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

$Page 1: The \"Elmina Note:\" Myth and Reality in Asante-Dutch Relations$
The "Elmina Note:" Myth and Reality in Asante-Dutch RelationsAuthor(s): Larry W. YarakSource: History in Africa, Vol. 13 (1986), pp. 363-382Published by: African Studies AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171552Accessed: 28/11/2008 12:39

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

Larry W. Yarak Texas A&M University

One of the more perplexing issues in the history of Asante's relations with the Europeans on the nineteenth-century Gold Coast has been that of the origin and significance of the so-called "Elmina Note," the pay document which authorized the Asantehene to collect two ounces of gold (or its equivalent in trade goods) per month from the Dutch authorities at Elmina.1 Not only have modern historians of Ghana evidenced no small amount of confusion on this matter, but during 1870/71 the Asantehene, the British, and the Dutch also disagreed strongly over the political significance of the note, as the Dutch negotiated to cede their "possessions" on the Gold Coast to the British. Failure to resolve these

disagreements contributed significantly to the Asante decision to invade the British "protected" territories in 1873. This action in turn led to the British invasion of Asante in 1874, which most historians agree constitutes a critical watershed in Asante his-

tory. Clearly, the matter of the "Elmina Note" (or kostbrief as it was known to the Dutch) is one of some historical and histori-

ographical importance. An examination of the relevant Dutch, Danish, and British documentation now makes possible a resolution of the major questions concerning its origin and meaning.

The debates between the Asante, the British, and the Dutch show that in the later nineteenth century there was considerable

agreement over certain issues: first, no one disputed that the Dutch had for some time past paid to the Asantehene (actually to an envoy dispatched by the king to Elmina) a stipend2 (or kostgeld, as the Dutch termed it) of two ounces of gold per month, or twenty- four ounces per year.3 Secondly, all parties agreed that the Dutch began this practice early in the eighteenth century, follow-

ing the defeat of Denkyerahene Ntim Gyakari by Asante forces under Osei Tutu (d. 1717). As Asantehene Kofi Kakari (1867-74) put it in a letter to the English governor:

The Fort of that place [Elmina] have from time immemor- ial paid an annual tribute to my ancestors to the present time by right of arms, when we conquered INTIM

GACKIDI, King of DINKIRA.

INTIM GACKIDI having purchased goods to the amount of

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

LARRY W. YARAK

nine thousand pounds,t9000, from the Dutch and not paying for them before we conquered INTIM GACKIDI, the Dutch demanded of my father OSAI TUTU I for the payment, who paid it in full. . .and the Dutch delivered the Elmina to him as his own.4

When asked by the English to respond to this claim, Dutch Governor C. Nagtglas did not dispute that his government had long paid the Asantehene kostgeZd and, citing "tradition," he al- lowed that the practice began when "the King of Ashantee conquered [the] Dinkirahs, and. . .the pay note came into his hands."5 What the Dutch governor rejected was the claim that such payment constituted "tribute," as the Asantehene asserted. Rather, in Nagtglas' view, the kostgeld was a mere "gift, to promote the trade with the natives of the interior."6 There was of course more than European pride involved here: if the Dutch paid tribute to the Asantehene in respect of their occupation of the fort at Elmina, then by what right could they cede "their" forts to the British?7 Ultimately, as is well known, the Asantehene issued a "Certificate of Apologie" withdrawing his claim of overlordship over Elmina--though some historians dispute the document's authen- ticity.s But, whatever the validity of the "Certificate" (more on this below), it must be remembered that the Asantehene continued to object to the transfer of his "allies," the people of the town of Elmina (Edena), to British subservience.9 Indeed, a year after the cession took place he ordered an army to the coast to assist the Elminas in attempting forcibly to eject the British from the old Dutch fort.

Looking back on these events, the colonial generation of Gold Coast historians--A.B. Ellis, W.W. Claridge, and W.E.F. Ward--tended to find merit in the arguments of Kofi Kakari.10 As Claridge wrote, Dutch payment to Asante of a yearly stipend "naturally implied an admission on the part of the Dutch that the Ashantis had the right to the ground on which their castle stood."11 More recently, historians have been less charitable to the late nineteenth-century Asante perspective. Douglas Coombs made an intensive examination of the Dutch and British archival sources for the period between 1850 and 1872 and argued for a position between what he termed the "extremes" of the Dutch and Asante views: the kostgeld relationship, he argued, was probably "founded on a misunderstanding: intended in one sense by the European, it was accepted in a very different one by the African."12

The most recent generation of Ghana historians has been even more skeptical of received wisdom. K.Y. Daaku went to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documentary sources in an attempt to discover the origins of the pay note itself. He was unable to find any reference to an Asante liquidation of a Denkyera debt to the Dutch following the Asante victory of 1701/02, as claimed by Kofi Kakari. 13 Nor was Daaku able to find any evidence that the Dutch had ever issued a kostbrief to the Denkyerahene in the seventeenth century.14 Though he did not say as much, Daaku's research suggested that the "Elmina Note" may never have existed, a position subsequently espoused by H.M. Feinberg.15 However, a

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"ELIINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY

few years later, Ivor Wilks published unequivocal evidence that the Dutch were indeed paying kostgeZd, upon presentation of a

kostbrief, to the Asantehene's representative as earlT as 1776. But curiously, the pay site was Accra and not Elmina. In the most recent review of the "Elmina Note" controversy, Feinberg acknowledged that this evidence forced a retreat from his earlier view that the note was "fictitious." But he was unable to resolve the apparent contradiction between the eighteenth-century kostgeZd payment at Accra uncovered by Wilks, and the EZmina note dispute of the 1870-71 period. 7 Among other things, the present paper attempts to resolve this mystery.

II

The earliest evidence for Dutch (and British and Danish) payment of a monthly stipend at Accra in fact derives from the seventeenth century. Just a few years after having ousted the

Portuguese from Elmina and Axim, the Dutch decided to construct a fort at Accra. In 1642, as Wilks has shown, they reached an

agreement with the king of Accra "by which they obtained land. . . on which to build a lodge, house or fort, for a monthly payment of two ounces of gold." The coastal fort which they eventually erected there was named Crevecoeur.

