Danish possessions on the Gold Coast
Danish settlements on the coast of today's Ghana , formerly known as the Gold Coast , existed from 1658 to 1850. The Danish possessions, however, were mainly forts and trading factories , so that the Danish Gold Coast was not actually a colony.
history
As part of the Second Northern War , Denmark and Sweden again waged war against each other from 1657. From 1658 the Danes in West Africa gradually conquered all Swedish possessions on the Gold Coast , which Sweden had only acquired from the Portuguese and Dutch in 1650. Fort Carolusborg (today Cape Coast Castle ) was the last Swedish fortress to fall into Danish hands, but it was lost to the English in 1664.
The Danish West India Company was founded in 1671 for the slave trade between its properties in West Africa, Europe and the Caribbean, and in 1750 all of the company's Danish properties on the Gold Coast were converted into a Danish crown colony . The capital was - as it was under Swedish rule - Fort Christiansborg in what is now the Ghanaian capital Accra . As part of Britain's struggle against the Russian-Danish policy of armed neutrality , the colony was occupied by the British in 1782–1785.
With the ban on the slave trade and slavery in the first half of the 19th century and the increasing resistance of the Ashanti and Akwamu in the African hinterland, Denmark lost interest in the Gold Coast and sold its West African possessions to Great Britain for £ 10,000 in 1850.
The fortresses and other bases in the course of time in detail
(The last estates ceded to Great Britain in 1850 are marked in yellow)
place | fortress | Foundation (conquest) | Task (sales) | Comments |
Accra | Fort Christiansborg | 1658 | 1850 | Swedish before 1658, Portuguese occupied from 1680–1682, sold to Great Britain in 1850 |
Ada | Fort Kongensteen | 1784 | 1850 | Sold to Great Britain in 1850 |
Amanful | Fort Frederiksborg | 1658 | 1685 | after 1685 English |
Anomabu | Fort William | 1658 | 1674 | Swedish before 1658, English after 1674 |
Cape Coast | Fort Carolusborg | 1659 | 1661 | before 1659 Swedish, 1661 Dutch |
Cong | Cong Heights | 1659 | 1661 | before 1659 Dutch, 1661 destroyed by Dutch |
Keta | Fort Prinzenstein | 1784 | 1850 | before 1780 Dutch, sold to Great Britain in 1850 |
Old Ningo | Fort Fredensborg | 1784 | 1850 | Sold to Great Britain in 1850 |
Sekondi-Takoradi | Fort Witsen | 1658 | 1659 | Swedish before 1658, abandoned in 1659 |
Teshie | Fort Augustaborg | 1787 | 1850 | Sold to Great Britain in 1850 |
literature
- Georg Norregard: Danish settlements in West Africa 1658–1850 . Boston University Press 1966