Elmina Castle Research Articles

Roots tourism experiences, identity construction, social equity and social justice: a mixed methods approach

ABSTRACT The incidence of African diaspora’s pilgrimage to their ancestral motherland in Africa has recently increased. Indeed, initiatives such as the Black Travel Movement and Year of Return have increased the desire for black diasporans to ‘go back home’. Evidence in the literature illustrates that this homecoming is a deliberate effort towards identity construction. Using a mixed-method research approach (and W.E.B Du Bois’s sociological; terror management, and substantive identity negotiation theories), this study examined root tourism’s effects on identity construction, social justice, and equity using data from the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles in Ghana. The study’s key outcome shows root tourism’s power to influence social justice and human rights equality. Furthermore, the study discovered that terror management and substantive identity negotiation theories are limited in their relevance to non-Western contexts. This study demonstrates how managers of tourism firms can rightly position root tourism as a distinct tool for identity construction, social justice and social equity. The study also discusses its implications, limitations and future studies.

Black women’s bodies as sacrificial lambs at the altar

The youth in South Africa are subject to unemployment and the pressure to fit into society. The unemployment rate in South Africa is high; therefore, some find themselves desperate for employment and often find themselves hoping and praying for a miracle; hence, the number of churches in South Africa is increasing. People go to church to be prayed for by ministers in a hope to better their lives and that of their families. Some of these young South Africans became victims of sexual harassment, rape and gender-based violence (GBV) at the hands of their pastors. The aim of this article was to challenge the church in identifying ways to break the cycle of perpetrators among pastors and help find the role pastoral counsellors can play regarding both victims and offenders to prevent history from repeating itself. Domestic violence and abuse in South Africa have been investigated by various disciplines. One of the most difficult realities for the church is the existence of clergy who abuse their female congregants. The article will create an awareness of violence against black women at the temple of black churches which is vindicated by Christian faith as miracle and healing. The violence against black women at the temple of the churches is patriarchal violence as male clergy sacrifice them in the name of faith using the bible. Some scholars of Black theology of liberation (BTL) argue that Elmina Castle had a chapel where women trading took place. Elmina Castle had a dungeon that kept black women who were waiting to be sold to a trade master. This article also exposed patriarchal violence that has been engraved on black women using the Bible by male clergy and connected Elmina Castle to Bishops Israel Makamu and Stephen Bafana Zondo to see the position of black women in these temples. Black theology of liberation was used to expose oppression of black women, by black men, in black churches.Contribution: This article aimed to challenge pastoral care givers to remain ethical during pastoral care and counselling to those in need, especially young women. This study was a literature review study.

Quantum Particularity: For Audre Lorde and Dionne Brand

This essay brings together the writing of Audre Lorde and Dionne Brand and their responses to their visits, decades apart to the dungeons of Elmina. The essay proposes that Elmina Castle and the other forts used for the purposes of trading enslaved Africans can be understood as particle accelerators because of their reduction of key components of communities into individuals for sale. The word “particular” in the writing and speaking of Lorde and Brand offer us a poetics beyond individuality.

Elmina Castle, Central Region of Ghana

Elmina Castle, Central Region of Ghana

Satellite, drone and video camera multi-platform monitoring of coastal erosion at an engineered pocket beach: A showcase for coastal management at Elmina Bay, Ghana (West Africa)

Regular monitoring of coastal areas is a prerequisite to evade any imminent erosive disaster. However, data-driven decisions become more uncertain when a monitoring platform is unable to capture events of a certain frequency. Erosion along Ghana’s coastline is endemic as in most of the Gulf of Guinea countries in West Africa. The current challenge is how to document and understand the dimensions of erosion despite limited human and logistical capacity. In the present study, shoreline change was assessed by an intensive multi-platform data collection strategy deployed for a year at Elmina Bay, Ghana through the use of drones, a shore-based camera, Sentinel satellite images and a dumpy level. The potential causes and areas of erosion at Elmina were clearly identified at a very fine scale by our sediment budget calculations. While a section of the beach in front of the Elmina Castle was adequately protected by the presence of jetties , downdrift of the larger unprotected portion of the beach was out of balance with high erosion rates. Furthermore, the results revealed that frequent, local video cameras and drones are more effective for operational monitoring of shoreline changes at all time scales. Satellite imagery is also a potential alternative tool, but its low temporal resolution, compared with video cameras, makes it unsuitable for detecting daily or event-based beach changes, and is of low accuracy for practitioners and management decisions.

