The Komenda Wars, 1694–1700: a Revised Narrative

I

Since 1990 I have been working on a critical edition of records of the Royal African Company of England (hereafter RAC), preserved in the Rawlinson collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford.¹ This material comprises letter-books containing correspondence received at the RAC's West African headquarters, Cape Coast Castle, mainly from the Company's other factories on the Gold Coast, during the period from 1681 to 1699 (though with some gaps). Two volumes of this correspondence, covering the years 1681-83 and 1685-88, were published in 1997 and 2001; a third and final volume, presenting correspondence from 1691-99, is now published.²

Although attention was drawn to this material in the 1970s, only limited use has hitherto been made of it by historians.³ The only substantial published study of the Gold Coast which makes extensive use of the Rawlinson material is that by Ray Kea (1982), which deals with general social and economic structures and their transformations, rather than with the detailed course of events.⁴ The general neglect of this material has undoubtedly been due, in large part, to its user-unfriendly arrangement, the letters being entered according to the date of their receipt at Cape Coast, without regard for geographical provenance, which makes the process of locating documents which relate to any particular locality extremely tedious—an obstacle which its publication has now removed. The potential utility of this material in the detailed reconstruction of events on the Gold Coast is illustrated here by the case of the "Komenda Wars" of 1694-1700.

The Komenda Wars have long been recognized as an especially significant episode in the history of the Gold Coast. They were primarily a confrontation between the African kingdom of Eguafo (in which Komenda was situated)⁵ and the Dutch West India Company (WIC), and as such represented "the longest-drawn-out struggle between a local state and a European company."⁶ The RAC was also centrally involved as a supporter of Eguafo, so that the wars also represented an important episode in the history of Anglo-Dutch rivalry on the West African coast. Moreover, they progressively drew in other African states, as allies on either side, including not only Eguafo's immediate neighbors, Ahanta to the west, Adom to the north, and Fetu to the east, but also more remote states—Asebu, Fante, and Akron on the coast further east; and Denkyira, Wasa, Twifo, "Cabess Terra" (i.e., Etsi)⁷ and Akani (Assin) in the interior. The Komenda Wars thus provide a prime example of the growing scale and intensity of warfare on the Gold Coast and in its hinterland in this period, reflecting a process of militarization of local societies, characterized by Ray Kea in terms of a transition from a "mercantile" to an "imperial" sociopolitical formation, which was in turn linked to the replacement of gold by slaves as the principal item of export from the region.

The perceived importance of the Komenda Wars also owes much to the fact that an extended account of them was included in the most influential contemporary European account of the Gold Coast, by Willem Bosman, an officer of the WIC, published in 1704.⁸ As Bosman makes clear, he was in part a first-hand observer of and participant in the wars, since he served as chief of the Dutch fort at Komenda during 1695, and was later involved in the highest level of local policy-making of the WIC, as Chief Merchant at the Company's headquarters at Elmina from 1699. It has long been recognized, however, that his account suffers from problems of bias.⁹ Its original publication provoked an officer of the RAC to complain of its "disingenuity, partiality and malice against the English."¹⁰ Bosman's account of the Komenda Wars, indeed, exhibits transparent bias not only against the English, but also against the leading African merchant of Komenda, John Cabess;¹¹ and against the two successive Directors-General of the WIC of this period, Johan Staphorst (served 1694-96) and Jan van Sevenhuysen (1696-1702), whom he blamed, in implicit...