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Osei-Tutu
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AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES
SHADOWS OF
EMPIRE IN
WEST AFRICA
New Perspectives on European Fortifications
Edited by
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Victoria Ellen Smith
African Histories and Modernities
Series editors
Toyin Falola
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, USA
Matthew M. Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions
to and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a
particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to
refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in ori-
gin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades.
Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the
series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on
an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space
in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While
privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series
will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the histori-
cal and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing
understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect
the way we think about African and global histories.
Editorial Board
Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University
Kwabena Akurang- Parry, History, Shippensburg University
Samuel O. Oloruntoba, History, University of North Carolina,

Wilmington
Tyler Fleming, History, University of Louisville
Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of

Texas at Austin
Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island
Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina,

Charlotte
More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14758
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu
Victoria Ellen Smith
Editors
Shadows of Empire
in West Africa
New Perspectives on European Fortifications
Editors
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu Victoria Ellen Smith
Norwegian University of Science and University of Ghana
Technology Legon, Ghana
Trondheim, Norway
African Histories and Modernities

ISBN 978-3-319-39281-3 ISBN 978-3-319-39282-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39282-0
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944543
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover image courtesy of Victoria Ellen Smith
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
This collection is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Kwabena Adu-Boahen.
Preface
The book is a product of a project called Shadows of Empire: a study of

European imperial forts and castles from the sixteenth century to the
present. This project applied entangled history approaches to the study of
Afro-European relationships in West Africa from the fifteenth century,
emphasising the centrality of fortifications as centres of interaction and
exchange. “Shadows of Empire” is, in turn, a sub-project under the
multi-component Beyond Borders: Transnational movements through
history project (2010–2012), an institution-based strategic project
designed and implemented by the Department of Historical Studies,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU, Trondheim).
The Faculty of Humanities of NTNU and the Norwegian Research
Council (NRC) co-funded the project. We are also grateful to the
Department of History of the University of Ghana for facilitating and
organising the infrastructure for the conference.
On 1st and 2nd August 2012, many of the contributors attended a
conference entitled Shadows of Empire: Studies of European Colonial
Fortifications in West Africa from fifteenth Century at the University of
Ghana. They came to share their thinking and put forward their research
from the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology, University of Cape Coast, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, Ashesi University, The Courtauld Institute of
Art, University of Basel and Sciences Po (Paris), University of Virginia
and University of California (Los Angeles). This publication brings
together selected and revised papers from the conference along with
vii
viii Preface
specially commissioned chapters from scholars associated with the

University of Warwick, University of Ghana, University of Wisconsin
and Norwegian University of Science and Technology to ensure that this
book presents a fully rounded and cohesive collection. As such, our aim
is to offer multidisciplinary and international approaches through which
we explore the meaning, uses and impacts of European fortification
systems on the Gold Coast (Ghana). We hope that these studies enrich
knowledge about the European-built forts and castles within the West
African milieu.
The process from conference to completed book has been a laborious
one, but the result is one that we are proud to be able to share with you.
We thank Dr. Kofi Baku, who as Head of the History Department at
the University of Ghana, accepted in 2012 to host the Conference from
which this book has emerged. Thanks also go to Tom McCaskie, Toyin
Falola and the team at Palgrave for their support in bringing this project
to publication. Regrettably, Dr. Kwabena Adu-Boahen, former Head of
the Department of History at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), and
one of the participants of the 2012 conference, did not live to see this
volume into print. We dedicate the book to his memory.
Trondheim, Norway John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu

Legon, Ghana Victoria Ellen Smith
Contents
1 Introduction: Interpreting West Africa’s Forts and Castles 1

2 Grossfriedrichsburg, the First German Colony in Africa?

Brandenburg-Prussia, Atlantic Entanglements and
National Memory 33
Roberto Zaugg
3 ‘Far from My Native Land, and Far from You’:

Reimagining the British at Cape Coast Castle in the
Nineteenth Century 75
Victoria Ellen Smith
4 Viewed from a Distance: Eighteenth-Century Images of

Fortifications on the Coast of West Africa 107
Emily Mann
5 Illusions of Grandeur and Protection: Perceptions

and (Mis)Representations of the Defensive Efficacy
of European-Built Fortifications on the Gold Coast,
Seventeenth–Early Nineteenth Centuries 137
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Hermann W. von Hesse
ix
x Contents
6 Female Agency in a Cultural Confluence: Women, Trade

and Politics in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century
Gold Coast 169
Kwabena Adu-Boahen
7 Fort Metal Cross: Commercial Epicentre of the British on

the Gold Coast 201
Fritz Biveridge
8 European Fortifications in West Africa as Architectural

Containers and Oppressive Contraptions 239
Henry Nii Adziri Wellington and Rexford Assasie Oppong
9 A Theatre of Memory for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade:

Cape Coast Castle and Its Museum 273
Neelima Jeychandran
10 Diplomacy, Identity and Appropriation of the “Door

of no Return”. President Barack Obama and Family in
Ghana and the Cape Coast Castle, 2009 297
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Ebenezer Ayesu
11 Recreating Pre-colonial Forts and Castles: Heritage

Policies and Restoration Practices in the Gold Coast/
Ghana, 1945 to 1970s 327
Jon Olav Hove
Index 351
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Prof. John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu is a Professor of History and currently

Head of the History Program at the Institute of Historical Studies,
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He became
a Visiting Scholar at the Department of History at the University of
Ghana in 2013–2014. His specialties are African and World/Global
histories. The articles in this anthology are products of the conference,
Shadows of Empire: Studies of European Colonial Fortifications in West
Africa from fifteenth Century, which was held in Accra in 2012. His
teaching and research interests include African-European encounters in
West Africa from the fifteenth century; colonisation, colonial rule and
popular encounters with British colonial rule; history of natural resources
regulation; oil and development in West Africa. He has been involved in
multidisciplinary and collaborative projects including the Asafo History
(documentation) Project; NKOSOO 2015: development of sustainable
oil industry for Ghana (under the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate’s
“Oil for Development (OfD)” program); and the “Beyond Borders:
Transnational movements through history project”. Currently, he is
involved in the “Political Regulation of Natural Resources 1890–2010,
Global Experiences, project that is funded by the Norwegian Research
Council”, and is the project coordinator for “NORPART-2016/10009:
Inter-cultural historical studies”, a mobility project funded by the
Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education.
xi
xii Editors and Contributors
Dr. Victoria Ellen Smith is a Lecturer in the Department of History

at the University of Ghana where she teaches the theory and practice of
oral history, and the history of the Fante states, as well as being a mem-
ber of the “History of the University of Ghana Project” and Founding
Curator of the Adu Boahen Memorial Library and Archive. Her research
interests are in the history, culture and literature of Ghana, with a par-
ticular focus on Fante and Anglo-Ghanaian societies. Having completed
her Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick
in 2011, she moved to the University of Ghana in 2012. In 2013, she
co-formed an international research team that was awarded an AHRC
Research Grant (Early Careers scheme) for the project “Decolonizing
Voices: World Literature and Broadcast Culture at the End of Empire”,
which has resulted in extensive research on the relationship between
radio and mid-twentieth century Ghanaian literature. In 2017, she
became a Core Network Member for the AHRC Research Networking
Grant project, “Small Magazines, Literary Networks and Self-Fashioning
in Africa and its Diasporas”. Her current publication work includes co-
editing the memoir of BBC/GCBS radio producer, Henry Swanzy,
with Michael Niblett (Warwick) and Chris Campbell (Exeter) for
Peepal Tree Press; co-editing a Special Issue of Obsidian: Literature &
Arts in the African Diaspora on Ghanaian literature with Helen Yitah
(Ghana) and Audrey Gadzekpo (Ghana); and editing a 60th anniversary
Second Edition of Voices of Ghana: literary contributions to the Ghana
Broadcasting System, 1955–57 for James Currey.
Contributors
Dr. Kwabena Adu-Boahen was a Historian and, until his death in

2014, the Head of the Department of History, University of Cape
Coast (2011–2014). He gained his DPhil degree from the University
of Melbourne, Australia, in 2005. His main area of research was gender
issues and women’s history, with a focus on women’s economic activ-
ity, women and the slave trade, child trafficking and female education.
Other research interests include state and inter-state relations on the
Gold Coast, post-abolition slave holding, Europeans and slave trading,
history and identity making in the Atlantic world, and local history. He
initiated several projects including cultural heritage research; historical
heritage: study on the slave castles in Cape Coast and Elmina; and the
Editors and Contributors xiii
“Place Names Research Project”. He also held academic administrative

positions on several academic boards at the University of Cape Coast. In
addition, he received awards both in Ghana and internationally for his
scholarship. He was editor of the Abibisem: Journal of African Culture
and Civilisation (2009–2014).
Dr. Ebenezer Ayesu is a Historian and currently a Senior Research
Fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana,
Legon. He studied at the Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA,
for his Ph.D. While in the USA, he worked as Visiting Faculty in History
at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. His teaching and research focus
on African history with special emphasis on traditional institutions;
festivals and funerals; eighteenth and nineteenth centuries European
activities in West Africa; biographies and the African diaspora. He was a
Fulbright Scholar (2006–2008). He has published, among others things,
on Afro-Brazilians in Ghana; re-examination of the foundation history
of the Akuapem State; chieftaincy, church and the family in Ghana; the
African diaspora; biographies; youth unemployment and superstition;
marriage, sex, labour and gender relations; and welfare of women in the
Gold Coast during British colonial rule. In addition, he has produced a
60-minute documentary on the Annual Odwira Festival of Amanokrom
Akuapem. He is currently working on the documentation of the chiefly
and priestly regalia of Akuapem. His hobbies include listening to music
(highlife music of the 1960s-80; gospel; reggae; country music); design-
ing African wear (male and female); and observing nature.
Dr. Fritz Biveridge is an Historical Archaeologist and Senior Lecturer
at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, University
of Ghana. He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy degree in Historical
Archaeology from the University of Ghana. Teaching and research inter-
ests include issues relating to heritage management, cultural contact and
the socio-economic and political impact on the groups involved, particu-
larly in terms of acculturation patterns. He is currently investigating the
consequences of the English presence along the Dixcove coastline and
how it impacted Ahanta land and neighbouring polities in the early six-
teenth to late nineteenth centuries. Dr. Biveridge is a former Head of the
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies. He has held several
academic administrative positions on academic boards at University of
Ghana since he joined the department in 2007.
xiv Editors and Contributors
Dr. Jon Olav Hove has a Ph.D. in the colonial history of Ghana. He
is working as an Associate Professor in cultural heritage studies at the
Department of Historical Studies at the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology. Research interests include the history and memory
of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism in both West Africa and
Scandinavia. He has published articles on, among other things, Ghanaian
politics in the late colonial period, the management and understanding
of Atlantic heritage in Ghana as well as Norway, and digital archives and
heritage.
Dr. Neelima Jeychandran is a Mellon Visiting Assistant Professor in the
Indian Ocean Worlds Research Initiative with a joint appointment in the
Departments of Anthropology and African American and African Studies
at the University of California, Davis. She holds a Ph.D. in Culture and
Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles. Currently,
she is working on her book on “African Memoryscapes in India” and is
curating a digital spatial history archive to map the sacred landscapes and
memorial shrines of the African-descent communities in India.
Dr. Emily Mann studied art history at the Courtauld Institute
in London, where she completed her Ph.D. in 2015 and has been
appointed Early Career Lecturer in Early Modern Art. Focusing on
architecture and its representation in English and other European colo-
nial and commercial settlements from the late sixteenth to the mid-eight-
eenth century, her research investigates the meanings of building and
buildings in the emerging empires and in the broader context of inter-
imperial competition and conflict over territory and trade. As Research
Associate with the Centre for the Political Economies of International
Commerce (PEIC) at the University of Kent, she further investigated
the architectural enterprises of early modern trading corporations such
as the English and Dutch East India companies and the Royal African
Company. Her publications include “To Build and Fortify: Defensive
Architecture in the Early Atlantic Colonies” in Building the British
Atlantic World: Spaces, Places and Material Culture, 1600–1850, ed. by
Daniel Maudlin and Bernard L. Herman (University of North Carolina
Press, 2016).
Prof. Rexford Assasie Oppong is an Associate Professor of Architecture
in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST).
He holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Architecture from the
Editors and Contributors xv
Liverpool School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool (UK);

a Masters in Urban Planning and Management from La Sapienza-
University (Rome, Italy); and a B.Sc. (design) and Postgraduate Diploma
(architecture) from KNUST (Kumasi, Ghana). Prof. Oppong is a
researcher, academic and architect with interest in human settlements
planning. He is a registered member of the Ghana Institute of Architects
and has acted as a consultant to a number of organisations and institu-
tions in urban/rural Ghana in the areas of architecture and building
construction. He has planned, designed and supervised a number of
projects for the Presbyterian Church of Ghana and has won many schol-
arships and awards/prizes. He co-won (with Professor Kwasi Kwafo
Adarkwa, former Vice-Chancellor of KNUST) the Appraisal Institute
Prize for the best paper delivery award at the Royal Institute of Chartered
Surveyors/International Real Estate Society sponsored Conference, held
at Livingstone, Zambia, in 2007. He has served as editor and reviewer for
a number of Ghanaian and international academic journals and confer-
ences. Prof. Oppong currently holds an Honorary Research Fellowship
from the Liverpool School of Architecture and the British Academy
International Partnership and Mobility Award since 2015.
Hermann W. von Hesse is currently a Ph.D. student in history at the
University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2014, he was awarded an MPhil
degree in history from the University of Ghana, Legon. His MPhil dis-
sertation is entitled “Euro-Africans, Afro-Brazilians and the Evolution
of Social Space in Nineteenth-Century Accra”. He has broader research
interests in the urban and architectural history of Africa and the Atlantic
world and also gender and sexuality. His works include “Døde rot-
ter under Christiansborg: om koloniale spøgelser i Ghana og Danmark
(Dead Rats Under Christiansborg: On Colonial Ghosts in Ghana and
Denmark)” co-authored with Pernille Ipsen (forthcoming) and “Wɔ ‘ya
Adabraka wɔ ya mɔ gbɛ” (‘We‘re going to Adabraka to secure a space’):
Gã Architectural and Urban Authenticity and Colonial Urban Planning
in Accra, c.1877–1908” in Replenishing History: New Directions to
Historical Research in the 21st Century in Ghana, ed. by Nana Yaw B.
Sapong and J. Otto Pohl (Banbury: Ayebia, 2014).
Prof. Henry Nii-Adziri Wellington FGA, studied at the Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) for the
B.Sc. in Design (1967) and M.Sc. in Architecture (1969) degrees.
He obtained the Dipl. Ing. in Urban Design (1972) and Dr. Ing in
xvi Editors and Contributors
Architecture and Development Planning (1981) at the Rheinisch-

