which stipulated that the rulers of Elmina “promise” to be “true

and faithful to His Majesty the King of the Netherlands”; and article twenty-three, which bound

the governor to assist Elmina’s rulers in their defense against external enemies and in the

settlement of their disputes with “strangers.”

20 Baesjou, “Dutch ‘Irregular’ Jurisdiction,” 56-66, offers a translation from Dutch into

English of the contract of 1844 with Elmina. Dutch language copies of various contracts,

including the 1844 one with Elmina, may be found in NAH, Archief van de Nederlandsche

Bezittingen ter Kuste Van Guinea (hereafter NBKG), inv. no. 774.

21 Preambles to 18

th and 19

th century contracts allude to a 1642 version, but scholars have

so far been unable to find such a document in the Dutch archives.

13

While the document was branded a “contract” and therefore implied both a relation freely

entered into and equivalence between the contracting parties—something officials in the

Netherlands were acutely aware of right up to date of their departure from the Gold Coast in

1872—the weight of obligation in the Dutch text was balanced against the town’s rulers and in

favor of the Dutch authorities. But, aside from the inherent problem of translation from Dutch

into Akan, which must have been quite real, how were the stipulations in this document

understood by Elmina’s rulers and populace at large? Obviously, given the relative paucity of

documents produced by the rulers of Elmina themselves, this is difficult to determine. The late

Dutch historian René Baesjou, who has studied the records of the Dutch administration at Elmina

perhaps more than any other scholar before or since, was inclined to accept the extent of Dutch

intrusion into Elmina’s affairs at more or less the documents’ face value, likening dispute

adjudication to the “irregular” authority claimed by the British administrator at Cape Coast

George Maclean (in office 1830-44).22

I disagree; I feel that the situation at Elmina was more

complex, and certainly more fluid than a literal reading of the judicial records would suggest.

The evidence for a broader view of the “contact” is sparse and often indirect, but

sufficient to show that Elmina understood it differently from the Dutch, in line, I argue, with

White’s notion of “creative [and] expedient misunderstandings.” At a minimum, Elmina’s rulers

understood the Dutch-Elmina contract as stipulating a series of mutual obligations. Further, the

regular Dutch payment of stipends to them likely represented an acknowledgement of the Elmina

22 Baesjou, “Dutch ‘Irregular’ Jurisdiction,” 21. Cf. the more nuanced view offered in the

concluding paragraph of his article, where he writes that the Elmina rulers “considered the Dutch

administration only as an extension of the amenities which their own legal system already

provided and made use of the unstable balance between the two judicial authorities”; 55. I find

this a more acceptable interpretation, but the notions of “irregular” jurisdiction and “unstable

balance” indicate to me that he views the relationship mainly from the Dutch point of view.

14

people’s indispensable role in whatever success the Dutch might attain in their West African

enterprise; the Dutch were in any case passing strangers and their numbers were exceeding small.

This made the relationship a negotiated one, requiring constant give and take, in line with a

broader Elmina practice of shared soveriegnty. Such is very much in evidence in the historical

record, for example, when Elmina faced attack from the neighboring Akan states, who were

often supported by the British (nominal allies of the Dutch in Europe since 1813) in Cape Coast.

Most dramatically, Fante, Denkyera and Wassa forces laid siege to Elmina in 1809-10, in 1828

and again in 1868. These were times of crisis in Dutch-Elmina relations, and they often rendered

the contract a dead letter; the Dutch did not always render assistance to Elmina, and Elmina’s

rulers did not always pay heed to Dutch efforts to curb Elmina’s defensive actions, which could

complicate Dutch relations with the British. In addition, unforeseen circumstances, particularly

matters of trade and debt, could give rise to serious disputes between the contracted parties.

How relations actually worked themselves out in times of disagreement was therefore a

reflection partly of the negotiating skills, and ultimately of the balance of force and the coercive

capacity, of the respective parties. Generally, the people of Elmina held the upper hand in terms

of sheer numbers of men potentially in arms; but the Dutch forts had the singular capacity to fire

cannon directly on the town (with ferocious consequences, as the British would demonstrate in

1873) and occasionally a visiting Dutch naval vessel enhanced their military reach and threat.

