Excerpted from information generously provided by The Historical Society of Ghana
Cape Coast and Elmina are names that resonate strongly in the history of Ghana. As the coastal settlements that first hosted foreigners from across the seas and remained in contact with them the longest, these towns enjoy unique histories, and the rich heritage reflected in their built environments is also imprinted in both their cultures and that of the wider national society.
Cape Coast
Called Cabo Corso by the Portuguese, who visited it late in the fifteenth century, Cape Coast was traditionally known as Ogua, a name thought to refer either to a market—gua—a use for which the town’s location made it remarkably well suited, or to the name of the first inhabitant to make his way from the interior to that location on the coast. Its selection by Europeans as the site for a major fort from which to conduct commercial activities led to Cape Coast’s rapid growth and inspired the realignment of many interior trade routes so that they converged on the town. Competition for access to important coastal trading centers like Cape Coast precipitated conflicts between the Asante and the Fante that persisted into the nineteenth century. By early in the eighteenth century, the slave trade had superseded the trade in gold that had originally drawn Europeans to Ghana’s shores, and most of the slaves to cross the Atlantic exited from Cape Coast.
Cape Coast Castle, built by the Swedish in 1652 and known as Carolusborg, became the headquarters of England’s commercial establishment in West Africa, east of Sierra Leone, in 1664, when it came permanently under English control. In 1874, the area south of the Pra River became a crown colony of Great Britain, with Cape Coast as its administrative capital. The town retained its status as a major political and economic center and a leading municipal area after the capital moved to Accra in 1877.
Today Cape Coast is the capital of the Central Region, one of the ten administrative districts into which Ghana is divided. A center of Christian evangelization and education from 1835, Cape Coast is home to a variety of fine secondary schools and a university which together account for its reputation as a center of educational excellence.
Elmina
Called El Mina—the mine—by the Portuguese to celebrate the great quantities of gold they found there during their early trading explorations, this town lies ten kilometers west of Cape Coast. The existence of a settlement on the site by the time the Portuguese arrived in 1471 is confirmed by a meeting known to have taken place between Admiral Don Diego D’Azambuja and Kwa Amankra, the local chief, to arrange for the foreigners to acquire from the inhabitants land upon which to erect a fort. The Portuguese completed the castle they named St. George d’Elmina in 1482 and managed to hold it until 1637, when the Dutch West India Company seized it and made it the headquarters of the Dutch West India Company’s mercantile operations in West Africa. A highly lucrative center for the trade in gold and ivory during the seventeenth century, the castle had by the eighteenth century become a major clearing house for the exportation of slaves from West Africa, accounting for about 10 percent of the enslaved persons who embarked from the coast of Ghana during that period.
The unique political and social systems that characterize the lives of the people of Elmina are attributed to the independence they enjoyed under the Portuguese and subsequently under the Dutch. Although the inhabitants are Akan, succession to political office in Elmina descends patrilineally, instead of by the traditional Akan matrilineal system. In addition, selection of a candidate to fill the vacant position of chief is made by one of the many politico-military organizations known as Asafo companies, which are also organized along patrilineal lines. Some of these companies had close associations with the European establishment and enjoyed the support of the castle authorities. The image that appears on the left panel of this brochure’s cover is taken from the flag of an Asafo company. However, property descends matrilineally in Elmina, so that the people practice what is described as “double descent.”
Despite Elmina’s longer history of interaction with European culture, the town did not acquire a reputation for educational excellence comparable to that achieved by Cape Coast, primarily because Christianity and western education were not very actively encouraged in Elmina prior to 1872, when the British acquired Dutch possessions in West Africa. Although a few boys and girls, usually children of Dutch officials and local women, were schooled in the Netherlands, virtually no opportunities to acquire an education existed at home. Nevertheless, Elmina Castle stands today as an unforgettable symbol of the first step in the long and complex history of Ghana’s contact with the western world.