The "Elmina Note:" Myth and Reality in Asante-Dutch Relations

Author(s): Larry W. Yarak

Source: History in Africa , 1986, Vol. 13 (1986), pp. 363-382
Published by: Cambridge University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/3171552

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 THE "ELMINA NOTE:" MYTH AND REALITY
IN ASANTE-DUTCH RELATIONS

Larry W. Yarak
Texas A&M University

One of the more perplexing issues in the history of Asante's

relations with the Europeans on the nineteenth-century Gold Coast
has been that of the origin and significance of the so-called
"Elmina Note," the pay document which authorized the Asantehene
to collect two ounces of gold (or its equivalent in trade goods)
per month from the Dutch authorities at Elmina.I Not only have
modern historians of Ghana evidenced no small amount of confusion
on this matter, but during 1870/71 the Asantehene, the British,
and the Dutch also disagreed strongly over the political signifi-
cance of the note, as the Dutch negotiated to cede their "posses-
sions" on the Gold Coast to the British. Failure to resolve these
disagreements contributed significantly to the Asante decision to
invade the British "protected" territories in 1873. This action
in turn led to the British invasion of Asante in 1874, which most
historians agree constitutes a critical watershed in Asante his-
tory. Clearly, the matter of the "Elmina Note" (or kostbrief as
it was known to the Dutch) is one of some historical and histori-
ographical importance. An examination of the relevant Dutch,
Danish, and British documentation now makes possible a resolution
of the major questions concerning its origin and meaning.
The debates between the Asante, the British, and the Dutch
show that in the later nineteenth century there was considerable
agreement over certain issues: first, no one disputed that the
Dutch had for some time past paid to the Asantehene (actually to
an envoy dispatched by the king to Elmina) a stipend2 (or kostgeld,
as the Dutch termed it) of two ounces of gold per month, or twenty-
four ounces per year.3 Secondly, all parties agreed that the
Dutch began this practice early in the eighteenth century, follow-
ing the defeat of Denkyerahene Ntim Gyakari by Asante forces under
Osei Tutu (d. 1717). As Asantehene Kofi Kakari (1867-74) put it
in a letter to the English governor:

The Fort of that place [Elmina] have from time immemor-

ial paid an annual tribute to my ancestors to the pres-
ent time by right of arms, when we conquered INTIM
GACKIDI, King of DINKIRA.

INTIM GACKIDI having purchased goods to the amount of

HISTORY IN AFRICA, 13 (1986), 363-382

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364 LARRY W. YARAK

nine thousand pounds,*9000, from the Dutch and not

paying for them before we conquered INTIM GACKIDI, the
Dutch demanded of my father OSAI TUTU I for the pay-
ment, who paid it in full. . .and the Dutch delivered
the Elmina to him as his own.4

When asked by the English to respond to this claim, Dutch

Governor C. Nagtglas did not dispute that his government had
long paid the Asantehene kostgeld and, citing "tradition," he al-
lowed that the practice began when "the King of Ashantee con-
quered [the] Dinkirahs, and. . .the pay note came into his hands."5
What the Dutch governor rejected was the claim that such payment
constituted "tribute," as the Asantehene asserted. Rather, in
Nagtglas' view, the kostgeld was a mere "gift, to promote the
trade with the natives of the interior."' There was of course
more than European pride involved here: if the Dutch paid tri-
bute to the Asantehene in respect of their occupation of the fort
at Elmina, then by what right could they cede "their" forts to
the British?7 Ultimately, as is well known, the Asantehene issued
a "Certificate of Apologie" withdrawing his claim of overlordship
over Elmina--though some historians dispute the document's authen-
ticity.s But, whatever the validity of the "Certificate" (more
on this below), it must be remembered that the Asantehene contin-
ued to object to the transfer of his "allies," the people of the
town of Elmina (Edena), to British subservience.9 Indeed, a year
after the cession took place he ordered an army to the coast to
assist the Elminas in attempting forcibly to eject the British
from the old Dutch fort.
Looking back on these events, the colonial generation of
Gold Coast historians--A.B. Ellis, W.W. Claridge, and W.E.F.
Ward--tended to find merit in the arguments of Kofi Kakari.10 As
Claridge wrote, Dutch payment to Asante of a yearly stipend "nat-
urally implied an admission on the part of the Dutch that the
Ashantis had the right to the ground on which their castle stood.""
More recently, historians have been less charitable to the late
nineteenth-century Asante perspective. Douglas Coombs made an
intensive examination of the Dutch and British archival sources
for the period between 1850 and 1872 and argued for a position
between what he termed the "extremes" of the Dutch and Asante
views: the kostgeld relationship, he argued, was probably "found
on a misunderstanding: intended in one sense by the European, it
was accepted in a very different one by the African."12
The most recent generation of Ghana historians has been even
more skeptical of received wisdom. K.Y. Daaku went to the seven-
teenth- and eighteenth-century documentary sources in an attempt
to discover the origins of the pay note itself. He was unable to
find any reference to an Asante liquidation of a Denkyera debt to
the Dutch following the Asante victory of 1701/02, as claimed by
Kofi Kakari.13 Nor was Daaku able to find any evidence that the
Dutch had ever issued a kostbrief to the Denkyerahene in the sev-
enteenth century.4 Though he did not say as much, Daaku's re-
search suggested that the "Elmina Note" may never have existed,
a position subsequently espoused by H.M. Feinberg.ls However, a

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 365

few years later, Ivor Wilks published unequivocal evidence that

the Dutch were indeed paying kostgeld, upon presentation of a
kostbrief, to the Asantehene's representative as early as 1776.
But curiously, the pay site was Accra and not Elmina. In the
most recent review of the "Elmina Note" controversy, Feinberg
acknowledged that this evidence forced a retreat from his earlier
view that the note was "fictitious." But he was unable to re-
solve the apparent contradiction between the eighteenth-century
kostgeld payment at Accra uncovered by Wilks, and the Elmina note
dispute of the 1870-71 period. 17Among other things, the present
paper attempts to resolve this mystery.

