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Gold Coast, description of the Gold, Ivory, and Slave Coasts of Guinea in 1700
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- FormatePub
- ISBN8235637351
- EAN9798235637351
- Date de parution22/04/2026
- Protection num.pas de protection
- Infos supplémentairesepub
- ÉditeurIoakim Ioakim
Résumé
1701. A Dutch chief merchant is stationed in the heart of West Africa. And he writes everything down. Willem Bosman was no mere visitor. For thirteen years, he served as chief merchant of the WIC and second-in-command at Fort Elmina. He bought gold, inspected ivory, and calculated the purchase price of slaves. Between 1688 and 1702, he wrote twenty letters home, not for his bosses but for a friend.
That is why his tone is businesslike, direct, and unfiltered. He looks straight into a world that Europe did not understand. A world of African men with twenty wives, where women work the land while men drink palm wine. Of court cases in which a woman must explain her accusation of adultery in anatomical detail to a circle of gray-haired men. Of African kings who are poorer than an ordinary Dutch merchant, and yet play French, English, and Dutch forts off against one another.
Of an inheritance law in which children inherit nothing from their father, because no one is certain who the father is. Bosman is there. At the courts of Axim, Commany, Fida, and Benin. He sees how a Brandenburg administrator is thrown into the sea by his own people. How a queen remains unmarried to retain her position and chooses an attractive slave for herself. He records with the same matter-of-fact pen the market price of a slave and the corruption within his own Company.
His "Accurate Description of the Guinean Gold, Ivory, and Slave Coast" was published in 1704 and immediately became a European bestseller, translated into English, French, and German within a year. Merchants used it as a handbook; Enlightenment thinkers as a source. This HISTORICA edition presents that famous account for the first time in clear, contemporary Dutch, without dampening Bosman's sharp, sometimes indignant voice.
Supplemented by the rare eyewitness letters of David van Nyendael on the court of Benin and Jan Snock on the coast up to Axim. This is not history from a distance. This is history from the inside. Read Bosman, and see with your own eyes how trade, power, and culture converge at the crucial crossroads of the world around 1700. Three hundred years old. Not a single page is boring. HISTORICA, Great stories, rediscovered.
That is why his tone is businesslike, direct, and unfiltered. He looks straight into a world that Europe did not understand. A world of African men with twenty wives, where women work the land while men drink palm wine. Of court cases in which a woman must explain her accusation of adultery in anatomical detail to a circle of gray-haired men. Of African kings who are poorer than an ordinary Dutch merchant, and yet play French, English, and Dutch forts off against one another.
Of an inheritance law in which children inherit nothing from their father, because no one is certain who the father is. Bosman is there. At the courts of Axim, Commany, Fida, and Benin. He sees how a Brandenburg administrator is thrown into the sea by his own people. How a queen remains unmarried to retain her position and chooses an attractive slave for herself. He records with the same matter-of-fact pen the market price of a slave and the corruption within his own Company.
His "Accurate Description of the Guinean Gold, Ivory, and Slave Coast" was published in 1704 and immediately became a European bestseller, translated into English, French, and German within a year. Merchants used it as a handbook; Enlightenment thinkers as a source. This HISTORICA edition presents that famous account for the first time in clear, contemporary Dutch, without dampening Bosman's sharp, sometimes indignant voice.
Supplemented by the rare eyewitness letters of David van Nyendael on the court of Benin and Jan Snock on the coast up to Axim. This is not history from a distance. This is history from the inside. Read Bosman, and see with your own eyes how trade, power, and culture converge at the crucial crossroads of the world around 1700. Three hundred years old. Not a single page is boring. HISTORICA, Great stories, rediscovered.
