Ruins Of Gambia's Slave Forts

The river Gambia is one of the most important transport arteries in West Africa, due to its proximity to America and Europe. 20 miles from its mouth there is a small island that lies close to the north bank.

The first European visitors to the island were the Portueguese. In 1455, an expedition under Luiz de Cadamosto stopped there to bury a sailor who had died of disease. They named it St. Andrews Island after him, but it was nearly 200 years before Europeans returned.

England claimed the island, but it was still uninhabited when settlers from the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (modern day Latvia) arrived in 1651. The Courlanders built a fort at the mouth of the river (Fort Bayona, which was abandoned a few years later) and another fort on St. Andrews Island, called Fort Jakob.

Old slave trade building in Juffureh, Barry Williams

Sweden declared war against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (of which the Duchy of Courland was a vassal) in 1655. In 1659 the Dutch offered to garrison the Fort Jakob while its owners were on the defensive in Europe and they expelled the Courlanders.

Under the Dutch, Fort Jakob suffered an attack from French privateers in the pay of the Swedes. After this setback, the Dutch were forced out of the fort by local tribesmen, who prevented them from getting fresh water from the mainland.

Fort James

The Courlanders returned and finished repairing their fort in 1661. A few days later, an English expedition under Sir Robert Holmes arrived, demanding that the island be handed over to England. The outnumbered Courlanders surrendered without a fight.

Sir Robert Holmes' expedition was an undertaking of the Company of Royal Adventurers, who took over the fort, calling it Fort James after the Duke of York. Holmes also built a fort downriver on Dog Island, called Fort Charles, but it was abandoned in 1666. Courland's colonies in the Gambia were formally ceded to England in 1664.

Fort James was square with four bastions'and it contained the governors lodging and barracks. There was a three-storey tower with a platform on the roof for a lookout. This enabled the garrison to spot any ship coming up the river long before it arrived.

Outside the central fort there were various storehouses and other outbuildings, including accommodation for slaves. James Island played an important part in the slave trade, with slaves being kept there before being put on ships and taken to the West Indies. The Courlanders had begun to trade for slaves, shipping them to their colony on Tobago, but it was under the English (later the British) that the slave trade on the river Gambia took off.

The island's shoreline was stabilised with pilings in an attempt to fight against the erosion caused by the river flow and tides. There were three batteries on the shore outside the fort, two facing downriver and one facing upriver. These batteries, which mounted 4 or 5 guns each, were designed to give the garrison control of the river, denying access to rival nations or free traders. However, Fort James had a serious disadvantage in the fact that there was no fresh water on the island.

This strech of the Gambia is tidal and the water is salty, so the garrison had to make frequent trips to the mainland to obtain fresh water. So although Fort James could easily be defended because it was on an island, it was always dependant on friendly settlements on the river banks for drinking water.

In 1681 the French established a trading outpost at Albreda, on the north bank of the river opposite James Island. This marked the beginning of Anglo-French rivalry for control of the river Gambia. In 1688 the War of the Grand Alliance broke out and provided an opportunity for both nations to damage their rival's trade in West Africa. In 1692 the English successfully captured the French settlements of Saint Louis and the Ile Gorée, but these were quickly recoved by the French.

In 1695, after the recapture of Gorée, a French squadron of 6 ships sailed up the Gambia and attacked Fort James. The garrison was weakened by fever and the governor surrendered after just two shells had been fired into the fort. The French force slighted the fort, but later the French African company occupied the island and planned to repair it.

In the end Fort James was returned to England by the Treaty of Rijswijk'in 1697 before any work could be carried out. The fort was rebuilt between 1698 and 1701, to the same design as before. War broke out again in 1702 and this work was put to the test.

Fort James was attacked and ransomed by the French in 1702, damaged by fire in 1703, attacked (and ransomed) again in 1704, suffered a mutiny in 1708 and was finally captured, demolished and abandoned in 1709. In 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht'restored James Island to Britain.

Once back in British hands, the fort was rebuilt from 1714 to 1717. In 1719 it was captured by the pirate Howel Davis, who visited the governor, posing as a merchant. His men took the fort by surprise and looted it. In 1725, disaster struck again when the powder magazine'exploded.

Repairs to the fort included the construction of an annex called the spur. This building was two storeys high and was built against the south-east side of the fort. It contained storehouses and accommodation for the garrison.