Digital reconstruction of Elmina Castle for mobile virtual reality via point-based detail transfer

Reconstructing 3D models from large, dense point clouds is critical to enable Virtual Reality (VR) as a platform for entertainment, education, and heritage preservation. Existing 3D reconstruction systems inevitably make trade-offs between three conflicting goals: the efficiency of reconstruction (e.g., time and memory requirements), the visual quality of the constructed scene, and the rendering speed on the VR device. This paper proposes a reconstruction system that simultaneously meets all three goals. The key idea is to avoid the resource-demanding process of reconstructing a high-polygon mesh altogether. Instead, we propose to directly transfer details from the original point cloud to a low polygon mesh, which significantly reduces the reconstruction time and cost, preserves the scene details, and enables real-time rendering on mobile VR devices. While our technique is general, we demonstrate it in reconstructing cultural heritage sites. We for the first time digitally reconstruct the Elmina Castle, a UNESCO world heritage site at Ghana, from billions of laser-scanned points. The reconstruction process executes on low-end desktop systems without requiring high processing power, making it accessible to the broad community. The reconstructed scenes render on Oculus Go in 60 FPS, providing a real-time VR experience with high visual quality.

Christine Beaule and John G. Douglass (eds.), The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism

Reviewed by: The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism ed. by Christine Beaule and John G. Douglass Damián V. Solano Escolano (bio) Christine Beaule and John G. Douglass, eds., The Global Spanish Empire: Five Hundred Years of Place Making and Pluralism. University of Arizona Press, 2020. Pp. 306. This collaborative work offers an overview of the Spanish empire as a global and pluralistic territory that, due to massive migrations and varied intermarriage practices, had multiple manifestations of place making. This theoretical concept does not have a univocal meaning in the book, since it includes both the deliberate creation of a physical space and its ritual practices, as happens in a mission, and the constant evolution of material traditions that affect, for instance, the forms of social climbing and cultural persistence (4–6). Other theoretical terms that appear intermittently are the dichotomy between place (physical markers such as buildings) and space (the totality of the landscape) (152), and ethnogenesis, usually understood as the creative responses of conquered groups to perpetuate their culture (216). As the editors explain in the introduction, this theoretical approach aims to overcome the particularities of the Spanish empire and to serve as an analogy for other forms of colonialism, whether European, non-European, or a combination of both, as in this case (8). The method used in The Global Spanish Empire, which is part of the current trend in theories of materiality, constitutes a useful contribution to colonial studies from an anthropological view. Besides examining new cases of specific [End Page 272] settings in disparate geographical points, each chapter extracts general principles related to these theoretical foci. To support their arguments, the authors use not only archival sources but also a wide variety of archaeological findings, artifacts, anthropological analyses, and oral sources. Considering the coloniality of power from a material point of view sheds light on the circumstances in which relations among pluralistic groups developed. For example, the presence of beads of various materials throughout the empire shows that, in addition to being proselytizing tools for Spanish priests, they were also signs of identification with Christian values for those Indigenous groups who wanted to distinguish themselves from others who rejected acculturation (259–61). To illustrate these material aspects, all chapters contain visual aids such as maps, drawings, and photographs. In this sense, a consistent use of place names from context (New Spain instead of Mexico, for example) both in the text and in the maps would have added historical rigor to the work. The Global Spanish Empire contains eleven chapters that analyze various cases, ranging from concrete contextual approaches to broader scopes. The structure does not seem to follow any thematic, geographical, or methodological order. Chapter 1 (Christopher R. DeCorse) explores the Iberian intersections in West Africa, in particular the life around Castelo São Jorge da Mina (today known as Elmina Castle, in Ghana). Chapter 2 (Corinne L. Hofman, Roberto Valcárcel Rojas, and Jorge Ulloa Hung) examines the latent Indigenous cultural persistence in the Caribbean Sea through case studies in Cuba and Hispaniola that focus on architecture and pottery. Chapter 3 (Christopher B. Rodning, Michelle M. Pigott, and Hannah G. Hoover) looks at the encounters between Spaniards and Mississippian chiefdoms throughout what was known as La Florida. The presence of Spanish forts and missions created divisions and clusters between the newcomers and the natives, and among the natives. Chapter 4 (Stacie M. King) travels to the current Sierra Sur de Oaxaca, Mexico. The arrival of Spaniards, mestizos, African slaves, and Indians (both allies and enslaved) transfigured the social reality of this region, which was a multiethnic landscape of conquest and migrations from pre-Hispanic times. Chapter 5 (Laura Matthew and William R. Fowler) examines the tense multiethnic coexistence in the first Spanish settlements in Central America, Santiago en Almolonga in Guatemala and San Salvador in El Salvador. Both were urban projects with an ephemeral life that highlighted the contradictions between the idealizations of the imperial mission, embodied in the layout in traza, and its complicated implementation. In a similar manner, chapter 6 (Kevin Lane) focuses on the domination of the Christian place over the Indigenous space through the construction...

