Because of centuries of colonialism and the slave trade that came with it, Ghana has centuries of traumatic history. However, I believe that it is important to face that history and to learn about it, as a way to gain a fuller understanding of present situations and as a way to prevent atrocities in the future.
The former slave-trading castles in Ghana have all been declared UNESCO Heritage Sites. The two that are most frequented by visitors to Ghana are the Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. Elmina Castle also has another interesting designation – it’s the first permanent European structure built in West Africa.
History of Elmina Castle
By the time that the Portuguese landed in the place that would come to be known as Elmina in 1471, they had already been trading along the African coast for 50 years. The king had given up on exploration of the African continent at that point, since returns had been small up until this point. When the traders reached present day Elmina, they arrived in a place that already had a thriving gold trade, which piqued resumed the royal interest in Africa. The place was called “La Mina” by the Portuguese, or “The Mine,” which has morphed into Elmina.
Construction of Elmina Castle began a little more than 10 years later, in 1482. The Portuguese met with the welcoming local chief, Kwamin Aisha, who was pressured into ceding the land to the Portuguese. Construction began immediately with prefabricated construction materials that had been sent from Portugal.
By the 17th century, the transatlantic slave trade had replaced the gold trade as the most significant economic activity on the coast of West Africa. Thousands of captive Africans passed through the castles on the coast as they were shipped to the “New World” where they were enslaved.
In 1637, the Dutch took over Elmina Castle by force, and they continued to trade human beings from there until 1814 when the slave trade was officially abolished by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. The British assumed control of the castle in 1872.
Inside Elmina Castle
A visit to Elmina Castle includes a tour guided by a knowledgeable volunteer. You will see the dungeons where the female captives were held and the ladder some of them climbed when they were chosen by the governor to be raped.
You will walk along the path that thousands of people took as their last steps on their home continent to the Door of No Return. This Door of No Return, unlike the one at Cape Coast Castle, has not been altered. It’s short and narrow, and the captives were forced to walk through it, chained to one another.
You’ll step inside the dark, windowless cell where rebellious captives were left to suffocate and starve to death as punishment. This is contrasted with the cell immediately next to it that has a barred door and window, that was used as punishment for soldiers that had committed an infraction.
You’ll also see the stark contrast between the areas where the captives were held and the large, breezy spaces that the colonizers lived in.
You’ll also see a bit of the history of the building after it was no longer trading human beings. At various points in history, it was a school and a police training academy. The British also held famed Ashanti queen Asante Yaa here before she was exiled to the Seychelles.
Visiting Elmina Castle
Elmina is about 15 kilometers from Cape Coast in the Central Region of Ghana. To get there from Accra, you can take a bus or a tro tro from Kaneshie station. Admission to the castle is 20 GHS (as of January 2018) for adult foreigners and includes the tour, which lasts a couple of hours.
