Gold Coast Euro-Africans
Regions with significant populations
Languages
Religion
Related ethnic groups

Gold Coast Euro-Africans were a historical demographic based in coastal urban settlements in colonial Ghana, that arose from unions between European men and African women from the late 15th century – the decade between 1471 and 1482, until the mid-20th century, circa 1957, when Ghana attained its independence.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In this period, different geographic areas of the Gold Coast were politically controlled at various times by the Portuguese, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Dutch and the British.[1][8][9][10] There are also records of merchants of other European nationalities such as the Spaniards, French, Italians and Irish, operating along the coast, in addition to American sailors and traders from New York, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.[11] Euro-Africans were influential in intellectual, technocratic, artisanal, commercial and public life in general, actively participating in multiple fields of scholarly and civic importance.[1][2][3][4][5][6][12][13][14][15] Scholars have referred to this Euro-African population of the Gold Coast as "mulattos", "mulatofoi" and "owulai" among other descriptions.[1][2][16] The term, owula conveys contemporary notions of "gentlemanliness, learning and urbanity" or "a salaried big man" in the Ga language.[2][16] The cross-cultural interactions between Europeans and Africans were mercantile-driven and an avenue to boost social capital for economic and political gain i.e. "wealth and power."[2][17][18] The growth and development of Christianity during the colonial period also instituted motifs of modernity vis-à-vis Euro-African identity.[2][19] This model created a spectrum of practices, ranging from a full celebration of native African customs to a total embrace and acculturation of European culture.[16][20]

Genealogy

Gold Coast Euro-Africans were mostly members of Anlo Ewe, Fante and Ga ethnicities - groups that are historically based along the coast of Ghana.[1][2][13] Typical cities that had a strong Euro-African presence include Accra, Anomabu, Cape Coast, Elmina, Keta, Saltpond, Sekondi-Takoradi and Winneba. Many Euro-Africans also owned farms and hamlets further inland on peri-urban plains and rural locales.[2] Euro-African residences along the coast, which also housed well-stocked personal libraries, typically combined colonial architecture designs from Palladian plans, traditional Akan courtyard houses, and the sobrado styles.[11][21][22][23][24][25] Euro-African marriage ceremonies largely combined traditional customary practices with nominal Western Christian standards of monogamy, often in accordance with official colonial rules of the time.[1][2] Euro-Africans also forged relationships with prominent native families of royal ancestry and nobility, both along the coast and in the Akan hinterland.[1][2][17][26][27] As a result, Euro-Africans were "intermediaries" and "councillors" who straddled both spheres with relative ease.[2][28][29] There are also cases of intermarriages between Euro-Africans and immigrants from the African diaspora in the Atlantic such as Afro-Brazilians, West Indians and Sierra Leone Creoles descended from the Nova Scotian Settlers.[13][30][31][32][33] A number of these Euro-Afro-Caribbean families are still extant.[31] There are also records of marriages between Euro-Africans and groups from Anglophone West Africa territories such as the Sierra Leone Creoles from Freetown, a focal trading centre and harbour city in that period.[16][18][34][35][36][37] In postcolonial Ghana, Euro-Africans fully assimilated into the broader Ghanaian culture and are therefore no longer perceived by scholars as a distinct demographic group.

Cultural attributes

Education and literacy

Euro-Africans were noted for their literacy, having benefited from a European-type formal education at the castle schools at Christiansborg and Cape Coast, both opened in the seventeenth century, as well as the government school at Elmina Castle which was opened in 1482.[38] This Western style education can be situated in coastal commerce and educational connections to Protestant missionaries from the Basel and Wesleyan societies that operated in the colony's townships.[2][12][39] The castle schools were started with the approval of European Governors to baptise and primarily educate the male Euro-African mulatto children of European men and Gold Coast African women to train them as administrative clerks and interpreters for colonial civil servants as well as soldiers in the garrisons around coastal European fortresses.[2][38]

