Frederiksgave
Frederiksgave was an experimental agricultural plantation of the Danish Crown in the hinterland of the West African Gold Coast (today's Ghana ) in the last two decades before the end of the Danish presence there as a colonial power in 1850.
Geographical location
Frederiksgave comprised a land area of about 55 hectares (100 Tønder), which extended over the surrounding area of the village of Sesemi. Sesemi is located at the foot of the Akwapim Mountains , about 20 km north of Accra . The highest point of Frederiksgave is about 700 m, the lowest point about 300 m above sea level.
history
Denmark was the first country to ban the transatlantic slave trade . This ban came into force in 1803. However, this did not prohibit slavery. From an economic point of view, slave labor on site in plantations on the Gold Coast appeared to be more sensible than the inhumane transport of slaves across the Atlantic, which was associated with high human losses. At the end of the 1820s, there were five larger Danish-run plantations in the Danish part of the Gold Coast, which were operated either by private traders or by government officials on a private basis. One of them belonged to the governor Henrik Gerhard Lindt , who was governor of the Danish estates on the Guinea coast from August 1, 1824 - January 20, 1831 and March 1, 1833 - July 21, 1833. After his return to Europe in 1831, his successor, Ludvig Vincent von Hein , bought the property in the name of His Majesty, King Frederik VI. of Denmark , and gave the place the name "Frederiksgave" (literally: "the gift of Frederik") in honor of its king. Frederiksgave remained a state farm until the Danish estates were sold to Great Britain in 1850. Frederiksgave offered both a pleasant retreat and relaxation place for the higher ranks of the Danish governorate. The stay in the Danish official seat of Fort Christiansborg , in today's Ghanaian capital Accra, was extremely unhealthy for Europeans due to the climatic conditions and the high risk of tropical diseases such as yellow fever, malaria and sleeping sickness.
With the acquisition of the plantation, the main aim was to create the first conditions on the Guinea coast for a Danish production center to supply the European market with tropical agricultural products. In this context, large-scale cultivation trials were carried out primarily with coffee , tobacco , sugar cane , indigo , cotton and various aromatic plants. At least the cultivation attempts with coffee, tobacco and sugar cane, on which the main focus was directed, failed. In a letter to His Majesty in Copenhagen, dated April 1, 1836, the then governor Frederik Siegfried Mörck informed the royal government about the failure of the attempts and the reasons that, in his opinion, were responsible for them. By the time of Mörck's letter, around 6000–8000 coffee plants, 4500 tobacco plants and 200 sugar cane plants had been consumed. Governor Mörck blamed the climatic conditions for this and included some of his own weather observation data for the period January 1835 to March 1835 with his letter. (In this context it must be mentioned that there was no systematic and permanent weather observation and meteorological measurement data recording on the Gold Coast at that time.)
Reasons for the failure of the cultivation attempts
In a study published in 2001 (see below), possible reasons for the failure of the Danish cultivation attempts in the 1830s were once again examined. From today's perspective, the growth of a plant is influenced by the complex interplay of four main variables which affect the plant from the immediate environment, and these are:
- a) the temperature,
- b) the water available for the plant,
- c) the light intensity and
- d) CNPK soil chemistry, d. H. the content of carbon , nitrogen , phosphorus and potassium in the soil in ionic form.
Without going into more detail at this point, the analysis showed that the location for the test plantation was extremely poorly chosen, but none of those involved at the time can be blamed for this. In general, field agriculture at the foot of the Akwapim Mountains is extremely risky for most crops.
Climatic conditions
The prevailing climate here, which in today's sense is assigned to the humid and dry tropical climate zone, is characterized by two rainy seasons (April to June and October) and a longer dry season (November to March). (The times describe the normal case, there are also exceptional years.) This is simply too dry for coffee and sugar cane. However, it could prove beneficial to the tobacco plant.
Chemical soil conditions
The bottom is too shallow, i.e. H. the growth-promoting layer is too low in height and too acidic in the subsoil to allow tobacco and sugar cane to thrive on it. In addition, there is a high aluminum content in the soil, which has a particularly toxic effect on the tobacco plant. In addition, the content of plant nutrients in the local soil (CNPK content) turned out to be so low that it hardly makes sense to practice field-based agriculture here at all. The tobacco plant in particular consumes a lot of potassium. However, the potassium content in Frederiksgave soils is described as low to very low.
Pests
Added to this is the damage caused by insects. Sugar cane seedlings were destroyed by ants in a very short time .
Overall, it came to the conclusion that if one had attempted the cultivation further up in the mountains, where Paul Erdmann Isert had already established the first Danish plantation on the Gold Coast with his Frederiksnopel plantation near Akropong in 1788 , the farm would probably be would also have survived economically. At least the climate there is much more favorable for growing coffee.
Literature / web link
- Frederiksgave Plantation and Common Heritage Site
- Frederiksgave Plantation and Common Heritage Site - Booklet ( PDF )
- Theodore W. Awadzi, Yaw Bredwa-Mensah, Henrik Breuning-Madsen, Enoch Bosateng, A scientific evaluation of the agricultural experiments at Frederiksgave, the Royal Danish Plantation on the Gold Coast, Ghana . In: Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography . Volume 101, 2001, pp. 33-42 (English).
footnote
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Frederiksgave Plantation and Common Heritage Site - there the section "Plantation as new commerce"
Coordinates: 5 ° 45 ′ N , 0 ° 15 ′ W