Dutch Gold Coast - Economy

Economy

Although the colony is nowadays primarily associated with Atlantic slave trade, this was not the reason for the first Dutch colonists to settle on the Gold Coast. Barent Eriksz made a profit trading gold, ivory, and West African pepper, and these products remained the primary trading goods in the early 17th century. According to Joannes de Laet, the Dutch West India had transported West-African goods worth 14 million Dutch guilders to the Dutch Republic by 1637, of which the most important was the trade in gold.

This changed with the gradual capture of Brazil from the Portuguese, from 1630 onward. Suddenly, the trade of slaves, for which there was no significant market earlier, became a necessity for the economic survival of Dutch Brazil. Nicolas van Yperen, Governor of the Dutch possessions on the Gold Coast, was instructed by his superiors of the Dutch West India Company to supply Dutch Brazil with slaves. In 1636, he managed to ship around a thousand slaves to Brazil from Fort Nassau, but to secure a continuous flow of slave labour, the company decided it was necessary to attempt once more to capture Elmina from the Portuguese. After Elmina was finally captured in August 1637, the focus of trade for the Dutch West India Company shifted to slave trade. The directors of the Dutch West India Company were not happy with the increasing slave trade on the Gold Coast itself, however, as it interfered with the profitable gold trade, and actively tried to move the slave trade to the Slave Coast, where they had trading posts from 1640 onward.

The loss of Brazil did not collapse Dutch slave trade, as in 1662, Dutch signed their first asiento with the Spanish Empire, pledging to provide slaves to Spanish America, primarily through their trading post in Willemstad, Curaçao. Furthermore, in 1664, the Dutch conquered Suriname, complementing Berbice and Essequibo as Caribbean plantation colonies depending on slave labour.

Meanwhile, the Dutch had tried in 1654 to directly control the mining of gold by building Fort Ruychaver far inland on the Ankobra River, but had left gold production to the locals since that fort was attacked and burned to the ground in 1660. The supply of gold declined dramatically at the turn of the eighteenth century, due to tribal warfare among the people of the Gold Coast. While the Ashanti succeeded in the Battle of Feyiase of 1701 to establish their hegemony on the Gold Coast, it took them a few years to fully "pacify" their newly conquered territory. 1701 proved to be the historic low for the gold trade, with only 530 mark of gold exported, worth 178.080 guilders.

Whereas the supply of gold was declining, the supply of slaves boomed as never before. This was to a large part due to the Ashanti wars; Governor-General Willem de la Palma wrote to his superiors at the Dutch West India Company that the war had unleashed slave raids among the local peoples in the Gold Coast. Whereas between 1693 and 1701 1,522 slaves were transported from Elmina to the Americas, an average of 169 slaves per year, 1,213 slaves were transported between 1702 and 1704, an average of 404 per year.

Apart from increased supply of slaves, the demand also increased due to the asiento trading with the Spanish. Between 1660 and 1690, the Dutch trading posts in Africa, which included the Slave Coast, Arguin, and Senegambia, shipped a third of the total number of slaves across the Atlantic. On the Gold Coast, Governor De la Palma actively tried to systemize the slave trade and improve the numbers of slave shipped to the Americas. To this purpuse, he sent Jacob van den Broucke as "opperkommies" (head merchant) to the Dutch trading post at Ouidah, on the Slave Coast.

De la Palma was a difficult personality and often at odds with his merchants and local African leaders. He resigned from his position in September 1705, but died before he could return to the Dutch Republic. He was replaced by his deputy, Pieter Nuyts, who tried to revive the gold trade at the coast.

But by the seventeenth century, even slave trade dwindled, with the Dutch becoming a rather small player in the trans-Atlantic trade. Since globally this trade peaked in the 18th century, this meant that the Dutch contribution to the Atlantic slave trade only amounts to 5% of the grand total, equalling around 500,000 slaves shipped from Africa to the Americas.

In 1730, the monopoly of the Dutch West India Company on the Atlantic slave trade was lifted. This contributed to the rise of the Middelburgsche Commercie Compagnie (MCC), which dominated the Dutch slave trade for much of the eighteenth century.