Willem Bosman's New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea: How Accurate is It?

Abstract

When Willem Bosman wrote his Naauwkeurige Beschryving van de Guinese- Goud-Tand- en Slavekust in 1702 the Guinea coast was perhaps enjoying more public interest in Europe than ever before. The Gold Coast and its interior had long appealed to the imagination of the western world, because it was one of the few gold-producing areas open to traders of all nations. But around 1700 interest in the whole coast of west Africa, particularly the east-west stretch or ‘Lower Guinea,’ further increased because of the rapidly increasing demand in the West Indies and Latin America for slaves from that area. As a matter of fact the “Asiento question” was one of the major issues at stake at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession. Bosman, late Chief Merchant on behalf of the Dutch West India Company on the coast of Guinea, was in an excellent position to satisfy public curiosity.Dutch contacts with the lower Guinea coast dated from 1595 when the then newly-emerging Republic of the Northern Netherlands or the United Provinces was badly in need of a regular supply of gold in order to finance its war efforts against the Spanish crown. Dutch trade expanded quickly in west Africa, at the expense of the Portuguese, who pretended to have a trade monopoly in the area. On the Gold Coast in particular the Portuguese were in a strong position, with fixed bases in the form of their castle at Sao Jorge da Mina (later Elmina) and supporting forts at Shama and Axim. But Portugal had been under the Spanish crown since 1580 and the Dutch considered their overseas possessions as legal prey and the undermining of their trade as a valid political aim. The Dutch were able to bring cheaper and better trade goods to the coast, and this prompted the ruler of the small state of Asebu near Elmina to defy openly the supposedly exclusive rights of the Portuguese, and, in 1612, to invite the Dutch to build a fort of their own at Mori. A Dutch attack in 1625 on the great castle of Elmina failed, but in 1637 they were successful and by 1641 they had expelled the Portuguese from their last possessions on the Guinea coast. But the Dutch were never able to enjoy the kind of monopolistic position the Portuguese had had; in 1631 the English built their first Gold Coast fort at Cormantin and other nations soon joined the rush to the profitable gold trade. By the end of the century no fewer than twenty-six fortified trade posts, belonging to the chartered companies of five nations, littered the coastline.