Following the defeat of the Accra king by the Akwamuhene Akonno, in 1703 the Dutch negotiated a treaty with Akonno, as the new overlord of Accra. This granted to the Akwamuhene the "or-

dinary monthly kostgeZd of two ounces [of gold per month]." In addition Akonno was promised a bounty of an additional two ounces of gold for every 240 ounces that might be traded to the Dutch during any two-month period.19 It is noteworthy that the Dutch action distinguished between the "ordinary kostgeZd" to which the Akwamuhene was entitled to irrespective of trade conditions-- in effect, a rent payment from their perspective--and the additional bounty he was to receive as an encouragement for maintain- ing favorable commercial relations.

A second transfer of the Dutch kostgeld for Accra took place shortly after the 1730 defeat of Akwamu by Akyem. In 1732 Dutch Director-General Jan Pranger travelled from Elmina to Accra in an effort to speed the return to peace and renewed trade in the area. He negotiated, among other things, the transfer of the kostgeld for Fort Crevecoeur, still at the nominal rate of two ounces of gold per month, to the Akyems, "just as we used to pay the Aquam- boes [Akwamus]."20 But, unlike the 1703 treaty, the terms of the 1732 transfer blurred somewhat the distinction previously made between kostgeld as rent, and separate, additional inducements for trade. As Pranger reported, the kostgeld was reassigned to the Akyems, "on condition they bring the trade to us, which [condition] they were willing to accept." Further, Pranger stated that:

he had been the more constrained to this convention, as the Ackims [Akyems] had in reality already received their

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LARRY W. YARAK

outstanding debts [i.e., rent due] from the English and Danes, and that if we had not agreed, it was to be feared that those Ackims would only go to the English and Danes to trade.21

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

The Assiantees went back to their country. They had

caught two of the Akim heirs to the throne. . .Oppoccu sent the message to the Akims that if they would en- throne those two. . .on their hereditary thrones, then he would deliver them to the Akims free, and they might send deputies, who could regard him eating fetish [i.e., swearing an oath], that as long as he lived he would not attack the Akims without reason. He did not require any tax from them, but the rent [afgift] from the Euro-

pean forts, and free passage for his men and the traders

through the Akim countries to Accra, as that was closer to him than Elmina. . Then the Assiantees came to Accra

23 for their rent. . .2

RUmer also indicated that in the transfer of the European fort rents to the Asantehene, the linkage between inducements for trade and rent payment established in the 1732 transference was reaffirmed:

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

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

Unfortunately, this information cannot be corroborated dir-

ectly from the available Dutch records: correspondence books from Fort Crevecoeur for 1744 to 1746 have not survived. But there is

no reason to doubt R~mer's statement that after the Asante victory of 1742 all the European establishments at Accra began to pay ground rent (in the European view) or tribute (in the Asante perspective) to the Asantehene.25 By the 1750s there is clear evidence that they were doing so. And in the case of the Dutch, there is no doubt that the Asantehene was issued a written voucher on which payments were recorded. The principles that formed the basis of this distinctive set of eighteenth-century Afro-European

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"ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY

relationships may be briefly summarized:

1) The obligation to pay the ground rent or tribute derived from the establishment of European settle- ments on lands over which sovereignty was ultimately vested with Asante.

2) The right to collect the rent or tribute derived from Asante conquest of those ahene (s. ohene, "chief" or "king") to whom the benefits had previously accrued, and could only be rescinded in turn

by a military defeat of Asante.

3) The relationship that arose from the regular payment and receipt of the rent or tribute found its raison d'^tre in trade. Asante failure to bring trade threatened continued European payment; Euro-

pean failure to pay what was due threatened the continued flow of Asante trade.

4) Payment was made at the coast on presentation of a document or "note" issued by the Europeans to the

king's envoy.

III

The available historical evidence shows generally consistent Asante adherence to the above principles throughout the more than 120 years of receipt of Dutch kostgeld. On one occasion, however, it is possible to discern an important modification in Asante ap- lication of these principles to the changing configuration of its

political and military relationships with the southern Akan peoples and the Europeans on the coast. This occurred during the

reign of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame (1804-1823), and resulted in the transfer of the payment site from Accra to Elmina. This change meant that what had been the pay note for Accra during the eighteenth became known as the "Elmina Note" during the nineteenth

century. In consequence of repeated Asante military incursions into

Fante and Akyem during 1806-1816, Asante receipt of the kostgeZd at Accra had become irregular, and by the end of the fighting in

early 1816, there had been no kostgeld payment for some five years. Thus when Governor-General H.W. Daendels arrived at Elmina in

early 1816, Dutch administrative records showed a debt on the

kostgeZd owed to the Asantehene in the amount of fl. 5,000.26 Daendels resolved to liquidate this sizeable debt as soon as possible in order to signal his earnest desire for good relations with the victorious Asante. Accordingly, when in April 1816 he learned that the Asantehene's "kostgeZd collector," Kwadwo Aberante

("Cudjo Abrantia"), was at Accra, he sent an officer there with the requisite trade goods to pay the full amount owed.27

A few days later an Asante embassy arrived in Elmina, headed

by a royal official named Gyesi ("Djesie").28 The purpose of

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LARRY W. YARAK

Gyesi's mission appears primarily to have been to convey expres- sions of the Asantehene's good will toward the Dutch and the El-

minas, and to give the king's assurances that Asante troops in the area were under orders to cooperate with them. Gyesi was also instructed to purchase a large amount of gunpowder on credit. Daendels refused this request, but offered instead to pay to Gyesi an advance on the king's kostgeZd for 1816 in gunpowder. Gyesi agreed, and subsequently took receipt in EZmina of the equivalent in powder of twenty-four ounces of gold.29

Subsequent evidence indicates that the Asantehene chose to

interpret these actions--the virtually simultaneous kostgeld payments made to Kwadwo Aberante at Accra and to Gyesi at Elmina-- as an acknowledgement that the Dutch were under obligation to pay him two distinct kostgeZds, one for Accra and another for Elmina.