Westfälische Technische Hochschule (RWTH), Aachen, and the
Technische Universität Braunschweig (TUBS), Braunschweig, respec-
tively. From 1972 to 2006, he researched in and taught architecture at
KNUST. Since 2009, on post-retirement contract in the Department of
Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Ghana, he teaches
and conducts research in Heritage Issues and Monuments Conservation.
Among his publications have been the anthology Fortresses, Compounds
and Plantations—Danish cultural Heritage shared with Ghana pub-
lished by Vandkunsten and the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen,
Denmark (2014), and a book titled Stones Tell Stories at Osu—Memories
of a Host community of the Danish TransAtlantic Slave Trade (2011).
Dr. Roberto Zaugg is currently a Fellow of the Swiss National Science
Foundation at the University of Lausanne. Since studying in Florence
and gaining his Ph.D. in Naples, he has taught Early Modern History
and African History at the University of Basel and at Sciences Po (Paris).
His research interests include Mediterranean and Atlantic trade, Euro-
African relations, migrations, autobiographical writings and colonial
cultures. Together with Craig Koslofsky (University of Illinois), he is pre-
paring an English edition of the journal of Johann Peter Oettinger, a sev-
enteenth-century slave ship’s surgeon. He is the author of a monograph
on foreigners in eighteenth-century Naples (Stranieri di Antico Regime:
Mercanti, giudici e consoli nella Napoli del Settecento, 2011) and the edi-
tor of a special issue on military doctors in colonial contexts (“Guerre,
maladie, empire”, Histoire, Médecine et Santé, 2016), as well as being the
co-editor of Union in Separation: Diasporic Groups and Identities in the
Eastern Mediterranean, 1100–1800 (2015).
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Forts and Castles of Ghana 3

Fig. 2.1 In popular culture, the encounter between
O.F. von der Gröben and the inhabitants of Pokesu
was represented in terms of dominion and submission 51
Fig. 4.1 Eleven fortifications on the coast of West Africa. Etched
by Johannes Kip after plates in Willem Bosman’s Nauwkeurige
Beschryving van de Guinese Goud-, Tand- en Slave-kust
(Utrecht, 1704). Plate 25 in Jean Barbot, A Description
of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea (London, 1732,
being vol. 5 of A Collection of Voyages and Travels).
Bibliothèque nationale de France 108
Fig. 4.2 Fort Frederiksburgh, Fort Amsterdam and Fort James
at Accra. Engraved and etched by Johannes Kip. Plate
14 in Jean Barbot, A Description of the Coasts of North
and South-Guinea (London, 1732, being vol. 5 of
A Collection of Voyages and Travels, reprint 1746).
Bibliothèque nationale de France 111
Fig. 4.3 The South Prospect of Dixcove Fort. Engraved and etched
by John Gray after William Smith. Plate 10 in
William Smith, Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea
(London, 1729) 117
Fig. 4.4 The North Prospect of the English and Dutch Forts at Accra.
Engraved and etched by John Gray after William Smith.
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Plate 25 in William Smith, Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea

(London, 1729) 117
Fig. 4.5 A compilation of prospects and plans of Cape Coast Castle
and gardens. Engraved and etched by Nathaniel Parr after
plates in William Smith, Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea
(London, 1729). Plate 65 from A New General Collection
of Voyages and Travels, vol. 2 (London, 1745) 118
Fig. 4.6 Dixcove Fort, “after Smith”. Engraved and etched
by Frans de Bakker. Plate 2 in Johann Joachim Schwabe,
Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, vol. 4
(Leipzig, 1749). Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 121
Fig. 5.1 “Map of the Coast of Ghana, showing the forts and castles
in their present condition.” Original in Albert van Dantzig,
Forts and Castles of Ghana (Accra: Sedco, 1999), 89 141
Fig. 7.1 Dixcove and neighbouring villages 203
Fig. 7.2 East Wing and courtyard of Fort Metal Cross, Dixcove 207
Fig. 8.1 Development of Christiansborg Castle in the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by Albert van Dantzig
in “Forts and Castles of Ghana” (Accra: SEDCO, 1980), 30 243
Fig. 8.2 View of Christiansborg, showing the promontory, the
fortification with its curtain walls, bastions, and Flag-tower,
flying the oversize Danish Flag, Dannenbrog. Featured in Jean
Barbot’s “Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa” ([1682];
1963 plate 42 a). For a view of Christiansborg from the
sea showing the Watch Tower Provesteen, the Belltower,
the Flagtower and the fortification on the promontory;
see Churchill’s Voyages (Christiansborg at around 1700)
in Thorkild Hansen’s Coast of Slaves (1967), 49;
For views of the historic courtyard at Christiansborg Castle,
showing Governor Engmann’s eighteenth-century
Cistern and the staircase leading to the Governor’s Parlour,
see Thierry Secretan’s photographs in Castles and Forts of Ghana
by J. Kwesi Anquandah (Atlantes: Ghana Museums
and Monuments Board, 1999), 24–30 245
Fig. 8.3 Draft of the lower ground floor plan of Cape Coast Castle.
Ghana Museum and Monuments Board (GMMB) 258
Fig. 8.4 Scaled sectional plan of male dungeons at Cape Coast Castle.
Original draft by GMMB adapted by Henry Nii Adziri
Wellington and Rexford Assasie Oppong 259
List of Figures xix
Fig. 8.5 Scaled sectional plan of female dungeons at Cape Coast

Castle. Original draft by GMMB adapted by Henry Nii
Adziri Wellington and Rexford Assasie Oppong 260
Fig. 8.6 Scaled sectional elevation of male dungeons under
Dalzel Tower at Cape Coast Castle. Original draft by
GMMB adapted by Henry Nii Adziri Wellington
and Rexford Assasie Oppong 261
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Muster roll, 20 September 1712 38

Table 7.1 Table showing the types and quantum of finds recovered
from unit 1 209
Table 7.2 Table showing types and quantum of finds recovered
from unit 2 210
from unit 3 211
from unit 4 212
from unit 5 213
from unit 6 214
from unit 7 214
from unit 8 215
from unit 9 216
from unit 10 217
Table 7.11 Table showing decreasing quantum of slag
recovered at unit 1 225
Table 7.12 Table showing decreasing quantum of slag
recovered at unit 2 225
xxi
xxii List of Tables
Table 7.13 Table showing decreasing quantum of slag recovered

at unit 5 226
at unit 7 226
at unit 8 227
at unit 10 227
Table 8.1 Anthropometrics of the dungeons 261
Table 11.1 Use of the forts and castles in the pre-independence
1950s, listed west to east 332
Table 11.2 Use of the forts and castles in 1972, listed west to east 342
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Interpreting West Africa’s

Forts and Castles
Fortresses are a universal phenomenon: they dominated the landscapes

and societies of civilisations and empires such as Mesopotamia, Assyria,
Egypt, China, Greece; Rome, and became ubiquitous features of
European spaces from the Middle Ages.1 As old as they may be, some
of these buildings have endured the tides of time and the vagaries of
the weather, becoming the inheritances of contemporary societies that
often had nothing to do with their construction. Paul Erdmann Isert,
a German surgeon and naturalist who worked for the Danish establish-
ment at Christiansborg Castle on the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in the
1780s, observed that a fortress is not like a mushroom that springs up
and withers overnight.2 The enduring architectural relics of European
activity and interactions with the societies in West Africa support Isert’s
truism. From 1445 to the 1870s, trading companies of core European
J.K. Osei-Tutu (*)

Department of Historical Studies, Norwegian University
of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
V.E. Smith
Department of History, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana
© The Author(s) 2018 1

J.K. Osei-Tutu and V.E. Smith (eds.), Shadows of Empire in West
Africa, African Histories and Modernities,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39282-0_1
2 J.K. Osei-Tutu and V.E. Smith
nations introduced congeries of European-type fortification systems to

West Africa, where these buildings became essential geo-strategic tools
of inter-European commercial competition, components in the intricate
networks of the Atlantic Basin trade and instruments of enslavement and
colonisation.
As pioneers of the European-African trade, the Portuguese were the
first to build fortified trading stations or factories (feitoria) in Africa.
They built their first fort on Mauritania’s Arguin Island in 1445 and
followed up with a string of forts at important trading points along the
West African coastline, including the infamous São Jorge da Mina—
now known as Ghana’s Elmina Castle—in 1482.3 Over a period of four
centuries, fortified trading stations grew in number and purpose as the
respective chartered companies of Holland, Sweden, Denmark-Norway,
Brandenburg and England (later, the UK) embarked on coastal forti-
fication projects comprising a string of castle-like structures, sparsely
defended lodges and small secondary forts that served as company
outposts.4
Questions remain regarding how many fortified and non-fortified
structures the competing European companies erected in West Africa.
Figures based on the physical evidence in the form of structural rem-
nants do not give a complete picture of the numbers built over the years,
as they do not account for those that have disappeared entirely: plun-
dered for building materials, eaten up by the Atlantic Ocean or sim-
ply left to crumble and turn into dust. Through long and painstaking
research into the archives of the various trading companies, some schol-
ars have, however, provided estimates of their numbers. A. W. Lawrence
lists forty-three extant principal fortified trading stations in West Africa
from Arguin Island to Ouidah, with the majority—thirty-two, to be
precise—located in Ghana.5 Other sources list between forty-eight and
sixty fortified edifices in Ghana alone, comprising large structures—com-
monly designated as castles—medium-sized forts and trading lodges (see
Fig. 1.1).6 The apparent quantitative discrepancies in the literature are
somewhat bridgeable through further research; and an increased schol-
arly and popular interest is now bringing more knowledge to light.
Currently, what is clear from attempts to quantify fortresses in West
Africa is that the Gold Coast had the largest concentration of European
fortresses in the non-European world. Ghana’s 500-kilometre-long
coastline was so densely built upon in certain areas that many of the for-
tresses are in close proximity and rivalling trading companies stood side
1 INTRODUCTION: INTERPRETING WEST AFRICA’S FORTS AND CASTLES 3
Fig. 1.1 Forts and Castles of Ghana. Source ‘Atlas of Slavery’, Edition 1e by
J. Walvin (ISBN/ASIN0582437806, 9780582437807) Copyright © 2005,
Pearson and Longman. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis books UK
by side.7 This concentration of European fortified trading posts under-

scores the important historical position of the Gold Coast as a site of
intense activity within the Atlantic economic and social systems from the
fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
As the largest stone structures on the West African coast, the for-
tresses functioned as claims of authority, defensive installations, trading
markets, warehouses, accommodation and administrative centres.8 Their
primary military purpose was to safeguard the commercial monopolies
of resident European trading companies within negotiated geographi-
cal spheres under the jurisdictions of friendly African potentates. The
designs, positioning, weaponry and garrisoning accentuated their defen-
sive roles in the context of the European overseas competition. Though
each of the buildings was unique in design, all of them shared the same
basic features. Their individual uniqueness comes out through differ-
ences ranging in design from rectangular and triangular to concentric
and star shaped.9 Overwhelmingly, they were littoral and placed strategi-
cally on rocky promontories with the Atlantic forming a natural exterior
protection to one side. The landward façades were oriented towards

the neighbouring settlements of established African territories, with
the reach of European guns and cannons dictating the parameters of
defence. Some, like Arguin Fort and Gorée Fort, were built on islands
and were relatively secure from inland attacks. Fewer still were located on
inland waterways, like the Portuguese Fort Duma erected on the bank of
Ghana’s Ankobra River in 1623.
The fortresses varied in structure, but generally they featured curtain
walls; massive battlements made of imported material and indigenous
raw materials such as limestone and granite; watchtowers; central court-
yards; and gun slits (referred to as ‘peep holes’ by tour guides) through
which the garrison soldiers could shoot at enemies approaching from sea
or land. Some, like Elmina Castle, had adjoining moats and were reach-
able by drawbridges. Certainly, these replicas of medieval and early mod-
ern European fortifications must have looked discordantly humongous
within West Africa’s contemporary fifteenth and sixteenth century ver-
nacular architectural settings. Depending on the size and strength of
their battlements, some were capable of carrying canons ranging from
four pounders to twenty-four pounders and of withstanding the ricochet
of firing such weaponry. The smaller poundage were generally trained
inland to ward off African enemies who were probably seen as a lesser
threat, whilst the larger poundage were poised to intimidate and poten-
tially destroy the approaching ships of belligerent European competitors.
Today, remnants of the forts and castles appear to be losing a centuries-
long war of attrition meted out by an unwavering ‘enemy’: the forces of
nature, particularly the mighty waves of the Atlantic Ocean, which bom-
bard mud and stone foundations with their unceasing saltwater artillery.
It will require massive inflows of expensive technology and masonry to
save the remnants; otherwise, in the next 50 years, only a handful will
remain.10
Some scholars have suggested that there were European states that
embarked on the practice of building fortifications overseas partly to
dominate territories.11 However, our research indicates that claims of
fortresses functioning as bases for territorial domination before the late
nineteenth century are tenuous, if not impossible to substantiate. More
realistically, during the period of commerce, the positioning of these
fortified trading warehouses enabled the representatives of European
nations to achieve exclusive political, defensive and commercial alliances
with African sovereigns from whom they leased the land on which they
built. As a result, Europeans—such as the British, Dutch and Danish on