However, the spur annex did not last long and was demolished by 1750, perhaps because it compromised the defence of the central fort. By this time erosion had taken its toll on the island's shore, especially on the south end, where the upriver battery was now underwater. The other outbuildings were often destroyed and rebuilt during the fort's history.

It was probably because of the explosion in 1725 that the powder magazine was moved to a better position under the east bastion. Expense magazines were placed in the south and west bastions, to hold shot close to the guns.

In the mid-18th century a cistern was built between the north and east bastions. The new cistern, which was divided into two sections, was much larger than the previous water storage facilities on the island, although it affected the defences.

Being situated between two bastions, it blocked some of the flanking fire across these bastions. However, the cistern was made with a angled exterior faces so that there was no dead ground. There was also a parapet around the top for soldiers.

In 1755 the fortifications on James Island were surveyed by an engineer called Watson. By this stage the two remaining curved batteries were in poor condition and a line of outbuildings formed the south-west edge of the island.

In accordance with Watson's recommendations, the two curved batteries, along with the straight 7-gun battery that had been established between them, were rebuilt in brick. This strengthened them against enemy fire but more importantly protected them from erosion.

Fort James Island

In 1757, during the Seven Years' War, the fort, assisted by nearby British vessels, repulsed an attack by French privateers. Albreda was burned and the British took the French colonies in Senegal. In 1765 Fort James was made the capital of British Senegambia.

This shows the strategic significance of the fort. Although it was not a complex fortification by European standards, its island position controlling the river Gambia made it one of the most important fortifications in West Africa.

In 1768 a Niumi interpreter was taken to the island and died there in mysterious circumstances. In revenge 500 Niumi tribesmen launched an attack against the fort. The Niumi attacked in canoes and approached the island from downriver.

Using the artillery in the batteries facing downriver, the heavily outnumbered garrison was able to prevent the attackers from landing, sinking a number of canoes and forcing the rest to retreat to the bank.

In 1778, during the American War of Independence, a flotilla of French ships arrived at Fort James, which surrendered without a shot being fired. This time the French slighted the fortifications much more thoroughly than on previous occasions. Mines were detonated beneath the bastions, the cistern and two of the curtains.

The buildings inside the central fort were also blown up and the other buildings on the island outside the central fort were burnt. The French destruction had its desired effect; when peace returned in 1783, the British decided that the fort would be too expensive to rebuild.

In 1807 the British government abolished slave trading and an effort was made to stop foreign slavers from using the river Gambia. This led to the founding of Bathurst (modern-day Banjul) in 1816 at the mouth of the river (where the Courlanders had their outpost, Fort Bayona). James Island was sporadically occupied by a small guard to keep watch over ships in the river, but the fort was never rebuilt. It was finally abandoned in 1829. (source: Fortified Places)

Gambia is in Western Africa surrounded by Senegal against the Atlantic Ocean and is the smallest country in continental Africa, and follows the flood plains of the Gambia River with some low hills. Independent from the UK in 1965 and briefly united with Senegal named Senegambia from 1982 until 1989, the Gambia has limited resources but a high concentration of birds, so agriculture and farming with light manufacturing and tourism make up the economy.

Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company trading and colonizing company, chartered by the States-General of the Dutch republic in 1621 and organized in 1623. Through its agency New Netherland was founded. The phenomenal success of the Dutch East India Company was an influential factor in its establishment. The United New Netherland Company, which had been trading around the mouth of the Hudson River for several years, was absorbed into the new company. By the terms of the charter no citizen of the Netherlands could trade with any point on the African coast between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope or on the American coast between Newfoundland and the Straits of Magellan without the company's permission. 

The company was responsible to the States-General in larger matters, such as declaring war, but otherwise had almost complete administrative and judicial power in its territory. The company was initially interested taking Brazil from the Portuguese. After 30 years of warfare, however, Brazil was lost. By that time the company had built Fort Orange (1624) on the site of Albany, N.Y., Fort Nassau (1624) on the Delaware River, Fort Good Hope on the site of Hartford on the Connecticut River, and finally Fort Amsterdam (1626), on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, which was the nucleus of the settlement called New Amsterdam, now New York City. England could not then afford to antagonize the Dutch because of wars with France and Spain and so permitted the Dutch settlement to be made on lands that England claimed. New Netherland remained under the control of the company until the English finally conquered it in 1664 (see New York , state). The company's unsound financial condition led to its reorganization under a new charter in 1674. Thereafter it engaged primarily in the African slave trade, though it still possessed colonies in Guiana. In 1791 its charter expired and was not renewed. [source: "Dutch West India Company." The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.. 2011. Encyclopedia.com. 14 May. 2012 .]