II

The earliest evidence for Dutch (and British and Danish)

payment of a monthly stipend at Accra in fact derives from the
seventeenth century. Just a few years after having ousted the
Portuguese from Elmina and Axim, the Dutch decided to construct
a fort at Accra. In 1642, as Wilks has shown, they reached an
agreement with the king of Accra "by which they obtained land. . .
on which to build a lodge, house or fort, for a monthly payment
of two ounces of gold."'8 The coastal fort which they eventually
erected there was named Crevecoeur.
Following the defeat of the Accra king by the Akwamuhene
Akonno, in 1703 the Dutch negotiated a treaty with Akonno, as the
new overlord of Accra. This granted to the Akwamuhene the "or-
dinary monthly kostgeld of two ounces [of gold per month]." In
addition Akonno was promised a bounty of an additional two ounces
of gold for every 240 ounces that might be traded to the Dutch
during any two-month period.19 It is noteworthy that the Dutch
action distinguished between the "ordinary kostgeld" to which
the Akwamuhene was entitled to irrespective of trade conditions--
in effect, a rent payment from their perspective--and the addi-
tional bounty he was to receive as an encouragement for maintain-
ing favorable commercial relations.
A second transfer of the Dutch kostgeld for Accra took place
shortly after the 1730 defeat of Akwamu by Akyem. In 1732 Dutch
Director-General Jan Pranger travelled from Elmina to Accra in an
effort to speed the return to peace and renewed trade in the area.
He negotiated, among other things, the transfer of the kostgeld
for Fort Crevecoeur, still at the nominal rate of two ounces of
gold per month, to the Akyems, "just as we used to pay the Aquam-
boes [Akwamus]."'20 But, unlike the 1703 treaty, the terms of the
1732 transfer blurred somewhat the distinction previously made
between kostgeld as rent, and separate, additional inducements
for trade. As Pranger reported, the kostgeld was reassigned to
the Akyems, "on condition they bring the trade to us, which [con-
dition] they were willing to accept." Further, Pranger stated
that:

he had been the more constrained to this convention, as

the Ackims [Akyems] had in reality already received their

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366 LARRY W. YARAK

outstanding debts [i.e., rent due] from the English

and Danes, and that if we had not agreed, it was to be
feared that those Ackims would only go to the English
and Danes to trade.21

Akyem domination of Accra's coastal towns in its turn was

also short-lived. In a military campaign widely celebrated in
Asante oral traditions, Asantehene Opoku Ware (?1720-1750) led
his army to a decisive victory over the combined Akyem forces in
1742.22 This major triumph extended Asante suzerainty over the
entire southeast Gold Coast. Most importantly for the purposes
here, it also marked the beginning of the Dutch obligation to pay
kostgeld to the Asantehene in respect of their fort at Accra.
The Danish merchant L. RQmer, in a work published in 1760, de-
scribed the aftermath of Opoku Ware's stunning victory:

The Assiantees went back to their country. They had

caught two of the Akim heirs to the throne. . .Oppoccu
sent the message to the Akims that if they would en-
throne those two. . .on their hereditary thrones, then
he would deliver them to the Akims free, and they might
send deputies, who could regard him eating fetish [i.e.,
swearing an oath], that as long as he lived he would
not attack the Akims without reason. He did not require
any tax from them, but the rent [afgift] from the Euro-
pean forts, and free passage for his men and the traders
through the Akim countries to Accra, as that was closer
to him than Elmina. . Then the Assiantees came to Accra
for their rent. . .23
Rdmer also indicated that in the transfer of the European fort
rents to the Asantehene, the linkage between inducements for
trade and rent payment established in the 1732 transference was
reaffirmed:

All the European nations. . .agreed [to transfer the

stipends to Asante] upon giving Oppoccu to understand
that it was because of the trade that we paid rent;
and if he sent up good trade he would get it; other-
wise not. He submitted to this and sent us a fairly
good trade when he sent for the rent.24

Unfortunately, this information cannot be corroborated dir-

ectly from the available Dutch records: correspondence books from
Fort Crevecoeur for 1744 to 1746 have not survived. But there is
no reason to doubt Rdmer's statement that after the Asante victory
of 1742 all the European establishments at Accra began to pay
ground rent (in the European view) or tribute (in the Asante per-
spective) to the Asantehene.25 By the 1750s there is clear evi-
dence that they were doing so. And in the case of the Dutch,
there is no doubt that the Asantehene was issued a written voucher
on which payments were recorded. The principles that formed the
basis of this distinctive set of eighteenth-century Afro-European

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 367

relationships may be briefly summarized:

1) The obligation to pay the ground rent or tribute

derived from the establishment of European settle-
ments on lands over which sovereignty was ultimately
vested with Asante.

2) The right to collect the rent or tribute derived

from Asante conquest of those ahene (s. ohene,
"chief" or "king") to whom the benefits had previ-
ously accrued, and could only be rescinded in turn
by a military defeat of Asante.
3) The relationship that arose from the regular pay-
ment and receipt of the rent or tribute found its
raison d'etre in trade. Asante failure to bring
trade threatened continued European payment; Euro-
pean failure to pay what was due threatened the
continued flow of Asante trade.

4) Payment was made at the coast on presentation of a

document or "note" issued by the Europeans to the
king's envoy.

III

The available historical evidence shows generally consistent

Asante adherence to the above principles throughout the more than
120 years of receipt of Dutch kostgeld. On one occasion, however,
it is possible to discern an important modification in Asante ap-
Zication of these principles to the changing configuration of its
political and military relationships with the southern Akan peo-
ples and the Europeans on the coast. This occurred during the
reign of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame (1804-1823), and resulted in
the transfer of the payment site from Accra to Elmina. This change
meant that what had been the pay note for Accra during the eigh-
teenth became known as the "Elmina Note" during the nineteenth
century.
In consequence of repeated Asante military incursions into
Fante and Akyem during 1806-1816, Asante receipt of the kostgeld
at Accra had become irregular, and by the end of the fighting in
early 1816, there had been no kostgeld payment for some five years.
Thus when Governor-General H.W. Daendels arrived at Elmina in
early 1816, Dutch administrative records showed a debt on the
kostgeld owed to the Asantehene in the amount of fl. 5,000.26
Daendels resolved to liquidate this sizeable debt as soon as pos-
sible in order to signal his earnest desire for good relations
with the victorious Asante. Accordingly, when in April 1816 he
learned that the Asantehene's "kostgeld collector," Kwadwo Aberante
("Cudjo Abrantia"), was at Accra, he sent an officer there with
the requisite trade goods to pay the full amount owed.27
A few days later an Asante embassy arrived in Elmina, headed
by a royal official named Gyesi ("Djesie").28 The purpose of