the Gold Coast (now Ghana) —established a permanent presence in West
Africa. Over the years, some European traders and company agents also
gained political influence in African affairs as a result of their mediatory
role in local disputes (either by invitation or intimidation), which led to
some Europeans defining the territories in which they were located as
protectorates. It was not until the late nineteenth century—when the
British became the dominant power on the Gold Coast and adopted
Christiansborg Castle as headquarters for the newly formed Gold Coast
Colony and as residence for its Governor—that history tells of Europeans
translating their informal interventions to territorial jurisdictions.12
Beyond their defensive role, the buildings were primarily used as trad-
ing centres, complete with storerooms for goods and prisons for hold-
ing Africans as captives prior to their transportation to the Americas
during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Above all, the larger fortresses such
as Elmina Castle, Cape Coast Castle and Christiansborg Castle served as
administrative headquarters for their respective national companies, resi-
dences for the principal trading agents, barracks for soldiers and sites for
diplomatic negotiations. Each company kept smaller (out-) forts as posts
where commodities and enslaved Africans were kept until their departure
through the major forts or exit ports.
Prior to the late nineteenth century, ownership of many of the for-
tresses changed, some several times, through purchase and legal appro-
priation by rival European companies, as well as through forced seizure
by Europeans and expanding Akan imperial states.13 New European
owners often adjusted the original designs of the buildings to suit their
specific purposes, as well as brokering new alliances with the reigning
local or regional African power. Currently, the forts and castles are the
property of independent African nations, and it is to their history that
they speak, for their encounters that they are remembered and for their
purposes that these memorials of entangled histories are now used. Yet,
the governments and peoples of West African countries have different
attitudes towards and uses for these monuments to the mounting histo-
ries of enslavement and empire. Though many committed to UNESCO’s
World Heritage Convention goal (1972) of protecting the world’s cul-
tural and natural heritage, West African governments are neverthe-
less attempting to capitalise on the economic worth of the buildings as
various types of tourist sites from historical monuments to guest houses.
Their strategies for increasing tourist visitations have great prospects
for adding to the national purse and maintaining the remaining struc-
tures. Thus, whereas Europeans built the edifices as part of their infra-
structure of commerce and slave trading, West African governments are
identifying ways of maintaining them through the exploitation of their
emotive legacies of trade and oppression. In doing so, many sites are
attracting the descendants of enslaved Africans through pilgrimage tour-
ism, as well as achieving national economic gain and educational devel-
opment. In Ghana, state organisations such as the Ghana Museum and
Monuments Board (GMMB) with the support of the UNESCO World
Heritage Centre have adopted some forts and castles to create heritage
and memorial sites for a broad spectrum of visitors.
At various times in the past, both colonial and independent govern-
ments have converted some of the fortresses for government offices. An
important case is that of Christiansborg Castle, which has served at the
centre of power for successive pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial
administrations. It was trading headquarters for the Danish enterprise on
the Gold Coast until 1850, Britain’s seat of colonial rule from 1877 until
1957 and Ghana’s official government house until 2008.14 Others have
been variously used as prisons, lunatic asylums, rest houses and youth
centres. In some cases, private investors have shown interest in translat-
ing smaller forts, like Fort Metal Cross at Dixcove, into unique accom-
modation or dining experiences for commercial gain. Elsewhere along
the Ghanaian coast, forts are in various stages of decay or have crumbled
into dust. It is for the intellectual preservation of those that continue to
cast their shadow literally and those that only do so metaphorically on
the history of West Africa, as well as America and the Caribbean, that
this collection of essays contributes. In doing so, the authors ask ques-
tions about what the fortresses have meant, what they now mean and
to whom. What connections, interactions, exchanges, networks and flows
they have facilitated. What impacts they had on the history and eve-
ryday lives of West Africans, particularly those living in their localities.
Moreover, what the contemporary appropriations and uses are for the
remnants of these edifices in West Africa.
Forts and Castles Research: Perspectives and Sources

Globally, there is a growing fascination with historic buildings. As a
result, incidents of the desecration of buildings, monuments and other
significant cultural places, such as the dramatic demolition of monuments
by the Daesh (Islamic State) in the Middle East, have been widely con-
demned.15 Despite the scholarly and popular turn to preservation, the
active destruction and passive abandonment of heritage sites continue
worldwide. One of the geographically ubiquitous architectural forms
that excites scholarly interest and calls for active preservation at the local,
national and international level are forts and castles. In his work on the
place of castles in European Medieval Society published in 2003, Charles
Coulson lamented a lack of authoritative literature on the subject to
match the popular interest and imaginings about the roles of fortresses
in European society.16 Coulson’s call for cutting-edge research on for-
tresses notwithstanding, more work is being done on the fortifications in
European countries such as the UK, France and Germany. Furthermore,
this scholarly interest has been institutionalised through societies such as
the UK’s Castle Studies Group with its journal of popular and scholarly
research.17
In comparison, there is yet to be the equivalent scholarly and organi-
sational interest dedicated to the sustained, rigorous study of the political
and social impact of European-built fortresses in West Africa. The finan-
cial and intellectual support being given to their preservation is also lim-
ited. From the 1950s, a number of important scholarly texts emerged
on the subject and have become standard references in the scholarship
on the forts and castles in West Africa. However, many of the works on
West Africa’s fortresses are limited to offering descriptive and illustrated
accounts detailing their numbers, locations, origins, ownership and role
within the European slave trade.18 Notable among them are J.D. Fage
et al.’s ‘A New Checklist of the Forts and Castles of Ghana’ (1959),
which provides a ‘more complete and less inaccurate’ list as a correc-
tive for lists previously published.19 In addition, Isaac S. Ephson’s 1970
work is a social history of the individual forts as sites of entangled Afro-
European histories;20 and Albert van Dantzig’s 1980 book offers readers
an introductory historical overview of the forts and castles along Ghana’s
coastline.21 Two recent social histories of the forts, from 2006 and 2011
respectively, are William St Clair’s detailed account of life within and out-
side the walls of Cape Coast Castle,22 and Rebecca Shumway’s account
of the Fante people (of Ghana’s Central Region) as both victims and
brokers in the trade.23
Archaeologists, particularly archaeological historians, notably A.W.
Lawrence,24 J.K. Anquandah25 and C.R. DeCorse,26 have published
authoritative works on the fortresses, seeing them as representing part of
the material culture of the African-European encounter and colonialism.

To date, Lawrence’s history of the buildings published in 1963 remains a
seminal work as it does not see the fortresses only in military terms, but
also as social and cultural arenas.27
In addition, some staff of the Ghana Museum and Monuments Board
(GMMB) have published ethnographic narratives on guided tours of the
castles at Elmina and Cape Coast.28 In terms of memoirs and archival
evidence, the writings of various European travellers, adventurers and
residents of West Africa’s forts and castles have also been published.29
Irrespective of their purposes and uses in the past, fortresses eve-
rywhere appear to attract a negative image as forbidding places.
Significantly, this focus on the fortresses’ negative reputation is not con-
signed to current popular thinking only, but is also reflected in the schol-
arly corpus to the exclusion of other modes of seeing them. Coulson,
for instance, laments how the literature on medieval castles focuses on
their ‘brutal technology’ and has led to the neglect of their political,
social and cultural aspects.30 Similarly, though the West African fortresses
were central to the everyday lives of coastal peoples—both African and
European—as well as to the economic and strategic engagements of inte-
rior states with the coast, their negative reputation as ‘oppressive’ archi-
tecture has stifled studies of the impact that these buildings had locally
and regionally. This collection, which is dedicated to the cultural and
sociopolitical context of the forts, is therefore timely.
Most commonly, the forts and castles elicit intellectual and popu-
lar scientific conversations within narratives of the trans-Atlantic slave
trade in which they are often tagged as ‘slave castles’ or ‘slave forts’, with
‘dungeon’ also serving as a metonym for ‘fort’. These conceptualisations
emphasise the fact that the European companies erected the majority of
fortresses in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries to facilitate the Atlantic
slave trade. Generally, too, contemporary observers overwhelmingly per-
ceive the remnants of the fortresses as relics of oppression, tout court:
as tools of exploitation, dominance and enslavement. Indeed, the open,
whitewashed and ‘civilized spaces’ occupied by European officials (with
their schools, churches, harvested rain water, fresh and clean air, etc.)
functioned alongside the eerie and suffocating slave holding dungeons.
This poignant juxtaposition evokes all manner of emotive responses
from all manner of visitors to these monuments. For many visitors, the
forts and castles in West Africa become meaningful as ‘sites’ of memory
in the capture-captive tension between the European and African slave
traders and the imprisoned Africans, who were kept there to be shipped
into a life of slavery in the Americas and beyond. During his 2009 tour
of Ghana, US President Barrack Obama visited Cape Coast Castle and
remarked that ‘it is here where the journey of much of the African
American experience began’.31 It is the historic function of the fortresses
as slave trading and holding edifices that gives significance to his words.
However, whilst the use of West Africa’s fortresses in the Atlantic
slave trade is a true element of their purpose and of great significance to
global history, the horrendous reputation assigned to them stifles study
of their other utilities and impacts in the West African social and spatial
contexts.32 Indeed, to see them as the main ‘culprits’ in the Atlantic slave
trade is to assign to them the power of agency, with the danger of emo-
tively shifting attention away from the real human perpetrators of the
slave trade. Indeed, the archival and other material records of the Atlantic
slave trade period are awash with the names, associations and enterprises
of the human beings who drove the trade. Therefore, would it not be
proper to see and study both the African captives and the architecture
used to enslave them as somewhat ‘victims’ abused by powerful slav-
ers? Will seeing the fortresses for what they are—buildings—not open
up research on their other uses and impacts in West Africa? Significantly,
a few works within the Atlantic slave trade corpus do attempt to give a
broader picture of the position of the fortresses in the Atlantic set-up.
One example is Edmund Abaka’s study, which deals with the role of the
fortresses in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but also tells their broader story
as architectural structures, as sites of economic and cultural exchanges,
and as important sites of memory.33 It is alongside innovative works such
as Abaka’s that this collection sits as a platform for new thinking.
There are compelling scholarly reasons for sustained critical multi- and
interdisciplinary studies of the forts and castles that interrogate them in
their own right as meritorious, though contentious, architectural envi-
ronments that embody different styles and functions; historicity; monu-
mentality; memories and heritage. First, despite their grim image in the
public eye, some of the West African forts and castles are architectural
masterpieces. Significantly, São Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle) and Cape
Coast Castle are listed as two of the ‘seven amazing fortresses and castles
in Africa’34 alongside the Saladin Citadel (Cairo Citadel) and Citadel of
Qaitbay;35 the Fasil Ghebbi Castle;36 Fort Jesus; and the Castle of Good
Hope.37 Indeed, as architectural pieces, their designs, aesthetic features,
materiality, functionality and spatial delineations are worth studying by
architectural historians to bring out the capacity of humans to coalesce

beauty with pain in one piece of architecture. In addition, the altera-
tions made to the buildings over the years reflect changes in function and
need. Study of these modifications will speak to the changing motives
and missions of successive European and African owners. Also worth
investigating are questions relating to how these alien architectural styles
fitted, disproportionately, within the vernacular landscape and how they
influenced the building styles and environs in the region.
The second scholarly reason for studying the fortresses is their his-
toricity. For centuries, these buildings provided concrete footholds for
the human actions and processes that entangled the histories of Africa,
Europe and the Americas, and led to the emergence of an Atlantic
world based on networks of trade, culture and politics. For, wherever
they existed, the forts and castles developed a life of their own, so to
speak, as nodal points of activity and interaction that shaped physical
landscapes and social spaces. Their impact on urbanising trends along
the coast is important. As spaces for mediating Afro-European entangle-
ment, these historical buildings had both local and global significance
in historical, sociopolitical and economic interaction as well as in inter-
cultural dialogues of dominance and appropriation. The emphasis is
on their position as ‘permanent’ sites within and around which human
actors transacted business, competed for control, and spawned ‘cre-
olised’ spaces and identities within emerging ‘portals of globalization’.38
Thus, fortresses should not be an obscure subject for military, political,
economic, social and cultural historians and archaeologists. Although
archaeologists have made enormous efforts through excavations and aca-
demic publications to document and unravel the multifaceted aspects of
life in and around the forts and castles in West Africa, there is still enor-
mous research potential particularly in the field of maritime archaeology.
Thirdly, the appropriation of forts and castles by contemporary
African states as ‘national heritage’ and by UNESCO as World Heritage
Sites validates their place among human kind’s collective history.39 Their
position as monuments and heritage sites has opened them up to be used
as museums and other tourist destinations. This makes them important
subjects to study in the fields of heritage research and management;
memory studies; diaspora and tourism studies; and post-colonial stud-
ies. The question of how different groups of people—Africans on the
continent; African and European descendants of slave traders; Africans

in the diaspora; Europeans from former slave-trading nations—relate to
and use these visual relics still needs to be fully explored so that their role
within the first modern transcontinental and transnational intersections
of African and European histories may be fully articulated.40
Fourthly, the sources available for embarking on academic enquiry
into the nature, position and impacts of the West African fortress as
architecture, as history and as heritage are plentiful, diverse and geo-
graphically dispersed primarily in Africa and Europe. The physical and
related material remains of the fortresses constitute primary frontline
sources. In addition, the document trails made up of company and colo-
nial government records (official correspondences and reports, archi-
tectural plans of the buildings, plates and maps, the private papers of
company employees, etc.) are locatable in the archives and libraries of
major European cities (Basel, Berlin, Copenhagen, Den Haag, London
and Lisbon) and in the archives of Ghana. In addition, representations
of the forts and castles found in the familiar travel corpus, including texts
(like biographies and memoires), images and cartography by historic
European visitors and administrators on the West African coast, are a val-
uable source.41 Furthermore, oral history testimonies, images, literature,
theatrical performances, etc. gathered through the fieldwork method and
the historiography of African and European encounter are valuable com-
plementary resources.
Cumulatively, the studies in this collection show that it is in reviewing
how the whole gamut of sources may represent societies and individuals
that we can comparatively appreciate how Europeans wished to represent
themselves and the local communities. In making the case for the poten-
tial of underexploited sources, the authors grant particular legitimacy to
literary and other artistic representations of the past. We see these impor-
tant sources not as validators of truth, but as historic representations that
afford us important insight into how their European and African crea-
tors represented their histories of interaction, exchange and empire in
the cultural milieu of the time. It is to these monuments, archival docu-
ments, material remains and oral records as well as the methodologies
of disciplines such as African studies, global/world history, archaeol-
ogy, heritage studies, memory studies, architecture, comparative cultural
studies, art history and world arts that the writers of this collection have
turned to consider West Africa’s European fortifications.
This Collection: Thematic, Theoretical

and Empirical Common Grounds
This section introduces the founding concept of this book. We will