James Island, Gambia

James Island is an island on the River Gambia. It is the site where European established a settlement as early as the 16th century. The earliest settlers were Baltic Germans who named it St Andrews Island. The settlers erected a fort which they named after Fort James, after James Kettler, Duke of Courland.

When the British took over the island in 1664, they renamed Fort James as well as James Island after James, the Duke of York, who later ascended the throne of England as King James II. In the subsequent centuries the fort changed hands between the British and the French. It served as an important trading post for African slaves until its abandonment in 1870. (source: World Heritage Site)

Saidiya Hartman: Lose Your Mother: A Journey Across the Atlantic Slave Route

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Across the Atlantic Slave Route, by Saidiya Hartman

From the New York Times, on 11 February 2007, "Erasing Slavery," by Elizabeth Schmidt: Saidiya Hartman’s story of retracing the routes of the Atlantic slave trade in Ghana is an original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery from the 16th century to the present and a welcome illustration of the powers of innovative scholarship to help us better understand how history shapes identity. But the book is also — this must be stressed — splendidly written, driven by this writer’s prodigious narrative gifts. She combines a novelist’s eye for telling detail (“My appearance confirmed it: I was the proverbial outsider. Who else sported vinyl in the tropics?”) with the blunt, self-aware voice (“On the really bad days, I felt like a monster in a cage with a sign warning: ‘Danger, snarling Negro. Keep away’ ”) of those young writers who have revived the American coming-of-age story into something more engaging and empathetic than the tales of redemption or of the exemplary life well lived, patterned on Henry Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass.

Hartman’s main focus in “Lose Your Mother” is shaking up our abstract, and therefore forgettable, appreciation for a tragedy wrought on countless nameless, faceless Africans. She makes us feel the horror of the African slave trade, by playing with our sense of scale, by measuring the immense destruction and displacement through its impact on vivid, imperfect, flesh-and-blood individuals — Hartman herself, the members of her immediate family she pushes away but mulls over, the Ghanaians she meets while doing her field work and the slaves whose lives she imaginatively reconstructs from the detritus of slavery’s records.

Her own journey begins in the stacks of the Yale library, where as a graduate student she came across a reference to her maternal great-great-grandmother in a volume of slave testimony from Alabama. Her excitement at finding a sign of her family’s past was undercut by her great-great- grandmother’s brief reply when asked what she remembered of being a slave: “Not a thing.” Hartman, while “crushed” to hear so little of her ancestor’s voice, turns negation into possibility, into all that can be communicated by such reticence: “I recognized that a host of good reasons explained my great-great-grandmother’s reluctance to talk about slavery with a white interviewer in Dixie in the age of Jim Crow.” Years later, after Hartman had begun work on this book, she returned to those interviews and could find no trace of the reference. She scoured the library for misshelved volumes, reread five surrounding volumes, reviewed her early notes but never found that paragraph imprinted in her memory, “the words filling less than half a page, the address on Clark Street, the remarks about her appearance, all of which where typed up by a machine in need of new ribbon.”

Hartman’s desire to know about slavery is thwarted at every turn: by grandparents who refuse to talk about the subject, by parents and a brother who urge her to stop brooding about the past and get on with her life, by the Ghanaians she encounters who either avoid the topic of slavery entirely or make it into a generic tourist attraction, and above all, by the huge gaps she encounters in her archival work, as the vanishing act of her great-great-grandmother’s testimony illustrates. Hartman’s response to what she calls the “non-history” of the slave fuels her drive “to fill in the blank spaces of the historical record and to represent the lives of those deemed unworthy of remembering.”

Hartman, the author of “Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America,” selects Ghana because it provides a vivid backdrop against which to understand how people with families, towns, religions and rich cultural lives lost all traces of identity. Ghana had “more dungeons, prisons and slave pens than any other country in West Africa,” she notes. “Nine slave routes traversed Ghana. In following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, I intend to retrace the process by which lives were destroyed and slaves born.” But Hartman, who “dreamed of living in Ghana” since college, is also interested in the country’s more recent centrality in the Pan-African movement since its independence in 1957, when the first president, Kwame Nkrumah, opened up the country to members of the African diaspora, creating a Ghana whose slogan was “Africa for Africans at home and abroad.”