Accordingly, in 1817 he dispatched two envoys, one to Elmina and one to Accra, for receipt of that year's payment.30 Kwadwo Ab- erante, evidently the senior kostgeZd collector, was sent to El- mina with a letter from the king containing the following assertion:

in earlier times we were paid the kostgeZd of Akim, [formerly paid] to Frinkon Manson [i.e., Frempon Man- so of Akyem Kotoku], whose land being conquered by me, the kostgeZd was naturally transferred to me; because

by conquest we possess the kostgeZd of Dinkara, El- mina, etc., just as now the Cape Cors [Cape Coast] and Annomaboe [kostgeZd - for the English forts] is given to me [by the English]. . .31

Two things are worthy of note here: first, Osei Tutu Kwame was correct in asserting that he possessed notes from the Europeans by conquest, and specifically, that the note for the Dutch fort at Accra derived from the Asante defeat of Akyem. But he was

engaging in a historical fabrication when he claimed that by virtue of the eighteenth-century defeat of Denkyera he had come to possess a pay note for Elmina. Indeed, it is interesting to note that in a subsequent letter reiterating his claim, the king stated that he had "lost his Company's Note for Elmina" and asked for a "new" one. 32

After deliberation in council on the Asantehene's initial

request, Daendels rejected the Asantehene's request for two sti-

pends, but he made it clear to the king's envoy that he would continue to pay--at the Elmina fort headquarters--the one kost-

geZd that the Dutch had paid for many years past at the subordinate fort at Accra.33 Daendels correctly argued that the Dutch had

always paid only one stipend to the Asantehene; but he was in- correct in his implicit rejection of the king's claim that his

right to the stipend existed by virtue of a military conquest of Akyem.

34 Daendels apparently viewed the kostgeZd as simply

an obligation owed directly to the Asantehene, which had been incurred some time in the past. Thus, on the basis of this mutual misunderstanding, what began life in 1744 as the pay note for Accra, became after 1818, when the Asantehene dropped his

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"ELMINA NOTE": MYTH AND REALITY 369

demand for two separate kostgeZds, the "Elmina Note."35 Osei Tutu Kwame's unprecedented request for two stipends

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

IV

Though strictly speaking inaccurate, the king's assertion of his right by conquest to the Elmina stipend was nevertheless as- sured immortality when he repeated it to the English mission in Kumase in 1817. The result was the creation of a myth that has demonstrated remarkable tenacity. This durability derived from two facts: first, the popularity and wide dissemination of T.E. Bowdich's Mission to Ashantee in which Osei Tutu Kwame's claim was permanently recorded;40 and secondly, Daendels' decision (and the king's de facto acceptance of it) that the one kostgeld which the Dutch continued to pay would henceforward be paid at Elmina.

The contradictions inherent in this historical fiction were of little consequence so long as Elmina continued to serve the Golden Stool as a "protected" subject polity. However, as I have argued elsewhere, following the Asante defeat at Katamanso in 1826 the character of Asante's relations with the people of El- mina underwent a significant change.41 As Asante was no longer capable of acting as Elmina's protector, so the notion of Asante- Elmina "alliance" and "brotherhood" arose to replace that of political subordination. In the peace and prosperity of Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin's reign (1834-67), the growing independence of Elmina was recognized by Asante, while at the same time the bonds of political friendship remained strong and those of commerce were markedly strengthened.

Thus, when in 1870 it came to Asantehene Kofi Kakari's atten-

LARRY W. YARAK

tion that the Dutch intended to cede to Elmina fort to the English, whose relations with Asante had been hostile since 1864, it was natural that the king as well as the Elminas would vigorously ob-

ject. But in his objection to the proposed transfer the Asante- hene initially chose to revive the issue of the kostgeZd, with its implications of Elmina subjection to Asante by the logic of

military conquest. This rankled not only the Dutch officials, who refused to acknowledge the kostgeZd as tribute, but also the Elmina political authorities, who well knew that their ancestors had never been defeated militarily by Denkyera or Asante. Seen in this light the central idea contained in Kofi Kakari's subse-

quent "Certificate of Apologie"--that the kostgeld represented "only board wages or salary and not 'tribute by right of arms"'-- assumes the aspect of appropriate diplomacy. Thus there seems little reason to suggest, as some historians have, that the "Cer- tificate" was either a forgery or a misrepresentation of the

king's true feelings.43 As has already been argued above, it is

significant that, while the Asantehene beat a diplomatic retreat on the matter of the precise political content of the kostgeZd relationship, he remained adamant that the loyal town of Elmina must not be transferred to the English. From the king's perspective there was nothing inconsistent about this.

V

In contrast with Asante, official Dutch thinking on both the origin and meaning of the kostgeld was from beginning to end

subject to repeated ad hoc mutations. These changes betray a re- current element of political and economic expediency. An early example is provided by Dutch Director-General Roelof Ulsen's efforts in 1756 to change the site of kostgeZd payment from Accra to Elmina. In January of that year two Asante officials had arrived at Ft. Crevecoeur with instructions from the Asantehene to collect what was due on the kostbrief.44 Apprised of the request by the Dutch officer at Accra, Ulsen granted permission for payment of goods worth sixty-six ounces of gold, but also instructed his subordinate to inform the envoys that "the kin%'s kostgeZd shall no longer be paid [at Accra] but at Elmina." 5 Ulsen's motivations are not difficult to decipher. Since about 1744 all direct communication between Kumase and Elmina had been broken off by a blockade organized by Wasahene Ntsiful I. 46 By changing the payment venue, Ulsen apparently wished to offer a further in- centive to the Asantehene to reopen by whatever means the trade route through Wasa. This would certainly be consistent with the

joint Elmina-Dutch peace initiative, under way since 1754, aimed at ending the Wasa rebellion.

