Cape Coast & Elmina Castles: Reminder of past and guide for the future

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• Yaw Yeboah 11 years ago

  A very interesting article and I fully agree with the sentiments that you have raised. However, the histories of Elmina & Cape Coast Castles, pre-dates & post dates the transatlantic slave trade. They were not built solely fo ...
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  A very interesting article and I fully agree with the sentiments that you have raised. However, the histories of Elmina & Cape Coast Castles, pre-dates & post dates the transatlantic slave trade. They were not built solely for the slave trade. Cape Coast Castle for Centuries was also the base for different European Colonial Administrations in the Gold Coast. The Fante's & other coastal people enjoyed close trading relations with British & other European traders at Cape Coast Castle.
  These trading links were not solely about the slave trade & to suggest otherwise is misleading.
  The history of the Ashanti Empire & other Empire is closely linked to trading with Portuguese & Dutch traders at Elmina Castle. The eagerness to control ownership of Elmina Castle (because of its strategic location for trade routes in the Atlantic Ocean), led to the 3rd Anglo-Ashanti War of 1873-1874.

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• C.Y. ANDY-K 11 years ago

  Indeed, those castles were not built originally to serve the purpose of storing slaves for the AST but the author is right in focusing attention on one aspect they assumed all along the coast of Africa. I suppose it was Hilto ...
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  Indeed, those castles were not built originally to serve the purpose of storing slaves for the AST but the author is right in focusing attention on one aspect they assumed all along the coast of Africa. I suppose it was Hilton who has shown that the value of the trade in other items such as gold, tropical timber, indigo, etc. superseded that of the value in slaves until much later with the rise of the Ashanti Kingdom turned the Gold Coast into a major exporter of slaves. Before then, slaves from as far as Angola were actually being brought to be sold to the Akans to help with the economic activities that were sustaining them and the ongoing trade with the Europeans, etc. As Lovejoy and others had argued, without the labour of those slaves, the forest areas couldn't have been settled to the extent that they were by the Akans. So whichever way you looked at it, the castles played major roles in fostering the trade in African captivess within Africa too and that's ONE MAJOR area which we MUST focus on too; not only the AST which was estimated to have taken 12-20 million Africans away.
  
  Yes, we must focus on the fact that some Africans were responsible for procuring the captives for the castles and must share some condemnation for their dastardly role too which led to an estimated 100m deaths in Africa (many times those taken away; of which role some of their still mentally warped scions are proud of and regularly rain insults and prejudice on those their ancestors used to raid for slaves, etc. In parts of Africa, Ghana inclusive, they are still treated as serfs and exploited. Indeed, as slaves in places like Mauretania. It is therefore important that we go back to the history and, in a didactic manner, try to learn some lessons and teach them to Africans and the rest of the world.
  
  Yes, we must focus on those castles as the fortresses for abolition of the slave trade and then our colonisation and further subjugation and exploitation. After all, within the short span of King Leopold's stranglehold on the Congo, 20m reportedly perished as a direct result of that exploitation. We must focus on these things that happened within Africa too and draw conclusions from their lingering effects that continue to haunt us.
  
  Andy-K

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• Kojo T 11 years ago

  The problem is these were acts by our " friends" , the West and we are afraid to offend them . They celebrate the landing at Normandy though they are now allies wth the Germans but we get cold feet to re count the atrocities ...
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  The problem is these were acts by our " friends" , the West and we are afraid to offend them . They celebrate the landing at Normandy though they are now allies wth the Germans but we get cold feet to re count the atrocities committed by these " Christians" against our peaceful " heathens"

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