Swedish possessions on the Gold Coast

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Historical map of the former Gold Coast

Swedish possessions on the Gold Coast or the Swedish Gold Coast refers to the bases that Sweden maintained from 1650 on the Gold Coast on the Gulf of Guinea in what is now Ghana in West Africa . However, it was only a matter of individual fortresses and factories around Cabo Corso (today's Cape Coast ) and in today's Accra owned by the private Swedish Africa Company , which together hardly justify the term "Swedish Gold Coast Colony".

geography

The area comprised the following forts and trading posts / factories:

Heads of the estates

The three successive administrators of the Swedish properties had different titles:

history

Christiansborg fortress near Accra was the seat of the Swedish, later also the Danish and British governors and is now the seat of the government of Ghana

After the Swedish Africa Company was founded in 1649, an expedition was sent to Africa in the spring of 1650 under the command of Henrik Carloff . Carloff, a native of Rostock, who had worked on the Gold Coast for the Dutch West India Company until 1648 , led negotiations with the King of Futu (also Feta ) and then bought some small areas of land. On April 22, 1650, the Swedish Gold Coast was founded and Carloff became the first administrator.

Shortly afterwards, the company under Carloff took over a station at Anomabu that the Danes had just given up under British pressure. Up until then, the Dutch had dominated the Gold Coast , but some local rulers were dissatisfied with their attempt to raise tariffs on intra-African trade. The company used this dissatisfaction to establish stations in Butre and Jumore in southwest Ghana. Butre was later lost to a revolt of the local Ahanta . In Accra, Carloff was able to build on good previous contacts in order to set up a trading station not far from the Dutch Fort Crevecouer . At Takoradi in 1653 still a fortified station came ( Fort Witsten added).

In 1656 Johan Filip von Krusenstierna became the new governor . This angry Carloff, who then left Cabo Corso, but returned on January 27, 1658 with the Danish privateer Glückstadt. Fort Carlsborg was conquered and made part of the Danish holdings on the Gold Coast .

For the Swedish King Karl X. Gustav this became one of his reasons to wage war with Denmark again. With the Treaty of Copenhagen in 1660, Cabo Corso was to come under Swedish administration again. Then it turned out that Carloff's colleague Schmidt had automatically sold the colony to the Dutch in March 1659 and had disappeared with the money.

Later, the local population began a revolt against the new rule and in December 1660 the King of Futu again offered the Swedes control of the possessions. A new expedition was sent to the colony. Von Krusenstierna was reappointed administrator.

On April 20, 1663 Fort Carlsborg and Fort Christiansborg fell again to the Dutch after a long siege against the commander Tönnies Voss.

On May 9, 1664, the area was conquered again, this time by the English around Robert Holmes and decades later by the British made it part of the British Gold Coast colony.

literature

  • Albert van Dantzig: Forts and Castles of Ghana . Sedco Pub Ltd, Accra 1980, ISBN 9964-72-010-6 (Reprinted: ibid 1999).
  • Kwame Yeboah Daaku: Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720. A study of the African reaction to European trade . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970, ISBN 0-19-821653-X ( Oxford studies in African affairs ).

See also

Web links