Purchasing Enslaved Africans with Gold
In 1471, as the Portuguese moved along the coast of West Africa, they arrived on the Costa da Mina (Mina Coast), a namesake related to the important gold deposits of the basins of the rivers Pra, Ofin, and Volta.35 The Mina Coast corresponded to the zone between the ComoĂ© River in the west and the Volta River in the east, covering parts of the littoral of present-day Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo.36 In this early period of the Atlantic slave trade, most of the Mina Coast was referred to as the Gold Coast, the area corresponding to the coast of modern-day Ghana.37 Later on, however, references to the Mina Coast instead referred to the region east of the Volta River, known as the Bight of Benin.
Moreover, the French also used the term “Côte d’or” (Gold Coast) when referring to the Bight of Benin. Since the early years of 1000 CE, caravans of gold traders expanded south of the Sahara by traveling through the rainforests of the Gold Coast (see map 1). During the fifteenth century, Portugal’s interest in exploring the region was not yet connected to the trade of enslaved Africans but rather pertained to obtaining access to these gold sources in the hinterland.The Gold Coast encompassed several polities and peoples who spoke a variety of languages such as Ga, Adanme, Ewe, and Akan.38 Whereas Akan-speaking populations may have migrated from the Sahara or from the regions of Sahel and the Atlantic Africa savanna to the Gold Coast, peoples speaking other languages such as Ga, Adanme, and Ewe may have reached the region coming from the east.39 Despite being erroneously represented as one single people, Akan speakers were not unified and were in constant interaction with communities whose languages belonged to other clusters.40 As early as 800 CE, Akan peoples developed sophisticated agricultural practices.
Using iron tools, they opened inland forests and created earthwork settlements, where they produced palm oil and grew yams. But an epidemic is thought to have caused the dramatic decline of the population, which led to a sharp decrease in farming. When the Portuguese arrived on the Gold Coast in the second half of the fifteenth century, agrarian activity was resurging, but population growth and farming communities took more than one hundred years to fully recover.41In 1481, Portugal sent the nobleman Diogo de Azambuja to the Gold Coast with ten caravels and two additional ships loaded with building supplies such as lime and stones as well as weaponry. The expedition was intended to construct a castle in a village then called Aldeia das Duas Partes (village of two parts), present-day Elmina, a coastal town controlled by Eguafo, one of the several kingdoms of Akan speakers on the Gold Coast. After their arrival in the region, the Portuguese obtained permission to disembark. Dressed in ceremonial outfits, the group of hosts included men playing trumpets, tambourines, and drums, who were prepared to introduce Kwamena Ansa, the local ruler. Likewise, the West African ruler came to welcome the newcomers accompanied by a large procession of men playing drums and cowrie shell shakers. They were also blowing horns and carrying arrows, bows, spears, and shields. Each man of noble rank was followed by two naked pages, one bringing a wooden stool for him to sit on and the other holding a shield. In a performance intended to display his wealth in gold to the Portuguese explorers, Ansa was sitting on a high chair. Wearing just a brocade cape, his arms, legs, and neck were totally covered with a variety of gold jewelry, chains, beads, and bells dangling from his hair, beard, and head.42
An interpreter translated the exchanges between Ansa and Azambuja, who told the West African ruler that his king sent him there to “trade, secure peace and friendship forever” and to make that territory the “perpetual site of many and very rich goods, so that by their good treatment, they, and those who descended from him, would always be richer and more ennobled.”43 But to achieve this goal, the Portuguese needed permission to obtain a place to store their merchandise and accommodate their men.
Ansa responded to the captain that up to that day very few, dirty and vile, Christians arrived in the region. But the current Portuguese expedition was different. According to Ansa, Azambuja was exceptionally well dressed and looked like the son or the brother of the king of Portugal.Following this first meeting, Ansa gave the Portuguese permission to build a castle, the first European building on the African coast. The Portuguese rapidly selected the construction site on top of a high cliff. Sea captain and explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira, who recorded the Portuguese expedition to the Gold Coast in writing, noted that the communities living in the surroundings of the castle consisted mostly of fishermen. The next day, as the Portuguese started breaking ground to launch the construction of the castle, they disrespected local religious practices by destroying sacred rocks used as shrines by the town’s inhabitants.44 Not surprisingly, the residents responded by violently attacking the newcomers. But Azambuja quickly understood that their reaction was rather related to the delay in delivering the gifts promised to Ansa, which in this context can be understood as tributes. Eventually, as the gifts such as cloth, basins, and manillas were provided as previously agreed, the Portuguese were able to dispel the animosity of the local population, and the construction of the castle proceeded.45
Chroniclers at that time narrated this early conflict as a minor incident. However, they also pointed out how, after the confrontation, the Portuguese proceeded with caution as the castle’s construction progressed. In other words, this attack scared the Portuguese newcomers, who were certainly impressed by the villagers’ locally made iron weaponry.46 In 1482, the Portuguese completed the construction of the imposing castle São Jorge da Mina (known as Elmina castle), intended to protect gold and other commodities from attacks by other European powers.
The gold trade was an extremely lucrative business. According to Captain Pereira, the Gold Coast merchants provided the Portuguese the equivalent of 170,000 dobras (coins) of “good fine gold” on an annual basis. In exchange, the Portuguese paid them with lambéls (a blue-and-red striped cloth), brass manillas, scarves, corals, red shells, white wine, and blue glass beads.47Gradually, the trade in gold became intertwined with the trade in enslaved Africans. In 1486, as the Portuguese continued navigating eastward, they reached the Kingdom of Benin, whose territory encompassed part of present-day southern Nigeria. Inhabited by the Edo-speaking people, this kingdom already maintained exchanges with the Gold Coast by purchasing gold and selling beads, cloth, and also slaves. In 1486, the Portuguese founded a trading post in the port of Gwato (or Ughoton), not far from Benin City, the kingdom’s capital. As it had done in Senegambia, Portugal developed diplomatic relations with Benin, and the two kingdoms exchanged reciprocal diplomatic missions. The encounter with the Portuguese coincided with a period of territorial expansion, in which Benin’s ruler (called an oba) waged war against his neighbors and sold his prisoners into slavery. Once in Benin, the Portuguese purchased ivory, timber, cloth, and pepper. They also acquired enslaved individuals whom they sold in exchange for gold to local traders on the Gold Coast.48 These same enslaved persons would then extract the gold from inland riverbeds and transport it by land or through the waterways to the coast. Enslaved people also helped clear the forests for farming, one of the main economic activities in the region, along with the production of salt and fishing.49
During the early period of the trade, Gold Coast polities maintained their political power. Yet, once the Elmina castle was established, competition among local societies to participate in the gold trade dramatically increased. Occasionally, the Portuguese intervened in the wars in the region to prevent the disruption of the gold trade. They also created alliances with local states to attempt to control the trade and eliminate European competitors. This approach helped generate more wars in which the Portuguese and their local allies on the Gold Coast actively opposed other states, which sometimes received support from competing European traders.50