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 Kingdom of Denmark were sold to the United Kingdom in 1850. Denmark had wanted to sell these colonies for some time as the expenses required to run the colonies had increased following the abolition of slavery. Although Britain was also struggling with rising costs, it sought to purchase them to reduce French and Belgian influence in the region, as well as to further curtail the slave trade that still operated there.[2] The purchased settlements and forts were later incorporated into the British Gold Coast.[3]
History
On April 20, 1663, the Danish seizure of Fort Christiansborg and Carlsborg completed the annexation of the Swedish Gold Coast settlements. From 1674 to 1755 the settlements were administered by the 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 Atlantic slave trade (implemented in 1803),[4] the purpose of their forts on the Guinea coast became uncertain. Previously, these outposts had served solely for the slave trade, with no real impact beyond isolated trading activities.[5][6] Colonial planners, recognising their limited knowledge of the surrounding territories (as evidenced by requests for detailed information),[7] sought for other options. This shift coincided with growing 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.[10] The fertile Volta River region and the Akuapem Hills emerged as frontrunners, with the Council on the 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.[19] On 30 March 1850 all of Denmark's Danish Gold Coast Territorial Settlements and forts of the Kingdom of Denmark were sold to Britain and incorporated into the 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.
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 Danish West India and Guinea Company also began establishing colonies in the Caribbean at Saint Thomas, Saint John in 1718, and Saint Croix in 1733. While these possessions were rather small, at only 350 square kilometers collectively, they became of utmost importance in 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.
^van Dantzig, Albert; Priddy, Barbara (1971). A Short History of the Forts and Castles of Ghana. Liberty Press. p. 49.
^ abcGobel, Erik (2016). The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition. Brill Academic Pub. pp. 3–7. ISBN978-90-04-33027-6.
^ 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.
^ Daniel Hopkins, Peter Thonning and Denmark’s Guinea Commission: A Study in Nineteenth-century African Colonial Geography (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
^ Per O. Hernæs, Slaves, Danes, and African Coast Society (Trondheim: University of Trondheim, 1995), 129–303.
^Nørregård, Georg. Danish Settlements in West Africa, 1658–1850. Translated by Sigurd Mammen. Boston: Boston University Press, 1966, 120–122.
^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.
^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.
^Joseph Evans Loftin, Jr., The Abolition of the Danish Atlantic Slave Trade (Doctoral Thesis: Louisiana State University, 1977), 128–129
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 155ff.
^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..
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 159ff.
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 159ff.
^Kea, R. A. (1967). Ashanti-Danish Relations: 1780-1831 (Doctoral dissertation, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana), 470-471.
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 164ff.
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 162ff.
^ Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 166ff.
^Hopkins, "The Danish Guinea Coast Forts", 2018. 167ff.
^Erik, Gobel (2016). The Danish Slave Trade and Its Abolition. Brill Academic Pub. pp. 182–183. ISBN978-90-04-33027-6.
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.
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