Early generations of Euro-Africans went to Europe for higher education.[2][39][40] Though largely excluded from the higher ranks of state bureaucracy, Western-educated Euro-Africans formed the nucleus of the emerging literate, wealthy, urban, anglophile professionals, co-opting the imperial project aspirations on the Gold Coast.[2][40] The sartorial choice for Euro-African men and women included frock-coats, top hats and Victorian dresses, creating caricature images of a pseudo-aristocracy.[2][15][41][42] Examples within this group include James Bannerman (1790–1858), John Hansen (d. 1840) of Jamestown and trader and politician, Henry Richter (1785–1849) of Osu.[2][43] James Bannerman (1790–1858) was the Lieutenant-Governor of the Gold Coast from 4 December 1850 to 14 October 1851.[2][12][13] James Bannerman's father was Scottish while his mother was a Fante woman. He married an Asante princess, Yaa Hom or Yeboah, daughter of the then Asantehene, Osei Bonsu, a political prisoner captured during the Battle of Katamanso in 1826.[12] Moreover, on the Dutch Gold Coast, Carel Hendrik Bartels (1792 – 1850), the son of Cornelius Ludewich Bartels (d. 1804), Governor-General of the Gold Coast, and a local Fante mulatto woman, Maria Clericq was sent to the Netherlands during his youth for education.[12] Additionally, George Lutterodt, an educated Ga-Danish mulatto merchant and an ally of the Basel missionary, Andreas Riis served as the acting Governor of the Danish Gold Coast from 5 July 1844 to 9 October 1844.[32][44][45][46][47][48]

In another instance, a clash between the old customs and the new Euro-African paradigm of literacy happened in the 1840s, when a Danish-educated baptised Ga native, Frederick Noi Dowuona initially declined the Osu Maŋtsɛ chieftain position, citing his Christian beliefs imbibed from his education in Denmark, work as an interpreter and educator at the Christiansborg Castle and his encounter with the first Basel missionaries who arrived on the Gold Coast in 1828.[2] In 1854 after the naval bombardment of Osu over the poll tax ordinance, Dowuona grudgingly accepted to be enstooled on condition of being allowed by the traditional polity to wear Western attire and be exempt from certain religious observances and rituals, in discharging his duties as the king of the town.[2][49]

Participation in public discourse

The then emerging clergy and catechist class had educated "mulattos" among its ranks.[50][51] A notable Western-educated Euro-African churchman was the Basel Mission pastor and historian, Carl Christian Reindorf whose magnum opus, The History of the Gold Coast and Asante, was published in 1895.[2] Reindorf's father had been a Danish-Ga soldier stationed at the Christiansborg Castle barracks, and later became an agent for an English merchant, Joshua Ridley.[2][52] Carl Reindorf's grandfather, Augustus Frederick Hackenburg was a Danish merchant who arrived on the Gold Coast in 1739 and later became the colonial Governor, leaving the position in 1748.[52] As an illustration, in mass media, the first indigenous newspaper to be established on the Gold Coast was the Accra Herald, later renamed the West African Herald, first published in 1857 in British Accra by the Euro-African English-trained lawyer Charles Bannerman and his brother Edmund, scions of the then well-connected coastal Bannerman family.[12][13][53] The two brothers were children of James Bannerman.[2] The newspaper was critical of European proselytizing on the Gold Coast and by 1859 had a readership of 310 subscribers.[13] Literature thus became an effective vehicle for public opinion and discourse.[13]

Social perceptions

Oral accounts indicate that coastal mulatto men had a perceived reputation of marital instability and philandering even though the native religions permitted polygamy.[2][13] A Basel missionary observed that Euro-African men were often "half-bankrupt...lazy and lustful" in their quest for entertainment or merry-making.[2] Euro-African traders often partook in traditional festivals like Homowo of the Ga people of Accra which had elements of drumming, dancing and brandy drinking.[13] Many Euro-Africans, though baptised and confirmed in the church, were nominally Christian and led a "robustly secular lifestyle" which was at odds with the lifestyle of Pietistic Basel and Victorian Wesleyan missionaries whose spiritual influence extended to the coast.[2] Like their trader counterparts, Euro-Africans in white-collar occupations often socialised with European residents on the coast, engaging in "hard drinking, gambling and occasional outburst of violent behaviour."[2]

