Forts, Castles and Society in West Africa

John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu, Ph.D. (2000), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), is Associate Professor of History (African and World) at NTNU. He has published a monograph, many articles and edited volumes, including (with Victoria Ellen Smith) Shadows of Empire in West Africa: New Perspectives on European fortifications (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsList of FiguresNotes on Contributors1 Introduction: Forts, Castles, and Society in West AfricaJohn Kwadwo Osei-Tutu2 Gold Coast Forts and Castles: Key Themes and PerspectivesJarle Simensen3 ‘Heaven Is High Above, and Europe Is Far Away’, so Christiansborg PrevailsSelena Axelrod Winsnes4 ‘Creative and Expedient Misunderstandings’: Elmina-Dutch Relations in the 19th CenturyLarry Yarak5 Wax Prints in West Africa: Unravelling the Myth of Dutch Colonial Soldiers as Cultural BrokersIneke van Kessel6William’s Fort: The English Fort at Ouidah, 1680s–1960sRobin Law7The Danish Guinea Coast Forts, Denmark’s Abolition of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and African Colonial Policy, 1788–1850Daniel Hopkins8Political Relations between Osu and Christiansborg, 1803–1826Ole Justesen9Cosmopolitan Conundrums: Impacts of Trade Fortresses on the Gã Space, 1450–1870John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu and Hermann W. von Hesse10Forts and Castles in the Colonial Period: Uses and Understandings of the Pre-colonial FortificationsJon Olav Hove`

'Very significantly, reader and researchers using Forts, Castles And Society In West Africa: Gold Coast & Dahomey will benefit from learning the fortresses roles in what critics have described as the abominable slave trade as well as the economic and political connections, which are centered on the forts, between the Europeans and local African polities; and also their place in various focused heritage studies and endeavors.The 276-page Forts, Castles And Society In West Africa: Gold Coast & Dahomey is a publication that can tremendously benefit college students at all levels as well as researchers and the general reader. Both the editor and the contributors deserve praise in giving an old subject matter a fresh overview to make it an appropriate sequel, where Ghana is concerned, to Professor Albert Van Dantzig’s 1980 pioneering work, Forts and Castles of Ghana'.Nana Abena D. Amoah-Ramey, Indiana University-Bloomington, in African and Asian Studies,18 (2019) pp. 213-231'The multi-dimensional and thought-provoking nature of this book is a major contribution to our understanding of the West African forts and castles between 1450 and 1960. [...] Osei-Tutu is to be strongly credited for his efforts in bringing together a variety of scholars in order to provide a comprehensive and coherent presentation of what has been, until recently, a mostly sporadic and superficial attention to West African forts and castles'.Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann, Hampshire College, in African Archaeological Review (2020) 37: 639–641