About the site
Located in Kormantin-Abandze on Ghana’s Atlantic coastline, Fort Amsterdam was a British fort and slave castle. The fort’s land was first leased to the British company “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of London Trading to Guynney and Binney” in 1631, who proceeded to build a lodge on the site. When this structure burned down in 1640, a more heavily fortified building was constructed in its place; this is the structure that still stands today. In 1665, twenty years after construction finished, the fort was captured by the Dutch West India Company and renamed Fort Amsterdam.
Fort Amsterdam’s most infamous use was as a slave castle or slave fort, where enslaved peoples were held before being sent across the Atlantic via the Middle Passage. According to the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, “it is believed that the first slave prison on the Gold Coast was in its hollow southeast bastion. The name Kormantin was synonymous on the Caribbean Islands for hard to subdue slaves, especially those originating from the Gold Coast” (source). This past has made the site important for scholars and researchers seeking to understand the Atlantic slave trade, as well as for the descendants of enslaved people who are looking to understand more about their family’s past.
In 1811, people from the nearby town of Anomabo attacked the fort and drove out the Dutch occupiers. The site was left in ruins and stayed that way until 1951, when the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board restored it. Fort Amsterdam was added to the UNSECO World Heritage list in 1979 alongside other Ghanaian forts and castles and is open to the public today as a cultural site.
Capture sites
Capture site 1
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Capture site 2
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