In contemporary post-Nkrumah Ghana, Hartman confronts her own sense of pure Generation X despondency: “I had come to Ghana too late and with too few talents. I couldn’t electrify the country or construct a dam or build houses or clear a road or run a television station or design an urban water system or tend to the sick or improve the sanitation system or revitalize the economy or cancel the debt. No one had invited me. I was just ... about as indispensable as a heater in the tropics.”

No one will talk to her directly about slavery. It’s old news for those progress-minded people focusing on Ghana’s many current social and economic woes, and it’s too painful for others who want to avoid the collective guilt of remembering the ways Africans in the former Gold Coast facilitated the slave trade. As the Ghanaian poet Kofi Anyidoho says, “We knew we were giving away our people, we were giving them away for things.”

By the end of her stay in Africa, Hartman faces the fact that she hasn’t found “the signpost that pointed the way to those on the opposite shore of the Atlantic.” She has had to rely primarily on her imagination in reconstructing the lives of particular slaves. But just as she gleaned something in her great-great-grandmother’s refusal to engage, she hears something beyond “the story I had been trying to find” in a small, walled town in the interior, one of the few places where the slave raids had been resisted: “In Gwolu, it finally dawned on me that those who stayed behind,” the survivors of the slave trade, “told different stories than the children of the captives dragged across the sea.” (source: The New York Times, Elizabeth Schmidt)

Journeying along a slave route in Ghana, following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, Saidiya Hartman retraces the history of the Atlantic slave trade from the fifteenth to the twentieth century and reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy. There were no survivors of Hartman's lineage, nor far-flung relatives in Ghana of whom she had come in search. She traveled to Ghana in search of strangers. The most universal definition of the slave is a stranger torn from kin and country. To lose your mother is to suffer the loss of kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as a stranger.

Across the Atlantic Slave Route from Cody's Books on FORA.tv

Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah

From the 17th to 19th centuries, millions of African people were sold into slavery, transported on ships to the Americas. With them came spiritual traditions including Voudun, which we now know as voodoo. Its roots are in the Dahomey kingdom on the West Coast of Africa, now the country of Benin.

The python temple in Ouidah, Benin, where voodooists invoke the "sacred"

We visit the Temple of Pythons and learn about Voudun religious practices, and witness some of the most important sites in the history of the slave trade.

We walk along a beach that was the single most highly-trafficked embarkation point for West African slaves headed over the Atlantic to the Americas. One million people were forced on to ships here, many transported to Haiti and Brazil, where Voudun transmuted into voodoo and Candombla.

Outsiders called this region the Slave Coast. Ouidah’s residents today call the former boarding platform on this otherwise idyllic beach the Gate of No Return.

Roots of Voudun and Slavery's Legacy in Ouidah

Benin's Dark Past of Slavery

BBC News, Benin, "Benin's Dark past of slavery," by Sue Branford: Few tourists reach Benin yet this West African nation has a remarkable story to tell about one of the most shameful episodes in history.

A massive, arched gateway, some 50 feet high, stands alone on the edge of one of the loveliest beaches in West Africa.

It is a striking - and in many ways a beautiful - structure, facing out across the Atlantic Ocean towards South America.

Yet it is also bleak beyond words.

Etched across the top of the arch are two long lines of naked, chained men disappearing into the sea.

Called the Gateway of No Return, it is a monument to the hundreds of thousands of Africans who were forced into slave boats on this beach, never to return.

I arrived at this gateway with a group of local historians. By the time I got there, I was choking back tears.

Not surprising really, as the monument comes at the end of a harrowing two-mile (3.2 km) trek from Ouidah.

Today Ouidah is an attractive town, the spiritual capital of Benin, with a thriving culture centred on the voodoo religion.

But once the very mention of Ouidah invoked fear among the local population.



Tree of Forgetfulness

The Portuguese, the Dutch, the British and the French all had forts near this town, built to defend their trading interests.

And for more than 200 years, the main commodity they traded was people.

Slave traders rounded up men, women and children, at times trapping them with nets.