Because of the failure of these negotiations and the subse-

quent ambivalent stand of the Akyem ahene with regard to the Asante-Wasa dispute, Kusi Obodom's reply did not reach the coast until August 1759. The Asantehene "requested" that Accra continue to be the site of the kostgeZd payment, and he promised soon to

370


send one Kankam to collect it.47 The Dutch officer at Accra, to whom this message was sent, made a telling comment on this "request" to his superior at Elmina:

I pray your Excellency to permit me to do this [i.e., make this next kostgeZd payment at Accra] as if it does not occur there will be a great harm done to the trade of our nation here [at Accra].48

The Director-General's reply is not on record. Kankam evidently did not make it to Accra in that year, but in 1762 the Asante- hene's kostgeld was paid out for six years--that is, from 1756 to 1761 inclusive--and the site of payment was Accra, as it would remain into the nineteenth century.9

In contrast to this early attempt to disengage the kostgeZd from its Accra payment site, events of the 1780s led the Dutch

emphatically to reaffirm the link. Following the outbreak in Europe of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch war in 1780, British forces on the Gold Coast mounted several attacks on the Dutch forts in early 1782.50 Though repulsed at Elmina, the British successfully overpowered Ft. Crevecoeur in March 1782. They retained control there until 1784 when the fort was restored to the Dutch, as stipulated in the treaty of peace signed in Europe which ended Anglo- Dutch hostilities. 5 The crucial point is that for some two years the Dutch were deprived of their trading establishment at Accra.

Prior to the war the last documented payment of kostgeZd at Accra took place in 1779.52 The first request for payment after the war came in 1788. Asantehene Osei Kwame (reigned 1777-1803) dispatched the envoy Boakye ("Boadje") to the Dutch fort at Accra bearing the king's kostbrief. 53 The Dutch officer at Accra, D. Lieftinck, brought the note to Elmina, requesting permission to pay out what was due. Director-General Lieve van der Grijp returned the note and issued the following instructions to Lief- tinck.

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

The link between physical occupation by the Dutch of their fort at Accra and the obligation to pay the kostgeZd is clear.

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

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LARRY W. YARAK

the 1750s, Daendels sought to redirect Asante mercantile atten- tions from Accra to Elmina by shifting the site of kostgeZd payment to the latter. His obsession with good communications between Elmina and Kumase is well-known. 5

Freed from the linkage to ground rent, official Dutch think-

ing on the kostgeld during the nineteenth century initially em-

phasized its function in the attraction of Asante trade to Elmina.

Thus, in January 1829 Governor Frederik Last threatened to stop payment of the kostgeZd to the Asante resident at Elmina, Kwadwo

Akyampon ("Cudjo Atjampon"), "as we [the Dutch] had not heard from or had trade with the King of Assiantyn for years."

6 How-

ever, in spite of Last's complaints about having to pay such "an enormous sum" and despite the fact that no Asante trade appeared at Elmina until 1831, the kostgeZd payments were not halted. The reasons for this are to be found in the renewed prospects of a

general peace which appeared in 1829. With peace eventually es-

tablished, growth in trade would soon follow, and so it was in Last's interest to be on good terms with the Asantehene's ambas- sador in Elmina.57 So eager was Last, in fact, that in November 1831--not long after the signing of the Anglo-Asante treaty of 1831--he gave Kwadwo Akyampon a rare advance of three months' worth of the kostgeZd "to serve as a proof to the King of Ashan-

tyn that we never lessened our trust (vertrouwen) in him."58

The link in Dutch thinking between the kostgeZd and Asante- Dutch trade at Elmina was reaffirmed during the 1830s. The payments had become increasingly burdensome to the Dutch coastal

administration, which was being prodded by the home government into cutting costs. Governor Christiaan Lans sought a novel so- lution to this problem. In 1834 he "proposed" to the Elmina Chamber of Commerce (Raad van KoophandeZ) that its members make contributions for the payment of the Asantehene's kostgeZd, as

they were "especially involved in trade with that kingdom."59 Lans' proposal met with a positive, though limited response: pledges of some fl. 145 by the Elmina merchants offered modest relief on a yearly expenditure of fl. 750-fl. 800.60 Neverthe-

less, the principle associating kostgeld with trade was implicit in these acts.

Later in the same decade a new element was injected into official Dutch thinking on the meaning of the kostgeZd. In 1836 a specially appointed Dutch Royal Commissioner, Major-General J.

Verveer, travelled to Kumase with a party of some 600 aides and carriers to establish there a station for the "recruitment" of West Africans into the Dutch military service for the East InO dies.61 A small-scale recruitment service had been in operation in Elmina since 1830 with limited success. The establishment of a "sub-depot" in Kumase involved a significant monetary invest- ment on the part of the Dutch. One of the expenses also assumed

by the recruiting effort was the payment of the kostgeld to the Asantehene in 1840 and 1841.62 In the beginning of 1842, however, the recruitment depot in Kumase was closed for a variety of reasons--not the least of which was the incessant British accusation that the recruitment effort amounted to little more than a veiled slave trade. After 1842 the kostgeZd payments were again charged

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"ELMINA NOTE": MYTII AND REALITY

to the regular administrative budget on the coast.63

Nevertheless, the link between kostgeZd and the recruitment effort remained. In 1853 Governor Hero Schomerus, in another

austerity drive, sought permission from the home government to institute a license or tax on the Elmina merchants so that the entire kostgeZd could be borne by them.64 The Dutch Minister of Colonies responded:

It is not clear to me what interest the merchants can have in assuming the burden of paying the salary [tractement] of the King of Ashanty, and why precisely this should serve as a justification for the introduction of said tax. The subsistence [onderstand] of fl. 800.-

per year enjoyed by said king was granted to him in the

past in order to obtain his cooperation in the recruitment of African soldiers for the army in the East In- dies. Now that the recruitment has ended perhaps then the payment should [also] cease, as long as such an act would not give rise to complications. . 5

Schomerus' reply acknowledged the logic of the minister's argu- ment, and did not question the patently false assertion that the

kostgeZd payments had originiated with the recruitment effort; but the governor noted that an abrupt ending of the payments would arouse the resistance of the Elmina traders.66 In the end Scho- merus' proposal to license the traders foundered; so too did the minister's idea of stopping the Asantehene's kostgeZd.