Notable Gold Coast Euro-Africans

Euro-African unions

Selected descendants of Euro-Africans

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Gold Coast DataBase". gcdb.doortmontweb.org. Archived from the original on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Jenkins, Paul (1998). The Recovery of the West African Past: African Pastors and African History in the Nineteenth Century : C.C. Reindorf & Samuel Johnson: Papers from an International Seminar Held in Basel, Switzerland, 25–28th October 1995 to Celebrate the Centenary of the Publication of C.C. Reindorf's History of the Gold Coast and Asante. Basler Afrika Bibliographien. pp. 31–46, 168–176, 192. ISBN 9783905141702. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 28 May 2018.
  3. 1 2 Ipsen, Pernille (2013). ""The Christened Mulatresses": Euro-African Families in a Slave-Trading Town". The William and Mary Quarterly. 70 (2): 371–398. doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.70.2.0371. JSTOR 10.5309/willmaryquar.70.2.0371.
  4. 1 2 Everts, Natalie (16 August 2012). Green, Toby (ed.). A Motley Company: Differing Identities among Euro-Africans in Eighteenth-Century Elmina. British Academy. doi:10.5871/bacad/9780197265208.001.0001. ISBN 9780191754180.
  5. 1 2 "Black Women's History: Euro-African Marriages in Ghana and the Gold Coast – New Narratives - Beyond Black & White". Beyond Black & White. 24 February 2016. Archived from the original on 12 November 2017. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  6. 1 2 Ipsen, Pernille (20 January 2015). Daughters of the Trade: Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812291971. Archived from the original on 21 June 2018.
  7. ↑ Ray, Carina E. (15 October 2015). Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821445396.
  8. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2018. Retrieved 22 July 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ↑ Meagan Ingerson, Independence Charter School, Philadelphia, PA (2013). Africa As Accessory Portrayals of Africans in Dutch art, 1600–1750 (PDF). London and Leiden: NEH Seminar For School Teachers; The Dutch Republic and Britain; National Endowment for the Humanities; University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2018. Retrieved 22 July 2018.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ↑ Weiss, Holger (2013). "The Danish Gold Coast as a Multinational and Entangled Space, c. 1700–1850". Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. Contributions to Global Historical Archaeology. Vol. 37. pp. 243–260. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-6202-6_14. ISBN 978-1-4614-6201-9. Retrieved 16 July 2019.
  11. 1 2 Micots, Courtnay (2010). African Coastal Elite Architecture: Cultural Authentication During the Colonial Period in Anomabo, Ghana. University of Florida. Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Doortmont, Michel (2005). The Pen-pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities by Charles Francis Hutchison: A Collective Biography of Elite Society in the Gold Coast Colony. Brill. ISBN 9789004140974. Archived from the original on 14 March 2018.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Sill, Ulrike (2010). Encounters in Quest of Christian Womanhood: The Basel Mission in Pre- and Early Colonial Ghana. BRILL. pp. 133, 134, 139 175, 176. ISBN 978-9004188884. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017.
  14. ↑ Bown, Lalage (9 October 2007). "Kwesi Brew". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
  15. 1 2 Quayson, Ato (13 August 2014). Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822376293. Archived from the original on 14 March 2018.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Simonsen, Gunvor (April 2015). "Belonging in Africa: Frederik Svane and Christian Protten on the Gold Coast in the Eighteenth Century". Itinerario. 39 (1): 91–115. doi:10.1017/S0165115315000145. ISSN 0165-1153. S2CID 162672218.