In late 1836 an interesting incident demonstrated these negotiating skills and the

importance of the balance of force in the outcome of a dispute, despite the sterile stipulations of

the contract. One of the two senior shrine priests in Elmina was/is in service to Ntona, an

obosom (local spirit or god) that appears to derive from a Catholic shrine to St. Anthony, built by

15

the Portuguese.23

By 1836 the Ntona priest had become regionally well known for giving shelter

to slaves who fled their masters for a variety of reasons.24

Masters of runaways based in Cape

Coast, with the support of the British governor Maclean, pressed the Dutch governor, C.E. Lans,

for their return. Lans was unable to secure the slaves’ release from the shrine priest and decided

that it was advisable to let the matter stand. He was soon and unexpectedly replaced as governor

at Elmina by a Dutch Royal Commissioner, Major-General Jan Verveer, at the end of 1836. This

was Verveer’s first visit to West Africa, though he spent part of his earlier career in the

Caribbean. He had been sent by the Dutch government to undertake a specific mission in as

short a period of time as possible,25

so he was not inclined to act towards the Elmina people with

the accommodation and flexibility that was expected of Dutch officers, like Lans, who made

their careers (and possible fortunes) at the coast. Furthermore, Verveer’s instructions specified

that he was to do all he could to secure the cooperation of the British officers at Cape Coast in

the achievement of his main goal: “recruitment” of West Africans for service in the Dutch East

Indies military. Consequently, shortly after his arrival at Elmina he sent for the Ntona priest to

come into the castle to discuss the complaints from Cape Coast about fugitive slaves. When the

okomfo refused, Verveer demanded that the Elmina king, Kodwo Dziewu (r. 1831-63), come into

the castle with his advisors and the Ntona priest. The priest again refused the summons, telling

the general’s messenger “he was drinking rum with his friends and did not wish to appear.”

Verveer then threatened to open fire on Elmina from the cannon at St. Jago fort, and this finally

23 See Wartemberg, Sao Jorge D’Elmina, 152-3.

24 The principal source for this episode is NAH, Archief van het Ministerie van Koloniën,

1814-49 (hereafter MK1) 1087: exh. 1 April 1837, No. 17: Verveer to Min. of Col., dd. Elmina

25 Dec. 1836. See also various entries in the Elmina Journal in NAH, NBKG 362.

25 He had been sent to secure the Asantehene’s cooperation in a scheme to “recruit”

young male slaves for service in the Dutch East Indies army; see Yarak, “New Sources.”

16

got the priest, Kwamena Isa, to enter the fort accompanied by several attendants. Verveer

expressed surprise when Isa addressed him in Dutch. Asked why he had refused to heed the

Dutch summons, he stated that “since we were not friends,” Verveer himself was to blame for

Isa’s failure to appear, for the general had not paid him a visit upon his arrival, nor had Verveer

invited him to the castle for a friendly conversation. A fascinating exchange then followed, Isa

claiming that he could not release the runaway slaves since they were the property of the god,

Ntona. Verveer replied that since the god (“fetish” in Verveer’s report) had no corporeal

existence, it could not own property. Isa retorted, “I know what the god [fetish] is, and you do

not”!

Verveer could only respond with a new threat of violence, both against the priest and the

shrine. Isa stated that he was well aware that Verveer had the power to seize the property of the

god and told him, “make use of it and I shall watch passively and without resistance.” At this

point the king’s counselors in attendance tried to calm the situation; they declared that Verveer

had “won his palaver.” Isa agreed to release the Cape Coast slaves, who were sent back to their

owners with a military escort, and the matter appeared settled. However, over the next few days

Verveer received a flood of new requests by other slaveowners in Cape Coast and Elmina asking

for the return of their slaves who had also taken refuge with Ntona. The general was thus forced

anew to issue orders to Kwamena Isa to hand over the slaves, and the priest again refused.

