User:Fentener van Vlissingen/Dantzig

The earliest, Portuguese, fortifications were mainly fortified to the land side (against an expected Muslim enemy?), but later forts were mainly protected to the sea side, against European competitors.

The Europeans did not have any territorial jurisdiction behind the walls of their forts.

Forts were built with consent, sometimes at the urgent request, of local chiefs and people. But one should not idealize the relationship between locals and Europeans (ibid, ook lood in ivoor, slaven insmeren met olie, etc. in PDF 300 jaar GH-NL aanhalen?)

France and England were the first European competitors to reach the Gold Coast, but it was the Dutch who posed the biggest threat to the Portuguese when they began to arrive in the last decade of the sixteenth century.

The Dutch at first did not want to disturb their profitable trade with the Iberians, but when Philip II closed the harbour of Lisbon to Dutch merchants in 1594, he more or less compelled them to get in the Asian trade themselves.

Treaty of Asebu, two ambassadors to the Dutch Republic.

In 1621, the Dutch West India Company took over the Gold Coast from the States-General.

Attack on Elmina organized from Dutch Brazil, conquered in 1630 from Portugal, by its governor John Maurice of Nassau.

It was no longer for gold alone that the Dutch wanted to have a stronger foothold in Africa: 'New Holland' was a sugar-producing colony, and to work the plantations they had conquered ...

Portuguese power was so much in decline that the locals did not come to their defence.