  17. 1 2 Reynolds, Edward (1974). "The Rise and Fall of an African Merchant Class on the Gold Coast 1830-1874". Cahiers d'Études Africaines (in French). 14 (54): 253–264. doi:10.3406/cea.1974.2644. ISSN 0008-0055. S2CID 144896027.
  18. 1 2 Green, Toby, ed. (16 August 2012). Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Pre-Colonial Western Africa. British Academy. doi:10.5871/bacad/9780197265208.001.0001. ISBN 9780191754180.
  19. ↑ Konadu, Kwasi (2009). "Euro-African Commerce and Social Chaos: Akan Societies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries". History in Africa. 36: 265–292. doi:10.1353/hia.2010.0001. ISSN 1558-2744. S2CID 143251998. Archived from the original on 22 December 2018. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
  20. ↑ Salm, Steven J.; Falola, Toyin (2002). Culture and Customs of Ghana. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 6–7. ISBN 9780313320507.
  21. ↑ Micots, Courtnay (December 2015). "Age of Elegance: An Italianate Sobrado on the Gold Coast" (PDF). African Studies Quarterly. 16 (1): 1–32. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  22. ↑ Micots, Courtnay (2010). African coastal elite architecture: cultural authentication during the colonial period in Anomabo, Ghana (Thesis). OCLC 715407504.
  23. ↑ Portway House, Wessex Archaeology. "Details for African Coastal Elite Architecture: cultural authentification during the Colonial period in Anomabo, Ghana". Archived from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  24. ↑ Micots, Courtnay (2017). "A Palace To Rival British Rule: The Amonoo Residence In Ghana" (PDF). Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. 11 (2): 132–154. Archived (PDF) from the original on 11 October 2018. Retrieved 11 October 2018.
  25. ↑ Micots, Courtnay (4 May 2017). "A Palace To Rival British Rule: The Amonoo Residence In Ghana". Critical Interventions. 11 (2): 132–154. doi:10.1080/19301944.2017.1363502. ISSN 1930-1944. S2CID 134904834.
  26. ↑ Doortmont, Michel (2012). "Kamerling in Ghana: A Euro-African family history and an old-fashioned love story". De Nederlandsche Leeuw. Archived from the original on 12 January 2019. Retrieved 28 January 2019.
  27. ↑ "Ghana - Arrival of the Europeans". countrystudies.us. Archived from the original on 3 November 2016. Retrieved 22 December 2018.
  28. ↑ Al, Fashion Et (6 July 2013). "Ghana Rising: Ghana's aging elite revealed in Dutch colonialism documentary project by Eline Jongsma & Kel O'Neill in Empire: Migrants…". Ghana Rising. Archived from the original on 12 April 2018. Retrieved 23 November 2018.
  29. ↑ Ipsen, Pernille (3 February 2016). Daughters of the Trade: Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast. Archived from the original on 12 January 2019. Retrieved 12 January 2019. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  30. ↑ Patton, Adell Jr. (13 April 1996). Physicians, Colonial Racism, and Diaspora in West Africa (1st ed.). University Press of Florida. p. 29. ISBN 9780813014326.
  31. 1 2 Anquandah, James Ghana-Caribbean Relations – From Slavery Times to Present: Lecture to the Ghana-Caribbean Association. National Commission on Culture, Ghana. (November 2006). "Ghana-Caribbean Relations – From Slavery Times to Present: Lecture disambiguation to the Ghana-Caribbean Association" (PDF). National Commission on Culture, Ghana. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 July 2016. Retrieved 28 May 2018.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  32. 1 2 Dawes, Mark (2003). "A Ghanaian church built by Jamaicans". Jamaican Gleaner. Archived from the original on 21 November 2017.
  33. ↑ Kwakye, Abraham Nana Opare (2018). "Returning African Christians in Mission to the Gold Coast". Studies in World Christianity. 24 (1): 25–45. doi:10.3366/swc.2018.0203.