Their catchment area stretched deep into Africa, even as far as Ethiopia and Sudan.

Once caught the slaves were forced to walk in chains, hundreds of miles to Ouidah.

Once there, they were subjected to a brutal process of brainwashing.

Taken down the slave route that I followed, they were made to walk around a supposedly magical tree called the Tree of Forgetfulness.

Men had to go round it nine times, women and children seven.

This experience, they were told, would make them forget everything - their names, their family, and the life they had once had.

As if this was not enough, the slaves were then locked into a dark room, built to resemble the hulk of a ship.

In the local language this room was called Zomai, meaning literally: "There, where the light is not allowed."

Its foundations are still visible and the place still seems to exude evil spirits and terror.

Brazil's role

Old Portugese Slave Fort - Ouidah. Old Portugese Slave Fort. The Slave Route

After several weeks - or even months - in this hell hole, the slaves were packed in ships for the long crossing to the Americas.

One of the historians told me that most of the slaves went to Brazil, at the time still ruled by Portugal and that some Brazilians played an important role in the trade.

Benin, Oyo, Asante And Dahomey Were Slave Trading Tribes

The most infamous was Don Francisco de Souza, an extraordinary wheeler-dealer who, arriving penniless from Brazil, made a fortune out of slave-trading while living in Benin.

He was a colourful figure, allegedly having 99 wives and hundreds of children.

He inspired one of Bruce Chatwin's most famous novels, The Viceroy of Ouidah.

In all, Brazil received some four million slaves from Africa - though not all, of course, from Ouidah.

This was many more than were sent to the United States.

Cultural impact

Economically, the slaves did not prosper, for blacks remain by far the poorest ethnic group in Brazil.

But culturally their impact was huge.

I lived in Brazil for many years and almost everything that makes Brazil that vibrant, warm country that so many of us love seems to be linked to Africa.

Carnival, samba, Candomble, capoeira - all were created by the descendants of former slaves.

I have always known this, but it was not until my recent trip to Benin that I became aware of just how tenaciously the slaves must have clung to their culture.

Huge efforts were made to cut them off from their past but they failed.

The "tree of forgetfulness" did not work.

Future tourism

Today there is a new twist to the tale.

As yet, Ouidah is unspoilt. Few tourists reach this relatively remote area of West Africa.

But tour operators have spotted the strong combination of wonderful beaches, hot climate, historical sites and, for Europeans, no jet lag.

Moreover, Benin is a relatively safe country with low levels of violence. The people are friendly.

Tourism is just the kind of industry that President Yayi Boni, who came to office earlier this year, is keen to promote.

He was a development banker before entering politics and wants to modernise the country.

Ouidah has a remarkable story to tell and local people need jobs.

But let us hope that Benin does not repeat the mistakes of other developing countries.

Too often tourism has had harmful effects.

Local communities have been evicted from their land. Water resources have been squandered on golf courses.

The local culture has been turned into a vulgar tourist attraction.

It would be ironic indeed if Benin's extraordinary heritage was to open the way for another cycle of exploitation by outsiders.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 7 September, 2006 at 1100 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times

(source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/5321484.stm)


Tree of Forgetfulness

Slave Route in Nigeria

From Africa Travel Magazine, "Discover the Slave Route in Nigeria," by Dr. Beryl Dorsett: A darker historical era saw many people of West Africa leave their shores for plantations in Europe, North and South America and the Caribbean. The infamous slave trade in Nigeria is not known to many people like the slave trade in Ghana, Senegal, Togo and Benin. Nigeria and Ghana were former British colonies. Senegal, Togo and Benin were former French colonies.

In December 2000, I attended the Fourth Eco-tourism Symposium in Nigeria as a delegate of the Africa Travel Association. The Lagos State Waterfront and Tourism Development Corporation invited conference delegates to a two-day pre-symposium tour of Lagos States. On the first day, we toured the city of Lagos. On the second day, we toured the town of Badagry and learned that Badagry was an important slave route in West Africa. Badagry is one of five divisions created in Lagos State in l968.