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368 LARRY W. YARAK

Gyesi's mission appears primarily to have been to convey expres-

sions of the Asantehene's good will toward the Dutch and the El-
minas, and to give the king's assurances that Asante troops in
the area were under orders to cooperate with them. Gyesi was
also instructed to purchase a large amount of gunpowder on cre-
dit. Daendels refused this request, but offered instead to pay
to Gyesi an advance on the king's kostgeld for 1816 in gunpowder.
Gyesi agreed, and subsequently took receipt in Elmina of the
equivalent in powder of twenty-four ounces of gold.29
Subsequent evidence indicates that the Asantehene chose to
interpret these actions--the virtually simultaneous kostgeld
payments made to Kwadwo Aberante at Accra and to Gyesi at Elmina--
as an acknowledgement that the Dutch were under obligation to pay
him two distinct kostgelds, one for Accra and another for Elmina.
Accordingly, in 1817 he dispatched two envoys, one to Elmina and
one to Accra, for receipt of that year's payment.30 Kwadwo Ab-
erante, evidently the senior kostgeld collector, was sent to El-
mina with a letter from the king containing the following asser-
tion:

in earlier times we were paid the kostgeld of Akim,

[formerly paid] to Frinkon Manson [i.e., Frempon Man-
so of Akyem Kotoku], whose land being conquered by me,
the kostgeld was naturally transferred to me; because
by conquest we possess the kostgeld of Dinkara, El-
mina, etc., just as now the Cape Cors [Cape Coast] and
Annomaboe [kostgeld - for the English forts] is given
to me [by the English]. .31
Two things are worthy of note here: first, Osei Tutu Kwame was
correct in asserting that he possessed notes from the Europeans
by conquest, and specifically, that the note for the Dutch fort
at Accra derived from the Asante defeat of Akyem. But he was
engaging in a historical fabrication when he claimed that by
virtue of the eighteenth-century defeat of Denkyera he had come
to possess a pay note for Elmina. Indeed, it is interesting to
note that in a subsequent letter reiterating his claim, the king
stated that he had "lost his Company's Note for Elmina" and asked
for a "new" one. 32
After deliberation in council on the Asantehene's initial
request, Daendels rejected the Asantehene's request for two sti-
pends, but he made it clear to the king's envoy that he would
continue to pay--at the Elmina fort headquarters--the one kost-
geld that the Dutch had paid for many years past at the subordinate
fort at Accra.33 Daendels correctly argued that the Dutch had
always paid only one stipend to the Asantehene; but he was in-
correct in his implicit rejection of the king's claim that his
right to the stipend existed by virtue of a military conquest
of Akyem.34 Daendels apparently viewed the kostgeld as simply
an obligation owed directly to the Asantehene, which had been
incurred some time in the past. Thus, on the basis of this
mutual misunderstanding, what began life in 1744 as the pay note
for Accra, became after 1818, when the Asantehene dropped his

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 369

demand for two separate kostgelds, the "Elmina Note.

Osei Tutu Kwame's unprecedented request for two stipends
from the Dutch must be viewed in the context provided by the
king himself in the statement cited above--his recent military
defeat of all the Fante coastal polities. This victory brought
Asante into direct contact with the British forts at Cape Coast
and Anomabo. The English, like most of the other Europeans on
the Gold Coast, were in the habit of paying ground rent for their
coastal establishments--in the case of these forts to two of the
leading Fante ahene. Consequently, the Asantehene demanded, and
was eventually granted, the transfer of those stipends from the
Fante chiefs to himself.36 The negotiations surrounding this
transfer absorbed much of the energies of the famed James-Bowdich
embassy to Kumase in 1817.37 What the Asantehene seems to have
done is to have applied the principles guiding Afro-European re-
lationships at Accra, and now at Cape Coast and Anomabo, to El-
mina. If the Dutch paid tribute for Accra, then they should also
be paying tribute for Elmina, particularly since that town had
"acknowledged his supremacy" and had accepted Asante protection
since 1812. This view, though misleading with respect to the
nature of Elmina's subordination to the Golden Stool--as a pro-
tectorate38 and not as a conquered territory--reflected a new,
rationalized, imperial Asante vision that may be discerned in the
reign of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame.39

IV

Though strictly speaking inaccurate, the king's assertion of

his right by conquest to the Elmina stipend was nevertheless as-
sured immortality when he repeated it to the English mission in
Kumase in 1817. The result was the creation of a myth that has
demonstrated remarkable tenacity. This durability derived from
two facts: first, the popularity and wide dissemination of T.E.
Bowdich's Mission to Ashantee in which Osei Tutu Kwame's claim
was permanently recorded;40 and secondly, Daendels' decision
the king's de facto acceptance of it) that the one kostgeld which
the Dutch continued to pay would henceforward be paid at Elmina.
The contradictions inherent in this historical fiction were
of little consequence so long as Elmina continued to serve the
Golden Stool as a "protected" subject polity. However, as I have
argued elsewhere, following the Asante defeat at Katamanso in
1826 the character of Asante's relations with the people of El-
mina underwent a significant change.41 As Asante was no longer
capable of acting as Elmina's protector, so the notion of Asante-
Elmina "alliance" and "brotherhood" arose to replace that of po-
litical subordination. In the peace and prosperity of Asantehene
Kwaku Dua Panin's reign (1834-67), the growing independence of
Elmina was recognized by Asante, while at the same time the bonds
of political friendship2remained strong and those of commerce were
markedly strengthened.
Thus, when in 1870 it came to Asantehene Kofi Kakari's atten-

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370 LARRY W. YARAK

tion that the Dutch intended to cede to Elmina fort to the English,
whose relations with Asante had been hostile since 1864, it was
natural that the king as well as the Elminas would vigorously ob-
ject. But in his objection to the proposed transfer the Asante-
hene initially chose to revive the issue of the kostgeld, with
its implications of Elmina subjection to Asante by the logic of
military conquest. This rankled not only the Dutch officials,
who refused to acknowledge the kostgeZd as tribute, but also the
Elmina political authorities, who well knew that their ancestors
had never been defeated militarily by Denkyera or Asante. Seen
in this light the central idea contained in Kofi Kakari's subse-
quent "Certificate of Apologie"--that the kostgeld represented
"only board wages or salary and not 'tribute by right of arms'"'--
assumes the aspect of appropriate diplomacy. Thus there seems
little reason to suggest, as some historians have, that the "Cer-
tificate" was either a forgery or a misrepresentation of the
king's true feelings.4 As has already been argued above, it is
significant that, while the Asantehene beat a diplomatic retreat
on the matter of the precise political content of the kostgeld
relationship, he remained adamant that the loyal town of Elmina
must not be transferred to the English. From the king's perspec-
tive there was nothing inconsistent about this.

