For the longest time, approximately the half-century after the establishment of Sao Jorge Mina, gold was the primary source of trade between Elmina and the Portuguese. Gold flowed abundantly, changing hands between African traders and Portuguese merchants, while European goods travelled in the opposite direction. This was, after all, why the Portuguese had come to Elmina in the first place. After reaching the Gold Coast in 1471 and discovering the extraordinary quantities of gold being traded around the area, they built Sao Jorge da Mina (the Elmina Castle) in 1482 to secure their access to it and protect their growing commercial interests.
As this trade expanded though, a new need arose. You see, gold was so much that the Portuguese and native Akans at Elmina realised that they needed more hands to keep the trade flourishing. So another commodity entered the coastline’s market — human beings. This development, however, can not be described as sudden and neither can it be described as the introduction of slavery into Africa. In fact, organised systems of slavery already existed in parts of West Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. All the latter did was to gradually insert itself into these existing networks and take advantage of it. What did change, however, was the scale, the commercial incentive, and eventually the direction of the gold trade at Elmina.
There is an important detail here that is often lost when the history of Elmina is told only through the lens of the Atlantic slave trade hat happened after. In the first decades after São Jorge da Mina was established, the trade in enslaved people did not primarily involve Africans being shipped across the Atlantic. Instead, the Portuguese brought enslaved people from other parts of West Africa to Elmina, where they were sold to African buyers and taken inland.
The reason was largely connected to the economy that the Portuguese had found on the Gold Coast. The Akan states around Elmina possessed gold in abundance, but they also needed labour. Gold mining in the forest regions required people, while the movement of goods between the coast and the interior also depended heavily on human carriers. The Portuguese therefore discovered that enslaved people could themselves become part of the trade through which they obtained the gold they wanted. They could purchase captives elsewhere in West Africa, bring them to Elmina and exchange them with Akan traders for gold.
Some of these captives came from areas further east along the West African coast, including the Kingdom of Benin and other states around what later became known as the Slave Coast. São Tomé, the Portuguese island colony in the Gulf of Guinea, also became part of this system, serving as an important Portuguese base through which enslaved people were moved before being taken to other markets. At Elmina, some of these captives were purchased by African traders and transported inland to work in the gold-producing areas.
The significance of this arrangement is that, during these early decades, the direction of the slave trade at Elmina was different from what the castle is remembered for today. Captives were moving towards the Gold Coast while gold was moving towards the Portuguese. Europeans were therefore not only buyers of enslaved Africans; they were also sellers of enslaved people to African buyers. African traders, likewise, were not only sellers of captives. Some were buyers who needed labour for the economic activities of their own states.
This arrangement did not remain the same. As European colonies in the Americas expanded, particularly the sugar plantations, the demand for enslaved African labour increased. The Portuguese and, later, the Dutch, English and other European traders found a much larger market for captives across the Atlantic. The value of sending enslaved people westward began to exceed the value of selling them to African buyers for labour in the Gold Coast. The direction of the trade therefore gradually changed.
Elmina, which had initially received captives who were sold to African buyers and taken inland, now became a place where Africans were held before being shipped across the Atlantic. By the seventeenth century, the castle had become firmly incorporated into this Atlantic system, and the movement of enslaved people through Elmina was no longer primarily directed towards the interior.
By the seventeenth century, the Elmina castle had become a thriving ground for enslaved Africans. Slaves captured from different regions would be stored in its dungeons until they were shipped to Brazil and the Caribbean plantations. The wait period, which was sometimes as long as three months, was often as gruesome as the journey to the plantations itself. Sometimes, up to a thousand slaves would be crammed in dungeons that were designed to hold only about 200 men. One can only imagine the type of torture these men went through, barely fed and struggling to survive in dark, airless and hot spaces. These unsavoury conditions also meant contagious diseases were rampant among the slaves, leading to the loss of countless lives.
And then there was the doorway, now popularly remembered as the “Door of No Return”. Enslaved Africans were often taken from the dungeons, through this entrance, and towards the ships waiting offshore before being transported across the Atlantic.
For those who passed through it, there was no certainty of seeing their homes again. Beyond the doorway was the Atlantic and, beyond it, the Americas. The castle had therefore acquired several meanings that were almost impossible to reconcile. To the Portuguese Crown, it had been a fortress built to protect gold. To merchants, it was a trading station. To missionaries, it became a centre from which Christianity could be spread. To the African diaspora, it became one of the places associated with the forced departure of their ancestors.
In 1872, its purpose changed again when the British took control, and in the years that followed, the castle acquired another role — this time as a place where Africans who opposed British authority could be detained. One of the most notable people held there was Nana Akwasi Agyeman Prempeh I, the Asantehene. Born in 1872, Prempeh became ruler of the Asante kingdom at the age of sixteen. In 1896, the British arrested him and took him to Elmina Castle, where he was held for four years before being transferred to Sierra Leone and eventually exiled to the Seychelles. His detention was part of the British campaign to bring Asante under colonial control, making Elmina once again a place of confinement.