This ancient town of Badagry was founded around l425 A.D. Before its existence, people lived along the Coast of Gberefu and this area later gave birth to the town of Badagry. It is the second largest commercial town in Lagos State, located an hour from Lagos and half hour from the Republic du Benin. The Town of Badgry is bordered on the south by the Gulf of Guinea and surrounded by creeks, islands and a lake. The ancient town served mainly the Oyo Empire which was comprised of Yoruba and Ogu people. Today, the Aworis and Egun are mainly the people who reside in the town of Badagry as well as in Ogun State in Nigeria and in the neighboring Republic du Benin.

Slave Trade Route

In the early 1500's, slaves were transported from West Africa to America through Badagry. It is reported that Badagry exported no fewer than 550,000 African slaves to America during the period of the American Independence in l787. In addition, slaves were transported to Europe, South America and the Caribbean. The slaves came mainly from West Africa and the neighboring countries of Benin and Togo as well as others parts of Nigeria. The slave trade became the major source of income for the Europeans in Badagry.

Today, Badagry is an historic site because of the significant role it played as a major slave port in Nigeria. The town of Badagry is promoting an African Heritage Festival in May, 2001 to enlighten the world to its historic sites, landscapes, cultural artifacts and relics of human slavery. Badagry wants to share this world heritage site with others. They are preserving buildings, sites and memories of this iniquitous period so those tourists can unearth the dark impact of this era. Places of interest include the Palace of the Akran of Badagry and its mini ethnographic museum, the early missionaries cemetery, the District Officer's Office and Residence, the First Storey Building in Nigeria constructed by the Anglican missionaries, relics of slave chains in the mini museum of slave trade, cannons of war, the Vlekte slave Market, and the Slave Port established for the shipment of slaves before the l6th century.

The Lagos State Waterfront and Tourism Development Corporation is sponsoring the African Heritage Festival, May 2001, in collaboration with Nigerian Tourist Development Corporation, Badagry Local Government and some NGOs. Chief Moses Hungbo Owolabani is the Executive Chairman of Badagry Local Government Council. The tentative program of events encompasses initiation into Nigerian tribes, boat regatta, educational and economic forums, music and dance festivals, and numerous recreational activities and picnicking on miles of beach front property. (source: Africa Travel Magazine)

The Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Ghanaian Times article "Less-Known Participating Nations In The Slave Trade,"from 26 February, 2011, by Godwin Yirenkyi, discusses the history of the transatlantic slave trade:

Recently I asked a Chilean journalist after a tour of the Cape Coast Castle whether there are black people, that is, descendants of the many African slaves taken there during the period as is the case in other South American countries. She answered no, apart from occasional visitors, adding that Chile never took part in that abominable trade. I showed her references to the contrary that slaves were taken there and she was surprised.

This short introduction is one reason behind the multi-national initiative led by UNESCO for more research and education to break a long silence surrounding the sordid story of to pave way for total healing, reconciliation and peace.

For even though you will not find forts and castles (infamous for their use as stations for the trafficking of African captives for use as slaves in the Americas between the 15th-19th ) belonging to nations like France, Spain and the United States on the Ghanaian coast where most of these relics are found in Africa, historical records show that these nations, and others shown in this article were, nevertheless, active participants in the slave trade.

Though contemporary history say that the Portuguese were the first to discovering Ghana (the then Gold Coast in 1471, the French historians claim their travelers were the first to have arrived in 1383, having founded two short-lived settlements named Petit Paris and Petit Dieppe somewhere along the western coastline as well as built a lodge at Takoradi. They say that the French trade had ended by the time the Portuguese arrived but until 1872 when Britain formally colonized the Gold Coast, the French navy never stopped foraging frequently along the coast.

The bastion de France

Fort William at Anomabu, for example, started was originally a French trading post built by them in 1751 but was captured two years later by the British. In retaliation, according to Reindorf, the French bombarded Cape Coast Castle and seized it from the British, thus enabling them to gain access to the gold and slave trade. In 1779 they captured Fort Orange, Sekondi, from the British but left soon afterwards. The French are also believed to have established a small fort at Amoku, 10 kilometers east of Anomabu on land purchased for 450 ounces of gold. They stayed at Christiansborg for some years and probably built a trading station at Ada that lasted for some time. France became the fourth largest slave trading nation and Nantes, in the Bay of Biscay became the slave trade capital just as Liverpool won disrepute as England's slave trade capital.

Ghanaian sailors have a legend that the frequent storms in the bay are the result of the many slave corpses dumped in the place by the slave ships.

Slave Trade maps show that the French sent many slaves from East Africa to the Seycheles, Mauritius and Madagascar.