In late 1859 the Dutch coastal government resumed military recruitment in Kumase, though on a much more limited scale than in 1836-1842. There was, however, no resort by the Dutch authorities to the previous practice of charging the expenses of the

kostgeZd to the recruitment accounts. Instead the expenses continued to be applied to the general administrative costs of the coastal government. 67 Nevertheless, the association of kostgeld with the recruitment effort continued to exist in the minds of

many on the coast. Thus Ramseyer and Kuhne, the Basel mission- aries who were being held hostages in Kumase at the time of the Asante-Dutch dispute over the meaning of the kostgeZd, made the

following observations on the import of the stipend:

The yearly payment of 24 ounces of gold dust arose in the delivery to the Dutch of black recruits for Java. However, the king considered this payment as "tribute" (Tribut) which naturally irritated the governor.6

Thus by 1870 a number of differing views regarding the origin and the significance of the Asantehene's kostgeZd were circulating among Europeans on the Gold Coast. Clearly, Nagtglas' decision in 1871 to emphasize only the link with trade was dictated by political necessity. His acceptance of the view that the Elmina note fell into Asante hands following the defeat of Denkyera was

particularly ironic in that this was precisely the myth concocted by Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame, and subsequently propagated by

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LARRY W. YARAK

Bowdich and Cruickshank. The reality of Dutch and Elmina relations with Asante, as

well as with the neighboring Fante, during 1831-1870 suggested that considerably more was at stake in the continuing Dutch payment of kostgeZd to the Asantehene than simply trade or the mil-

itary recruitment effort. Especially revealing was the fact that since 1831 the Dutch were the only Europeans on the coast to make such payments to Asante. Even among Dutch coastal officials there existed an undercurrent of dissent from the official explan- ations. One such view was expressed as early as the 1820s by Dr. M. Reynhout, a surgeon and botanist in Dutch employ during Daen- dels' tenure as governor. In a speech delivered in the Nether- lands in 1824, Reynhout considered why a "handful of sickly Euro-

peans remained in secure possession" of their coastal forts and

trading lodges. Observing that all agreements and treaties between the indigenous authorities and the Europeans were invariably concluded in favor of the former, he unabashedly drew the conclu- sion that "one can [therefore] consider the whites as tribuary (cijnsbaar)" to the indigenous authorities.69 Though Reynhout did not explicitly mention the Asantehene's kostgeZd, the implied reference is clear.

Writing some forty years later, former Dutch coastal officer Jan Gramberg noted the continuing political implications of the

stipend. Arguing that it still retained the connotation of

"ground rent" (Zandrente), Gramberg further asserted that the

kostgesd payments now also symbolized the long-standing Asante- Dutch political alliance (bondgenootschap).7 This relationship, he contended, had long outlived its usefulness to the Dutch. How to end the "alliance"?--either by unilaterally ending kostgeZd payments, or by secretly negotiating to "buy off" the Asantehene's

kostbrief.7 Gramberg held no illusions as to the prevailing in-

terpretation of the kostgeld relationship on the coast:

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

[schatting] to the King of Ashantyn. . .thus they are at the same time subjects [onderdanen] of Ashantyn. . 72

These sentiments were alluded to by the Elmina authorities as

early as 1853,73 and were echoed explicitly in a Fante "Memorial" drawn up in 1868 for submission to the British governor at Cape Coast. Protesting the Elmina refusal to join with them in an anti-Asante alliance, the "memorialists" attributed this refusal to the influence of the Dutch government at Elmina, "that has for

many years past paid tribute annually to the King of the Ashan- 7,74

tees, and been strongly allied to that power."4

Consequently, Nagtglas' 1871 contention that the Dutch kost-

geZd payments represented no more than an inducement for trade contradicted both the historical record and the notions generally held by Asante, the Fantes and even some of Nagtglas' former col-

leagues. But Asantehene Kofi Kakari's contention that it represented Asante sovereignty over the land on which the Dutch fort at Elmina stood, though grounded in the shared perceptions of many coastal authorities, indigenous and European, was also inaccurate.

374


Ultimately, however, niether the Asantehene nor the Dutch governor was principally concerned with the relative historical

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

VI

In summary, the Dutch began paying kostgeld to the Asante- hene in 1744. At this time, and throughout the eighteenth cen-

tury, there was general agreement between Asante and the Dutch on the meaning of this payment: it represented ground rent or tribute for the Dutch fort at Accra--the right of the Asantehene to collect the stipend developed on him as a consequence of his defeat of the ahene of Akyem in 1742 and the relationship was predicated on mutually beneficial commerical relations conducted at the fort. It is important to note that the Dutch kostgeld paid at this time was no different from that rendered by the Danish and the British for their own establishments at Accra. It therefore had not yet come to symbolize the special relation-

ship that already existed between Asante, Elmina, and the Dutch.75 In the reign of Osei Tutu Kwame this situation changed. As

a result of his military victory over the Fante ahene, the Asante- hene demanded and was granted the notes for the British forts at

Cape Coast and Anomabo. In 1816 the Dutch made two kostgeld payments, one at Accra and one at Elmina. To the Dutch these were merely separate payments covering different time periods of one obligation. To the Asantehene these acts represented an

acknowledgment of his right to two kostgelds, and thus to two

separate notes, for the Dutch forts at both Accra and Elmina. The Dutch position prevailed, and the one kostgeZd was henceforth made payable at Elmina; the new kostbrief issued in 1818 therefore became known as the "Elmina note." Residual Asante claims to the Accra kostgeZd were rendered unsustainable by the Asante defeat at Katamanso in 1826 and the Anglo-Asante and Danish- Asante treaties of 1831, which ended Asante political domination of the Accra towns.

The treaties also effected the removal of most of the southern Akan kingdoms from Asante suzerainty. Accordingly, both the Danish and the British ceased all rent or tribute payments on the notes they had issued to Asante, while their indigenous allies also ceased paying tribute to the Asantehene. Only the Dutch continued to pay kostgeZd to the Asantehene (there is no evidence that the Elminas ever paid tribute to Asante). Thus the "Elmina

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LARRY W. YARAK

Note" acquired a larger significance. To all on the coast it now became a symbol of the peculiar relationship of the Dutch and Elmina to Asante: in the official Dutch and Elmina view, an "alliance" or merely "friendship;" in the official Asante view, sovereignty over the land occupied by the Dutch at Elmina, as well as the Dutch and Elmina alliance; in the Fante view, Dutch and Elmina subservience to the Asantehene, and hostility to the Fante.

