3 Review(s)

For 143 years, Cape Coast Castle on the 'Gold Coast' of present-day Ghana was, in the words of one of its governors, the 'Grand Emporium' of the British slave trade. From this pretty, whitewashed, building perched on a rocky outcrop on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, British slave merchants bought African men, women, and children to be sent to the West Indies, to North America, and elsewhere in the New World. This fortress, now a UNESCO world heritage site, stained with a history that has affected the whole world, is the subject of this remarkable book. For those able to visit the Castle much of the experience is still as it was during the slaving era. However, to understand its extraordinary history, the main travelling must always take place in the imagination. William St Clair tells the story of the Castle and of the people who spent part of their lives within its walls, men, women, and children, Europeans, Africans, free and enslaved - these last listed in the Castle's books just as M., W., B., G. (standing for Men, Women, Boys, Girls). Three million of them passed through this and nearby fortresses. Drawing on an extraordinary, largely unpublished and unused archive, often still stained with sea water, William St Clair enables readers to appreciate its unique claim on the collective memory of the modern world.