The Road to Elmina
As stated earlier, Africa already had a well-established system of slavery and the Europeans merely took advantage of it. Long before the slaves entered the Elmina castle, they had travelled through a network of markets and trading settlements that stretched deep into the interior of West Africa. Elmina had merely become one of the final points within a much larger system.
It is important, however, not to treat this system as though it existed in exactly the same form throughout West Africa or from the beginning of the European presence. In northern Ghana, for example, much of the region was not significantly drawn into the trans-Atlantic slave trade during the sixteenth century. The situation changed considerably after the Asante kingdom invaded Gonja in 1732 and Dagomba in 1744. Following these invasions, Asante demanded slaves as tribute from the two states. The chiefs of Gonja and Dagomba, having to meet these demands, increasingly turned towards communities further north which were less heavily armed and began raiding them for captives.
One of the most important markets that contributed to the savetrade at Elmina was Salaga, located in what is now known as northern Ghana. Salaga had long been an important commercial centre where traders from different parts of West Africa met to exchange commodities. Various trades met for exchange in Salaga, including kolanuts, livestock, salt, and over time, humans. By the nineteenth century, Salaga had become known as the largest slave market in northern Gold Coast. Captives brought into the market would be purchased by traders who then moved them further south towards the coastal markets. More often than not, slaves exchanged hands several times along the way, from one trader to another, from one market to another, until they met a trader that would transfer them to Elmina. Some of these journeys covered as far as hundreds of kilometres and were made on foot.
The expansion of this trade was also aided by the activities of the Zabarama, immigrants from the Mande region who had moved into the area. Dagomba chiefs employed them as mercenaries because of their experience in warfare, and their possession of firearms gave them an advantage over communities that were less heavily armed and still relied largely on bows and arrows. The Zabarama eventually became involved in slave raiding themselves, and two of their leaders, Babatu and Samori, became prominent figures in the slave-raiding activities of northern Ghana.
One of the places associated with this slave trade was Assin Manso, located in present-day Central region of Ghana. Assin Masso was situated on a route that connected interior West Africa with the coastal forts at Cape Coast and Elmina, hence, it became an important market for captives being moved towards the coast. Here at Manso, we learn of the Donkor Nsuo which literally translates as “Salve River.” This river was particularly memorable for thousands of slaves that went through this route. Such slaves would be brought to the Donko Nsuo and allowed some rest and even a bath, before continuing towards the coast. Before the journey, however, captives were usually sorted and sometimes branded with heated irons to help with identification, a practice that later became adopted and widespread on plantations in the Americas. Here also, captives who were considered too weak to continue would be separated from those selected for the journey to the coast.
To understand the slave trade and the role the Elmina castle played, is to understand these slave routes. Elmina was never the point at which the trade began. It was merely the point at which a thriving system of inland trade became connected directly to the Atlantic trade.
The Locals who Survived and the Impact on the Society Left Behind
The consequences of the slavetrade on African societies were severe. The removal of large numbers of young and able-bodied people meant that labour was gradually being taken away from agriculture and other productive activities. Communities were not simply losing individuals; they were losing people who would otherwise have farmed, raised families, defended communities and contributed to the economic life of their societies.
Slave raiders, who were largely made up of Africans themselves, were known to raid villages and capture men, women and children. Women in particular became easy targets because they often had to leave the safety of their communities to fetch water. In the northern Ghanaian community of Nakong, oral accounts collected from descendants of people who experienced the raids describe how raiders deliberately hid near water sources and waited for women to arrive. During periods when water was scarce, the attacks became even easier to carry out because women had no choice but to travel further in search of water. Some of those captured were taken to “Sola”, now known as Salaga.
The raids did not only remove individuals; they could empty entire homes. Oral accounts from Nakong describe houses being abandoned after able-bodied men and women had been captured, leaving behind children and older people who were then absorbed into other families. In some cases, the remains of these homes survived as mounds of earth containing the utensils and tools that had belonged to the families who once lived there. Some of these locations were later regarded as sacred because of their connection to the people who had been taken away.
Of these captives, some were fortunate to escape but very few found their way back home due to the long distances they had already travelled. Not everyone who was captured remained in captivity. Some managed to escape during the journey. One oral account from Nakong tells of a man named Kaba who had been captured and taken to another village. While he was being held there, a woman secretly gave him water mixed with dawadawa, which he applied to his chained hands and eventually managed to free himself. He escaped and returned home. Other captives were not so fortunate. Although some survived the raids, they were taken so far from their communities that returning home became almost impossible.
The movement of captives therefore did not simply remove people from one place and deliver them to another. It progressively emptied communities of their productive population, separated families and created settlements in which children and older people were left behind. The slave trade consequently affected not only those who were eventually transported towards the coast, but also the communities through which the trade passed and the families whose members never returned.
The expansion of slavery in northern Ghana also continued after European countries had begun abolishing the Atlantic slave trade. In parts of the region, slave raiding and slaveholding continued into the early twentieth century, showing that the end of the trans-Atlantic trade did not immediately bring an end to the systems of enslavement that had developed around it.
