Sex and Desertion in the Gold Coast Slave Trade: Re-examining the Roles of "Castle Slaves"

Drawing on the eighteenth-century correspondence and account books of the English, Dutch and Danish trading companies, this paper examines the ways in which the unfree laborers in the forts and castles on the coast of Ghana (the Gold Coast) occupied a social and cultural space that blurred conventional notions of "African" vs. "European" and "free" vs. "slave" identity, and how their gender identities affected their experiences as members of the so-called Atlantic community. The European trading companies employed several hundred men, women and children in their permanent trade facilities on the Ghana coast throughout the eighteenth century. Referred to variously as "castle slaves," "company's slaves," "committee's slaves," and "company's caboceers," the non-white personnel built and maintained the forts, provided a range of domestic services for their inhabitants and served as interpreters and liaisons between the Europeans and their African host communities. My initial findings suggest that, in the eighteenth century, nearly half of the castle slaves were women, and that many of these women raised infants and small children inside the castle walls. Beginning phases of research also suggest that a large number of the castle slaves were so-called "mulattoes," descendants of European men and African women. This paper will examine how racial and/or gender identities affected the strategies and possibilities for castle slaves to obtain freedom in the era of the slave trade.