Previous page | New search |
The free AfricaBib App for Android is available here
Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Global Encounters: Slavery and Slave Lifeways in Nineteenth-Century Danish Plantations on the Gold Coast, Ghana |
Author: | Bredwa-Mensah, Yaw |
Year: | 2004 |
Periodical: | Journal of African Archaeology |
Volume: | 2 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 203-227 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | slaves agricultural workers plantations history 1800-1899 History and Exploration Labor and Employment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) colonialism Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/43135935 |
Abstract: | The global processes unleashed as a result of European maritime exploration and commercial activities from 1500 onwards affected the indigenous peoples and cultures of the Atlantic world. In West Africa, the European presence precipitated the Atlantic slave trade, which involved the exportation of millions of Africans into slavery. In the nineteenth century a so-called legitimate trade in colonial agricultural commodities replaced the Atlantic slave trade. As a result, the Danes established agricultural plantations on the Gold Coast and exported tropical crops for processing and consumption to Denmark and the West Indies. Enslaved Africans were used by the Danes to cultivate the plantations in the foothills of the Akuapem Mountains and along the estuary of the Volta River. This paper combines information from written sources, ethnography, oral information and archaeology to investigate the living conditions of the enslaved workers on the plantations. The archaeological data was recovered from the Frederiksgave plantation at Sesemi near Abokobi in the Akuapem Mountains of southeastern Gold Coast (Ghana). Bibliogr., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract] |