Verveer then loosed several cannon shots over the part of the town where the shrine was

located,26

and dispatched an armed detachment to the shrine. When the Dutch force arrived

some two thousand people reportedly surrounded the place, though apparently unarmed.

26 At the eastern end of the town; today it is located at Bantoma, an eastern suburb of

Elmina.

17

Verveer noted in his report to the Minister of Colonies that the Elminans acted in the same way

that (urban) trouble makers acted in Europe; women and children threw themselves in the way of

the detachment, wailing and shouting insults. When the soldiers entered the shrine, they found

the priest standing before “a kind of altar” along with two barrels of gunpowder and an elderly

slave holding a burning torch, preparing to light the powder. The soldiers seized the slave, and

dragged Isa into the fort, where he was placed under arrest and imprisoned. Verveer sent a

message to the king of Elmina demanding the release of the slaves still held at the shrine; a

number were handed over, but one of the Cape Coast slaves committed suicide rather than be

returned to his former master. The next day the king and his counselors begged for the release of

the priest, agreeing to banish him forever from Elmina. The Dutch general refused.

In late April 1837 Verveer departed from the coast with the completion of his main task.

The Elmina rulers were able in the next year to convince a new Dutch governor, whose interests

were primarily mercantile, that the banned Ntona priest should be allowed to return to his shrine

in Elmina.27

And perhaps Kwamena Isa had the final word in the matter: in 1838 Verveer

returned to Elmina to undertake a punitive expedition against the king of Ahanta, whose people

had killed the prior Dutch governor in a dispute over a debt gone horribly wrong. Verveer

succeeded in arresting and executing the Ahanta king Bonsu, but as the general was leaving for

Holland he fell suddenly ill and died. His body was buried at sea. One can only speculate as to

the reaction of the Elmina people and the priest of Ntona to this news.

27 Baesjou, “Dutch ‘Irregular’ Jurisdiction,” 42.

18

Placing (or Refusing to Place) the Governor on the “Stool”

Another major dispute took place two decades later, this time involving Dutch and Elmina

parties who knew each other all too well. In the 1840s the Dutch official W. G. F. Derx had

risen to a senior position of bookkeeper and officer of justice.28

As mentioned above, his Elmina

wife, Jacoba Bartels, was a daughter of the wealthy and influential Euro-African merchant, C. H.

Bartels. Unlike his boss, Governor A. van der Eb,29

Derx was not active as a merchant. He was

accused by the Elmina rulers of using his position as a judicial officer to enhance his salary and

dispense partial justice. They cited examples, including: in 1844 an important Elmina merchant,

Kweku Akwa (an office or “stool” bearing his name is part of the Elmina “traditional” hierarchy

to this day), had been found guilty by the Elmina king of having overcharged his customers for

the sale of “Portuguese” (Brazilian) tobacco. Akwa was ordered to repay the purchasers and to

pay a fine on top of it. Unhappy with the king’s sentence, Akwa appealed to Derx, who negated

the ruling and ordered the king to pay a steep fine of 4 oz. of gold. This and other such cases led

the Elmina authorities to oppose Derx’s succession to the governorship ad-interim in 1846, but

due to the influence of his father-in-law, C. H. Bartels, the Elmina authorities grudgingly

accepted Derx’s temporary assumption of the office. In early 1850 Derx took his retirement and

returned to the Netherlands, ending a 13-year career at Elmina.30

Shortly after his departure, his Elminan father-in-law died, leaving in his will a

substantial fortune to be divided up among his children and grandchildren—including the sons of

28 The main sources for this incident are NAH, Archief van het Ministerie van Koloniën,

1850-1900 (hereafter MK2) 5886: exh. 15 Dec. 1856, No. 723 (secret): Bartels and Weytingh to

Minister, dd. Elmina, 8 Nov. 1856; ibid., verbaal 17 Dec. 1856, No. 729 (secret) and enclosures.