Why forget us? Developing the Three-Town enslaved relics as alternative sites of commemoration in southeastern Ghana

ABSTRACT This paper examines preliminary research findings emanating from investigations carried out on the marginalised landscapes and relics of slavery in the Three-Town area of southeastern Ghana. It discusses the politics of exclusion being practised in the choice of histories and sites of enslavement for annual commemorative events in Ghana. The popular knowledge that the trade in humans occurred mostly at Cape Coast and Elmina Castles in the Central Region of Ghana has skewed development and commemorative activities such as Emancipation, PANAFEST and Year of Return programmes toward these exclusive sites of reverence. Lack of attention to the Three-Town sites and other sites of enslavement and their relics by government institutions has exacerbated their exclusion from public discourse and heritage development. This paper questions this indifference by highlighting the tangible and intangible imprints of trans-Atlantic slavery and enslavement on the histories, landscapes and memories of the Somey-Ewe people of Three-Town. It underscores the need — and the ongoing quest by archaeologists — to develop the Three-Town enslaved relics as important enslaved heritage resources and complementary sites of reverence in southeastern Ghana.

From Anomansa to Elmina: The Establishment and the Use of the Elmina Castle – From the Portuguese to the British

From Anomansa to Elmina: The Establishment and the Use of the Elmina Castle – From the Portuguese to the British

Museums: An institution for knowledge acquisition – A spotlight on the museum education in Ghana

Museums, just like formal institutions of learning always have understood that conserving collections for study and exhibition can be an important part of the educational process. Since 1957, Ghana has established several museums under the Museums and Monument Board. These museums just like others are required to play a great deal of role in the social, educational, economic development of a nation. However, it is distressing to note that with the highly endowed museum assets of Ghana, such as the Cape Coast Castle Museum, Ghana National Museum, Fort Appolonia Museum of Nzema History and Culture, the Elmina Castle Museum, Ho Museum, Bolga Museum, Wa Museum, The Head of State Museum and Museum of Science and Technology both in Accra, there has been little contributions to Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product. Significantly, visitor experience and satisfaction is very low. In this view, this study sought to investigate educational activities of Ghana Museum and Monument Board (GMMB) and inquire into their educational activities. Employing qualitative approaches, the study used a triangulation of observations, interview and focus group discussion to assemble data from these museums. In conclusion, the museums provide some sort of education but there is no formalized educational framework serving as a guide. They mainly employ monotonous experience of guided and self-guided gallery tours, and occasionally, the museum curators and educators organize a oneoff programme such as an outreach to schools and special exhibitions as well as seminars. Recommendations to strengthening museum education in Ghana are addressed
 Citation: Kwasi Amoako – Ohene, Nana Ama Pokua Arthur, and Samuel Nortey.Museums: An institution for knowledge acquisition – A spotlight on the museum education in Ghana, 2020 5 (2): 10－23. Received: March 3, 2020 Accepted: June 30, 2020

Intellectuele toe-eigening en discursief geweld in Focquenbrochs Afrikaense Thalia (1678)

In 1668, the Dutch medic and poet Willem Godschalck van Focquenbroch left Amsterdam for the African Gold Coast to become “fiscaal” (a kind of public prosecutor) on behalf of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) at Elmina Castle in Guinea, which was a bulwark of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade. In his posthumously published Afrikaense Thalia (African Thalia, 1678), a collection of poems and letters containing the well-known Afrikaense Brieven (African Letters), Focquenbroch testifies to his life and work in Elmina Castle through his alter ego “Focq”. In this article, I use Stephen Greenblatt’s notions of “wonder” and “possession” to demonstrate that Focq’s descriptions in the Afrikaense Brieven can be read as an expression of his initial wonder for, and subsequent appropriation of Guinea and its inhabitants. I argue that Focq’s literary-intellectual appropriation of the African Other, which at first sight seems rather innocent compared to the brutal physical appropriation of African people by the Dutch colonists, can nevertheless be considered violent at a discursive level. Focq’s conviction that he is superior to the Guineans because he possesses written language enables him to frame his writing in a discourse which stresses the superiority of the own culture and the culturelessness of the African Other. As such, Focq degrades and instrumentalizes the African Other in order to glorify and preserve the Self.