The decision of the Dutch to cede their Gold Coast possessions to the British in 1870-1872 brought out the contradictions in these interpretations. These were especially evident in the Asante protestations against the proposed cession. For Kofi Kakari to invoke the conquest origin of the kostgeld relation-

ship necessarily implied an assertion of Asante sovereignty not

only over the land occupied by the Dutch fort but also over El- mina town. This it was impolitic for him to do; hence he authorized the issuance of the much debated "Certificate of Apologie" of August 1872. In this document, Kofi Kakari abandoned alto-

gether his claim to sovereignty by conquest over the Dutch-occu-

pied lands at Elmina. In its place he emphasized Asante-Elmina

"brotherhood," and the long-standing Dutch "friendship" as evidenced by the kostgeZd relationship, in support of his continuing objection to the cession of Elmina to the British. These modifi- cations unquestionably met the requirements of diplomacy vis-a-vis the Elminas, but they failed in the end to prevent the Dutch from

going through with the cession; indeed, if anything, they served to hasten the Dutch exit. The Asantehene was thus left with no alternative but to take up arms to enforce his claims to the

loyalty of Elmina; it is also important to note that he did so with the full cooperation of the Elmina town authorities.76 By the end of 1873 this effort had failed, and Elmina passed permanently out of the Asante sphere of influence, and into that dominated by imperial Britain.

NOTES

1. Financial support for the research on which this paper is based was generously provided by the Asante Collective Bi-

ography Project (directed by Ivor Wilks and T.C. McCaskie), the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright-Hays program of the Department of Education. I would like to thank Brenda Blair, John Rowe and Ivor Wilks for reading and

commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. Any remaining defects are of course my own.

2. The term "stipend" is used here in a strictly neutral sense to denote "regular payment of a stipulated amount by one

party to another," without connotations as to the significance of such payment.

3. This represented 80 Dutch florins (abbrev., fl.) or fl. 960 on an annual basis. During the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth century, this was a nominal figure; the actual

376


cost to the Dutch was less than the stipulated amount because they paid the stipend in trade goods, charging the retail cost of the goods against the amount owed, while their actual expenditure for the goods was of course substantially less. For a brief period in the early nineteenth century and after 1859 the Dutch authorities stopped this practice and paid the Asantehene's envoys the full amount due. See L.W. Yarak, "Asante and the Dutch: A Case Study in the History of Asante Administration, 1744-1873" (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1983), 128-30, 136, 164.

4. Handelingen der Staten-Generaal (Dutch Parliamentary Papers-- hereafter HSG)1873-74, Bijlagen 156.34: Kofi Kakari to Ussher dd. Kumase 24 November 1870. Language as in original. See also J. Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settle- ments From 1750 to 1874 (Dublin, 1923), 389-90. The HSG version is slightly, but not substantially, different from that found in Crooks.

5. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP), C.670, A&P (1872) LXX: Nagtglas to Ussher dd. 20 December 1870 (extracted in G. Metcalfe, ed., Great Britain and Ghana: Documents of Ghana History [London, 1964], 333).

6. Ibid. This part of Nagtglas' letter is not included in Met- calfe's extract, but may be found in the version published in Crooks, Records, 391-93.

7. This point was raised by the British Colonial Office in correspondence with the Foreign Office about the execution of the transfer; it requested that "the Dutch government should procure. . .the renunciation of the claim of the king of Ashantee to Elmina" before proceeding with the cession; see BPP, C.670, A&P (1872) LXX: Colonial Office to Foreign Office dd. London 3 February 1871 (Metcalfe, Documents, 333).

8. See e.g., Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century (Cam- bridge, 1975), 233-34, where it is argued that the document was "spurious." J.K. Adjaye, Diplomacy and Diplomats in Nineteenth Century Asante (New York, 1984), 190-91, adopts a similar position. By contrast, Douglas Coombs, "The Place of the 'Certificate of Apologie' in Chanaian History," Trans- actions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 3/3 (1958); the same author's The Gold Coast, Britain, and the Netherlands, 1850-1874 (London, 1963), chapter 4; and R. Baesjou, An Asante Embassy on the Gold Coast: The Mission of Akyempon Yaw to Elmina 1869-1872 (Leiden, 1979), 40, take the oppo- site view. As Coombs notes (Gold Coast, 102), the idea that the Certificate was a "forgery" dated from at least 1874. For a copy of the Certificate itself, see HSG 1873-74, Bijlagen 156.40.

9. See Kofi Kakari's letter to the Dutch governor dd. 19 August 1871 translated in Baesjou, Asante Embassy, 155-58; and BPP, C. 890 (1874) LXVI, Kofi Kakari to Harley dd. Kumase 20 March 1873 (extracted in Metcalfe, Documents, 349).

10. A.B. Ellis, A History of the Gold Coast of West Africa (Lon- don, 1893), 88; W.W. Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti (2 vols.: London, 1915), 1:198. W.E.F. Ward,

377

A History of Ghana (2d ed.: London, 1958), 122-23; in ibid., 245 Ward makes the further claim that the Elminas themselves

paid tribute to Asante prior to 1872, but I have found no evidence whatsoever to corroborate this.

11. Claridge, History, 1:198. 12. Coombs, Gold Coast, 8. 13. K. Daaku, Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720

(London, 1969), 69-70. 14. Ibid., 67. 15. H. Feinberg, review of Daaku, Trade, in African Historical

Studies, 4 (1971), 722. Cf. H.M. Feinberg, "Elmina, Ghana: A History of Its Development and Relationship with the Dutch in the Eighteenth Century" (Ph.D., Boston University, 1969), 150.

16. Wilks, Asante, 132-33. 17. H. Feinberg, "There was an Elmina Note, But. . .," Interna-

tional Journal of African Historical Studies, 9 (1976), 618- 30.

18. Ivor Wilks, "The Rise of the Akwamu Empire, 1650-1710," Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 3/2 (1957), 104. See also Daaku, Trade, 57.

19. Algemeen Rijksarchief (Dutch National Archives--hereafter

ARA), The Hague, Archief van de Tweede West Indische Com-

pagnie (hereafter WIC) 98: de la Palma to Council dd. Elmina 10 October 1703, enclosure Y.