29 Who was married to another Bartels daughter.

30 His Elmina wife, Jacoba, had died in childbirth in 1848.

19

Derx. Management of the estate fell to Bartels’ senior son, Carel (aka Charles).31

Derx learned

of this in Holland and apparently became increasingly concerned (with good reason, it later

transpired) that Carel would not manage the estate well,32

thereby jeopardizing the portion set

aside for his sons. So when the Dutch Minister of Colonies decided in 1856 to send a special

commissioner to Elmina to investigate the possibility of imposing import duties on goods

entering ports like Elmina and to stimulate the recruitment of soldiers for the East Indies army,

Derx was more than willing to accept that appointment. Unfortunately for the Elmina leaders,

his official status was such that should the incumbent governor die while he was there, Derx

would automatically assume the governorship. Before Derx’s arrival at Elmina, Governor H.

Schomerus did indeed succumb to illness and was succeeded briefly by the senior Dutch officer

on the coast, P. Runckel. With the arrival of Derx shortly thereafter, the Elmina leaders faced

the fact that its old nemesis would assume the governorship, an outcome the Elmina leaders were

determined to prevent.

They submitted a petition to the acting governor, P. Runckel. The document was signed

by Kodwo Dziewu, “King of Elmina Country,”33

the Ekuwesonhen, the heads of each of the

seven asafos, and the head of “broker’s people,” i.e., the Maworɛfo. While the unknown writer

of the petition did not have full command of the Dutch language, the document offers a rare and

valuable, if linguistically awkward, statement of the political views of the Elmina ruling class.

The signatories first noted that:

31 Carel and his younger brother Jacob had been sent by their father to Holland and

Britain for schooling.

32 Carel Bartels later fell into bankruptcy and forfeited all his property.

33 “De Koning van het Elminasch Land.”

20

When the Governor A. van der Eb died [in 1852] the members of the

[Dutch] Council [in the fort] and the King of Elmina and the [Elmina]

councilors installed the late H. Schomerus [as his successor;] and when he

died [in 1856] Your Excellency [i.e. Runckel] was installed by us and the

entire [Dutch] Council.

A central Elmina role in “installing” the replacement Dutch governor, and therefore their

necessary consent to that installation, is implicit here. Although the Elmina-Dutch contract

makes no mention of an Elminan role in the succession to the Dutch governorship, that role was

nevertheless made explicit in a subsequent statement:

the men and women of this country have convened concerning the

administration which His Honor [i.e. Derx] is going to accept; [and] have

expressed the wish not to appoint His Honor as Governor.34

The petitioners then stipulated the reasons for their refusal to “appoint” Derx, citing several

specific cases of malfeasance when he was acting governor in the 1840s. On the presentation of

their petition to the acting Governor Runckel, the Elmina authorities referred to the office of

Dutch governor as a “stool,” one of the few existing hints of the Elmina view of the head of the

Dutch administration.35

The right of the rulers of Elmina to approve the successor to the Dutch

“stool” (governorship) is clearly implied here. Remarkably, the members of the Dutch council,

European and Euro-African, also refused to accept Derx’s succession. Days later Derx wrote to

the Minister of Colonies that in the circumstances, though he had taken the oath of office, he

“stood alone” and could not fulfill his duties; he asked to be allowed to return to the Netherlands.

Six months later he was indeed recalled. This incident clearly shows the different ways that the

relations between the Dutch and the Elmina government were understood by each party.

34 NAH, MK2 5886: verbaal 17 Dec. 1856, No. 729 (secret), enclosure: Elmina petition,

dd. Elmina, October 1856. The author of the petition had limited facility in Dutch, hence the

rather awkward expression.

35 I have found only one other instance of the Elmina rendering of the office of governor

as a “stool” in Dutch records of the 1820s.