In contrast with Asante, official Dutch thinking on both

the origin and meaning of the kostgeld was from beginning to end
subject to repeated ad hoc mutations. These changes betray a re-
current element of political and economic expediency. An early
example is provided by Dutch Director-General Roelof Ulsen's ef-
forts in 1756 to change the site of kostgeld payment from Accra
to Elmina. In January of that year two Asante officials had ar-
rived at Ft. Crevecoeur with instructions from the Asantehene to

collect what was due on the kostbrief.44 Apprised o

by the Dutch officer at Accra, Ulsen granted permission for pay-
ment of goods worth sixty-six ounces of gold, but also instructed
his subordinate to inform the envoys that "the kin 's kostgeld
shall no longer be paid [at Accra] but at Elmina." 5 Ulsen's
motivations are not difficult to decipher. Since about 1744 all
direct communication between Kumase and Elmina had been broken
off by a blockade organized by Wasahene Ntsiful I.46 By
the payment venue, Ulsen apparently wished to offer a further in-
centive to the Asantehene to reopen by whatever means the trade
route through Wasa. This would certainly be consistent with the
joint Elmina-Dutch peace initiative, under way since 1754, aimed
at ending the Wasa rebellion.
Because of the failure of these negotiations and the subse-
quent ambivalent stand of the Akyem ahene with regard to the
Asante-Wasa dispute, Kusi Obodom's reply did not reach the coast
until August 1759. The Asantehene "requested" that Accra continue
to be the site of the kostgeld payment, and he promised soon to

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 371

send one Kankam to collect it.47 The Dutch officer at A

whom this message was sent, made a telling comment on this "re-
quest" to his superior at Elmina:

I pray your Excellency to permit me to do this [i.e.,

make this next kostgeld payment at Accra] as if it does
not occur there will be a great harm done to the trade
of our nation here [at Accra].48

The Director-General's reply is not on record. Kankam evidently

did not make it to Accra in that year, but in 1762 the Asante-
hene's kostgeld was paid out for six years--that is, from 1756 to
1761 inclusive--and the site of payment was Accra, as it would
remain into the nineteenth century.)9
In contrast to this early attempt to disengage the kostgeld
from its Accra payment site, events of the 1780s led the Dutch
emphatically to reaffirm the link. Following the outbreak in
Europe of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war in 1780, British forces on
the Gold Coast mounted several attacks on the Dutch forts in
early 1782.50 Though repulsed at Elmina, the British
overpowered Ft. Crevecoeur in March 1782. They retained control
there until 1784 when the fort was restored to the Dutch, as sti-
pulated in the treaty of peace signed in Europe which ended Anglo-
Dutch hostilities. s The crucial point is that for some two years
the Dutch were deprived of their trading establishment at Accra.
Prior to the war the last documented payment of kostgeld at
Accra took place in 1779.52 The first request for payment after
the war came in 1788. Asantehene Osei Kwame (reigned 1777-1803)
dispatched the envoy Boakye ("Boadje") to the Dutch fort at Accra
bearing the king's kostbrief.53 The Dutch officer at Accra, D.
Lieftinck, brought the note to Elmina, requesting permission to
pay out what was due. Director-General Lieve van der Grijp re-
turned the note and issued the following instructions to Lief-
tinck.

Your Honor may pay the kostgeld [owed] to the Assiantyn

King Zaaij [Osei Kwame] to his envoy Boadje on the same
basis as has been done by the previous governors at
Accra; however with this reservation, that from the day
that the Accra [fort] was taken and possessed by the
English, until [the day] that it was returned to us,
the King can be given no kostgeZd. From that day for-
ward his kostgeld begins on the old basis.54

The link between physical occupation by the Dutch of their fort

at Accra and the obligation to pay the kostgeld is clear.
As noted in a previous section, Dutch Governor Daendels
succeeded in effecting a change in the site of kostgeld payment
from Accra to Elmina in 1816. From the Dutch perspective, this
action, and the Asantehene's ultimate acquiescence to it, liber-
ated the kostgeld, in theory, from the notion of ground rent.
The emergence of this new Dutch viewpoint was primarily the re-
sult of economic expediency: in imitation of his predecessor of

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372 LARRY W. YARAK

the 1750s, Daendels sought to redirect Asante mercantile atten-

tions from Accra to Elmina by shifting the site of kostgeld pay-
ment to the latter. His obsession with good communications be-
tween Elmina and Kumase is well-known.55
Freed from the linkage to ground rent, official Dutch think-
ing on the kostgeld during the nineteenth century initially em-
phasized its function in the attraction of Asante trade to Elmina.
Thus, in January 1829 Governor Frederik Last threatened to stop
payment of the kostgeld to the Asante resident at Elmina, Kwadwo
Akyampon ("Cudjo Atjampon"), "as we [the Dutch] had not heard
from or had trade with the King of Assiantyn for years."56 How-
ever, in spite of Last's complaints about having to pay such "an
enormous sum" and despite the fact that no Asante trade appeared
at Elmina until 1831, the kostgeld payments were not halted. The
reasons for this are to be found in the renewed prospects of a
general peace which appeared in 1829. With peace eventually es-
tablished, growth in trade would soon follow, and so it was in
Last's interest to be on good terms with the Asantehene's ambas-
sador in Elmina.57 So eager was Last, in fact, that in November
1831--not long after the signing of the Anglo-Asante treaty of
1831--he gave Kwadwo Akyampon a rare advance of three months'
worth of the kostgeld "to serve as a proof to the King of Ashan-
tyn that we never lessened our trust (vertrouwen) in him."s8
The link in Dutch thinking between the kostgeld and Asante-
Dutch trade at Elmina was reaffirmed during the 1830s. The pay-
ments had become increasingly burdensome to the Dutch coastal
administration, which was being prodded by the home government
into cutting costs. Governor Christiaan Lans sought a novel so-
lution to this problem. In 1834 he "proposed" to the Elmina
Chamber of Commerce (Raad van Koophandel) that its members make
contributions for the payment of the Asantehene's kostgeld, as
they were "especially involved in trade with that kingdom."59
Lans' proposal met with a positive, though limited response:
pledges of some fl. 145 by the Elmina merchants offered modest
relief on a yearly expenditure of fl. 750-fl. 800.60 Neverthe-
less, the principle associating kostgeld with trade was implicit
in these acts.
Later in the same decade a new element was injected into of-
ficial Dutch thinking on the meaning of the kostgeld. In 1836
a specially appointed Dutch Royal Commissioner, Major-General J.
Verveer, travelled to Kumase with a party of some 600 aides and
carriers to establish there a station for the "recruitment" of
West Africans into the Dutch military service for the East In0
dies.61 A small-scale recruitment service had been in operation
in Elmina since 1830 with limited success. The establishment of
a "sub-depot" in Kumase involved a significant monetary invest-
ment on the part of the Dutch. One of the expenses also assumed
by the recruiting effort was the payment of the kostgeld to the
Asantehene in 1840 and 1841.62 In the beginning of 1842, however,
the recruitment depot in Kumase was closed for a variety of rea-
sons--not the least of which was the incessant British accusation
that the recruitment effort amounted to little more than a veiled
slave trade. After 1842 the kostgeld payments were again charged

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 373

to the regular administrative budget on the coast.63

Nevertheless, the link between kostgeld and the recruitment
effort remained. In 1853 Governor Hero Schomerus, in another
austerity drive, sought permission from the home government to
institute a license or tax on the Elmina merchants so that the
entire kostgeld could be borne by them.64 The Dutch Minister of
Colonies responded:

