The Portuguese position on the Gold Coast…

The Portuguese position on the Gold Coast remains secure for almost a century.

During this time, Lisbon leases the right to establish trading posts to individuals or companies that seek to align themselves with the local chiefs and to exchange trade goods both for rights to conduct commerce and for slaves provided by the chiefs.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, adventurers—first Dutch, and later English, Danish, and Swedish—are granted licenses by their governments to trade overseas.

On the Gold Coast, these European competitors build fortified trading stations and challenge the Portuguese.

Sometimes they are also drawn into conflicts with local inhabitants as Europeans develop commercial alliances with local chiefs.

The principal early struggle is between the Dutch and the Portuguese.

With the loss of Elmina in 1642 to the Dutch, the Portuguese leave the Gold Coast permanently.

The next one hundred and fifty years will see kaleidoscopic change and uncertainty, marked by local conflicts and diplomatic maneuvers, during which various

European powers struggled to establish or to maintain a position of dominance in the profitable trade of the Gold Coast littoral.

Forts are built, abandoned, attacked, captured, sold, and exchanged, and many sites are selected at one time or another for fortified positions by contending European nations.