Bunce Island, Serra Leone

Until the late 1700s the Spaniards, who started the trans-Atlantic slave trade with the Portuguese and later became the main buyers of slaves in the Americas, obtained their supplies from other Europeans without coming to the West African mainland. By the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, signed between Spain and Portugal, the African coast was awarded to Portugal by the Pope. Hence the Spaniards who got the New World did not feature prominently in direct trading activities in West Africa except for their enclaves of Equatorial Guinea and Sao Thome. Early records, however, indicate that they traded for sometime at Arguin in modern Mauritania in the 15th century.

The nearest that Spain ever came to settling in the former Gold Coast was in 1756 when the Danes sent an agent, Prof. Moldenhauer, to Madrid to negotiate, unsuccessfully, the exchange of their fort at Ada on the Volta River for the Spanish Crab Island, also known as Bisque, in the West Indies. By 1830, the Spaniards were visiting the country during the governorship of Captain George Maclean, and one of the charges brought against the governor by his opponents during investigations into his activities was that he allowed Spanish slavers to buy provisions on the coast. In 1848, the British warship Kingfisher and an American cruiser Yorktown attacked the last slave trading station run by the Spaniards at Cess River, in Liberia, and freed 3,000 captives.

Elmina Castle

The activities of the Portuguese, after they were driven away from Elmina Castle by the Dutch in 1637 is also not well known since it was generally assumed that they were driven away completely from the country after they ceded the rest of their possessions to the Dutch in a treaty in 1641. The treaty stipulated that they should not trade here and that if they wanted to trade on the Lower Coast, that is at Fida (Ouidah) and Porto Novo, they should first drop anchor first at the Dutch fort and pay a large tariff. Records, however, show that the Danes bought Christiansborg from them in 1660 and built another small fort called Fort Xavier in 1679 in the area from where they were driven off in 1683. Around this period they were also said to have put up another less-known trading lodge along the Accra coast which they named Ft. Vicente. Between 1811 and 1816, Portuguese vessels frequented Accra looking for captives to buy. During the abolition period, a notorious Portuguese slave trader by name Don Jose Mora continued buying slaves in the Keta area till he finally moved to Little Popo and Grand Popo in modern Benin after the Danes tried to arrest him.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

The Portuguese stayed on in Guinea Bissau, Principe and Sao Thome where they had established large sugar plantations since the late 15th and 16th centuries. Sao Thome also served as an entreport for the slave trade to Europe and the Americas. Further down they held the monopoly in Angola where millions of captives were sent to Brazil from Fort San Miguel, and also along the East African coast where they operated from Mozambique, Zanzibar and Lamu Islands as well as Mombasa in Kenya. Their main legacy in Ghana today is the Elmina Castle, near Cape Coast. Linguists claim they also left a few words that have become part of the local Ghanaian vocabulary such as dash (gift), paano (bread), palava (meeting), fetish (idol) and sabola (onion). The word used for slave catching, panyarring was also believed to have come from the Portuguse word panyar, meaning catch.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

Due to the name change, people often forget that the Brandenburgs, who in 1683 built Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, and two other lodges at Akwida (1685) and Takrama (1687), were Germans. Brandenburg was the name of East Germany before it was united with neighboring provinces to become Germany. In the 17th cenury they took over a Spanish station at Arguin in Senegal and were also present at Whydah, Benin, for sometime. However, the full extent of German involvement in the slave trade in West Africa and the Americas is not known. At one time they tried to acquire a part of the Virgin Islands, but Togo and Cameroon were the main centers of their activities in West Africa.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

Virtually unknown among the European slave traders of West Africa were the Courlanders, a small Germanic nation (population 200,000) situated in the present Republic of Latvia in the Baltics. The Courlabders built a small fort on St. Andrews Island (James Island) in the Gambia in 1652 and colonized Tobago in the 17th century and established sugar, cotton and rum plantations wiith about 7,000 slaves. The British seized James Island in 1661.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

It is not known how far Brazil which received the largest number of slaves participated in slave buying since most documents of the slave trade were purposely burnt in that country. But one Brazillian slave trader called Cossar Corquila Lima was known to have established a large trading post at Vodza, near Keta. After his death in 1862, his domestic slave and agent who inherited him renamed himself Geraldo Lima, married his wives and continued with the trade, causing much trouble with the Adas and their Danish allies.

