Fort Nassau
The first Dutch fort and first capital.
Ghana-Net.com · Forts & Castles · Central, Western and Greater Accra
The Dutch stayed longer than any other European power on the Gold Coast: nearly 275 years. They threw out the Portuguese, ran the slave trade from Elmina for two centuries, paid rent to Asante for the castle they called their own, recruited Gold Coast men to fight in Indonesia, and finally sold the lot to Britain for under 47,000 guilders. This is the hub for every Dutch fort, governor and story on Ghana-Net.
In 1591 the Dutch skipper Barent Eriksz sailed to the Gold Coast and came home with gold. Within a few years dozens of Dutch ships a year were trading on the beaches, underselling the Portuguese, and the coastal rulers were glad of the competition. The first Dutch trading post followed in 1598.
In 1612, after a treaty with the king of Asebu, the Dutch built Fort Nassau at Mouri, their first fort and first capital, a few kilometres from Portuguese Elmina. See also King Amamoo of Asebu. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was founded and took over the trade.
A first Dutch assault on Elmina in October 1625 ended in disaster: the landing force was ambushed by Portuguese troops and their Elmina allies. In August 1637 the WIC tried again, this time with African allies of its own. Its men dragged guns up St Jago Hill and bombarded the castle from above, and on 29 August 1637 São Jorge da Mina surrendered.
Elmina Castle became the Dutch headquarters for the next 235 years. Shama fell in 1640 and Axim in 1642. On St Jago Hill, where the guns had stood, the Dutch later built Fort Coenraadsburg to make sure nobody could do to them what they had done to the Portuguese.
Elmina's Dutch town: the Dutch cemetery, the old merchant houses and the festival of Edina Bronya, Elmina's "local Christmas", all date from these centuries. See our dedicated site, ElminaCastle.info.
At its height the Dutch Gold Coast was a chain of forts from Beyin to Accra, some built by the Dutch, many taken from the Portuguese, English, Swedes and Brandenburgers.
The first Dutch fort and first capital.
Headquarters from 1637 to 1872, with Fort Coenraadsburg on the hill.
The Dutch fort in Accra, later British Ussher Fort. Dedicated site.
The small Dutch fort above Butre, near Busua.
Taken from the English. The name "Coromantee" for Gold Coast captives in the Americas comes from here.
Built next to the English, and fought over in the Komenda Wars.
Fort Oranje at Sekondi, today a lighthouse station. See Sekondi-Takoradi.
Fort Lijdzaamheid, "patience", because building it took so long.
Fort Goede Hoop at Senya Beraku, the Dutch fort on the Efutu coast. Dedicated site.
Renamed Fort Hollandia, with Fort Dorothea at Akwida.
The full hub, with every fort that changed hands.
The WIC came for gold, ivory and pepper. After it took Elmina it turned more and more to people. Captives were bought from African traders and states, held in the castle dungeons and shipped across the Atlantic, above all to the Dutch colonies of Suriname and Curaçao and to Brazil during the Dutch occupation there. Through the eighteenth century the Gold Coast was one of the WIC's main sources of captives.
Not only Europeans. The trade depended on African partners: coastal brokers, the inland states, and the war captives of Akwamu, Denkyira and Asante. Read Who sold whom?, The Forgotten Giants of the Atlantic Slave Trade and The History of Slavery in Ghana.
The Dutch never owned Elmina outright in African eyes. They paid a regular rent for it, recorded in a document known as the Elmina Note. The payment first went to Denkyira; after Osei Tutu I defeated Denkyira in 1701, the note passed to Asante. The Dutch became Asante's main European partner on the coast, and Elmina its window on the sea.
Why it mattered in 1872: when the Dutch sold Elmina to Britain, Asante insisted the town was theirs by right of the note. Britain disagreed, and the dispute fed directly into the Sagrenti War of 1873–1874.
After the Java War of 1825–1830, the Dutch colonial army in Indonesia was short of men. From 1831 the Dutch recruited soldiers on the Gold Coast, at first largely by buying enslaved men and "freeing" them on condition of military service. In Java they were called the Belanda Hitam, the "Black Dutch". About 3,000 men were sent before the practice ended with the Dutch departure in 1872.
Two Asante princes: as part of the recruiting agreement with Asantehene Kwaku Dua I in 1837, two young princes, Kwasi Boakye and Kwame Poku, were sent to be educated in the Netherlands. Boakye trained as a mining engineer at Delft and spent the rest of his life in Java.
One of the WIC's commanders at Elmina in the fort-building decades.
The Elmina trader whose description of the Gold Coast was read all over Europe.
Taken to the Netherlands as a boy, ordained, and sent back to Elmina after defending slavery in his thesis.
Taken from Axim by the Dutch West India Company and given to a German duke.
Envoy to Kumasi, with Jacob Huydecoper and Hans Propitius.
The Ahanta king the Dutch hanged in 1838. His head was kept in the Netherlands until 2009.
The Dutch fort in Accra, and what is happening to it. With Ghana's Ghosts.
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The Dutch are the forgotten colonists of Ghana. The British get the blame and the Portuguese get the "discovery", but for most of the slave-trade era it was the Dutch who ran Elmina, and Dutch ships that carried Gold Coast captives to Suriname and Curaçao. They paid rent to Asante, hanged an Ahanta king, shipped Gold Coast men to fight in Java, and left in 1872 for the price of their furniture. Elmina's stones are Portuguese at the bottom and Dutch almost everywhere you look. The Netherlands has begun to talk about its slavery past at home; on the Gold Coast, the conversation has hardly started.
Verified: 28 September 2026. The 1591 voyage, the 1598 trading post, Fort Nassau (1612), the WIC (1621), the conquest of Elmina (1637), Shama (1640), Axim (1642), the fort dates, the Belanda Hitam from 1831, the 1867 exchange treaty, the February 1871 cession price and the 6 April 1872 handover follow standard histories of the Dutch Gold Coast. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.