The grand slave emporium : Cape Coast Castle and the British slave trade

312 Pages·2006·13.876 MB·English

by  William St Clair

William St Clair
The Grand
Slave Emporium
Cape Coast Castle and the British Slave Trade
For nearly one hundred and fifty years before
abolition in 1807, Cape Coast Castle on the
African ‘Gold Coast’ was, in the words of one of
its British governors, the grand emporium of the
British slave trade. From this handsome building
perched on the shore of the South Atlantic
Ocean, men, women and children born in Africa
were sold as slaves and carried on British slave
ships to the West Indies, to North and South
America, and to destinations elsewhere. Here
the ancestors of millions of people living today
in Britain, the United States and many other
countries passed through the “door of no return’.
In a most original and remarkable book, by
telling the story of the castle and of some
of the people who lived, worked or were
imprisoned within its walls, William St Clair
is able to illuminate a vast panorama of
modern history, which in its entirety is hard
to comprehend.
He draws on an immense archive of records,
hitherto scarcely explored — agreements with
local African leaders, correspondence between
colleagues in the Africa Service, letters from
home, receipts for the buying and selling of
slaves, and scribbled notes sent between the
Castle and the slave ships. Bleached by the sun
or stained by salt water, these unique writings
offer glimpses of events noted down as they
happened without hindsight or agenda. In telling
the story of Cape Coast Castle, the building, the
sea around and its people, St Clair catches for us
the sense of actually being there at the time as
witnesses.
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The Grand
Slave Emporium
ALSO BY WILLIAM ST CLAIR
That Greece Might Still Be Free, the Philhellenes in the
War ofI ndependence
Heinemann prize
Trelawny, the Incurable Romancer
The Godwins and the Shelleys, the Biography of a Family
Time-Life prize and Macmillan Silver Pen
Lord Elgin and the Marbles
Thalassa Award for Culture (Greece)
Mapping Lives: The Uses of Biography
edited by Peter France & William St Clair
The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period
The Grand
Slave Emporium
Cape Coast Castle and the British Slave Trade
William St Clair
PROFILE BOOKS
ESSEX COUNTY
COUNCIL LIBRARY
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by
PROFILE BOOKS LTD
34 Exmouth House
Pine Street
Exmouth Market
London EcIR oJH
www.profilebooks.com
Copyright © William St Clair, 2006
TORQ ksh] 0) Sa4 ea ar
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays, Bungay, Suffolk
Text design by Sue Lamble
Typeset in Caslon by MacGuru Ltd
[email protected]
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written peasy of
both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
A CIP catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library
ISBN-10: 1 86197 904 5
382 BN-13: 978 1 86197 904 9
A4O
966
709
033
Contents
Map
List of illustrations
Introduction
The sea 10
Outside 29
Inside 63
The officers 82
The soldiers and the workers 128
The women 147
The fort 181
The emporium 200
The wide wide world 245
wODuFWNPOnOeon s
Bibliographical note 265
Acknowledgements 275
Index 276
SAHARA THE GOLD COAST OF AFRICA
Sess during the slave trade era
ee
nd
Ustog> R. Gambia
oe
o Salaga
R. Volta
SIERRA ¥ ‘ ae
LEONE ~< er . Niger
@
ee Kanaai Ris
% _ >
AT EANEL G OG EAN
50 miles
ASANTE EMPIRE
100 km
O The three Castles
© British, Dutch and
Danish forts