Elmina as Postcolonial Space

The town of Elmina in Cape Coast, Ghana, is usually associated with the Elmina Castle as a key site within UNESCO’s Slave Route project, whereby tourism becomes the vehicle for remembering and mourning the memorial consequences of the Atlantic slave trade. Abutting the tourist-oriented Castle, however, is a crumbling yet lived-in urban space, in whose town planning and architecture we see evidence of another shaping force: creolization as the occluded other to slavery and colonialism within the story of Western Africa. Moreover, the town is also home to the Elmina Java Museum, which memorializes Elmina’s links to the Indian Ocean world, especially as invested in the textiles that moved between Africa and Asia during different phases of world history. Through this variegated postcolonial space of Elmina, I excavate sedimented histories of transoceanic creolization that connect the continent to both Atlantic and Indian Oceans. From this reading of Elmina through the lens of a transoceanic creolized past and its relationship to the present, I prise open the contours of postcolonial spatiality to propose for it a genealogy both radically compromised and promisingly porous.

A Short Report on Two Diaries in the Roman Catholic Archives in Navrongo-Ghana

By about 1470 the Portuguese had arrived on the coast of what would later become the Gold Coast, now Ghana. Having established a trading post, the Portuguese engaged in trade with the indigenous Fanti and other traders from the interior particularly Ashanti. Trade came along with the building of forts and castles and also with the introduction of Christianity albeit at a slow pace and limited to the forts and castles. By the end of the sixteenth century these fortresses particularly Elmina and Christiansburg castles had Catholic priests who were stopping over on missions to other parts of Africa and considering the possibility of opening a mission in either Accra or Elmina. Such plans never materialised mostly due to lack of commitment, early death of the missionaries or lack of funds.

Domestic tourists to Elmina Castle, Ghana: motivation, tourism impacts, place attachment, and satisfaction

Current research on dark tourism lacks an in-depth investigation of the relationships between the various psychological factors that influence tourist satisfaction. Using the cognitive-affective-behavior system, this paper evaluates a theoretical model that postulates relationships between four constructs, namely: motivation, perceptions of tourism impacts, place attachment, and satisfaction. The study extends the tourism literature on cultural sustainability by showing the psychological connections of domestic tourists to a dark heritage site, and the implications for perceptions of tourism impacts on this heritage. Based on a sample of 414 domestic tourists at a dark heritage site in Elmina, Ghana, PLS-SEM confirmed several inter-relationships among the four constructs. Motivation had a positive relationship with perceptions of positive and negative tourism impacts, suggesting that the tourists who were more motivated to visit the site for cultural/learning experiences were also more inclined to perceive both positive and negative tourism impacts. Implications for dark tourism and how heritage site management can influence tourists’ perceptions of impacts are offered.

Black women’s bodies as reformers from the dungeons: The Reformation and womanism

While it cannot be denied that the 16th-century Reformation, which challenged papal authority and questioned the Catholic Church’s ability to define Christian moral practice in a just manner, indeed came with deep and lasting political changes, it remained a male-dominated discourse. The Reformation was arguably patriarchal and points to a patriarchal culture of subordination and oppression of women that prevailed then and is still pertinent in the church and all spheres of society today. The absence of Elmina and the silenced yet loud voices and cries from the female dungeons below a Dutch Reformed Church in the upper levels of the castle in the retelling of the narrative of the Reformation leaves much to be desired and has a bearing on how black women perceive the Reformation 500 years later. The article thus problematises the Reformation through the heuristic eyes of Elmina Castle in Ghana as the genesis of the ‘dungeoning’ of black women justified by faith. The article argues that black women are reformers from the dungeons following the historical experience of reformation and the Reformed faith as racist and sexist, among other ills experienced by blacks in the Global South, with black women literally kept in the dungeons below a Reformed Church building as they were in Elmina with a biblical inscription, Psalm 138, on the threshold of its main door. This article thus points to irreconcilable contradictions maintained by the Reformed faith that continues to bury black women in the ‘dungeons’ even today. The enfleshment of black bodies in the dungeons of the Elmina Castle underneath a Reformed Church building is seen as the historical and heuristic starting point of engaging Reformed faith from a womanist perspective.