address the thematic, theoretical and empirical linkages that connect the
chapters, whilst emphasising the uniqueness of each one in turn. The
driving idea behind this collection is the need for new academic and pop-
ular understanding of the network of fortresses so as to emphasise the
impact of the forts and castles on society and space within West Africa.
Whilst this is intended to open up discussions of the fortresses’ var-
ied sociopolitical, economic and cultural contexts, it is not intended to
underrate the uses to which the buildings were put during the dastardly
business of enslavement and forced deportation of captured Africans to
work in the cotton, tobacco and sugar cane fields of the Americas and
Caribbean. We do not seek in any way to marginalise the importance of
slavery studies. Surely, the story of the trans-Atlantic slave trade must be
told through reference to the forts and castles. However, the buildings
ought to be seen as tools used by people, European and African alike, to
make wealth for themselves, families and nations. And, when visitors go
to the ‘dungeons’ and pass through the ‘door of no return’, they must
not only be thinking of what horrific places these were and how haunt-
ing they still feel. They ought to also see and think of these places as
reminders of the capacity of nameable people and groups to contrive and
use devices to oppress and visit cruelty on others for profit and for politi-
cal gain. Furthermore, the scholarship in this collection invites readers to
think about the centuries of activity that took place in and around these
buildings both before and after the trans-Atlantic slave trade took place.
With explicit and not so explicit focus on particular forts and castles,
the authors in this volume investigate and analyse how the fortresses
affected society and space in the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Generally,
the chapters approach their themes and analysis by considering particu-
lar forts or castles as nodes in competing historical and cultural spaces,
where West African history connects to a multitude of global histories.
They also emphasise the historicity of the fortifications as sites of mem-
ory and examine the buildings as edifices with a collective focus on the
lives lived inside and beyond; the Euro-African societies created; the
impact on demographic, socioculture, political and economic change;
as well as the continued use and preservation of material artefacts and
intellectual preservation—the place forts and castles hold in our global
collective memory. Research that takes these buildings as the start-

ing point of multifaceted studies is innovative, and their approaches are
capable of taking account for analysis, interaction and change in African
settings.
One of the strengths of the collection comes from the diverse per-
spectives that manifest through a framework of transnational and entan-
gled histories. This not only allows new discussions of how scholars may
interpret the forts and castles of Ghana through various theoretical and
disciplinary perspectives, but also challenges expectations of which meth-
ods researchers may employ in conducting similar studies. Above all, the
essays enable greater understanding—at local, state and international
levels—of the contemporary positions of the forts and castles as herit-
age sites where the separate but connected Euro-African and African-
American experiences are narrated through guided tours, museums
exhibitions and dramatisation. In taking this approach to study the posi-
tions and impacts of the forts and castles, the authors seek to generate
new conversations about the African-European encounter on the Gold
Coast and in West Africa, without, in any way, demeaning the status of
these edifices as symbols of oppression and memorial sites of the slave
trade.
Beyond the broadly binding idea that underpins the collection, there
are thematic, conceptual and empirical linkages between some of the
chapters. One cross-cutting theme in the first three chapters concerns
how the forts and castles were exploited for constructing and perpetuat-
ing European national myths of heroism, power and sovereignty through
cultural enactments, narratives, artistic impressions and museum exhibi-
tions. In the age of overseas European competition, the different con-
texts of the public imaginings of and myths about their nations’ presence
in West Africa served to rally national and patriotic feelings for empire.
This theme is apparent in the way that the first three chapters analyse
aspects of periodic reimagining through public commemorations of
the colonial culture in Europe. This is achieved in relation to how the
Germans and British understood their connection to the fortresses and
people of West Africa.
In Chap. 2, Roberto Zaugg problematises a German myth that cel-
ebrates Fort Grossfriedrichsburg at Pokesu in the western part of the
Gold Coast as the first ‘German colony’. Furthermore, applying the
metaphor of performance,42 the chapter argues that the celebration in
German culture (from the late nineteenth century) of a Brandenburg
military expedition to Pokesu constituted an act of imaginary appro-

priation that refashioned the present in response to an imagined past.
Conceptually, the strength of the analysis derives from how it draws on
perspectives on the relationship between cultural memory (associated
with place, monument, artefact, document, performative act, occasion
and national heroes) and the use of history in the invention of tradi-
tions, which syncs with the theoretical positioning of influential works by
Pierre Nora, Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.43
Looking at the British case in Chap. 3, Victoria Ellen Smith explores
how images of West Africa and narratives of heroics and honour were
projected to Britain in the nineteenth century to entice all manner of
British men and women from various professions to travel to Cape Coast,
and how those who came related to the African communities politically,
economically and culturally. Furthermore, it interrogates how the British
myths of the nineteenth century contributed to the imposition of British
colonial rule. It concludes that establishing their ‘Britishness’ in West
Africa and creating an enduring collective identity for the Anglo-Fante
society at Cape Coast was as much, if not more, about creating a reality
for themselves as it was about defining that which they encountered.
In Chap. 4, Emily Mann offers a detailed and critical study of eight-
eenth-century topographical views and plans of fortresses on the Ghanaian
coast. Narratives about the dissemination of these images are woven
together with a history of the 1707 Act of Union, commercial and cultural
encounters between Africans and Europeans, and the end of the Royal
African Company’s trade monopoly in West Africa.44 The chapter cautions
against using such images as straightforward sources for the fortresses, and
argues that the artists sought to use them to persuade their audiences that
the buildings represented and that the artists sought to use them to per-
suade the British public that the buildings represented Britain’s greatness
as well as having potential in terms of settlement and control.45 The chap-
ter concludes, perceptively, that as much as the artists and audiences used
the drawings as evidence of the shape and scale of European military and
economic dominance in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, they elicit
a similar effect today. In addition, in opening the analysis with a descrip-
tion of a gallery space at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich
(England) when the museum reopened a display to mark the 2007 bicen-
tenary of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Chap. 4 immediately
speaks to Chap. 3, which considers how the triumph of abolition became
the dominant memory of British activity in West Africa, and to Chap. 9,
which addresses how the museum spaces at Cape Coast Castle simultane-
ously represent the history of the former British trading headquarters, the
culture of the Fante host community, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the
African-American legacy. This reflects the general theme of how museum
exhibitions are used to project histories of different actors from different
standpoints.46
The important theme of European military and economic dominance
in the West African milieu prior to the 1850s is broached in Chaps. 2, 3
and 4. This theme is further elaborated on in the fifth chapter by John
Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Hermann von Hesse, which concurs with the
observation made in Chap. 4 regarding the contrast between the image
of British power on the Gold Coast (as projected by draughtsmen in
their drawings of the fortresses) and the tenuous reality of European
power in the period. Chapter 5 illustrates through different empirical
scenarios that whilst the forts and castles were monumental in compari-
son to the local vernacular architecture, they projected only illusions of
power and protection. Indeed, relatively, the fortresses provided little
protection to either European residents or their local allies during peri-
ods when the region was volatile due to vicious inter-European competi-
tion, slave raids and waves of expansion wars being waged by the forest
Akan states as they attempted to dominate the coast.
The theme of gendered political, economic, social and cultural West
African spaces is elaborated on in several chapters that deal with how
men and women actively carved niches for themselves amidst African-
European interactions. Generally, in the period, men dominated both
politics and trade, two complimentary activities that accorded them influ-
ence and power. The case then, as it is now, was that men and women
rarely had equal access to opportunities in the social space. Whilst both
men and women functioned as the ruling elite of West African polities,
there arose on the Gold Coast a class of African male merchants, known
in the Akan Twi language of Ghana as abirempɔŋ (sing.: ɔbirempɔŋ47).
These men grew wealthy due to their role as facilitators of the Atlantic
trade, and thereby became shaping forces in the Gold Coast economic,
military and sociopolitical milieu of the eighteenth century. Chapters
2, 5 and 6 describe, with degrees of emphasis, the activities and influ-
ence of some of the abirempɔŋ, particularly Asameni of Akwamu and
Jan Conny (Kɔne Kpole), who challenged the monopolistic tendencies
of the Danish and Dutch trading companies. The daring nature of these
men was manifest in Asameni’s seizure and occupation of the Danish
Christiansborg Castle for a year (1693–1694) and Conny’s occupation

of the Brandenburg’s Fort Grossfriedrichsburg for 6 years (1718–1724).
The relative ease with which these abirempɔŋ appropriated the forts
underscores the argument that the buildings were vulnerable despite
their intimidating appearance.
Though men dominated trade and politics in West Africa in the sev-
enteenth and eighteenth centuries, some women exercised remarkable
economic, political and cultural agency in the context of an economy
broadly restructured in response to the integration of West Africa into
the Atlantic capitalist economic system. In Chap. 6, Kwabena Adu-
Boahen expatiates on the agency of Gold Coast women—whether they
were positioned through British interference or an authority that was
deeply rooted in legitimate structures of trade and inheritance. The
chapter locates their influence in the histories of the forts and castles and
recognises that women both with and without a personal relationship to
a European man—be that as father, husband or patron—became influen-
tial in economic and political spheres. It explains how the women used
their roles as political and cultural actors to exploit external influences
and accumulate new resources that facilitated their upward mobility and
enhanced their prestige. The achievement of this chapter, therefore, is to
firmly locate women who live in the locality of the fortifications within
their economic history via the elucidation of female political influence in
Gold Coast society, thus contributing to a relatively neglected theme in
West African history. In cases where women moved beyond the domestic
sphere through ‘sexual allegiance’ with European men as wives or con-
cubines, new households bearing European names rose alongside (and,
at times, surpassed) traditional rulers to become the Euro-African elite
of the nineteenth century. In making these claims, the chapter is a useful
addition to the established feminist scholarship as it considers ideologies
of a public-private binary that locates women of Africa in the domestic
sphere and enables men to control the political and economic spheres.48
Similarly, on the European side, perception of the European overseas
presence as a masculinist domain is being confronted by descriptions
of European women of empire, like Letitia Elizabeth Landon who—
as explained in Chap. 3—lived, died and was entombed at Cape Coast
Castle.49
The next two Chaps. 7 and 8, are archaeological and architectural
studies that engage with the material remains, physical design and struc-
tural development of some of the forts and castles in order to study the
connected histories of West Africans and Europeans in selected locali-

ties. Employing archaeological data derived from surface surveys and
excavations at various locations, Chap. 7 documents Fritz Biveridge’s
investigation of the impact of commercial and social exchanges in and
around Fort Metal Cross on the host Ahanta communities. The chapter
avers that though Dixcove did not function as a major hub of the trans-
Atlantic slave trading network, a large quantity of European remains—
jewellery and household materials—were found, which suggests that the
presence of the fort as a British out-base greatly transformed the material
preferences of Dixcove society.
In Chap. 8, Henry Nii Adziri Wellington and Rexford Assasie
Oppong’s analysis of some Danish and British castles is structured in two
parts. Part one establishes the spatial historical context of Christiansborg
Castle to illustrate how forts and castles in West Africa reflect European
philosophies and conceptions of space. Part two focuses on the archi-
tectural configuration of the dungeon spaces to consider them as con-
traptions of oppression. The analysis considers how the architecture
replicates and modifies the established designs and materials used for for-
tified structures, as well as how their cores grew both horizontally and
vertically with an eclectic ensemble of organically chosen architectural
elements to become imposing edifices. In doing so, the chapter argues
that the physical expressions of European presence in West Africa, as
found in the forts and castles, can be used to interpret how the struc-
tures shaped interactions between various players and the people they
represented. Of particular importance to the first part of this chapter are
the curtain walls, gateways and windows because of their physical expres-
sion of territoriality (conveying by whom the building is controlled), fil-
ters (controlling the movement of people, information, goods and fresh
air) and boundaries (demarcating the restrictions on cultural contact).
Part two of this architectural study responds to global perception of the
forts and castles as slave holding facilities (dungeons). In considering the
fortifications of Ghana’s Central Region, scale drawings of the ground
plans are employed to gain a nuanced understanding of the experience
of African captives by conducting architectural analysis to reconstruct the
atmosphere that might have existed in spaces referred to by the authors
as architectural contraptions of oppression. The aim here is to provide
not only scholars but also tour guides and other heritage interpreters
working in sites such as these in West Africa with new data for applica-
tion in their respective fields.
The theme of engaging with the fortresses as heritage sites and sites
of memory for enacting a variety of visitor experiences—as elucidated in
many of the chapters—is addressed more closely in Chap. 9 by Neelima
Jeychandran and Chap. 10 by John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Ebenezer
Ayesu. Respectively, the chapters analyse visitor experiences at Cape
Coast Castle and President Barack Obama’s momentous visit to the
same site in 2009. Chapter 9 describes Cape Coast Castle as a theatre
of memory,50 which, as previously mentioned, aligns it theoretically with
aspects of the Chaps. 2, 3 and 4 in its deployment of Pierre Nora’s con-
cept of lieux de mémoire to argue that the memory scape of the Castle
gains increasing significance through the various experiences that visitors
have whilst within its spaces. This assertion is illustrated through analysis
of the site-specific nature of visitors’ encounters with the Castle as well as
the experiences they gained within its museum spaces, as tourist engag-
ing in the rituals of taking photographs and purchasing souvenirs, and as
members of the audience for re-enactment performances. Furthermore,
this chapter, like many of the others in the volume, gives attention to the
international effort led by the GMMB and UNESCO to salvage and pre-
serve the forts and castles as Heritage for human kind. They collectively
became a World Heritage Site in 1979; in the early 1990s, new museum
spaces were curated; tour guide narratives have become standardised over
the last decade; and events such as the biennial Pan-African Historical
Theatre Festival (PANAFEST) are dedicated to the contextualisation of
European fortification within Ghanaian history, the culture of the Fante
states, and the African-American legacy of enslavement and forced exile.
An affinity between Chaps. 9 and 10 is obvious when it comes to con-
sideration of contemporary visitors’ experiences at the fortresses. Chapter
10 hinges on an analysis of Obama’s 2009 presidential visit to Ghana
with his family and their tour of Cape Coast Castle within the broad
frameworks of America’s political agenda towards sub-Saharan Africa and
the culture of pilgrimage (‘Roots’ or ‘Diaspora’) tourism. Arguing that
the visit was in many ways a journey that fused political motivations, his-
torical meanings, symbolisms and paradoxes, the chapter interrogates the
historical and political authorities behind the visit and questions whether
in walking through the infamous ‘Door of No Return’, Obama could
claim legitimacy as a true representative of the African-American experi-
ence derived from ancestral enslavement.
Chapter 11 by Jon Olav Hove is a fitting conclusion to the volume by
virtue of its multidisciplinary position within history and heritage studies.
By looking at the heritage policies and restoration practices of successive