21

The “Elmina Note”: Asante’s Claim on Elmina Castle

A final example of “creative, often expedient misunderstandings” at Elmina may be cited, one of

even greater consequence than those discussed above. In the year leading up to the Dutch

decision to cede its “possessions” on the Gold Coast to Great Britain in 1872, a claim on Elmina

by the King of Asante became a stumbling block and a pretext for the 1873 Asante invasion of

the Fante states in an attempt to seize Elmina castle from the British.36

. This invasion, as is well

known, failed in its objectives and elicited the British counter-invasion of Asante under Sir

Garnet Wolseley in 1874. These events led directly to the British unilateral declaration of the

establishment of the Gold Coast Colony later in the same year. The misunderstandings that

complicated these events were shared by all the parties to the dispute over Elmina Castle: Elmina,

Asante, the Dutch, and the British. The Dutch records allow us to ascertain the misreadings of

the past of which all were guilty.

When informed in late 1870 that the Dutch intended to cede their forts at the coast,

including Elmina, to Britain, Asantehene Kofi Kakari protested in a letter to the British governor:

The Fort of that place [Elmina] have from time immemorial paid annual

tribute to my ancestors to the present time by right of arms, when we

conquered INTIM GACKIDI, King of DINKIRA (Denkyera).

INTIM GACKIDI having purchased goods to the amount of nine thousand

pounds, £9000, from the Dutch and not paying for them before we

conquered INTIM GACKIDI, the Dutch demanded of my father OSAI

TUTU I for the payment, who paid it in full … and the Dutch delivered

the Elmina to him as his own. And from that time tribute has been paid to

us to this present time.37

36 L. Yarak, Asante and the Dutch (Oxford, 1990), ch. 3.

37 Handelingen der Staten Generaal (Dutch Parliamentary Papers) 1873-4, Bijlagen

156.34: Kofi Kakari to Ussher, dd. Kumasi, 24 Nov. 1874. Language as in original as

22

European records permit us to date the Asante defeat of Denkyera referred to here to the year

1701. The letter was forwarded to the Dutch governor at Elmina, C.J.M. Nagtglas—a man with

many years experience at the coast—who responded by rejecting the king’s claim. But he did

not search through his archives to find documentary evidence of the origins of the Dutch and

Elmina relationship to Asante, nor the meaning of the annual payment he was well aware was

being paid to Asante.38

Nagtglas apparently based his statements on the published works of the

British officials T. E. Bowdich (1817) and B. Cruickshank (1853). Citing “tradition”, he

stipulated that payment of an annual stipend (kostgeld in the Dutch language of the coast, at the

value of the trade goods equivalent of 2 oz. of gold per month) to Asante had indeed begun at the

time of the Asante military defeat of Denkyera, when the “pay note [for Denkyera] came into his

[the Asante king’s] hands”. But Nagtglas countered that the payment represented no more than a

“gift” to promote trade with the interior.”39

I have found no evidence of the Elmina view of the

matter, but it was no doubt politic for them to accept the Asante version of the origin and

meaning of the kostgeld, for they looked forward to Asante assistance in thwarting the British

take-over of Elmina Castle. The Asantehene was making a claim on the castle, rather than on

Elmina town, and his objection was to the cession, which ought not to proceed without his

knowledge and approval. The Elmina king’s similar objection to the transfer of the castle to the

British has been cited above.

reproduced here. A slightly different, but substantially the same version of the letter’s text was

published in the British Parliamentary Papers, C.670 (1872), 13.

38 Having worked several years in the Dutch archives on this problem, I can attest that he

would not have been able to give a timely response based on the Dutch records, even if he had

tried!

39 PP, 1872 C.670, 13-14: Nagtglas to Ussher, dd. Elmina, 20 Dec. 1870.

23

My own search of the archival record has revealed no evidence that the Dutch ever paid

kostgeld to Asante before 1742. It is important to recall that Elmina Castle was built long before

there was evidence of the existence of the kingdoms of either Denkyera or Asante, and that the

Dutch took the castle by force of arms in 1637. The records show that the Dutch began paying a

stipend of 2 oz. trade goods equivalent per month for the right to occupy the land and the fort

they built at Accra in the later seventeenth century. Initially this kostgeld was paid to the local

Ga rulers. Following the Akan state of Akwamu’s conquest of Ga areas, it was paid to the

Akwamu king. Following his defeat by the kingdom of Akyem, it passed to its ruler, the

Okyenhene. Finally with the Asante conquest of Akyem in 1742 the “note” passed to the Asante

king Opoku Ware. From the 1740s to the 1810s, successive Asante kings sent envoys to Accra

to receive goods from the Dutch reckoned at 2 oz. gold equivalent in trade goods.