Ft. Groot Fredericksburg at Princess Town, Ghana

West Africa was not the only place that suffered from the ravages of the slave trade. The huge Congo, for example, was owned by King Leopold II of tiny Belgium, who had no colonies in the New World yet sold thousands of slaves to the Americas and enslaved the natives at home in a manner far worse than what Arab slave traders were doing before the Belgians arrived.

According to the National Geographic (Sept. 1992) the greatest number of slaves taken to the Americas came from the Congo-Angola region while another report (March 1973) indicated that the Congo endured more than three centuries of slaving, losing hundreds of thousands of people to the labour-hungry New World. From Boma, 90km inland, the Flemish traders assembled the captives then moved them to Banana Island at the mouth of the Congo River their main slave port for shipment.

Simultaneously, the native population at home was brutally forced to collect ivory and rubber in what became known as the rubber atrocities, rigorously implemented by state agents long after the abolition of slavery. Belgium's Royal Museum of Central Africa has on display symbols of the shameful trade including shackles and collar rings that once bonded Congolese slaves. In the same museum can be seen life-size mannequins depicting Congolese slaves and Arab slave buyers.

Records indicate that American slavers in the 1700s took part directly in the buying of captives from Africa, which they called the Circuit trade as distinct from Triangular Slave Trade. The first American slavers dispatched by Boston merchants in 1644 included the Rainbow which took a number of captives to Barbados. Later they became more active and started using what became known as rum boats, which were smaller and faster than the European ones, to cross the Atlantic with cargoes of rum to intoxicate potential African slave traders, and then return to America via the West Indies to offload their captives and stock up with molasses to take home and make it into more rum. One hundred and fifteen gallons of rum bought a male captive and ninety-five for a female. Records indicate that about twenty rum boats were in service by 1758.

The Swedes played an active role in the slave trade within the brief 17 years that they spent in the Gold Coast. By 1638 they had founded a colony called New Sweden on the Christina River around present Wilmington in the Delaware River valley of the United States which they held till 1655 when it was abandoned owing to pressure by the Dutch who were staging a comeback after losing it previously to local Indians. In 1640 they constructed Fort Witsen at Takoradi then began another one at Anomabo. Ten years later the Swedish African Company led by Heinrich Caerlof constructed a short-lived lodge at Butre. In 1657 they made Carolusburg Castle, Cape Coast, their headquarters, before they lost it together with Christiansborg, Osu, to the Danes. They were not heard of again after they were driven off by the Danes shortly afterwards. In the West Indies they had one island, St. Barthelemy, for themselves from 1784-1877.

Sweden's eastern neighbour, Norway also took part in the slave trade jointly with Denmark of which it was then a part. That explains why a slave ship called the Fredensborg, named after an erstwhile fort at old-Ningo, near Tema, which was returning to its home port after discharging a cargo of slaves at St. Croix in the Caribbean sunk near the town of Arundel, Norway, in 1768. Dr. Paul Isert, a Danish surgeon who wrote extensively about the period stated how, for some inexplicable reason the climate seemed unsuitable for the Norwegians. When they arrive in this land, the surgeon wrote, even though they have never before in their lives been ill, they behave like a fresh-water fish that has been placed in salt water. They become misanthropic, fretful, and do not know why. First they complain of a headache, usually accompanied by vomiting; after 24 hours often follow convulsions, and the patient dies a man who had been perfectly healthy 48 hours earlier.

Another less-known aspect of the trans-Atlantic slave is the fact that besides the United States, Central America, the West Indies and Brazil which are often mentioned, several thousands slaves were also taken to Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Paraguay and Uruguay. Lima became a major redistribution center from where slaves, some brought directly from Africa around Cape Horn were sent into the interior of the continent never to be heard of again.

The atrocities of slavery were not limited to the black people of Africa. At the time of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the British, French and Australians were tricking and kidnapping thousands of Melanesian captives to work in the sugarcane fields of Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia and other Pacific colonies. Among the kidnappers, also known as the black birders was one Ross Lewin who often disguised himself as an Anglican bishop to trick islanders to come to his ship, while another called James Murray enticed villagers to paddle their canoes to his schooner with promises of trade in beads, pipes and tobacco and then took them by force and sold them.

(source: Ghanaian Times)