Danish Gold Coast

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Danish Gold Coast Settlements
Danske Guldkyst
1658–1850
Christiansborg) (1658–1850)
Common languagesDanish, German (official)
Ga, Dangme,
Akan
King of Denmark 
• 1658–1670
Frederick III of Denmark-Norway (first)
• 1848–1863
Frederick VII of Denmark (last)
Governor 
• 1658-1659
Hendrik Carloff
• 1847-1850
Rasmus Eric Schmidt
History 
• 
Denmark-Norway annexation from Sweden
1658
1660
• Disestablished
March 30 1850
CurrencyDanish rigsdaler
Preceded by		 Succeeded by
Swedish Gold Coast
British Gold Coast
Today part ofGhana
Gold Coast
A contemporary drawing of Fort Christiansborg, now Osu Castle. The outpost to the right is Fort Prøvestenen.

The Danish Gold Coast (Danish: Danske Guldkyst or Dansk Guinea) comprised the colonies that Denmark–Norway controlled in Africa as a part of the Gold Coast (roughly present-day southeast Ghana), which is on the Gulf of Guinea. It was colonized by the Dano-Norwegian fleet, first under indirect rule by the Danish West India Company (a chartered company), later as a crown colony of the kingdom of Denmark-Norway. The area under Danish influence was over 10,000 square kilometres.[1]

The five Danish Gold Coast Territorial Settlements and forts of the

British Gold Coast.[3]

History

On April 20, 1663, the Danish seizure of

Danish West India-Guinea Company. From December 1680 to 29 August 1682, the Portuguese occupied Fort Christiansborg. In 1750 it was made a Danish crown colony
. From 1782 to 1785 it was under British occupation.

Following the 1792 decree abolishing Denmark's participation in the

abolitionist sentiment and the desire to establish plantation colonies in Africa to produce tropical commodities such as sugar and coffee.[8][9]

Debate arose over the most suitable locations for these new agricultural endeavours.

Guinea Coast even resisting orders to close outlying forts, fearing negative consequences for trade and security. The Slave Trade Commission ultimately favoured the Volta region for plantations, while rescinding the closure order in 1799.[11]
This back-and-forth illustrates the continuing uncertainty surrounding the future of the forts and the challenges Denmark faced in adapting its colonial strategy in the wake of the abolition of the slave trade.

Internal disagreements within the Danish administration further complicated the future of the forts. Evaluations by Peter Thonning and Governor Wrisberg revealed opposing views on inland and coastal plantation projects.[12] The Coastal Council even suggested a temporary continuation of the slave trade to facilitate the establishment of these ventures.[13] This reflects the challenges Denmark faced - limited geographical knowledge, internal disagreements over strategy and the impact of the Napoleonic Wars, which further hampered colonial efforts.

In the post-Napolenic-war period, Peter Thonning, now focused on cost reduction, proposed new inland fortifications.[14] This shift reflects Denmark's continuing difficulties in adapting its colonial strategy without the slave trade. Figures such as Thonning envisioned inland plantation ventures that required good relations with powerful African states such as Asante.[15] Others, however, advocated a more limited role for the forts, focusing on trade and defence.[16] The Guinea Commission, led by Thonning, explored inland colonies, but ultimately failed to convince a cost-conscious Danish government.[17] King Christian VIII even sought to sell the forts altogether [66]. The arrival of Governor Carstensen in 1842 briefly revived interest in a more active colonial approach, with plantations at Akuapem and annual visits by warships to project power.[18]

However, Denmark's waning enthusiasm for colonialism and financial constraints ultimately led to the sale of the forts to Great Britain in 1850, marking the end of its colonial ambitions in Africa.

British Gold Coast.[3]

This period reveals the internal struggles within the Danish administration and the unfulfilled ambitions that marked Denmark's brief venture into African colonialism.

The title of its chief colonial administrator was

opperhoved (singular; sometimes rendered in English as station chief
) since 1658, only in 1766 upgraded to Governor.

Danish slave trade

Further information: Danish slave trade

The Danes were involved in the slave trade from the mid-17th century until the early 19th century. The Danish navy and its mercantile marine were recorded as the fourth largest in Europe in this period. With the establishment of the Gold Coast colony in the 1660s, commodities such as gold and ivory dominated at first, but by the turn of the 18th century, slaves were the most important commodity in the Danish trade. Those who commanded the large slave ships were often instructed to convert their cabin into a kind of moveable showroom upon arrival on the African coast. While throughout the 18th century, Danish exports of enslaved Africans accounted for about 5 percent of the total exports from the Gold Coast, by the 1780s, this was up to 10 percent.