20. ARA, WIC 126: Minutes of Council dd. 15 May 1732, as translated in Albert van Dantzig, The Dutch and the Guinea Coast, 1674-1742 (Legon, 1978), 271.

21. Ibid. 22. For a brief account, see M. Kwamena-Poh, Government and Pol-

itics in the Akuapem State, 1730-1850 (London, 1973), 76-77. 23. L. Rimer, Tilforladelig Efterrentning om Kysten Guinea

(Copenhagen, 1760), 188-89. I have used K. Bertelsen's translation of this passage (The Coast of Guinea [Legon, 1965], 31), adding the original Danish word that she rendered as "rent." See also Georg Norregard, Danish Settle- ments in West Africa, 1658-1850, tr. S. Mammen (Boston, 1966), 104.

24. R~mer, Tilforladelig, 189 (Bertelsen translation, 32). 25. The issues here are complex. With regard to the European

view of the matter, it is noteworthy that the English recorded their payments specifically as "ground rent" as early as 1752 (Public Record Office [hereafter PRO], London, Treasury Papers 70/977: James Fort Day Books, entry for 1 November 1752; I am grateful to R.A. Kea for this reference). Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Dutch used the term kostgeld (literally, "board money") to describe their rent payments; this may have derived from their usage in Asia, where the Dutch East Indies Company established similar relationships with the indigenous authorities of Java early in the seventeenth century (see H. Klomp- maker, Handel in de Gouden Eeuw [Bossum, 1966], 39-40). In the eighteenth century the Danes employed the term afgift

378 LARRY W. YARAK


(literally, "tax"), as shown by Rqmer's account cited above. By the early nineteenth century the "ground rent" connotation of the payments was still quite clear to English officials and traders on the coast; see G. Robertson, Notes on Africa (London, 1819), 181; William Hutton, A Voyage to

Africa (London, 1821), 263n.; Joseph Dupuis, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), i-ii. The evolution of Dutch thinking on the political meaning of the payments is discussed further below. With regard to the Asante perspective, it is clear that the European concept of "rent" was alien to Asante perceptions of rights in lands held by subject peoples, such as those at the coast. These rights derived from Asante notions of political sovereignty rather than private property; thus the regular payments in respect of its sovereignty in imperial lands were logically included in the category of "tribute." As Wilks has argued, "the Asante government regarded the British, Dutch and Danish establishments on the Gold Coast as falling within the class of tributaries;" Wilks, Asante, 68. The following statement

by Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame (1804-1823) recorded in 1820

gives some indication of his view of the significance of the European payments: "White man come to my country to trade. . .They build castles and houses to live in; they stay as long as they like, then take the gold and go home

again. . .The forts are mine, because I hold the books

(notes), but don't say they belong to me to keep. I say they stand in my country to trade with my people." Dupuis, Journal, 146. Cf. T.E. Bowdich, Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 44, 68-69.

26. ARA, Archief van het Ministerie van Kolonien (hereafter MK) 3986: Daendels to Minister dd. Elmina 23 March 1816. The sum fl. 5,000 represented what was owed to the Asantehene for 62 1/2 months, thus presumably spanning the years 1811-

1815, plus the first 2 1/2 months of 1816, i.e., up to the time of Daendels' writing.

27. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 19 April 1816. 28. ARA, Archief van de Nederlandsche Bezittingen ter Kuste van

Guinea (hereafter NBKG) 349: Elmina Journal, entry for 25

April 1816. 29. See H.W. Daendels, Journal and Correspondence (Legon, 1964),

94-95, "Instructions for Mr. Huydecoper" dd. Elmina 26 April 1816; ARA, MK 3986: General State of Finances dd. Elmina 29 June 1816, entry for 27 April 1816.

30. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 30 May 1817; ARA, NBKG 501: Roelossen to Daendels dd. Accra 12 June 1817.

31. ARA, NBKG 350: Osei Tutu Kwame to Daendels dd. Kumase 17

April 1817. My translation. 32. Ibid., Osei Tutu Kwame to Daendels dd. 6 December 1817. A

year later the Dutch issued one new note; ARA, NBKG 351: Elmina Journal, entry for 25 November 1818.

33. ARA, MK 3983: Minutes of Council dd. Elmina 30 May 1817. 34. This implicit rejection of the conquest origin of the kost-

geld was made explicit by Daendels' successor Frans Oldenburg

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LARRY W. YARAK

when in 1818 the king's envoy pressed for the last time for payment of two distinct kostgelds; see ARA, NBKG 351: Elmina Journal, entry for 6 November 1818. It is also in-

teresting to note that Daendels refused to salute the entry of Kwadwo Aberante into the Dutch fort with seven cannon

shots, as the Asante envoy had been accustomed to receive at Accra. The evidence indicates that the king's kostgeld collectors had indeed received such an honor in the late 1790s; see ARA, NBKG 189: Sinninghe to Bartels dd. Accra 25 October 1798.

35. The reasons for the Asantehene's failure to press further for the Accra stipend are not difficult to discern. First, the king was absorbed from early 1818 with a serious rebellion in the province of Gyaman. Secondly, the appropriate retaliatory measure for Dutch failure to pay kostgeld--cessa- tion of trade with the Dutch at Accra--held little promise of success, for trade at the port had long been in decline; there was also the possibility that such an act might jeop- ardize trade at Elmina, which had become a crucial source of

guns, powder, and lead since Daendels' arrival there in 1816. 36. Copies of the Fante notes transferred to Osei Tutu Kwame in

1817 may be found in PRO, Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 2/11, ff. 103-04.

37. Bowdich, Mission, passim. 38. L.W. Yarak, "Elmina and Greater Asante in the Nineteenth

Century," Africa, forthcoming. 39. Yarak, "Asante and the Dutch," chapter 5, develops this

theme in greater detail. 40. Bowdich, Mission, 71-72. Bowdich's story was repeated by

Brodie Cruickshank in his Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast (2 vols.: London, 1853), 1:51-52. Significantly, this work was translated into Dutch in 1855 as Achttien Jaren aan de Goudkust, tr. D. Weijtingh (2 vols.: Amsterdam, 1855).