colonial and post-colonial governments of Ghana since 1945, the chap-
ter argues that the forts and castles have survived due to the commit-
ment of political officials to preserving them for posterity. Though other
chapters mention the point, a strength of this chapter is its in-depth trac-
ing of how transition of purpose and adaptation of use fulfil new func-
tions in changing situations and periods. Furthermore, in touching on
the theme of restoration and heritage policy, Chap. 11 raises an issue
that runs through several of the chapters: the various political and private
initiatives to use the forts and castles not only to educate future gener-
ations of Ghanaian and international visitors—as elucidated in Chap. 8—
but also to rake in economic dividends from African-American tourists.
Attempts to make economic capital from grief appear cynical, especially
considering that—as explored in Chaps. 8, 9 and 10—the fortresses do
not seem to hold any emotional significance or sentimental attraction for
Ghanaians, or, indeed, for West Africans in general.
Concluding Suggestions
The chapters in this collection seek to contribute to new ways of seeing
forts and castles in the social, cultural, economic and political contexts
of West Africa. Thus, the core idea of the collection is that though the
vast majority of European fortifications in West Africa were conceived in
the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries to facilitate the trans-Atlantic slave
trade, the contemporary focus on them as ‘culprits’ in the dastardly trade
potentially deflects the scholarly gaze away from the trade’s human partici-
pants, European and African alike. Yes, the story must be told of how the
fortresses were used to imprison Africans prior to their transportation and
exploitation in chattel slavery. However, as the various studies in this vol-
ume show, it is possible to employ multi- and interdisciplinary approaches
to interrogate the various roles and impacts of the buildings on society and
space in West Africa as well as to explore how European groups sought
to use them in their own intra-European status contests. In all these, the
fortresses are seen implicitly or explicitly as nodal points of entanglement
within the sociopolitical spaces, where various forms of local and global
connections, interactions, perspectives, networks of exchanges, flows (of
goods, people, cultures and ideals) and memories have originated.
Rather paradoxically, the history of the slave trade from West Africa
has been kept alive today, with the associated contemporary rituals of
remembrance and enactment remaining poignant, largely due to the

resilient, physical presence of the stone and brick remnants of the for-
tresses. Moreover, the post-slavery appropriation and conversion of the
buildings to other oppressive and civil uses is testimony to the malle-
ability of architecture to human caprices. Through this collection, it is
intended that the forts and castles may be seen not only for the shadow
cast by one of their historic uses, but for the position they occupy in
numerous narratives of West African history from pre-colonial trade and
interactions to the seat of recent governments via various African and
European imperial dominations.
Notes
1. Charles L.H. Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society: Fortresses in England,
France and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 15.
2. Paul Erdmann Isert, Letters on West Africa and the Slave Trade: Paul
Erdmann Isert’s Journey to Guinea and the Caribbean Islands in
Columbia (1788) ed. by Selena Axelrod Winsnes (Accra: Sub-Saharan
Publ., 2007), 96.
3. A.W. Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1963), 25. The Portuguese built forts at many places
from the Mauritanian island of Arguin in the 1440s, to the Gold Coast
in 1482, on to Mozambique, East Africa, India and Malacca by 1511,
to Indonesia’s Jakarta (Batavia) in 1521 and Macau (Macao) in China
by 1524. See Marco Ramerini, ‘Arguin: A Portuguese Fortress in
Mauritania, 1445–1633’. Source http://www.colonialvoyage.com/
arguin-portuguese-fortress-mauritania/#.
4. For definitions of the terminologies of ‘castle’, ‘fort’ and ‘lodge’, see A.W.
Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1963), 70; Lise E. Hull, Britain’s Medieval Castles (Westport:
Praeger Publishers, 2006), xiii–xxvi and 173–188; Coulson, 1–14.
5. Lawrence (1963), 14 –15. Perhaps the most sustained attempt since 1998
to build a comprehensive and up to date Internet database of European
colonial forts worldwide is Marco Rameniri’s ongoing effort at http://
www.colonialvoyage.com. The site includes continental and national
(original ownership) overviews and bibliographies.
6. See Albert Van Dantzig, Forts and Castles of Ghana (Accra: Sedco
Publishing, 1980, Reprinted 1999), viii–xii; J.D. Fage, Transactions of
the Historical Society of Ghana (formerly Transaction of the Gold Coast
and Togoland Historical Society), vol. 4 (1959, 57–68); and Gold Coast
Survey Department, Atlas of the Gold Coast (Accra: 1949), 19–20. For
definitions of ‘castle’, see http://www.castlesandmanorhouses.com/cas-
tles.htm.
7. The distance between the fortifications ranges from 500 m to 15 km.
8. J.R. Hale, ‘Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa by A.W. Lawrence.
London: Jonathan Cape, 1963’. Antiquity, 39: 155, 1965, 231–232.
9. For a description of the types of forts and castles built in West Africa, see
Lawrence, 1963, Chap. 6.
10. For the impact of climatic change on coastal erosion, see ‘Osu Castle
could sink into the sea’ GNA, 3/12/2009. See http://www.ghanaweb.
com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/printnews.php?ID=172879.
11. See Peter Francopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London
and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 260.
12. See H.M. Feinberg, ‘Palaver on the Gold Coast: Elmina-Dutch
Cooperation during the Eighteenth Century’ and René Baesjou, ‘Dutch
“irregular” Jurisdiction on the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast’ in
René Baesjou and Robert Ross (Eds.), Palaver-European Interference in
African Dispute Settlement, African Perspectives 1979/2 (Leiden: Afrika-
Studiersentrum, 1979) 11–20 and 21–66; Rebecca Shumway, The Fante
and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Rochester, NY: Rochester University
Press, 2011), 61–62.
13. For instance, the Dutch displaced the Portuguese on the Gold Coast after
capturing all their forts from 1637; and the British became the dominant
force on the Gold Coast by purchasing Danish forts in 1850 and taking
over the Dutch forts in 1872.
14. The official inauguration of Flagstaff House (originally named Golden
Jubilee House) as the residence and seat of power for the Ghanaian presi-
dent happened in 2008. However, the actual transfer of The Presidency
(full-scale government business) from Christiansborg Castle to Flagstaff
House happened in 2012/2013. Prior to this transfer, the edifice served
sporadically as a reception site for visiting foreign presidents and diplo-
mats. At the time of writing, Christiansborg Castle continues to house
auxiliary government offices, with President Nana Akufo-Addo hav-
ing used the occasion of Ghana’s 60th anniversary of Independence (6
March, 2017) to launch the initiative that will transform Christiansborg
Castle into a Presidential Museum.
15. Historically, the destruction and desecration of monuments span differ-
ent time periods and geographical expanses. War is the most obvious
destructive force of monuments. Institutions, organisations and organised
events like tourism as well as individual action are alleged to be culprits.
On NATO’s alleged culpability in destruction of historical monuments,
see Nina Posidelow and Athanasia Mantzouranis, ‘Chapter 9. Destruction
of Cultural and Historic Sites in Yugoslavia’ (Independent Commission

