When you hear the word castle, what comes to mind is royalty, lavish living, and ballroom parties. At least, that’s what comes to my mind when I hear or think of castles. Thanks to all the stories and fairy tales I grew up reading and watching as a child. This extended into my adolescence when I read authors like Nora Roberts and her Irish folktales, tales of love and magic with a castle or two, here and there.
Imagine my shock as an adult when I learned of Elmina Castle in Ghana for the first time. Beautiful in structure and breathtaking in size, this castle is anything but magical. Unfortunately, this beautiful castle holds tales and stories of woe and misfortunes so bad that if walls could talk, Elmina castle walls would break your heart.
Elmina castle was built in 1482 by the Portuguese bearing the full name Castelo de São Jorge da Mina (St. George of the Mine Castle); it was also referred to as Castelo da Mina or simply Mina (or Feitoria da Mina), in present-day Elmina, Ghana. Back then, it was referred to as the Gold Coast. Elmina Castle was the first permanent structure and trading post built south of the Sahara by Europeans; it is the oldest European building in sub-Saharan Africa today. The castle was a trading outpost back when gold dust was the main object of commerce. Permission for the erection of this outpost had been given reluctantly by the Alan people because the agreement for peace and trust was not broken. This outpost gave the Portuguese monopoly on trading in that area and unrestricted access to the region’s gold.
The Portuguese were the pioneer sea traders who, in a bid to establish sea trade routes with Africa and Asia. Their main target was Asia, but they had to circumnavigate Africa to achieve this goal. When Portuguese captains arrived on the coast of modern-day Ghana, they quickly discovered that the region (between Ankobra and Volta) had natural gold mines and that the Alan people indigenous to this area were willing to trade their gold for cloth and other items.
The goal of Portugal was to use the wealth generated from this gold trade to enrich their commercial activities back home—the gold in this region was their primary target, so they quickly established a stronghold on the mainland in the form of Castelo de São Jorge da Mina. This outpost was eventually expanded with forts erected in Accra, Shama, and Axim to ensure that only the Portuguese enjoyed the gold trade with the locals.
Only after the end of the 16th century could any other European country establish any significant presence in the region, which meant that Portugal was successful in its efforts to monopolize the area. They had also been shipping enslaved people to make up for labor shortages in their plantations. When the Dutch—who had recently broken free from Spanish rule—needed to cement their position in sea trading and commercial trade, they, too, needed labor for their grown goods to strengthen trade relations.
As part of their takeover and assertion of freedom from Spanish rule, the Dutch set out to take over much of the Portuguese strongholds by destroying their naval power in the Caribbean and taking over their plantation colony in Brazil. The upkeep of these plantations, which held their main trade produce, sugar, required extensive work and more supply. Their sights were set on West Africa, where the Portuguese had previously shipped labor. The difference between the Portuguese ways and that of other European countries is that the slave trade was not Portugal’s primary profit source; it was always gold and other commodities they needed for their domestic commercial operations.
However, as plantations emerged in the Americas and the Caribbean, the Portuguese, who were in good standing with West Africa, became the go-to for manpower supply. English and French colonists began to settle in the Caribbean islands to exploit the area for its tropical produce. The slave trade became imperative for the Dutch to maintain their plantation colonies as the need for enslaved people also grew in the Americas for their cotton fields. The Dutch recognized that the slave trade was indeed a profitable business, and to keep their supply of enslaved people, they had to conquer all Portuguese territories in west Africa—Castelo de São Jorge da Mina being one of them, was taken over in 1637, where the Dutch West Indies Company carried out slave trade for another 250 years.
Ghana served as a hub during the transatlantic slave trade because of its coastline and geographic location in West Africa. Nearly 40 slave castles operated in Ghana alone. The slave traders brought in people from different African countries, but most of them spent their last moments on the continent in Ghana, a good number of those in Elmina Castle.
Elmina castle eventually fell out of the hands of the Dutch and into the hands of British colonists. The castle was renovated in 1770 and 1775 to accommodate the trade of enslaved people, expanding storerooms into dungeons. There were also punishment cells and the infamous Door of No Return, where all enslaved people would touch African soil for the last time. By the 18th century, at least 30,000 enslaved people passed through the castle yearly to the Americas. Elmina Castle stands whitewashed and mighty against the backdrop of the sea and shoreline; for a fee, you can walk through the halls and dungeons and see where enslaved persons were subjected to inhumane conditions and torture. Some have also reported feeling an almost tangible sense of despair and sadness that echo through the beautiful castle walls, now one of Ghana’s main tourist attractions on the Cape Coast.