Following Asante’s conquest of all the southern Akan polities in 1816, the Dutch

governor, H. W. Daendels, decided for convenience sake—and to attract Asante traders to

Elmina—to make the old Accra kostgeld payable henceforth at Elmina. A new “pay note” or

kostgeld briefje was issued by Daendels’ successor in 1818, and this document was presented

regularly by the Asante king’s functionary at Elmina for payment, initially in trade goods, and

later in gold dust, right through to April 1872, the month the Dutch handed over Elmina castle to

Great Britain. Detached from its original seventeenth century connection to the Dutch fort at

Accra, the pay note became associated in the minds of all as a form of “rent” or a “gift” (in the

varying European view) or “tribute” (in the Asante, and possibly Elmina views) in respect of the

Dutch occupation of Elmina castle. By the early nineteenth century, all parties therefore had

developed and embraced creative and expedient misunderstandings of the origins of kostgeld and

the relationship of Asante and Elmina with the Dutch. None of this mattered, however, until the

24

Dutch decided to abandon their Gold Coast forts and Britain decided to occupy them without the

consent of the people living in the space adjoining the forts. These misunderstandings ceased to

be expedient and became deadly and tragic: based on their deeply rooted view of the nature of

the European presence in their midst, the majority of the people of Elmina rejected British

occupation of Elmina Castle. Thus they suffered the total destruction of their town on 13 June

1873. Two days later, people from the neighboring Fante and Denkyera towns looted the ruins

of Elmina, no doubt in celebration of a British-led victory that had eluded them on so many

previous occasions. The age of European colonialism had truly commenced with the violence

that would underpin it.

Conclusion

How then are we to view the position of the Dutch officers on the nineteenth century Gold Coast

and their interactions with the rulers of the Elmina state? Each side had different understandings

of that position, attached different meanings to the words they used to describe it, and drew

different conclusions from the actions they took together or when they clashed. When writing to

their superiors in Holland, Dutch officers at Elmina often described their role in Elmina as one of

benevolent influence, even claiming a species of loyalty and attachment from their Elmina

counterparts. In Holland however, an investigation by a high-powered state commission in the

1850s found that the Dutch government could make no claim to political dominion on the Gold

Coast, recognizing that the “contract” promised no more than “mutual assistance against enemy

attacks”. It did not recognize Dutch “sovereignty.” 40

40 See Tweede Rapport der Staatscommissie, benoemd bij Koninklijk Besluit van 29

November 1853, No. 66 (The Hague, 1856), 76, 78.

25

Infrequent statements by Elmina’s rulers in the Dutch records indicate that they saw their

own position as pre-eminent, granting to the Dutchmen who lived and worked among them a

limited voice in the town’s affairs, a form of shared sovereignty that also existed between

Elmina’s rulers and those of surrounding Akan states. Examined carefully, the historical record

reveals something rather different from either party’s view, though perhaps closer to the Elmina

view: a negotiated relationship, built on compromise in the face of disagreement, with the

occasional use of force or the threat of violence to achieve limited goals. But generally the

relationship worked, and until the crisis borne of British imperialism in the 1870s, it worked in

considerable measure because of “creative … and expedient misunderstandings,” much as

Richard White found among Indians and the French in the pays d’en haut during the eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries. There is little evidence of a Dutch “informal empire” at Elmina

or elsewhere along the coast where the Dutch occupied small fortifications adjoining Akan and

Ga towns. A careful re-examination of the British activities at Cape Coast over the same period

might reveal a similar record of interaction, up to the point when London decided that a new,

hegemonic, imperial relationship had to be imposed on the entire Gold Coast in the last quarter

of the nineteenth century.