It is not clear to me what interest the merchants can

have in assuming the burden of paying the salary [tracte-
ment] of the King of Ashanty, and why precisely this
should serve as a justification for the introduction
of said tax. The subsistence [onderstand] of fl. 800.-
per year enjoyed by said king was granted to him in the
past in order to obtain his cooperation in the recruit-
ment of African soldiers for the army in the East In-
dies. Now that the recruitment has ended perhaps then
the payment should [also] cease, as long as such an
act would not give rise to complications. . .65
Schomerus' reply acknowledged the logic of the minister's argu-
ment, and did not question the patently false assertion that the
kostgeld payments had originiated with the recruitment effort; bu
the governor noted that an abrupt ending of the payments would
arouse the resistance of the Elmina traders. 66In the end Scho-
merus' proposal to license the traders foundered; so too did the
minister's idea of stopping the Asantehene's kostgeld.
In late 1859 the Dutch coastal government resumed military
recruitment in Kumase, though on a much more limited scale than
in 1836-1842. There was, however, no resort by the Dutch author-
ities to the previous practice of charging the expenses of the
kostgeld to the recruitment accounts. Instead the expenses con-
tinued to be applied to the general administrative costs of the
coastal government. Nevertheless, the association of kostgeld
with the recruitment effort continued to exist in the minds of
many on the coast. Thus Ramseyer and Kuhne, the Basel mission-
aries who were being held hostages in Kumase at the time of the
Asante-Dutch dispute over the meaning of the kostgeld, made the
following observations on the import of the stipend:

The yearly payment of 24 ounces of gold dust arose in

the delivery to the Dutch of black recruits for Java.
However, the king considered this payment as "tribute"
(Tribut) which naturally irritated the governor.68

Thus by 1870 a number of differing views regarding the origin and

the significance of the Asantehene's kostgeld were circulating
among Europeans on the Gold Coast. Clearly, Nagtglas' decision
in 1871 to emphasize only the link with trade was dictated by
political necessity. His acceptance of the view that the Elmina
note fell into Asante hands following the defeat of Denkyera was
particularly ironic in that this was precisely the myth concocted
by Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame, and subsequently propagated by

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374 LARRY W. YARAK

Bowdich and Cruickshank.

The reality of Dutch and Elmina relations with Asante, as
well as with the neighboring Fante, during 1831-1870 suggested
that considerably more was at stake in the continuing Dutch pay-
ment of kostgeZd to the Asantehene than simply trade or the mil-
itary recruitment effort. Especially revealing was the fact that
since 1831 the Dutch were the only Europeans on the coast to make
such payments to Asante. Even among Dutch coastal officials
there existed an undercurrent of dissent from the official explan-
ations. One such view was expressed as early as the 1820s by Dr.
M. Reynhout, a surgeon and botanist in Dutch employ during Daen-
dels' tenure as governor. In a speech delivered in the Nether-
lands in 1824, Reynhout considered why a "handful of sickly Euro-
peans remained in secure possession" of their coastal forts and
trading lodges. Observing that all agreements and treaties be-
tween the indigenous authorities and the Europeans were invariably
concluded in favor of the former, he unabashedly drew the conclu-
sion that "one can [therefore] consider the whites as tribuary
(cijnsbaar)" to the indigenous authorities.69 Though Reynhout
did not explicitly mention the Asantehene's kostgeZd, the implied
reference is clear.
Writing some forty years later, former Dutch coastal officer
Jan Gramberg noted the continuing political implications of the
stipend. Arguing that it still retained the connotation of
"ground rent" (landrente), Gramberg further asserted that the
kostgeld payments now also symbolized the long-standing Asante-
Dutch political alliance (bondgenootschap).7 0 This relationship,
he contended, had long outlived its usefulness to the Dutch. How
to end the "alliance"?--either by unilaterally ending kostgeld
payments, or by secretly negotiating to "buy off" the Asantehene's
kostbrief.7 Gramberg held no illusions as to the prevailing in-
terpretation of the kostgeld relationship on the coast:

What do the natives say of us? "The Dutch pay tribute

[schatting] to the King of Ashantyn. . .thus they are
at the same time subjects [onderdanen] of Ashantyn. . .
These sentiments were alluded to by the Elmina authorities as
early as 1853,73 and were echoed explicitly in a Fante "Memoria
drawn up in 1868 for submission to the British governor at Cape
Coast. Protesting the Elmina refusal to join with them in an
anti-Asante alliance, the "memorialists" attributed this refusal
to the influence of the Dutch government at Elmina, "that has for
many years past paid tribute annually to the King of the Ashan-
tees, and been strongly allied to that power."74
Consequently, Nagtglas' 1871 contention that the Dutch kost-
geld payments represented no more than an inducement for trade
contradicted both the historical record and the notions generally
held by Asante, the Fantes and even some of Nagtglas' former col-
leagues. But Asantehene Kofi Kakari's contention that it repre-
sented Asante sovereignty over the land on which the Dutch fort
at Elmina stood, though grounded in the shared perceptions of many
coastal authorities, indigenous and European, was also inaccurate.

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 375

Ultimately, however, niether the Asantehene nor the Dutch gov-

ernor was principally concerned with the relative historical
precision of his viewpoint: their dispute was fundamentally po-
litical. The Dutch sought any expedient means to facilitate
their release from West African involvements they had come to
see as overly burdensome. Asante, for its part, wished to retain
the loyalty of a strategically important coastal entrepot in the
face of open hostility from the British and Fante. The ambigui-
ties of the kostgeZd relationship as it existed in 1870, a re-
sult of the divergence of Asante and Dutch thinking on the sub-
ject since at least 1816, gave both sides the rhetorical means
to defend their positions.

VI

In summary, the Dutch began paying kostgeld to the Asante-

hene in 1744. At this time, and throughout the eighteenth cen-
tury, there was general agreement between Asante and the Dutch
on the meaning of this payment: it represented ground rent or
tribute for the Dutch fort at Accra--the right of the Asantehene
to collect the stipend developed on him as a consequence of his
defeat of the ahene of Akyem in 1742 and the relationship was
predicated on mutually beneficial commerical relations conducted
at the fort. It is important to note that the Dutch kostgeld
paid at this time was no different from that rendered by the
Danish and the British for their own establishments at Accra.
It therefore had not yet come to symbolize the special relation-
ship that already existed between Asante, Elmina, and the Dutch.7
In the reign of Osei Tutu Kwame this situation changed. As
a result of his military victory over the Fante ahene, the Asante-
hene demanded and was granted the notes for the British forts at
Cape Coast and Anomabo. In 1816 the Dutch made two kostgeld
payments, one at Accra and one at Elmina. To the Dutch these
were merely separate payments covering different time periods of
one obligation. To the Asantehene these acts represented an
acknowledgment of his right to two kostgelds, and thus to two
separate notes, for the Dutch forts at both Accra and Elmina.
The Dutch position prevailed, and the one kostgeld was henceforth
made payable at Elmina; the new kostbrief issued in 1818 there-
fore became known as the "Elmina note." Residual Asante claims
to the Accra kostgeld were rendered unsustainable by th
defeat at Katamanso in 1826 and the Anglo-Asante and Danish-
Asante treaties of 1831, which ended Asante political domination
of the Accra towns.
The treaties also effected the removal of most of the south-
ern Akan kingdoms from Asante suzerainty. Accordingly, both the
Danish and the British ceased all rent or tribute payments on the
notes they had issued to Asante, while their indigenous allies
also ceased paying tribute to the Asantehene. Only the Dutch
continued to pay kostgeld to the Asantehene (there is no evidence
that the Elminas ever paid tribute to Asante). Thus the "Elmina