of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of
Yugoslavia). See http://iacenter.org/warcrime/9_cultur.htm.
16. Coulson, 1.
17. See http://www.castlestudiesgroup.org.uk/.
18. See for instance: A.W. Lawrence, Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1963); J. Kwesi Anquandah, Castles and Forts
of Ghana (Paris:, Atlante, 1999); I.S. Ephson, Ancient Forts and Castles
of the Gold Coast (Ghana) (Accra: Ilen Publications, 1970); Michel
Doortmont and Michel Van den Nieuwenhof, Ancient Forts and Castles
in Ghana (1999); Albert Van Dantzig, Forts and Castles of Ghana (Accra:
Sedco, 1980); and Albert van Dantzig and Barbara Priddy, A Short
History of the Forts and Castles of Ghana (Accra: Liberty Press, 1971).
19. See Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (formerly Transaction
of the Gold Coast and Togoland Historical Society), vol. 4 (1959, 57–68);
also Gold Coast Survey Department, Atlas of the Gold Coast (1949);
W.E.F. Ward, A History of the Gold Coast (1948); and W.W. Claridge,
A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti (1915).
20. Ancient Forts and Castles of the Gold Coast (Ghana) (Accra: Ghana
Institute of Art and Culture, 1970).
21. Forts and Castles of Ghana (Accra: Sedco, 1980).
22. The Grand Slave Emporium: Cape Coast Castle and the British slave trade
(London: Profile Books, 2006).
23. The Fante and the Trans-atlantic Slave Trade (Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 2011).
24. Trade Castles and Forts of West Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1963).
25. Castles and Forts of Ghana (Accra: Ghana Museum and Monuments
Board, 1999).
26. ‘Early Trade Posts and Forts of West Africa’ in Eric Klingelhofer (ed.),
First Forts: Essays on the Archaeology of Proto-colonial Fortifications
(Leiden: Brill, 2010).
27. A.W. Lawrence, ‘Some Source Books for West African History’, The
Journal of African History, (1961) 227–234, 2; E. Kofi Agorsah,
‘Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Slavery: placing Africa in
African Diaspora Studies in the Caribbean’ in Paul J. lane and Kevin C.
Macdonald (Ed.), Proceedings of the British Academy 168 Oxford 2011),
199–221.
28. An example is K.E. Blankson, Cape Coast Castle Tour: a concise interpreta-
tion of the Cape Coast Castle (Cape Coast: Nyakod, 2009).
29. Examples are as follows: Brodie Cruickshank’s Eighteen Years on the
Gold Coast of Africa: including an account of the native tribes, and
their intercourse with Europeans, vols. 1 & 2 (1853; 1966; New York:
Elibron Classics, 2007); J.J. Crooks’ Records Relating to the Gold Coast
Settlements from 1750 to 1874 (Psychology Press, 1923); João de Barros’s,
Asia (1552) translated and edited by G. R. Crome (Hakluyt Society, No.
LXXXVI, 2nd ser., 1937); Ruy de Pina’s Chronicle of John II. [ca 1500],
translated and edited by J. W. Blake (Hakluyt Society, No. LXXXVI, 2nd
ser., 1941); and George Nørregård’s Danish Settlements in West Africa,
1658–1850, translated by Sigurd Mammen (Boston, 1966). Others
include George Macdonald’s The Gold Coast: Past and Present - a short
description of the country and its people (London, 1898); Closing the Books:
Governor Edward Carstensen on Danish Guinea 1842–1850, translated
by T. Storsveen (Accra: Sub-Saharan, 2010). Thorkild Hansen’s Coast
of Slaves, translated by Kari Dako (Accra: Sub-Saharan, 2009), also deals
with memoirs and archival evidence, but through the form of the didactic
novel.
30. Charles L.H. Coulson, Castles in Medieval Society: Fortresses in England,
France and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 1.
31. The White House, Office of the Press Secretary: Remarks by the President
at Cape Coast Castle (11 July 2009) www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/remarks-president-cape-coast-castle [Accessed: 06/08/2009];
also see ‘President Obama’s African journey’, Interview with Anderson
Cooper at Cape Coast Castle, Ghana, CNN 360 Special Edition. www.
youtube.com/watch?v=0gmDoon_yC.
32. Rebecca Shumway’s work is in this vein: ‘Of particular interest [to visitors
from the Western Hemisphere] … are Africa’s largest collection of forts
and castles used during the transatlantic slave trade … [which] offer vivid
reminders of the horrific trade that gave birth to the black population of
the Americas. Visitors come to Ghana’s Castles to experience … where
many Americans’ ancestors spent their last days …’ and ‘in search of a
connection with their own African ancestors’ (p. 3).
33. House of Slaves and ‘Door of no Return’: Gold Coast/Ghana Slave Forts,
Castles and Dungeons and the Atlantic Slave Trade (Trenton, NJ: Africa
World Press, 2012).
34. Style-wise, the two in Egypt are uniquely Arabic; the one in Ethiopia is
a blend of Arabic, Nubian and Gothic; and four are medieval and Early
Modern European. See http://historylists.org/architecture/7-amazing-
forts-fortresses-and-castles-in-africa.html. See also ‘Latest History Lists’,
http://historylists.org/index.html.
35. The Saladin Citadel (Cairo Citadel), built by Sultan Saladin of Egypt
and Syria (from 1174 to 1193); and the Citadel of Qaitbay (Alexandria,
Egypt), built during the rule of the Mamluk Sultan Qaitbay (1468–
1496).
36. Fasil Ghebbi Castle (Gondar, Ethiopia), built during the era of Ethiopian
Emperor Fasilides (1632–1667).
37. Fort Jesus in Mombasa, Kenya was built by the Portuguese between 1593
and 1596; and Good Hope Castle (originally Fort de Goede Hoop) in
Cape Town, South Africa was erected by the Dutch between 1666 and
1679.
38. Holger Weiss, ‘The Entangled Spaces of Edena, Oguaa and Osu: A Survey
of Three early Modern African Atlantic Towns, ca. 1650–1850’ in Holger
Weiss (ed.), Ports of Globalisation, Places of Creolisation: Nordic Possessions
in the Atlantic World during the Era of the Slave Trade (Leiden: Brill,
2016) 23.
39. See www.ghanamuseums.org/forts/forts-castles.php.
40. W.J. Varley, ‘Castles of the Gold Coast’, West Africa, 21 June 1952,
555–556.
41. Jean Barbot, Williem Bosman, Pieter de Marees, Paul Erdman Isert, H.C.
Monrad, Johannes Rask, William Smith, Wilhelm Johann Müller, Edward
Carstensen Henry Meredith and G.E. Metcalfe. More contemporary
works like Barbara Priddy, Albert van Dantzig, Margaret Priestley, J.K.
Anquandah and A.W. Lawrence have been useful.
42. For the notion of ‘metaphor of performance’ see Tim Edensor, National
Identity, Popular Culture and Everyday Life (New York: oxford
International Publishers Ltd, 2002), 69–102.
43. See Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1996); ‘Between Memory and
History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–24;
‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’ Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000): 1–14; Terance Ranger, ‘The Invention of
Tradition in Colonial Africa’, The Invention of Tradition: 211–262.
44. The chapter supports Geoff Quilley’s argument in ‘The Lie of the Land:
slavery and the aesthetics of imperial landscape in eighteenth-century
British art’, Representing Slavery: Art, Artefacts and Archives in the
Collections of the National Maritime Museum ed. by Douglas Hamilton
and Robert J. Blyth (Aldershot, Hampshire: Lund Humphries, 2007)
120–35, 124.
45. Thomas Astley, who published a number of the images in 1745, expressed
a similar view on the importance of the forts for the British-African trade.
See Thomas Astley [collector and publisher], A New General Collection of
Voyages and Travels, vol. 2 (London, 1745), vii.
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Vendramin vit d’opium, celui-ci vit d’amour, celui-là s’enfonce dans la
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—Parce que vous voulez tous vous distraire d’une idée fixe
qu’une révolution guérirait radicalement, reprit le médecin. Le
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Piémontais souhaite le gouvernement constitutionnel, le Romagnol
désire la liberté...
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l’influence des femmes. La plupart de mes compatriotes veulent lire
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au prix de bien du sang le droit de s’y disputer comme vous le faites
pour de sottes idées.
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—Je croyais les Italiens plus patriotes, dit le Français.
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ne pouvons lui offrir. Tout à coup, en se retournant, il se trouve face
à face avec le terrible visage du sénateur armé d’un poignard; il
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les jardins suspendus de Sémiramis, le temple de Jérusalem, les
merveilles de Rome. Enfin il agrandit le Moyen-âge par le monde de
la vapeur, par de nouveaux chefs-d’œuvre qu’enfantent les arts,
protégés comme Venise les protégeait autrefois. Les monuments,
les hommes, se pressent et tiennent dans son étroit cerveau, où les
empires, les villes, les révolutions se déroulent et s’écroulent en peu
d’heures, où Venise seule s’accroît et grandit; car la Venise de ses
rêves a l’empire de la mer, deux millions d’habitants, le sceptre de
l’Italie, la possession de la Méditerranée et les Indes!
—Quel opéra qu’une cervelle d’homme, quel abîme peu compris,
par ceux mêmes qui en ont fait le tour, comme Gall, s’écria le
médecin.
—Chère duchesse, dit Vendramin d’une voix caverneuse,
n’oubliez pas le dernier service que me rendra mon élixir. Après
avoir entendu des voix ravissantes, avoir saisi la musique par tous
mes pores, avoir éprouvé de poignantes délices, et dénoué les plus
chaudes amours du paradis de Mahomet, j’en suis aux images
terribles. J’entrevois maintenant dans ma chère Venise des figures
d’enfant contractées comme celles des mourants, des femmes
couvertes d’horribles plaies, déchirées, plaintives; des hommes
disloqués, pressés par les flancs cuivreux de navires qui s’entre-
choquent. Je commence à voir Venise comme elle est, couverte de
crêpes, nue, dépouillée, déserte. De pâles fantômes se glissent
dans ses rues!... Déjà grimacent les soldats de l’Autriche, déjà ma
belle vie rêveuse se rapproche de la vie réelle; tandis qu’il y a six
mois c’était la vie réelle qui était le mauvais sommeil, et la vie de
l’opium était ma vie d’amour et de voluptés, d’affaires graves et de
haute politique. Hélas! pour mon malheur, j’arrive à l’aurore de la
tombe, où le faux et le vrai se réunissent en de douteuses clartés qui
ne sont ni le jour ni la nuit, et qui participent de l’un et de l’autre.
—Vous voyez qu’il y a trop de patriotisme dans cette tête, dit le
prince en posant sa main sur les touffes de cheveux noirs qui se
pressaient au-dessus du front de Vendramin.
—Oh! s’il nous aime, dit Massimilla, il renoncera bientôt à son
triste opium.
—Je guérirai votre ami, dit le Français.
—Faites cette cure, et nous vous aimerons, dit Massimilla; mais
si vous ne nous calomniez point à votre retour en France, nous vous
aimerons encore davantage. Pour être jugés, les pauvres Italiens
sont trop énervés par de pesantes dominations; car nous avons
connu la vôtre, ajouta-t-elle en souriant.
—Elle était plus généreuse que celle de l’Autriche, répliqua
vivement le médecin.
—L’Autriche nous pressure sans rien nous rendre, et vous nous
pressuriez pour agrandir et embellir nos villes, vous nous stimuliez
en nous faisant des armées. Vous comptiez garder l’Italie, et ceux-ci
croient qu’ils la perdront, voilà toute la différence. Les Autrichiens
nous donnent un bonheur stupéfiant et lourd comme eux, tandis que
vous nous écrasiez de votre dévorante activité. Mais mourir par les
toniques, ou mourir par les narcotiques, qu’importe! n’est-ce pas
toujours la mort, monsieur le docteur?
—Pauvre Italie! elle est à mes yeux comme une belle femme à
qui la France devrait servir de défenseur, en la prenant pour
maîtresse, s’écria le médecin.
—Vous ne sauriez pas nous aimer à notre fantaisie, dit la
duchesse en souriant. Nous voulons être libres, mais la liberté que je
veux n’est pas votre ignoble et bourgeois libéralisme qui tuerait les
Arts. Je veux, dit-elle d’un son de voix qui fit tressaillir toute la loge,
c’est-à-dire, je voudrais que chaque république italienne renaquît
avec ses nobles, avec son peuple et ses libertés spéciales pour
chaque caste. Je voudrais les anciennes républiques aristocratiques
avec leurs luttes intestines, avec leurs rivalités qui produisirent les
plus belles œuvres de l’art, qui créèrent la politique, élevèrent les
plus illustres maisons princières. Étendre l’action d’un gouvernement
sur une grande surface de terre, c’est l’amoindrir. Les républiques
italiennes ont été la gloire de l’Europe au Moyen-âge. Pourquoi
l’Italie a-t-elle succombé, là où les Suisses, ses portiers, ont vaincu?
—Les républiques suisses, dit le médecin, étaient de bonnes
femmes de ménage occupées de leurs petites affaires, et qui
n’avaient rien à s’envier; tandis que vos républiques étaient des
souveraines orgueilleuses qui se sont vendues pour ne pas saluer
leurs voisines; elles sont tombées trop bas pour jamais se relever.
Les Guelfes triomphent!
—Ne nous plaignez pas trop, dit la duchesse d’une voix
orgueilleuse qui fit palpiter les deux amis, nous vous dominons
toujours! Du fond de sa misère, l’Italie règne par les hommes d’élite
qui fourmillent dans ses cités. Malheureusement, la partie la plus
considérable de nos génies arrive si rapidement à comprendre la
vie, qu’ils s’ensevelissent dans une paisible jouissance; quant à ceux
qui veulent jouer au triste jeu de l’immortalité, ils savent bien saisir
votre or et mériter votre admiration. Oui, dans ce pays, dont
l’abaissement est déploré par de niais voyageurs et par des poëtes
hypocrites, dont le caractère est calomnié par les politiques, dans ce
pays qui paraît énervé, sans puissance, en ruines, vieilli plutôt que
vieux, il se trouve en toute chose de puissants génies qui poussent
de vigoureux rameaux, comme sur un ancien plant de vigne
s’élancent des jets où viennent de délicieuses grappes. Ce peuple
d’anciens souverains donne encore des rois qui s’appellent
Lagrange, Volta, Rasori, Canova, Rossini, Bartolini, Galvani, Vigano,
Beccaria, Gicognara, Corvetto. Ces Italiens dominent le point de la
science humaine sur lequel ils se fixent, ou régentent l’art auquel ils
s’adonnent. Sans parler des chanteurs, des cantatrices, et des
exécutants qui imposent l’Europe par une perfection inouïe, comme
Taglioni, Paganini, etc., l’Italie règne encore sur le monde, qui
viendra toujours l’adorer. Allez ce soir à Florian, vous trouverez dans
Capraja l’un de nos hommes d’élite, mais amoureux de l’obscurité;
nul, excepté le duc Cataneo, mon maître, ne comprend mieux que
lui la musique; aussi l’a-t-on nommé ici il fanatico!
Après quelques instants, pendant lesquels la conversation
s’anima entre le Français et la duchesse, qui se montra finement
éloquente, les Italiens se retirèrent un à un pour aller dire dans
toutes les loges que la Cataneo, qui passait pour être una donna di
gran spirito, avait battu, sur la question de l’Italie, un habile médecin
français. Ce fut la nouvelle de la soirée. Quand le Français se vit
seul entre le prince et la duchesse, il comprit qu’il fallait les laisser
seuls, et sortit. Massimilla salua le médecin par une inclination de
tête qui le mettait si loin d’elle, que ce geste aurait pu lui attirer la
haine de cet homme, s’il eût pu méconnaître le charme de sa parole
et de sa beauté. Vers la fin de l’opéra, Émilio fut donc seul avec la
Cataneo; tous deux ils se prirent la main, et entendirent ainsi le duo
qui termine il Barbiere.
—Il n’y a que la musique pour exprimer l’amour, dit la duchesse
émue par ce chant de deux rossignols heureux.
Une larme mouilla les yeux d’Émilio, Massimilla, sublime de la
beauté qui reluit dans la sainte Cécile de Raphaël, lui pressait la
main, leurs genoux se touchaient, elle avait comme un baiser en
fleur sur les lèvres. Le prince voyait sur les joues éclatantes de sa
maîtresse un flamboiement joyeux pareil à celui qui s’élève par un
jour d’été au-dessus des moissons dorées, il avait le cœur oppressé
par tout son sang qui y affluait; il croyait entendre un concert de voix
angéliques, il aurait donné sa vie pour ressentir le désir que lui avait
inspiré la veille, à pareille heure, la détestée Clarina; mais il ne se
sentait même pas avoir un corps. Cette larme, la Massimilla
malheureuse l’attribua, dans son innocence, à la parole que venait
de lui arracher la cavatine de Genovese.
—Carino, dit-elle à l’oreille d’Émilio, n’es-tu pas au-dessus des
expressions amoureuses autant que la cause est supérieure à
l’effet?
Après avoir mis la duchesse dans sa gondole, Émilio attendit
Vendramin pour aller à Florian.
Le café Florian est à Venise une indéfinissable institution. Les
négociants y font leurs affaires, et les avocats y donnent des rendez-
vous pour y traiter leurs consultations les plus épineuses. Florian est
tout à la fois une Bourse, un foyer de théâtre, un cabinet de lecture,
un club, un confessionnal, et convient si bien à la simplicité des
affaires du pays, que certaines femmes vénitiennes ignorent
complétement le genre d’occupations de leurs maris, car s’ils ont
une lettre à faire, ils vont l’écrire à ce café. Naturellement les espions
abondent à Florian, mais leur présence aiguise le génie vénitien, qui
peut dans ce lieu exercer cette prudence autrefois si célèbre.
Beaucoup de personnes passent toute leur journée à Florian; enfin
Florian est un tel besoin pour certaines gens, que pendant les
entr’actes, ils quittent la loge de leurs amies pour y faire un tour et
savoir ce qui s’y dit.
Tant que les deux amis marchèrent dans les petites rues de la
Merceria, ils gardèrent le silence, car il y avait trop de compagnie;
mais, en débouchant sur la place Saint-Marc, le prince dit:—
N’entrons pas encore au café, promenons-nous. J’ai à te parler.
Il raconta son aventure avec la Tinti, et la situation dans laquelle
il se trouvait. Le désespoir d’Émilio parut à Vendramin si voisin de la
folie, qu’il lui promit une guérison complète, s’il voulait lui donner
carte blanche auprès de Massimilla. Cette espérance vint à propos
pour empêcher Émilio de se noyer pendant la nuit; car, au souvenir
de la cantatrice, il éprouvait une effroyable envie de retourner chez
elle. Les deux amis allèrent dans le salon le plus reculé du café
Florian y écouter cette conversation vénitienne qu’y tiennent
quelques hommes d’élite, en résumant les événements du jour. Les
sujets dominants furent d’abord la personnalité de lord Byron, de qui
les Vénitiens se moquèrent finement; puis l’attachement de Cataneo
pour la Tinti, dont les causes parurent inexplicables, après avoir été
expliquées de vingt façons différentes; enfin le début de Genovese;
puis la lutte entre la duchesse et le médecin français; et le duc
Cataneo se présenta dans le salon au moment où la conversation
devenait passionnément musicale. Il fit, ce qui ne fut pas remarqué
tant la chose parut naturelle, un salut plein de courtoisie à Émilio, qui
le lui rendit gravement. Cataneo chercha s’il y avait quelque
personne de connaissance; il avisa Vendramin et le salua, puis il
salua son banquier, patricien fort riche, et enfin celui qui parlait en ce
moment, un mélomane célèbre, ami de la comtesse Albrizzi, et dont
l’existence, comme celle de quelques habitués de Florian, était
totalement inconnue, tant elle était soigneusement cachée: on n’en
connaissait que ce qu’il en livrait à Florian.
C’était Capraja, le noble de qui la duchesse avait dit quelques
mots au médecin français. Ce Vénitien appartenait à cette classe de
rêveurs qui devinent tout par la puissance de leur pensée.
Théoricien fantasque, il se souciait autant de renommée que d’une
pipe cassée. Sa vie était en harmonie avec ses opinions. Capraja se
montrait sous les procuraties vers dix heures du matin, sans qu’on
sût d’où il vînt, il flânait dans Venise et s’y promenait en fumant des
cigares. Il allait régulièrement à la Fenice, s’asseyait au parterre, et
dans les entr’actes venait à Florian, où il prenait trois ou quatre
tasses de café par jour; le reste de sa soirée s’achevait dans ce
salon, qu’il quittait vers deux heures du matin. Douze cents francs
satisfaisaient à tous ses besoins, il ne faisait qu’un seul repas chez
un pâtissier de la Merceria qui lui tenait son dîner prêt à une certaine
heure sur une petite table au fond de sa boutique; la fille du pâtissier
lui accommodait elle-même des huîtres farcies, l’approvisionnait de
cigares, et avait soin de son argent. D’après son conseil, cette
pâtissière, quoique très-belle, n’écoutait aucun amoureux, vivait
sagement, et conservait l’ancien costume des Vénitiennes. Cette
Vénitienne pur-sang avait douze ans quand Capraja s’y intéressa, et
vingt-six ans quand il mourut; elle l’aimait beaucoup, quoiqu’il ne lui
eût jamais baisé la main, ni le front, et qu’elle ignorât complétement
les intentions de ce pauvre vieux noble. Cette fille avait fini par
prendre sur le patricien l’empire absolu d’une mère sur son enfant:
elle l’avertissait de changer de linge; le lendemain, Capraja venait
sans chemise, elle lui en donnait une blanche qu’il emportait et
mettait le jour suivant. Il ne regardait jamais une femme, soit au
théâtre, soit en se promenant. Quoique issu d’une vieille famille
patricienne, sa noblesse ne lui paraissait pas valoir une parole; le
soir après minuit, il se réveillait de son apathie, causait et montrait
qu’il avait tout observé, tout écouté. Ce Diogène passif et incapable
d’expliquer sa doctrine, moitié Turc, moitié Vénitien, était gros, court
et gras; il avait le nez pointu d’un doge, le regard satyrique d’un
inquisiteur, une bouche prudente quoique rieuse. A sa mort, on
apprit qu’il demeurait, proche San-Benedetto, dans un bouge. Riche
de deux millions dans les fonds publics de l’Europe, il en laissa les
intérêts dus depuis le placement primitif fait en 1814, ce qui
produisait une somme énorme tant par l’augmentation du capital que
par l’accumulation des intérêts. Cette fortune fut léguée à la jeune
pâtissière.
—Genovese, disait-il, ira fort loin. Je ne sais s’il comprend la
destination de la musique ou s’il agit par instinct, mais voici le
premier chanteur qui m’ait satisfait. Je ne mourrai donc pas sans
avoir entendu des roulades exécutées comme j’en ai souvent écouté
dans certains songes au réveil desquels il me semblait voir voltiger
les sons dans les airs. La roulade est la plus haute expression de
l’art, c’est l’arabesque qui orne le plus bel appartement du logis: un
peu moins, il n’y a rien; un peu plus, tout est confus. Chargée de
réveiller dans votre âme mille idées endormies, elle s’élance, elle
traverse l’espace en semant dans l’air ses germes qui, ramassés par
les oreilles, fleurissent au fond du cœur. Croyez-moi, en faisant sa
sainte Cécile, Raphaël a donné la priorité à la musique sur la poésie.
Il a raison: la musique s’adresse au cœur, tandis que les écrits ne
s’adressent qu’à l’intelligence; elle communique immédiatement ses
idées à la manière des parfums. La voix du chanteur vient frapper en
nous non pas la pensée, non pas les souvenirs de nos félicités, mais
les éléments de la pensée, et fait mouvoir les principes mêmes de
nos sensations. Il est déplorable que le vulgaire ait forcé les
musiciens à plaquer leurs expressions sur des paroles, sur des
intérêts factices; mais il est vrai qu’ils ne seraient plus compris par la
foule. La roulade est donc l’unique point laissé aux amis de la
musique pure, aux amoureux de l’art tout nu. En entendant ce soir la
dernière cavatine, je me suis cru convié par une belle fille qui par un
seul regard m’a rendu jeune: l’enchanteresse m’a mis une couronne
sur la tête et m’a conduit à cette porte d’ivoire par où l’on entre dans
le pays mystérieux de la Rêverie. Je dois à Genovese d’avoir quitté
ma vieille enveloppe pour quelques moments, courts à la mesure
des montres et bien longs par les sensations. Pendant un printemps
embaumé par les roses, je me suis trouvé jeune, aimé!
—Vous vous trompez, caro Capraja, dit le duc. Il existe en
musique un pouvoir plus magique que celui de la roulade.
—Lequel? dit Capraja.
—L’accord de deux voix ou d’une voix et du violon, l’instrument
dont l’effet se rapproche le plus de la voix humaine, répondit le duc.
Cet accord parfait nous mène plus avant dans le centre de la vie sur
le fleuve d’éléments qui ranime les voluptés et qui porte l’homme au
milieu de la sphère lumineuse où sa pensée peut convoquer le
monde entier. Il te faut encore un thème, Capraja, mais à moi le
principe pur suffit; tu veux que l’eau passe par les mille canaux du
machiniste pour retomber en gerbes éblouissantes; tandis que je me
contente d’une eau calme et pure, mon œil parcourt une mer sans
rides, je sais embrasser l’infini!
—Tais-toi, Cataneo, dit orgueilleusement Capraja. Comment, ne
vois-tu pas la fée qui, dans sa course agile à travers une lumineuse
atmosphère, y rassemble, avec le fil d’or de l’harmonie, les
mélodieux trésors qu’elle nous jette en souriant? N’as-tu jamais senti
le coup de baguette magique avec laquelle elle dit à la Curiosité:
Lève-toi! La déesse se dresse radieuse du fond des abîmes du
cerveau, elle court à ses cases merveilleuses, les effleure comme un
organiste frappe ses touches. Soudain s’élancent les Souvenirs, ils
apportent les roses du passé, conservées divinement et toujours
fraîches. Notre jeune maîtresse revient et caresse de ses mains
blanches des cheveux de jeune homme; le cœur trop plein déborde,
on revoit les rives fleuries des torrents de l’amour. Tous les buissons
ardents de la jeunesse flambent et redisent leurs mots divins jadis
entendus et compris! Et la voix roule, elle resserre dans ses
évolutions rapides ces horizons fuyants, elle les amoindrit; ils
disparaissent éclipsés par de nouvelles, par de plus profondes joies,
celles d’un avenir inconnu que la fée montre du doigt en s’enfuyant
dans son ciel bleu.
—Et toi, répondit Cataneo, n’as-tu donc jamais vu la lueur directe
d’une étoile t’ouvrir les abîmes supérieurs, et n’as-tu jamais monté
sur ce rayon qui vous emporte dans le ciel au milieu des principes
qui meuvent les mondes?
Pour tous les auditeurs, le duc et Capraja jouaient un jeu dont les
conditions n’étaient pas connues.
—La voix de Genovese s’empare des fibres, dit Capraja.
—Et celle de la Tinti s’attaque au sang, répondit le duc.
—Quelle paraphrase de l’amour heureux dans cette cavatine!
reprit Capraja. Ah! il était jeune, Rossini, quand il écrivit ce thème
pour le plaisir qui bouillonne! Mon cœur s’est empli de sang frais,
mille désirs ont pétillé dans mes veines. Jamais sons plus
angéliques ne m’ont mieux dégagé de mes liens corporels, jamais la
fée n’a montré de plus beaux bras, n’a souri plus amoureusement,
n’a mieux relevé sa tunique jusqu’à mi-jambe, en me levant le rideau
sous lequel se cache mon autre vie.
—Demain, mon vieil ami, répondit le duc, tu monteras sur le dos
d’un cygne éblouissant qui te montrera la plus riche terre, tu verras
le printemps comme le voient les enfants. Ton cœur recevra la
lumière sidérale d’un soleil nouveau, tu te coucheras sur une soie
rouge, sous les yeux d’une madone, tu seras comme un amant
heureux mollement caressé par une Volupté dont les pieds nus se
voient encore et qui va disparaître. Le cygne sera la voix de
Genovese s’il peut s’unir à sa Léda, la voix de la Tinti. Demain l’on
nous donne Mosè, le plus immense opéra qu’ait enfanté le plus beau
génie de l’Italie.
Chacun laissa causer le duc et Capraja, ne voulant pas être la
dupe d’une mystification; Vendramin seul et le médecin français les
écoutèrent pendant quelques instants. Le fumeur d’opium entendait
cette poésie, il avait la clef du palais où se promenaient ces deux
imaginations voluptueuses. Le médecin cherchait à comprendre et
comprit; car il appartenait à cette pléiade de beaux génies de l’École
de Paris, d’où le vrai médecin sort aussi profond métaphysicien que
puissant analyste.
—Tu les entends? dit Émilio à Vendramin en sortant du café vers
deux heures du matin.
—Oui, cher Émilio, lui répondit Vendramin en l’emmenant chez
lui. Ces deux hommes appartiennent à la légion des esprits purs qui
peuvent se dépouiller ici-bas de leurs larves de chair, et qui savent
voltiger à cheval sur le corps de la reine des sorcières, dans les
cieux d’azur où se déploient les sublimes merveilles de la vie
morale: ils vont dans l’Art là où te conduit ton extrême amour, là où
me mène l’opium. Ils ne peuvent plus être entendus que par leurs
pairs. Moi de qui l’âme est exaltée par un triste moyen, moi qui fais
tenir cent ans d’existence en une seule nuit, je puis entendre ces
grands esprits quand ils parlent du pays magnifique appelé le pays
des chimères par ceux qui se nomment sages, appelé le pays des
réalités par nous autres, qu’on nomme fous. Eh! bien, le duc et
Capraja, qui se sont jadis connus à Naples, où est né Cataneo, sont
fous de musique.
—Mais quel singulier système Capraja voulait-il expliquer à
Cataneo? demanda le prince. Toi qui comprends tout, l’as-tu
compris?
—Oui, dit Vendramin. Capraja s’est lié avec un musicien de
Crémone, logé au palais Capello, lequel musicien croit que les sons
rencontrent en nous-mêmes une substance analogue à celle qui
engendre les phénomènes de la lumière, et qui chez nous produit
les idées. Selon lui, l’homme a des touches intérieures que les sons
affectent, et qui correspondent à nos centres nerveux d’où
s’élancent nos sensations et nos idées! Capraja, qui voit dans les
arts la collection des moyens par lesquels l’homme peut mettre en
lui-même la nature extérieure d’accord avec une merveilleuse
nature, qu’il nomme la vie intérieure, a partagé les idées de ce
facteur d’instruments qui fait en ce moment un opéra. Imagine une
création sublime où les merveilles de la création visible sont
reproduites avec un grandiose, une légèreté, une rapidité, une
étendue incommensurables, où les sensations sont infinies, et où
peuvent pénétrer certaines organisations privilégiées qui possèdent
une divine puissance, tu auras alors une idée des jouissances
extatiques dont parlaient Cataneo et Capraja, poëtes pour eux seuls.
Mais aussi, dès que dans les choses de la nature morale, un homme
vient à dépasser la sphère où s’enfantent les œuvres plastiques par
les procédés de l’imitation, pour entrer dans le royaume tout spirituel
des abstractions où tout se contemple dans son principe et
s’aperçoit dans l’omnipotence des résultats, cet homme n’est-il plus
compris par les intelligences ordinaires.
—Tu viens d’expliquer mon amour pour la Massimilla, dit Émilio.
Cher, il est en moi-même une puissance qui se réveille au feu de ses
regards, à son moindre contact, et me jette en un monde de lumière
où se développent des effets dont je n’osais te parler. Il m’a souvent
semblé que le tissu délicat de sa peau empreignît des fleurs sur la
mienne quand sa main se pose sur ma main. Ses paroles répondent
en moi à ces touches intérieures dont tu parles. Le désir soulève
mon crâne en y remuant ce monde invisible au lieu de soulever mon
corps inerte; et l’air devient alors rouge et petille, des parfums
inconnus et d’une force inexprimable détendent mes nerfs, des
roses me tapissent les parois de la tête, et il me semble que mon
sang s’écoule par toutes mes artères ouvertes, tant ma langueur est
complète.
—Ainsi fait mon opium fumé, répondit Vendramin.
—Tu veux donc mourir? dit avec terreur Émilio.
—Avec Venise, fit Vendramin en étendant la main vers Saint-
Marc. Vois-tu un seul de ces clochetons et de ces aiguilles qui soit
droit? Ne comprends-tu pas que la mer va demander sa proie?
Le prince baissa la tête et n’osa parler d’amour à son ami. Il faut
voyager chez les nations conquises pour savoir ce qu’est une patrie
libre. En arrivant au palais Vendramini, le prince et Marco virent une
gondole arrêtée à la porte d’eau. Le prince prit alors Vendramin par
la taille, et le serra tendrement en lui disant:—Une bonne nuit, cher.
—Moi, une femme, quand je couche avec Venise! s’écria
Vendramin.
En ce moment, le gondolier appuyé contre une colonne regarda
les deux amis, reconnut celui qui lui avait été signalé, et dit à l’oreille
du prince:—La duchesse, monseigneur.
Émilio sauta dans la gondole où il fut enlacé par des bras de fer,
mais souples, et attiré sur les coussins où il sentit le sein palpitant
d’une femme amoureuse. Aussitôt le prince ne fut plus Émilio, mais
l’amant de la Tinti, car ses sensations furent si étourdissantes, qu’il
tomba comme stupéfié par le premier baiser.
—Pardonne-moi cette tromperie, mon amour, lui dit la Sicilienne.
Je meurs si je ne t’emmène!
Et la gondole vola sur les eaux discrètes.
Le lendemain soir, à sept heures et demie, les spectateurs
étaient à leurs mêmes places au théâtre, à l’exception des
personnes du parterre qui s’asseyent toujours au hasard. Le vieux
Capraja se trouvait dans la loge de Cataneo. Avant l’ouverture, le
duc vint faire une visite à la duchesse; il affecta de se tenir près
d’elle et de laisser Émilio sur le devant de la loge, à côté de
Massimilla. Il dit quelques phrases insignifiantes, sans sarcasmes,
sans amertume, et d’un air aussi poli que s’il se fût agi d’une visite à
une étrangère. Malgré ses efforts pour paraître aimable et naturel, le
prince ne put changer sa physionomie, qui était horriblement
soucieuse. Les indifférents durent attribuer à la jalousie une si forte
altération dans des traits, habituellement calmes. La duchesse
partageait sans doute les émotions d’Émilio, elle montrait un front
morne, elle était visiblement abattue. Le duc, très-embarrassé entre
ces deux bouderies, profita de l’entrée du Français pour sortir.
—Monsieur, dit Cataneo à son médecin avant de laisser
retomber la portière de la loge, vous allez entendre un immense
poëme musical assez difficile à comprendre du premier coup; mais
je vous laisse auprès de madame la duchesse qui, mieux que
personne, peut l’interpréter, car elle est mon élève.
Le médecin fut frappé comme le duc de l’expression peinte sur le
visage des deux amants, et qui annonçait un désespoir maladif.
—Un opéra italien a donc besoin d’un cicérone? dit-il à la
duchesse en souriant.
Ramenée par cette demande à ses obligations de maîtresse de
loge, la duchesse essaya de chasser les nuages qui pesaient sur
son front, et répondit en saisissant avec empressement un sujet de
conversation où elle pût déverser son irritation intérieure.
—Ce n’est pas un opéra, monsieur, répondit-elle, mais un
oratorio, œuvre qui ressemble effectivement à l’un de nos plus
magnifiques édifices, et où je vous guiderai volontiers. Croyez-moi,
ce ne sera pas trop que d’accorder à notre grand Rossini toute votre
intelligence, car il faut être à la fois poëte et musicien pour
comprendre la portée d’une pareille musique. Vous appartenez à
une nation dont la langue et le génie sont trop positifs pour qu’elle
puisse entrer de plain-pied dans la musique; mais la France est
aussi trop compréhensive pour ne pas finir par l’aimer, par la cultiver,
et vous y réussirez comme en toute chose. D’ailleurs, il faut
reconnaître que la musique, comme l’ont créée Lulli, Rameau,
Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cimarosa, Paësiello, Rossini, comme la
continueront de beaux génies à venir, est un art nouveau, inconnu
aux générations passées, lesquelles n’avaient pas autant
d’instruments que nous en possédons maintenant, et qui ne savaient
rien de l’harmonie sur laquelle aujourd’hui s’appuient les fleurs de la
mélodie, comme sur un riche terrain. Un art si neuf exige des études
chez les masses, études qui développeront le sentiment auquel
s’adresse la musique. Ce sentiment existe à peine chez vous,
peuple occupé de théories philosophiques, d’analyse, de
discussions, et toujours troublé par des divisions intestines. La
musique moderne, qui veut une paix profonde, est la langue des
âmes tendres, amoureuses, enclines à une noble exaltation
intérieure. Cette langue, mille fois plus riche que celle des mots, est
au langage ce que la pensée est à la parole; elle réveille les
sensations et les idées sous leur forme même, là où chez nous
naissent les idées et les sensations, mais en les laissant ce qu’elles
sont chez chacun. Cette puissance sur notre intérieur est une des
grandeurs de la musique. Les autres arts imposent à l’esprit des
créations définies, la musique est infinie dans les siennes. Nous
sommes obligés d’accepter les idées du poëte, le tableau du peintre,
la statue du sculpteur; mais chacun de nous interprète la musique au
gré de sa douleur ou de sa joie, de ses espérances ou de son
désespoir. Là où les autres arts cerclent nos pensées en les fixant
sur une chose déterminée, la musique les déchaîne sur la nature
entière qu’elle a le pouvoir de nous exprimer. Vous allez voir
comment je comprends le Moïse de Rossini!
Elle se pencha vers le médecin afin de pouvoir lui parler et de
n’être entendue que de lui.
—Moïse est le libérateur d’un peuple esclave! lui dit-elle,
souvenez-vous de cette pensée, et vous verrez avec quel religieux
espoir la Fenice tout entière écoutera la prière des Hébreux délivrés,
et par quel tonnerre d’applaudissements elle y répondra!
Émilio se jeta dans le fond de la loge au moment où le chef
d’orchestre leva son archet. La duchesse indiqua du doigt au
médecin la place abandonnée par le prince pour qu’il la prît. Mais le
Français était plus intrigué de connaître ce qui s’était passé entre les
deux amants que d’entrer dans le palais musical élevé par l’homme
que l’Italie entière applaudissait alors, car alors Rossini triomphait
dans son propre pays. Le Français observa la duchesse, qui parla
sous l’empire d’une agitation nerveuse et lui rappela la Niobé qu’il
venait d’admirer à Florence: même noblesse dans la douleur, même
impassibilité physique; cependant l’âme jetait un reflet dans le chaud
coloris de son teint, et ses yeux, où s’éteignit la langueur sous une
expression fière, séchaient leurs larmes par un feu violent. Ses
douleurs contenues se calmaient quand elle regardait Émilio, qui la
tenait sous un regard fixe. Certes, il était facile de voir qu’elle voulait
attendrir un désespoir farouche. La situation de son cœur imprima je
ne sais quoi de grandiose à son esprit. Comme la plupart des
femmes, quand elles sont pressées par une exaltation
extraordinaire, elle sortit de ses limites habituelles et eut quelque
chose de la Pythonisse, tout en demeurant noble et grande, car ce
fut la forme de ses idées et non sa figure qui se tordit
désespérément. Peut-être voulait-elle briller de tout son esprit pour
donner de l’attrait à la vie et y retenir son amant.
Quand l’orchestre eut fait entendre les trois accords en ut majeur
que le maître a placés en tête de son œuvre pour faire comprendre
que son ouverture sera chantée, car la véritable ouverture est le
vaste thème parcouru depuis cette brusque attaque jusqu’au
moment où la lumière apparaît au commandement de Moïse, la
duchesse ne put réprimer un mouvement convulsif qui prouvait
combien cette musique était en harmonie avec sa souffrance
cachée.
—Comme ces trois accords vous glacent! dit-elle. On s’attend à
de la douleur. Écoutez attentivement cette introduction, qui a pour
sujet la terrible élégie d’un peuple frappé par la main de Dieu. Quels
gémissements! Le roi, la reine, leur fils aîné, les grands, tout le
peuple soupire; ils sont atteints dans leur orgueil, dans leurs
conquêtes, arrêtés dans leur avidité. Cher Rossini, tu as bien fait de
jeter cet os à ronger aux tedeschi, qui nous refusaient le don de
l’harmonie et la science! Vous allez entendre la sinistre mélodie que
le maître a fait rendre à cette profonde composition harmonique,
comparable à ce que les Allemands ont de plus compliqué, mais
d’où il ne résulte ni fatigue ni ennui pour nos âmes. Vous autres
Français, qui avez accompli naguère la plus sanglante des
révolutions, chez qui l’aristocratie fut écrasée sous la patte du lion
populaire, le jour où cet oratorio sera exécuté chez vous, vous
comprendrez cette magnifique plainte des victimes d’un Dieu qui
venge son peuple. Un Italien pouvait seul écrire ce thème fécond,
inépuisable et tout dantesque. Croyez-vous que ce ne soit rien que
de rêver la vengeance pendant un moment? Vieux maîtres
allemands, Hændel, Sébastien Bach, et toi-même Beethoven, à
genoux, voici la reine des arts, voici l’Italie triomphante!
La duchesse avait pu dire ces paroles pendant le lever du rideau.
Le médecin entendit alors la sublime symphonie par laquelle le
compositeur a ouvert cette vaste scène biblique. Il s’agit de la
douleur de tout un peuple. La douleur est une dans son expression,
surtout quand il s’agit de souffrances physiques. Aussi, après avoir
instinctivement deviné, comme tous les hommes de génie, qu’il ne
devait y avoir aucune variété dans les idées, le musicien, une fois sa
phrase capitale trouvée, l’a-t-il promenée de tonalités en tonalités,
en groupant les masses et ses personnages sur ce motif par des
modulations et par des cadences d’une admirable souplesse. La
puissance se reconnaît à cette simplicité. L’effet de cette phrase, qui
peint les sensations du froid et de la nuit chez un peuple
incessamment baigné par les ondes lumineuses du soleil, et que le
peuple et ses rois répètent, est saisissant. Ce lent mouvement
musical a je ne sais quoi d’impitoyable. Cette phrase fraîche et
douloureuse est comme une barre tenue par quelque bourreau
céleste qui la fait tomber sur les membres de tous ces patients par
temps égaux. A force de l’entendre allant d’ut mineur en sol mineur,
rentrant en ut pour revenir à la dominante sol, et reprendre en
fortissimo sur la tonique mi bémol, arriver en fa majeur et retourner
en ut mineur, toujours de plus en plus chargée de terreur, de froid et
de ténèbres, l’âme du spectateur finit par s’associer aux impressions
exprimées par le musicien. Aussi le Français éprouva-t-il la plus vive
émotion quand arriva l’explosion de toutes ces douleurs réunies qui
crient:
O nume d’Israël!
Se brami in liberta
Il popol tuo fedel
Di lui, di noi pieta.
(O Dieu d’Israël, si tu veux que ton peuple fidèle sorte

