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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Small Company Trade and the Gold Coast. The Swedish Africa Company, 1650-1663 |
Author: | Nováky, Gyorgy |
Year: | 1992 |
Periodical: | Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History |
Volume: | 16 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 57-76 |
Language: | English |
Geographic terms: | Ghana Sweden |
Subjects: | colonization trading companies mercantile history History and Exploration Economics and Trade |
Abstract: | The Swedish Africa Company (Svenska Afrikakompaniet, SAK) was a chartered trading company which conducted a limited and short-lived trade in the middle of the seventeenth century. The SAK originated in the overseas trading activities of Louis de Geer, a Swedish merchant of Dutch origin. Its first trading organization was established in 1649 in Cabo Corso, the major port of the Fetu polity, later known as Cape Coast (in present-day Ghana). Since profitable trade with the Gold Coast ultimately depended on a knowledge of the social, political and economic aspects of West African societies, Henrich Carlof, the former superintendent of Elmina, was appointed 'commendant' in 1649. Between 1649 and 1658 the Company was commercially quite successful. An inventory carried out in 1654 of the SAK's investments on the Gold Coast shows that it possessed four permanent trading points (Cabo Corso, Osu, Anomabu and Takoradi). The fall of the SAK started in 1657 when Carlof left the Company in anger. The last remaining assets of the Swedish Africa Company on the Gold Coast were confiscated in 1663. The unavoidable dependency on local (Fetu) elites provides the explanation both for the Company's success, and for its ultimate failure. Notes, ref. |