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376 LARRY W. YARAK

Note" acquired a larger significance. To all on the coast it

now became a symbol of the peculiar relationship of the Dutch and
Elmina to Asante: in the official Dutch and Elmina view, an "al-
liance" or merely "friendship;" in the official Asante view,
sovereignty over the land occupied by the Dutch at Elmina, as
well as the Dutch and Elmina alliance; in the Fante view, Dutch
and Elmina subservience to the Asantehene, and hostility to the
Fante.
The decision of the Dutch to cede their Gold Coast posses-
sions to the British in 1870-1872 brought out the contradictions
in these interpretations. These were especially evident in the
Asante protestations against the proposed cession. For Kofi
Kakari to invoke the conquest origin of the kostgeld relation-
ship necessarily implied an assertion of Asante sovereignty not
only over the land occupied by the Dutch fort but also over El-
mina town. This it was impolitic for him to do; hence he author-
ized the issuance of the much debated "Certificate of Apologie"
of August 1872. In this document, Kofi Kakari abandoned alto-
gether his claim to sovereignty by conquest over the Dutch-occu-
pied lands at Elmina. In its place he emphasized Asante-Elmina
"brotherhood," and the long-standing Dutch "friendship" as evi-
denced by the kostgeld relationship, in support of his continuing
objection to the cession of Elmina to the British. These modifi-
cations unquestionably met the requirements of diplomacy vis-a-vis
the Elminas, but they failed in the end to prevent the Dutch from
going through with the cession; indeed, if anything, they served
to hasten the Dutch exit. The Asantehene was thus left with no
alternative but to take up arms to enforce his claims to the
loyalty of Elmina; it is also important to note that he did so
with the full cooperation of the Elmina town authorities.7 By
the end of 1873 this effort had failed, and Elmina passed per-
manently out of the Asante sphere of influence, and into that
dominated by imperial Britain.

NOTES

1. Financial support for the research on which this paper is

based was generously provided by the Asante Collective Bi-
ography Project (directed by Ivor Wilks and T.C. McCaskie),
the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright-Hays
program of the Department of Education. I would like to
thank Brenda Blair, John Rowe and Ivor Wilks for reading and
commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. Any remaining
defects are of course my own.
2. The term "stipend" is used here in a strictly neutral sense
to denote "regular payment of a stipulated amount by one
party to another," without connotations as to the signifi-
cance of such payment.
3. This represented 80 Dutch florins (abbrev., fl.) or fl. 960
on an annual basis. During the eighteenth and most of the
nineteenth century, this was a nominal figure; the actual

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 377

cost to the Dutch was less than the stipulated amount be-
cause they paid the stipend in trade goods, charging the
retail cost of the goods against the amount owed, while
their actual expenditure for the goods was of course sub-
stantially less. For a brief period in the early nineteenth
century and after 1859 the Dutch authorities stopped this
practice and paid the Asantehene's envoys the full amount
due. See L.W. Yarak, "Asante and the Dutch: A Case Study
in the History of Asante Administration, 1744-1873" (Ph.D.,
Northwestern University, 1983), 128-30, 136, 164.
4. Hand?lingen der Staten-Generaal (Dutch Parliamentary Papers--
hereafter HSG)1873-74, Bijlagen 156.34: Kofi Kakari to Ussher
dd. Kumase 24 November 1870. Language as in original. See
also J. Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settle-
ments From 1750 to 1874 (Dublin, 1923), 389-90. The HSG
version is slightly, but not substantially, different from
that found in Crooks.

5. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), C.670, A&P

(1872) LXX: Nagtglas to Ussher dd. 20 December 1870 (extrac-
ted in G. Metcalfe, ed., Great Britain and Ghana: Documents
of Ghana History [London, 1964], 333).
6. Ibid. This part of Nagtglas' letter is not included in Met-
calfe's extract, but may be found in the version published
in Crooks, Records, 391-93.
7. This point was raised by the British Colonial Office in cor-
respondence with the Foreign Office about the execution of
the transfer; it requested that "the Dutch government should
procure. . .the renunciation of the claim of the king of
Ashantee to Elmina" before proceeding with the cession; see
BPP, C.670, A&P (1872) LXX: Colonial Office to Foreign Office
dd. London 3 February 1871 (Metcalfe, Documents, 333).
8. See e.g., Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cam-
bridge, 1975), 233-34, where it is argued that the document
was "spurious." J.K. Adjaye, Diplomacy and Diplomats in
Nineteenth Century Asante (New York, 1984), 190-91, adopts
a similar position. By contrast, Douglas Coombs, "The Place
of the 'Certificate of Apologie' in Chanaian History," Trans-
actions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 3/3 (1958); the
same author's The Gold Coast, Britain, and the Netherlands,
1850-1874 (London, 1963), chapter 4; and R. Baesjou, An
Asante Embassy on the Gold Coast: The Mission of Akyempon
Yaw to EZmina 1869-1872 (Leiden, 1979), 40, take the oppo-
site view. As Coombs notes (Gold Coast, 102), the idea that
the Certificate was a "forgery" dated from at least 1874.
For a copy of the Certificate itself, see HSG 1873-74,
Bijlagen 156.40.
9. See Kofi Kakari's letter to the Dutch governor dd. 19 August
1871 translated in Baesjou, Asante Embassy, 155-58; and BPP,
C. 890 (1874) LXVI, Kofi Kakari to Harley dd. Kumase 20
March 1873 (extracted in Metcalfe, Documents, 349).
10. A.B. Ellis, A History of the Gold Coast of West Africa (Lon-
don, 1893), 88; W.W. Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast
and Ashanti (2 vols.: London, 1915), 1:198. W.E.F. Ward,

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378 LARRY W. YARAK

A History of Ghana (2d ed.: London, 1958), 122-23; in ibid.,

245 Ward makes the further claim that the Elminas themselves
paid tribute to Asante prior to 1872, but I have found no
evidence whatsoever to corroborate this.