d’esclavage, daigne avoir pitié de lui et de nous!)
—Jamais il n’y eut une si grande synthèse des effets naturels,
une idéalisation si complète de la nature. Dans les grandes
infortunes nationales, chacun se plaint longtemps séparément; puis
il se détache sur la masse, çà et là, des cris de douleur plus ou
moins violents; enfin, quand la misère a été sentie par tous, elle
éclate comme une tempête. Une fois entendus sur leur plaie
commune, les peuples changent alors leurs cris sourds en des cris
d’impatience. Ainsi a procédé Rossini. Après l’explosion en ut
majeur, le Pharaon chante son sublime récitatif de: Mano ultrice di
un dio! (Dieu vengeur, je te reconnais trop tard!) Le thème primitif
prend alors un accent plus vif: l’Égypte entière appelle Moïse à son
secours.
La duchesse avait profité de la transition nécessitée par l’arrivée
de Moïse et d’Aaron pour expliquer ainsi ce beau morceau.
—Qu’ils pleurent, ajouta-t-elle passionnément, ils ont fait bien
des maux. Expiez, Égyptiens, expiez les fautes de votre cour
insensée! Avec quel art ce grand peintre a su employer toutes les
couleurs brunes de la musique et tout ce qu’il y a de tristesse sur la
palette musicale? Quelles froides ténèbres! quelles brumes! N’avez-
vous pas l’âme en deuil? n’êtes-vous pas convaincu de la réalité des
nuages noirs qui couvrent la scène? Pour vous, les ombres les plus
épaisses n’enveloppent-elles pas la nature? Il n’y a ni palais
égyptiens, ni palmiers, ni paysages. Aussi quel bien ne vous feront-
elles pas à l’âme, les notes profondément religieuses du médecin
céleste qui va guérir cette cruelle plaie? Comme tout est gradué
pour arriver à cette magnifique invocation de Moïse à Dieu! Par un
savant calcul dont les analogies vous seront expliquées par Capraja,
cette invocation n’est accompagnée que par les cuivres. Ces
instruments donnent à ce morceau sa grande couleur religieuse.
Non-seulement cet artifice est admirable ici, mais encore voyez
combien le génie est fertile en ressources, Rossini a tiré des beautés
neuves de l’obstacle qu’il se créait. Il a pu réserver les instruments à
cordes pour exprimer le jour quand il va succéder aux ténèbres, et
arriver ainsi à l’un des plus puissants effets connus en musique.
Jusqu’à cet inimitable génie, avait-on jamais tiré un pareil parti du
récitatif? il n’y a pas encore un air ni un duo. Le poëte s’est soutenu
par la force de la pensée, par la vigueur des images, par la vérité de
sa déclamation. Cette scène de douleur, cette nuit profonde, ces cris
de désespoir, ce tableau musical, est beau comme le Déluge de
votre grand Poussin.
Moïse agita sa baguette, le jour parut.
—Ici, monsieur, la musique ne lutte-t-elle pas avec le soleil dont
elle a emprunté l’éclat, avec la nature entière dont elle rend les
phénomènes dans les plus légers détails? reprit la duchesse à voix
basse. Ici, l’art atteint à son apogée, aucun musicien n’ira plus loin.
Entendez-vous l’Égypte se réveillant après ce long
engourdissement? Le bonheur se glisse partout avec le jour. Dans
quelle œuvre ancienne ou contemporaine rencontrerez-vous une si
grande page? la plus splendide joie opposée à la plus profonde
tristesse? Quels cris! quelles notes sautillantes! comme l’âme
oppressée respire, quel délire, quel tremolo dans cet orchestre, le
beau tutti. C’est la joie d’un peuple sauvé! Ne tressaillez-vous pas de
plaisir?
Le médecin, surpris par ce contraste, un des plus magnifiques de
la musique moderne, battit des mains, emporté par son admiration.
—Bravo la Doni! fit Vendramin qui avait écouté.
—L’introduction est finie, reprit la duchesse. Vous venez
d’éprouver une sensation violente, dit-elle au médecin; le cœur vous
bat, vous avez vu dans les profondeurs de votre imagination le plus
beau soleil inondant de ses torrents de lumière tout un pays, morne
et froid naguère. Sachez maintenant comment s’y est pris le
musicien, afin de pouvoir l’admirer demain dans les secrets de son
génie après en avoir aujourd’hui subi l’influence. Que croyez-vous