Conservation and character defining elements of historical towns: A comparative study of Cape Coast and Elmina streets and castles

The concept of historical conservation and character definition is reflected in the Liverpool Street of Elmina and Kingsway Street of Cape Coast in Ghana. The features of these streets are changing owing to urbanization and to the development of commercial retail. In this study, we investigated the character-defining features of Kingsway Street and Liverpool Street within an 800m radius relative to the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles, respectively, which are known for their landmark roles as historical artifacts. We adopted a combination of mapping, philology, and fractal geometry to assess the character-defining features of each street. The key changes in the features of the two streets and the similarities between these features are emphasized in our results. The features of both streets have undergone rapid changes in terms of economic retail activities, which represent the central element defining the characters of these streets. Furthermore, the 18th and 19th century architecture along these streets is gradually losing their original features because of undocumented and unguided renovations, as well as retrofitting works that are based on the discretion and taste of building owners.

International tourism in Ghana: A survey analysis of traveller motivations and perceptions

Abstract International tourism plays an increasing role as an engine for economic growth in Ghana, and has enormous potential to enhance the country's balance of payments. The National Tourism Development Plan for 2013–2027 is testament to government recognition of the industry's importance. This paper examines motivations for and obstacles to international tourism in Ghana, based upon the analysis of field data from mixed-format survey questionnaires collected during 2014 in Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast, three of Ghana's major tourist destination cities. Tourists are attracted to Ghana's rich offerings in culture and natural environment, including the UNESCO listed Cape Coast Castle, Elmina Castle, Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, and Kakum and Mole National Parks. Challenges faced by tourists include the visa acquisition process and mobility within the country, especially with regard to limited public transportation options and deficient highway infrastructure. Based upon these findings, government planners should place a higher emphasis on the quality of the tourist product as articulated by the Ministry of Tourism (2012). Moreover, the national and local tourism authorities, as well as tourism service providers should make a concerted effort to help guide tourist expectations and make them more realistic, especially when it comes to tourists from wealthier countries.

Maritime Archaeology and the Early Atlantic Trade: research at Elmina, Ghana

This article details recent maritime archaeological research off the town of Elmina in coastal Ghana. Founded in 1482, Elmina Castle was the first and largest European outpost in sub-Saharan West Africa, and remained a centre of maritime trade for almost four centuries. Survey and diver investigations led to the discovery of several sites, including a shipwreck dating to the mid 17th century, which is characterized by a mass of trade goods, cannon and buried hull remains. A second Dutch vessel dating to c.1700 was documented after its discovery during dredging operations in the Benya Lagoon adjacent to Elmina. These sites present an opportunity to study ships and cargoes involved in the West African trade.

Pilgrimage tourism of diaspora Africans to Ghana

1. Slavery Heritage and the Call to Home: Diasporan Travel to Ghana 2. The Development of Ghana's Heritage Tourism 3. Culture Brokers at the Front Lines: Tour Guides at Cape Coast and Elmina Castles Interpret the Slave Story 4. Visitors' Perspectives at Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle: Slave Trade Memoryscapes and Ideoscapes 5. The Performance of Public Discourse: Slavery Heritage and One Africa Ideoscapes Produced by Locals 6. Foreigner or Family? Ghanaian Interpretations of the One Africa Ideoscape 7. Slavery Heritage Tourism, the African Family, and the Politics of Memory

The roots tourism experience of diaspora Africans: A focus on the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles

Ghana is one of the countries visited by diaspora Africans seeking to trace their roots and reconnect with their kith and kin. However, promoting roots tourism to the African diaspora is a delicate undertaking. There is a need to understand the factors which are of importance to the roots tourism experience as this will help to package the roots tourism product appropriately to meet the expectations of tourists. This study therefore sought to examine the factors that underlie the roots tourism experience of diaspora Africans in Cape Coast and Elmina in Ghana. A cross-sectional survey of 264 diaspora Africans within the Cape Coast and Elmina Castles was conducted using convenience sampling procedures. The study identified four factors that underlie the roots tourism experience of diaspora Africans namely, host–guest relationship, authenticity, emotion and appearance of the slave castles. It is recommended that the roots tourism product is repackaged to include welcome ceremonies, visits to communities, re-enactment of the slave trade and initiation ceremonies in order to improve host–guest interactions.