11. Claridge, History, 1:198.

12. Coombs, GoZd Coast, 8.
13. K. Daaku, Trade and PoZitics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720
(London, 1969), 69-70.
14. Ibid., 67.
15. H. Feinberg, review of Daaku, Trade, in African Historical
Studies, 4 (1971), 722. Cf. H.M. Feinberg, "Elmina, Ghana:
A History of Its Development and Relationship with the Dutch
in the Eighteenth Century" (Ph.D., Boston University, 1969),
150.
16. Wilks, Asante, 132-33.
17. H. Feinberg, "There was an Elmina Note, But. . .," Interna-
tionaZ JournaZ of African Historical Studies, 9 (1976), 618-
30.
18. Ivor Wilks, "The Rise of the Akwamu Empire, 1650-1710,"
Transactions of the HistoricaZ Society of Ghana, 3/2 (1957),
104. See also Daaku, Trade, 57.
19. Algemeen Rijksarchief (Dutch National Archives--hereafter
ARA), The Hague, Archief van de Tweede West Indische Com-
pagnie (hereafter WIC) 98: de la Palma to Council dd. Elmina
10 October 1703, enclosure Y.
20. ARA, WIC 126: Minutes of Council dd. 15 May 1732, as trans-
lated in Albert van Dantzig, The Dutch and the Guinea Coast,
1674-1742 (Legon, 1978), 271.
21. Ibid.
22. For a brief account, see M. Kwamena-Poh, Goverment and PoZ-
itics in the Akuapem State, 1730-1850 (London, 1973), 76-77.
23. L..R~mer, TilforZadelig Efterrentning om Kysten Guinea
(Copenhagen, 1760), 188-89. I have used K. Bertelsen's
translation of this passage (The Coast of Guinea [Legon,
1965], 31), adding the original Danish word that she ren-
dered as "rent." See also Georg Norregard, Danish Settle-
ments in West Africa, 1658-1850, tr. S. Mammen (Boston,
1966), 104.
24. Rqmer, TilforZadeZig, 189 (Bertelsen translation, 32).
25. The issues here are complex. With regard to the European
view of the matter, it is noteworthy that the English re-
corded their payments specifically as "ground rent" as early
as 1752 (Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], London,
Treasury Papers 70/977: James Fort Day Books, entry for 1
November 1752; I am grateful to R.A. Kea for this reference).
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the
Dutch used the term kostgeZd (literally, "board money") to
describe their rent payments; this may have derived from
their usage in Asia, where the Dutch East Indies Company es-
tablished similar relationships with the indigenous author-
ities of Java early in the seventeenth century (see H. Klomp-
maker, Handel in de Gouden Eeuw [Bossum, 1966], 39-40). In
the eighteenth century the Danes employed the term afgift

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 379

(literally, "tax"), as shown by Rqmer's account cited

above. By the early nineteenth century the "ground rent"
connotation of the payments was still quite clear to English
officials and traders on the coast; see G. Robertson, Notes
on Africa (London, 1819), 181; William Hutton, A Voyage to
Africa (London, 1821), 263n.; Joseph Dupuis, JournaZ of a
Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), i-ii. The evolution
of Dutch thinking on the political meaning of the payments
is discussed further below. With regard to the Asante per-
spective, it is clear that the European concept of "rent"
was alien to Asante perceptions of rights in lands held by
subject peoples, such as those at the coast. These rights
derived from Asante notions of political sovereignty rather
than private property; thus the regular payments in respect
of its sovereignty in imperial lands were logically included
in the category of "tribute." As Wilks has argued, "the
Asante government regarded the British, Dutch and Danish
establishments on the Gold Coast as falling within the class
of tributaries;" Wilks, Asante, 68. The following statement
by Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame (1804-1823) recorded in 1820
gives some indication of his view of the significance of
the European payments: "White man come to my country to
trade. . .They build castles and houses to live in; they
stay as long as they like, then take the gold and go home
again. . .The forts are mine, because I hold the books
(notes), but don't say they belong to me to keep. I say
they stand in my country to trade with my people." Dupuis,
Journal, 146. Cf. T.E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast
Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 44, 68-69.
26. ARA, Archief van het Ministerie van Kolonien (hereafter MK)
3986: Daendels to Minister dd. Elmina 23 March 1816. The
sum fl. 5,000 represented what was owed to the Asantehene
for 62 1/2 months, thus presumably spanning the years 1811-
1815, plus the first 2 1/2 months of 1816, i.e., up to the
time of Daendels' writing.
27. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 19 April 1816.
28. ARA, Archief van de Nederlandsche Bezittingen ter Kuste van
Guinea (hereafter NBKG) 349: Elmina Journal, entry for 25
April 1816.
29. See H.W. Daendels, Journal and Correspondence (Legon, 1964),
94-95, "Instructions for Mr. Huydecoper" dd. Elmina 26 April
1816; ARA, MK 3986: General State of Finances dd. Elmina 29
June 1816, entry for 27 April 1816.
30. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 30 May 1817;
ARA, NBKG 501: Roelossen to Daendels dd. Accra 12 June 1817.
31. ARA, NBKG 350: Osei Tutu Kwame to Daendels dd. Kumase 17
April 1817. My translation.
32. Ibid., Osei Tutu Kwame to Daendels dd. 6 December 1817. A
year later the Dutch issued one new note; ARA, NBKG 351:
Elmina Journal, entry for 25 November 1818.
33. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 30 May 1817.
34. This implicit rejection of the conquest origin of the kost-
geld was made explicit by Daendels' successor Frans Oldenburg

