Straddling Land And Sea: A History of the Edinafo’s Involvement in the Atlantic Commerce, 1701-1872.

Abstract

This study is a local history and will emphasis major indigenous socio-economic developments between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries of Dutch presence in Elmina. It will stress the nature of the Atlantic commercial interactions between Europeans and Africans on the Gold Coast and how the Edinafo intermediated and dominated these interactions. Elmina was drawn into a vibrant Atlantic Ocean trade in gold, European luxury goods, and slaves from the turn of the fifteenth century. Straddling land and sea, Elmina came under the economic and political sway of the Akan interior and the Atlantic world. Being a major part of this world where an Atlantic commercial enterprise was established, Elmina became important in shaping trade relations amongst European and African merchants. This study will explore the agency of the Edinafo as a model of an African involvement in the Atlantic commerce, with a focus on how they influenced the Dutch Atlantic commercial interest on the Gold Coast. Thus, the study will emphasise the dynamic and complex Atlantic interactions on the Gold Coast and the intermediary role of the Edinafo which, to a far extent, influenced the Dutch West India Company (WIC). In Elmina, there were the “commercial agents” or makelaars (brokers), merchants, entrepreneurs, Dutch officials― particularly the Abrofomba (Euro-Africans) ― as well as the Edinafo and their political hierarchy. Moreover, Elmina was involved in the politics of the Gold Coast since the early eighteenth century. This emanated from the rise of Asante who built a strong commercial and political relation with the Edinafo, much to the chagrin of the Fante states. Consequently, local interest in the commercial exchanges and its associated politics in Elmina became a bulwark against the Dutch commercial and political exploitation of the roles of the brokers, political officials, indigenous merchants, the Abrofomba Dutch officials, amongst others, in the commercial interaction. This culminated in the departure of the Dutch WIC from the Gold Coast in 1872.