In 1672, the

transatlantic slave trade
under the Danish flag because of their intensive and highly profitable sugar production which depended on slave labor. As a result, and because mortality rates were higher than fertility rates among slaves in the Danish West Indies, it became necessary to import slaves every year. Most of these enslaved human beings came directly from Africa while others came from foreign Caribbean islands.

After the slave trade was abolished in 1803, Danish colonizers attempted to establish cotton, coffee, and sugar plantations on the Gold Coast; however, these were largely unsuccessful. By 1817, almost all of the Danish posts on the Coast were abandoned, with the exception of Fort Christiansborg, which was, along with the other posts, sold to the British in 1850.[3] Throughout the transatlantic slave trade, it is estimated that about 12.5 million Africans were taken captive and 10.7 million of them were transported to the Americas. The Danish slave trade constituted about 1 percent of this trade, with about 100,000 Africans embarked. Denmark was reportedly the first European colonial empire to ban its slave trade in 1792, although this law did not come into effect until 1803, and illegal trading continued into the nineteenth century.[20]

Forts and settlements

Main forts

The following forts were in the possession of Denmark until all forts were sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.

Place in Ghana Fort name Founded/
Occupied 		Ceded Comments
Accra Fort Christiansborg 1658 1850 First captured from the Swedes in 1658. Occupied between 1680 and 1682 by the Portuguese. Sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.
Old Ningo Fort Fredensborg 1734 1850 Sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.
Keta
Fort Prinsensten
 1784 1850 Sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.
Ada
 Fort Kongensten 1784 1850 Sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.
Teshie Fort Augustaborg 1787 1850 Sold to the United Kingdom in 1850.

Temporarily held forts and trading posts

Apart from these main forts, several forts and trading posts were temporarily held by the Danes.

Place in Ghana Fort name Founded/
Occupied 		Ceded Comments
Cape Coast Fort Carlsborg 1658 1664 Captured from the Swedes in 1658. Captured by the British in 1664.
Amanful Fort Frederiksborg 1659 1685
Cong Cong Heights 1659 1661

See also

  • Colonial Heads of Danish Gold Coast
    the office-holders of the Danish Gold Coast
  • Dane gun
  • Danish Africa Company
  • Dano-Dutch War

References

  1. ISBN 978-90-04-33056-6
    , retrieved 2022-02-05
  2. ^ van Dantzig, Albert; Priddy, Barbara (1971). A Short History of the Forts and Castles of Ghana. Liberty Press. p. 49.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-90-04-33027-6
    .
  4. ^ Hopkins, Daniel. "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts, Denmark’s Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and African Colonial Policy, 1788–1850." Forts, Castles and Society in West Africa. Brill, 2018. 148-169.
  5. ^ Daniel Hopkins, Peter Thonning and Denmark’s Guinea Commission: A Study in Nineteenth-century African Colonial Geography (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
  6. ^ Per O. Hernæs, Slaves, Danes, and African Coast Society (Trondheim: University of Trondheim, 1995), 129–303.
  7. ^ Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston: Boston University Press, 1966, 120–122.
  8. ^ Selena Axelrod Winsnes (trans.), Letters on West Africa and the Slave Trade: Paul Erdmann Isert’s Journey to Guinea and the Caribbean Islands in Columbia (1788) (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1992), 190.
  9. ^ Daniel Hopkins, ‘The Danish Ban on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Denmark’s African Colonial Ambitions, 1787–1807, Itinerario 25 (2001): 154–184, 156–159.
  10. ^ Joseph Evans Loftin, Jr., The Abolition of the Danish Atlantic Slave Trade (Doctoral Thesis: Louisiana State University, 1977), 128–129
  11. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 155ff.
  12. ^ Hopkins, Daniel. "Danish natural history and African colonialism at the close of the eighteenth century: Peter Thonning's ‘scientific journey’to the Guinea Coast, 1799–1803." Archives of Natural History 26.3 (1999): 369-418..
  13. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 159ff.
  14. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 159ff.
  15. ^ Kea, R. A. (1967). Ashanti-Danish Relations: 1780-1831 (Doctoral dissertation, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana), 470-471.
  16. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 164ff.
  17. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 162ff.
  18. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 166ff.
  19. ^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 167ff.
  20. ISBN 978-90-04-33027-6
    .

Further reading

  • Closing the Books: Governor Edward Carstensen on Danish Guinea, 1842-50. Translated from the Danish by Tove Storsveen. Accra, Ghana: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2010.

External links

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