Goudkust (Guinea)

The Gold Coast is the coast of present-day Ghana. Here the Dutch had a series of forts and trading posts from 1612 to 1872, with Elmina as their headquarters. At first the WIC bought mainly gold. From the late seventeenth century the slave trade became the most important business: enslaved Africans were shipped from the forts to Suriname, Curaçao and other colonies in the Americas. After the slave trade was banned (1814), the Netherlands recruited soldiers here for the army in the Dutch East Indies until 1872. In 1872 the forts were handed over to Great Britain.

Source: Atlas of Mutual Heritage