  34. ↑ Akyeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku; Niven, Mr Steven J. (2 February 2012). Dictionary of African Biography. OUP USA. ISBN 9780195382075. Archived from the original on 29 October 2017. Retrieved 2 February 2019.
  35. ↑ Easmon, M. C. F. (1961). "A Nova Scotian Family", Eminent Sierra Leoneans in the nineteenth century.
  36. ↑ Patton, Adell Jr. (1989). "Dr. John Farrell Easmon: Medical Professionalism and Colonial Racism in the Gold Coast, 1856-1900". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 22 (4): 601–636. doi:10.2307/219057. JSTOR 219057.
  37. ↑ Boadi-Siaw, S. Y. (2013). "Black Diaspora Expatriates in Ghana Before Independence". Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (15): 115–135. ISSN 0855-3246. JSTOR 43855014.
  38. 1 2 "History of Education in Ghana – Great Pola Africa Foundation". politicalpola.wikifoundry.com. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 17 May 2017.
  39. 1 2 Mangan, J. A. (7 March 2013). The Cultural Bond: Sport, Empire, Society. Routledge. ISBN 9781135024376. Archived from the original on 28 June 2018.
  40. 1 2 Ray, Carina E. (15 October 2015). Crossing the Color Line: Race, Sex, and the Contested Politics of Colonialism in Ghana. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780821445396. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  41. ↑ Al, Fashion Et (5 December 2011). "Ghana Rising: The Origins of the Brew surname in Ghana ….(Descendant of Richard Brew, described as, 'the infamous slave trader of the Gold Coast, now Ghana')…". Ghana Rising. Archived from the original on 2 February 2014. Retrieved 23 July 2017.
  42. ↑ Al, Fashion Et (12 May 2013). "Ghana Rising: History: Ghana's Majestic Past –People & Culture in Black & White from 1850 - 1950". Ghana Rising. Archived from the original on 20 February 2017. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
  43. ↑ Justesen, Ole (2003). "Henrich Richter 17851849: Trader and Politician in the Danish Settlements on the Gold Coast". Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (7): 93–192. ISSN 0855-3246. JSTOR 41406700.
  44. ↑ Seth, Quartey. "Andreas Riis: a lifetime of colonial drama". Research Review of the Institute of African Studies. 21. Archived from the original on 17 April 2017.
  45. ↑ Missionary Practices on the Gold Coast, 1832-1895. Cambria Press. ISBN 9781621968733. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018.
  46. ↑ Miller, Jon (22 May 2014). Missionary Zeal and Institutional Control: Organizational Contradictions in the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast 1828-1917. Routledge. ISBN 9781136876189. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018.
  47. ↑ Knispel, Martin; Nana Opare Kwakye (2006). Pioneers of the Faith: Biographical Studies from Ghanaian Church History. Accra: Akuapem Presbytery Press.
  48. ↑ "NUPS-G KNUST>>PCG>>History". www.nupsgknust.itgo.com. Archived from the original on 7 February 2005. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  49. ↑ "Osu Salem". osusalem.org. Archived from the original on 29 March 2017. Retrieved 5 April 2017.
  50. ↑ Sundkler, Bengt; Christopher Steed (4 May 2000). A History of the Church in Africa. Cambridge University Press. p. 719. ISBN 9780521583428. Archived from the original on 10 September 2017.
  51. ↑ Debrunner, Hans W. (1965). Owura Nico, the Rev. Nicholas Timothy Clerk, 1862–1961: pioneer and church leader. Accra: Watervile Publishing House. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017.
  52. 1 2 Quartey, Seth (March 2006). Carl Christian Reindorf: Colonial Subjectivity and Drawn Boundaries. Lulu.com. ISBN 9781411677708. Archived from the original on 19 May 2018.
  53. ↑ Ziegler, Dhyana; Molefi Kete Asante (1992). Thunder and Silence: The Mass Media in Africa. Africa World Press. p. 12. ISBN 9780865432512.
  54. ↑ "Bartels, Carel Hendrik". GoldCoastDataBase. 6 April 2012. Archived from the original on 3 October 2020. Retrieved 19 April 2012.
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