Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century

1991 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 157
Author(s):  
Johannes M. Postma ◽  
Harvey M. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Gold Coast

Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Roger B. Beck ◽  
Harvey M. Feinberg ◽  
Johannes Menne Postma ◽  
Richard Price
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Gold Coast

A Microcosm of Why Africans sold Slaves: Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s.

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Slave Raids ◽  
The Impact

The European goods which Africans consumed in the slave trade era tell us much about the African societies which imported them. However the study of the subject has involved much confusion through the application of fragmentary evidence from different societies in different stages of development towards the fashioning of broad hypotheses about the impact of the trade on West Africa as a whole. It is important therefore, when the evidence is available, to study each society and each group of African middlemen individually as well as within the wider context.The papers (especially the barter records) of Richard Miles throw a good deal of light on one such microcosm: the Akan people of the Gold Coast in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Fante middlemen with whom Miles dealt required, for virtually every barter, an assortment of goods from five major categories: hardware, currencies, textiles, luxury items, arms and ammunition. Though all these categories were necessary for the trade, it is notable that textiles were far and away the dominant commodity desired by the Akan. Guns were in surprisingly low demand during this period which suggests that the Akan slave producers (principally the Asante) had no difficulty raising slaves through tribute in peacetime and were not forced to rely on wars and slave-raids.Miles's documents also make it clear that generalizations drawn from the Gold Coast in this period cannot be extended automatically to other areas; Akan history tells us that neither can they be extended on the Gold Coast into a different era.

scholarly journals The English Establishments on the Gold Coast in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century

1922 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 167-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eveline C. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
National Pride ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many

Among the many unexplored fields in the history of the Outer Empire, the British settlements on the West African coast, until the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, have been the most neglected. The main course of English relations with that coast from earliest times to the end of the nineteenth century has been told in an admirable survey by Sir Charles Lucas, and several histories of the Gold Coast exist. None of these sources, however, have provided more than an outline sketch of the English settlements in West Africa, and the method of government and organisation by which they were maintained in the eighteenth century has not been examined. The most recent history of the Gold Coast, published in 1910 by Mr. Walton Claridge, is mainly occupied with nineteenth-century history, and no attempt is made by him to give anything but a cursory description of government in the previous century. Many other surveys of European progress in Africa have been written, but in all of them the treatment of the eighteenth century is slight. It is easy to account for this neglect. The story of the coast is bound up with the most discreditable of undertakings that mark the expansion of the Empire—the negro slave [trade—and Lecky's brief account of the English relations with West Africa would not encourage research into a subject so humiliating to national pride.

Working in the ‘White Man’s Grave’: Wages and Migration from Europe to the Gold Coast in the Eighteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 438-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klas Rönnbäck ◽  
Stefan Öberg ◽  
Stefania Galli
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Risk ◽  
West Africa ◽  
High Mortality ◽  
Wage Premium ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Very High

This article examines the economic incentives for Europeans to migrate to the so-called ‘white man’s grave’ of West Africa. Ignorance and coercion have been proposed as explanations for migration to high mortality areas. We use data on the Royal African Company and their European employees on the Gold Coast during the period 1707–1740. We found that the employees received a premium above the wage they would have received in England. Economic reasons might therefore have swayed the decision to migrate. Nevertheless, the wage premium was low in relation to the very high risk of dying. The migrating men either placed a low value on their own lives, or did not understand the risks they were facing.

Mapping Senegambia: Legacies of Ambition and the Failure of an Early Colonial Venture

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-231
Author(s):  
Sven Outram-Leman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
West Africa ◽  
Senegal River ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
Secure Access ◽  
Early Colonial ◽  
River Niger

Britain's short-lived Province of Senegambia (1765–1783) was part of an expansion effort in the region driven by a desire to secure access to the gum trade of the Senegal river. Drawing on Britain's knowledge of France's dealings with the Upper-Senegal region it was complemented by the adoption of French cartography, edited to illustrate a new colonial identity. It is argued here that there was an additional motive of developing closer contact with the African interior. This pre-dates the establishment of the African Association in 1788 and its subsequent and better-known expeditions to the River Niger. In contrast to the French, however, the British struggled to engage with the region. This paper approaches the topic from a perspective of cartographic history. It highlights Thomas Jeffery's map of ‘Senegambia Proper’ (1768), copied from Jean Baptiste Bourguingnon d'Anville's ’Carte Particuliére de la Côte Occidentale de l'Afrique' (1751) and illustrative of several obstacles facing both British map-making and colonial expansion in mid-eighteenth century Africa. It is argued that the later enquiries and map-making activities of the African Association, which were hoped to lead to the colonisation of West Africa, built upon these experiences of failure in Senegambia.

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