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Port · Gold Coast

Elmina Castle and the town of Edina

Elmina Castle, first called São Jorge da Mina, stands on the coast of today’s Ghana. The Portuguese began it in 1482 to trade for gold, and it is usually described as the oldest European-built building still standing south of the Sahara. Around 1715 it was the West African headquarters of the Dutch West India Company, beside a large African town called Edina, and in these years the trade in captive people overtook gold as the coast’s main export.

Who built Elmina Castle, and why is it called Elmina?

In 1481 King John II of Portugal sent Diogo de Azambuja to West Africa with about ten caravels, small sailing ships, and two supply ships loaded with pre-cut stone and roof tiles. The fleet arrived on 19 January 1482 and building began within days.

The local ruler, named Caramansa in Portuguese records and remembered in Ghana as Kwamena Ansa, agreed only reluctantly. When the builders started breaking up a rock the townspeople held sacred, people were outraged and fought back, and the building went ahead in spite of their resistance.

The Portuguese named the castle São Jorge da Mina, St George of the Mine. There was no mine on the spot: “Mina” pointed to the gold trade. Akan peoples mined gold inland and traders carried it to the coast. In the early 1500s about 24,000 ounces (680 kilograms) a year left the Gold Coast through Portuguese hands, roughly a tenth of the world’s supply. By the early 1500s the Portuguese were also trading people, bringing enslaved Africans from Benin and selling them to African merchants for gold.

What was the town of Edina like?

Elmina was an African town before the castle, and it stayed one. Its people called it Edina. Archaeology by Christopher DeCorse shows the old town on the peninsula beside the Benya lagoon. For about 1700 to 1760, historians estimate 12,000 to 16,000 people, probably the largest town on the Gold Coast. The Dutch staff on the whole coast was about 250.

The town was organised into asafo companies: wards based on family descent that also served as fighting units. Seven are recorded in 1724. Townspeople worked as canoemen, brokers, traders, soldiers and labourers. A written contract, renewed from time to time, set out duties on both sides. The castle and the town depended on each other, though quarrels sometimes broke out.

Powerful kingdoms inland also had a claim on Elmina. The Dutch paid them a yearly payment, called “food money”, first to Denkyira and then, after Asante defeated Denkyira at Feyiase in 1701, to Asante. The town was attacked or besieged in 1726 and again in 1740.

How did the Dutch take Elmina Castle?

The Dutch attacked the castle and failed in 1596, 1603, 1606, 1615 and 1625. In August 1637 a force of the Dutch West India Company (WIC), a trading company chartered by the Dutch Republic, finally succeeded. Roughly 1,000 to 1,400 African soldiers from the neighbouring states of Eguafo and Asebu fought alongside them. The Dutch hauled guns up St Jago hill, where a Portuguese chapel stood, and bombarded the castle’s weaker side until the garrison surrendered.

So that no enemy could repeat their trick, the Dutch fortified the hill: an earthwork in 1638, then by the 1660s a stone fort, Fort Coenraadsburg, also called Fort St Jago. The castle became the seat of the WIC’s Director-General, its headquarters for the Gold Coast, and it stayed the Dutch headquarters in West Africa until 1872.

Was Elmina a slave castle in 1715?

Yes. In the early 1700s, the trade in captive people overtook gold and ivory as the Gold Coast’s main export. War drove the change. The rise of the Asante kingdom from 1701 and wars between Akan states produced captives. Captives came from these inland wars and trading networks, and Asante became a major supplier.

African and European traders both took part. Some Elmina merchants sold captives to the Dutch and held enslaved people themselves. The company also owned “castle slaves”, enslaved workers who served as craftsmen and labourers keeping the forts running. Historians find, however, that Elmina’s own townspeople were not themselves a source of captives for the trade; the people sold came from further inland. Children made up a growing share of those the WIC bought, nearly a tenth in the early 1700s.

The SlaveVoyages database estimates that Dutch ships carried about 73,800 people from all parts of Africa in 1701–1725 and about 83,100 in 1726–1750, roughly 3,000 a year. Those figures include the Slave Coast around Whydah and Loango, not only Elmina.

What happened to captives inside the castle?

People brought from inland were held in storerooms beneath the castle that had been turned into dungeons, with men and women kept apart. They waited for weeks, sometimes months, until a ship came. The rooms were crowded, dark and badly aired, and food and water were sometimes withheld as punishment. Many people died there before ever boarding a ship.

In the courtyard, the Dutch used the old Portuguese church as a hall for trading, including the sale of captives. A cell for condemned prisoners still survives.

The sea gate through which captives left is now called the “Door of No Return”. The name appears to be a modern one, given in remembrance of the people who passed through it.

What happened to Elmina Castle later, and can you visit it?

Much of today’s castle is Dutch rebuilding, including work in 1770–1775, so in 1715 it looked somewhat different. The Dutch ended their slave trade in 1814. On 6 April 1872 they handed the castle and their other Gold Coast posts to Britain, and in June 1873 the British bombarded and destroyed the old town on the peninsula.