41. Yarak, "Elmina." 42. Ibid. 43. Wilks, Asante, 234; Adjaye, Diplomacy, 190-91. 44. ARA, NBKG 117: Schadde to Ulsen, Accra n.d. (but received

at Elmina 8 January 1756). 45. Ibid., Ulsen to Schadde dd. Elmina 21 January 1756. 46. See L.W. Yarak, "The Dutch-Elmina Peace Initiative of 1754-

1758," Asantesem: The Asante Collective Biography Project Bulletin, no. 7 (June, 1977), 26-31.

47. ARA, NBKG 120: van Blydenberg to Huydecoper dd. Accra 22

August 1759. 48. Ibid. 49. ARA, NBKG 123: van Blydenberg to Erasmi dd. Accra 9 April

1762. 50. Briefly described in Claridge, History, 1:216-18. See also

Joseph Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settle- ments from 1750 to 1874 (Dublin, 1923), 47-68.

51. Crooks, Records, 74-75. 52. ARA, NBKG 150: van der Peuye to Woortman dd. Accra 11 Octo-

ber 1779.

380


53. ARA, NBKG 160: Lieftinck to van der Grijp dd. Elmina 29 May 1788. Lieftinck was on temporary leave from his post at Accra.

54. Ibid., van der Grijp to Lieftinck dd. Elmina 1 June 1788. 55. See Daendels, JournaZ, 95-96, "Instructions for Mr. Juyde-

coper" dd. 26 April 1816, which documents his efforts to encourage the Asantehene to rebuild the "great-road" between Elmina and Kumase via Wasa. Daendels' previous career in the Dutch East Indies was also characterized by a strong concern for road building and maintenance; see Nieuw Neder- Zandsch Biografisch Woordenboek, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1911), entry "Daendels (Herman Willem)," col. 670.

56. ARA, NBKG 357: Elmina Journal, entry to 12 January 1829. 57. Ibid., entry for 30 May 1829. 58. ARA, NBKG 360: Elmina Journal, entry to 29 November 1831. 59. ARA, NBKG 769: Correspondence with the Merchants' Council,

Minutes of a Meeting dd. Elmina 27 November 1834. 60. ARA, NBKG 361: Elmina Journal, entry for 16 December 1834.

Typical of the cost to the Dutch government of the kostgeld at this time was the fl. 751.25 paid for the year 1835; see MK 4005: Lans to Minister dd. Elmina 23 April 1836, enclosure: Trade Tolls Accounts (Rekognitie Kas), credit entry for 16 March 1835.

61. A brief account of the military recruitment effort may be found in Albert van Dantzig, "The Dutch Military Recruitment Agency in Kumasi," Ghana Notes and Queries, no. 8 (1966), 21-24. See also Baesjou, Asante Embassy, 23-26.

62. ARA, MK 4012: Accounts of the African Recruitment Depot, credit entry for 16 November 1841.

63. ARA, NBKG 365: Elmina Journal, entry for 28 January 1843; NBKG 923: Financial Documents, receipt dd. Elmina 24 August 1845.

64. ARA, NBKG 367: Elmina Journal, entry for 29 August 1853; NBKG 715: Schomerus to Minister (confidential) dd. Elmina 6 September 1853. It is interesting to note that it was about this time that Dutch officials began referring to the kostgeld as the Asantehene's "salary" (tractement) or "subsistence" (onderstand).

65. ARA, Archief van het Ministerie van Kolonien 1850-1900 (hereafter MK[II]) 293: Minister to Schomerus dd. 's-Gravenhage 5 November 1853.

66. ARA, NBKG 394: Schomerus to Minister dd. Elmina 9 August 1854. 67. ARA, NBKG 852: Ledger of Expenditures, entry for 2 October

1860. 68. Franz Ramseyer and Johann Kuhne, Vier Jahre in Asante (Basel,

1875), 121 (cf. the English edition, Four Years in Ashantee [New York, 1875], 129). See also Kofi Kakari's letter to Nagtglas dd. Kumase 19 August 1871 (translated in Baesjou, Asante Embassy, 156).

69. M. Reynhout, "Redevoering, gehouden op den 11 van Slagtmaand 1824. . .behelzende kruid- en geschiedkundige waarnemingen emtrent de Goudkust;" a copy of this document may be found in the library of the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land-

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LARRY W. YARAK

en Volkenkunde, at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. Reynhout was apparently the major source of information about the Dutch possessions and their hinterland used by Bowdich in his Mission to Ashantee; see pp. 165-215 and 219 of that work. The notion that the kostgeld payments in effect "bought" peace and protection for the Europeans on the coast was alluded to even earlier in an official dispatch from the Dutch governor; see ARA, Archief van het West Indisch Comite 94: Bartels and de Wit to Committee dd. Elmina 25 August 1799.

70. Jan Gramberg, Sketsen van Afrika's Westkust (Amsterdam, 1861), 343-44; idem., "De Goudkust," De Gids (1866), 399.

71. Gramberg, "Goudkust," 401. Governor Nagtglas actually proposed this idea to the Minister of Colonies in 1869: ARA, MK(II) 6007: verbaaZ 30 September 1869, enclosure: Nagtglas to Minister dd. Elmina 7 September 1869. It seems however that the difficulties surrounding Asante envoy Akyampon Yaw's stay in Elmina during 1869/70 prevented the execution of this plan, and the decision to cede the forts to the British rendered the question moot.

72. Gramberg, "Goudkust," 399. 73. ARA, NBKG 544: Statement of the Elmina Government dd. Elmina

12 September 1853. It should be noted however that the El- mina authorities rejected these connotations: "[The Fantes] further accuse that our Government (Dutch) pay allowance to Ashantee King, which thing, they consider us to do this to beg that king so as to be free from suffering his terror-. We have ever defended that such is only for trade and not for anything else. . ."

74. J.A.B_ Horton, Letters on the PoliticaZ Condition of the Gold Coast (London, 1870), 96n. Cf. PRO, CO 879/2: Ussher to Kennedy dd. Cape Coast 6 April 1868.

75. Feinberg, "Elmina, Ghana," 150-54.

382