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Shadows of Empire in West Africa: New

More information about this series at

African Histories and Modernities

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944543

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover image courtesy of Victoria Ellen Smith

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The book is a product of a project called Shadows of Empire: a study of

specially commissioned chapters from scholars associated with the

Trondheim, Norway John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu

1 Introduction: Interpreting West Africa’s Forts and Castles 1

2 Grossfriedrichsburg, the First German Colony in Africa?

3 ‘Far from My Native Land, and Far from You’:

4 Viewed from a Distance: Eighteenth-Century Images of

5 Illusions of Grandeur and Protection: Perceptions

6 Female Agency in a Cultural Confluence: Women, Trade

7 Fort Metal Cross: Commercial Epicentre of the British on

8 European Fortifications in West Africa as Architectural

9 A Theatre of Memory for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade:

10 Diplomacy, Identity and Appropriation of the “Door

11 Recreating Pre-colonial Forts and Castles: Heritage

About the Editors

Prof. John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu is a Professor of History and currently

Dr. Victoria Ellen Smith is a Lecturer in the Department of History

Dr. Kwabena Adu-Boahen was a Historian and, until his death in

“Place Names Research Project”. He also held academic administrative

Liverpool School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool (UK);

Architecture and Development Planning (1981) at the Rheinisch-

Fig. 1.1 Forts and Castles of Ghana 3

Plate 25 in William Smith, Thirty Different Drafts of Guinea

Fig. 8.5 Scaled sectional plan of female dungeons at Cape Coast

Table 2.1 Muster roll, 20 September 1712 38

Table 7.13 Table showing decreasing quantum of slag recovered

Introduction: Interpreting West Africa’s

John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Victoria Ellen Smith

Fortresses are a universal phenomenon: they dominated the landscapes

J.K. Osei-Tutu (*)

© The Author(s) 2018 1

nations introduced congeries of European-type fortification systems to

by side.7 This concentration of European fortified trading posts under-

protection to one side. The landward façades were oriented towards

built. As a result, Europeans—such as the British, Dutch and Danish on

Forts and Castles Research: Perspectives and Sources

the material culture of the African-European encounter and colonialism.

architectural historians to bring out the capacity of humans to coalesce

continent; African and European descendants of slave traders; Africans

This Collection: Thematic, Theoretical

This section introduces the founding concept of this book. We will

collective memory. Research that takes these buildings as the start-

military expedition to Pokesu constituted an act of imaginary appro-

Christiansborg Castle for a year (1693–1694) and Conny’s occupation

connected histories of West Africans and Europeans in selected locali-

By looking at the heritage policies and restoration practices of successive

remembrance and enactment remaining poignant, largely due to the

of Cultural and Historic Sites in Yugoslavia’ (Independent Commission

(O Dieu d’Israël, si tu veux que ton peuple fidèle sorte

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Forts and Castles Research: Perspectives and Sources