The castle later served as a police training centre and a school. Today it is a museum run by the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, restored in the 1990s, and a place of remembrance and pilgrimage for people of African descent. UNESCO listed it in 1979, together with Fort St Jago, among Ghana’s forts and castles, which also include Cape Coast Castle.

Legend or fact?

Legend says: Elmina Castle is the oldest European building south of the Sahara.

Records show: It is fairly described as the oldest European-built building still standing there, and it was the first European trading post in sub-Saharan Africa. But church ruins at Cidade Velha in Cape Verde date from about 1470, and much of the present castle is Dutch rebuilding.

Legend says: 30,000 enslaved people a year passed through Elmina.

Records show: This figure, found in some popular accounts such as BlackPast, does not fit the records. All Dutch ships from all of Africa carried about 3,000 people a year in 1701–1750, and an older estimate puts the whole Gold Coast at perhaps 5,000 a year at its 18th-century peak.

Legend says: The Portuguese built the castle with the local ruler’s blessing.

Records show: Caramansa agreed reluctantly, and fighting broke out when the builders broke up a sacred rock.

Legend says: The Dutch captured Elmina on their own.

Records show: Roughly 1,000 to 1,400 African allies from Eguafo and Asebu fought with them in 1637.

Legend says: Elmina’s own people were sold from the castle.

Records show: Historians find the townspeople themselves were not a source of captives. Captives came from inland wars and trade, though some Elmina merchants were among the suppliers.

Legend says: Elmina was a European fort with a few Africans around it.

Records show: Edina was a large African town of perhaps 12,000 to 16,000 people with its own government. About 250 Dutch staff on the whole coast depended on it.

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Sources

  1. Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions, UNESCO World Heritage Centre (1979). World Heritage listing in 1979 with Fort St Jago; Elmina as one of the oldest European buildings outside Europe.
  2. St. George’s Castle (Elmina Castle), Elmina (1482), Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. First major European construction in tropical Africa; enslaved people brought from Benin; Dutch capture in 1637; rebuilding 1770–1775; handover on 6 April 1872; later uses and the museum today.
  3. Fort St. Jago, Elmina (1660s), Ghana Museums and Monuments Board. The Portuguese chapel on the hill, the Dutch guns that forced the 1637 surrender, and the permanent fort built by the 1660s.
  4. An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900, Christopher R. DeCorse (Smithsonian Institution Press), described by Syracuse University (2001). Elmina (Edina) as a complex African settlement on the peninsula by the Benya lagoon, and the first European trading post in sub-Saharan Africa.
  5. A West African Cosmopolis: Elmina (Ghana) in the Nineteenth Century, Larry W. Yarak, Library of Congress Seascapes conference (2003). Town population and Dutch numbers (after Feinberg), asafo wards, the contract with the Dutch, the shift from gold to captives, Elmina merchants and castle slaves, sieges of 1726 and 1740.
  6. Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century, Harvey M. Feinberg, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79, pt 7 (1989). Standard study of relations between the town and the castle, including population and tribute (consulted through Yarak and later summaries).
  7. Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database: Estimates, SlaveVoyages. People carried on Dutch ships in 1701–1725 and 1726–1750.
  8. Dutch involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, African Studies Centre Leiden. The Gold Coast as a main zone of the WIC slave trade, with Elmina its best-known fort.
  9. The dimension of the Dutch slave trade from Western Africa, Johannes Postma, Journal of African History 13 (1972). Phases of the WIC trade and the growing share of children among those bought in the early 1700s.
  10. Ghana: Early European Contact and the Slave Trade, US Library of Congress, Country Studies (c. 1994). An older estimate of about 5,000 people a year from the whole Gold Coast at the 18th-century peak.
  11. Earliest church in the tropics unearthed in former heart of Atlantic slave trade, University of Cambridge (2017). The Cidade Velha church ruins of about 1470, older than Elmina.
  12. El Mina São Jorge da Mina, Kayomi Wada, BlackPast.org (2010). The meaning of “Mina”, gold exports in the early 1500s, and conditions in the dungeons. Also an example of the “30,000 a year” figure the page corrects.
  13. Elmina, Dutch heritage, Dirk Teeuwen, Rendez-vous Batavia (2009). Dutch headquarters until 1872; the old church used for sales of captives; the condemned cell.
  14. History of Elmina, Wikipedia (citing DeCorse 2001 and Feinberg 1989). Additional source: the town’s name Edina, Caramansa’s reluctant consent and the sacred rock, failed Dutch attacks, African allies in 1637, the Dutch “food money” payments to Denkyira and Asante, asafo in 1724, the 1873 destruction of the town.
  15. Elmina Castle, Wikipedia (citing Hair 1994, Lawrence 1963 and DeCorse 2001). Additional source: the 1481–1482 voyage, the founding, the end of the Dutch slave trade in 1814 and the handover to Britain.
  16. Fort Coenraadsburg, Wikipedia (citing histories of the Dutch Gold Coast). Additional source: the Dutch earthwork on St Jago hill in 1638 and the stone fort that replaced it in the 1660s.

Written for Silver & Sails. Facts last checked against these sources on 11 October 2026. Found a mistake? Tell us.