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380 LARRY W. YARAK

when in 1818 the king's envoy pressed for the last time
for payment of two distinct kostgelds; see ARA, NBKG 351:
Elmina Journal, entry for 6 November 1818. It is also in-
teresting to note that Daendels refused to salute the entry
of Kwadwo Aberante into the Dutch fort with seven cannon
shots, as the Asante envoy had been accustomed to receive
at Accra. The evidence indicates that the king's kostgeZd
collectors had indeed received such an honor in the late
1790s; see ARA, NBKG 189: Sinninghe to Bartels dd. Accra 25
October 1798.
35. The reasons for the Asantehene's failure to press further
for the Accra stipend are not difficult to discern. First,
the king was absorbed from early 1818 with a serious rebel-
lion in the province of Gyaman. Secondly, the appropriate
retaliatory measure for Dutch failure to pay kostgeld--cessa-
tion of trade with the Dutch at Accra--held little promise
of success, for trade at the port had long been in decline;
there was also the possibility that such an act might jeop-
ardize trade at Elmina, which had become a crucial source of
guns, powder, and lead since Daendels' arrival there in 1816.
36. Copies of the Fante notes transferred to Osei Tutu Kwame in
1817 may be found in PRO, Colonial Office (hereafter CO)
2/11, ff. 103-04.
37. Bowdich, Mission, passim.
38. L.W. Yarak, "Elmina and Greater Asante in the Nineteenth
Century," Africa, forthcoming.
39. Yarak, "Asante and the Dutch," chapter 5, develops this
theme in greater detail.
40. Bowdich, Mission, 71-72. Bowdich's story was repeated by
Brodie Cruickshank in his Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast
(2 vols.: London, 1853), 1:51-52. Significantly, this work
was translated into Dutch in 1855 as Achttien Jaren aan de
Goudkust, tr. D. Weijtingh (2 vols.: Amsterdam, 1855).
41. Yarak, "Elmina."
42. Ibid.
43. Wilks, Asante, 234; Adjaye, Diplomacy, 190-91.
44. ARA, NBKG 117: Schadde to Ulsen, Accra n.d. (but received
at Elmina 8 January 1756).
45. Ibid., Ulsen to Schadde dd. Elmina 21 January 1756.
46. See L.W. Yarak, "The Dutch-Elmina Peace Initiative of 1754-
1758," Asantesem: The Asante Collective Biography Project
BuZZetin, no. 7 (June, 1977), 26-31.
47. ARA, NBKG 120: van Blydenberg to Huydecoper dd. Accra 22
August 1759.
48. Ibid.
49. ARA, NBKG 123: van Blydenberg to Erasmi dd. Accra 9 April
1762.
50. Briefly described in Claridge, History, 1:216-18. See also
Joseph Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settle-
ments from 1750 to 1874 (Dublin, 1923), 47-68.
51. Crooks, Records, 74-75.
52. ARA, NBKG 150: van der Peuye to Woortman dd. Accra 11 Octo-
ber 1779.

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 "ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 381

53. ARA, NBKG 160: Lieftinck to van der Grijp dd. Elmina 29 May
1788. Lieftinck was on temporary leave from his post at
Accra.
54. Ibid., van der Grijp to Lieftinck dd. Elmina 1 June 1788.
55. See Daendels, Journal, 95-96, "Instructions for Mr. Juyde-
coper" dd. 26 April 1816, which documents his efforts to
encourage the Asantehene to rebuild the "great-road" between
Elmina and Kumase via Wasa. Daendels' previous career in
the Dutch East Indies was also characterized by a strong
concern for road building and maintenance; see Nieuw Neder-
landsch Biografisch Woordenboek, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1911),
entry "Daendels (Herman Willem)," col. 670.
56. ARA, NBKG 357: Elmina Journal, entry to 12 January 1829.
57. Ibid., entry for 30 May 1829.
58. ARA, NBKG 360: Elmina Journal, entry to 29 November 1831.
59. ARA, NBKG 769: Correspondence with the Merchants' Council,
Minutes of a Meeting dd. Elmina 27 November 1834.
60. ARA, NBKG 361: Elmina Journal, entry for 16 December 1834.
Typical of the cost to the Dutch government of the kostgeld
at this time was the fl. 751.25 paid for the year 1835; see
MK 4005: Lans to Minister dd. Elmina 23 April 1836, enclos-
ure: Trade Tolls Accounts (Rekognitie Kas), credit entry for
16 March 1835.
61. A brief account of the military recruitment effort may be
found in Albert van Dantzig, "The Dutch Military Recruitment
Agency in Kumasi," Ghana Notes and Queries, no. 8 (1966),
21-24. See also Baesjou, Asante Embassy, 23-26.
62. ARA, MK 4012: Accounts of the African Recruitment Depot,
credit entry for 16 November 1841.
63. ARA, NBKG 365: Elmina Journal, entry for 28 January 1843;
NBKG 923: Financial Documents, receipt dd. Elmina 24 August
1845.
64. ARA, NBKG 367: Elmina Journal, entry for 29 August 1853;
NBKG 715: Schomerus to Minister (confidential) dd. Elmina
6 September 1853. It is interesting to note that it was
about this time that Dutch officials began referring to the
kostgeld as the Asantehene's "salary" (tractement) or "sub-
sistence" (onderstand).
65. ARA, Archief van het Ministerie van Kolonien 1850-1900 (here-
after MK[II]) 293: Minister to Schomerus dd. 's-Gravenhage
5 November 1853.
66. ARA, NBKG 394: Schomerus to Minister dd. Elmina 9 August 1854.
67. ARA, NBKG 852: Ledger of Expenditures, entry for 2 October
1860.
68. Franz Ramseyer and Johann Kuhne, Vier Jahre in Asante (Basel,
1875), 121 (cf. the English edition, Four Years in Ashantee
[New York, 1875], 129). See also Kofi Kakari's letter to
Nagtglas dd. Kumase 19 August 1871 (translated in Baesjou,
Asante Embassy, 156).
69. M. Reynhout, "Redevoering, gehouden op den 11 van Slagtmaand
1824. . .behelzende kruid- en geschiedkundige waarnemingen
emtrent de Goudkust;" a copy of this document may be found
in the library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-

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382 LARRY W. YARAK

en Volkenkunde, at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.

Reynhout was apparently the major source of information about
the Dutch possessions and their hinterland used by Bowdich
in his Mission to Ashantee; see pp. 165-215 and 219 of that
work. The notion that the kostgeld payments in effect
"bought" peace and protection for the Europeans on the coast
was alluded to even earlier in an official dispatch from
the Dutch governor; see ARA, Archief van het West Indisch
Comite 94: Bartels and de Wit to Committee dd. Elmina 25
August 1799.
70. Jan Gramberg, Sketsen van Afrika's Westkust (Amsterdam,
1861), 343-44; idem., "De Goudkust," De Gids (1866), 399.
71. Gramberg, "Goudkust," 401. Governor Nagtglas actually pro-
posed this idea to the Minister of Colonies in 1869: ARA,
MK(II) 6007: verbaal 30 September 1869, enclosure: Nagtglas
to Minister dd. Elmina 7 September 1869. It seems however
that the difficulties surrounding Asante envoy Akyampon
Yaw's stay in Elmina during 1869/70 prevented the execution
of this plan, and the decision to cede the forts to the
British rendered the question moot.
72. Gramberg, "Goudkust," 399.
73. ARA, NBKG 544: Statement of the Elmina Government dd. Elmina
12 September 1853. It should be noted however that the El-
mina authorities rejected these connotations: "[The Fantes]
further accuse that our Government (Dutch) pay allowance to
Ashantee King, which thing, they consider us to do this to
beg that king so as to be free from suffering his terror-. We
have ever defended that such is only for trade and not for
anything else. . ."
74. J.A.B. Horton, Letters on the Political Condition of the
Gold Coast (London, 1870), 96n. Cf. PRO, CO 879/2: Ussher
to Kennedy dd. Cape Coast 6 April 1868.
75. Feinberg, "Elmina, Ghana," 150-54.

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