The Dutch Gold Coast cession (Dutch: afstand van de Kust van Guinée, also Afstand van de Goudkust) of 1871–1872 was the transfer by the Kingdom of the Netherlands of its possessions on the Cape of Guinea — the Dutch Gold Coast, in present-day Ghana — to Great Britain, by a convention concluded on 25 February 1871, ratified on 17 February 1872 (promulgated as the Wet of 20 January 1872, Staatsblad No. 6), and formally transferred at a flag ceremony on 6 April 1872 at Castle St. George. Concluded in the same year as the Sumatra Treaty, the cession released the Dutch from their West African entanglement and freed their hands for the coming Atjeh-Oorlog of 1873–c. 1904, while the British assumption of the Gold Coast brought them into the long Ashanti contest that would close the century. Van der Kemp and Dr. F. W. Stapel both treat the cession as the structural pivot between the early-modern Dutch-Achehnese story opened in 1598 by the Houtman brothers’ voyage and the modern Dutch-Achehnese story that would dominate the nineteenth century.
The Dutch Gold Coast possessions
The Dutch possessions on the Gold Coast of West Africa — a string of forts from Axem to Chama — had been a feature of Dutch overseas presence since the seventeenth century, but by the late nineteenth century they had become commercially marginal. As Stapel records, “the trade relations also meant little more: the firm of Rijckevorsel had withdrawn, while the Rotterdam firm of Muller saw more advantage in its relations with Mozambique and Liberia, so that only one of its ships once a year called at the Coast” (de handelsrelaties beteekenden ook weinig meer: de firma van Rijckevorsel had zich teruggetrokken, terwijl de Rotterdamsche firma Muller meer voordeel zag in hare betrekkingen met Moçambique en Liberia, zoodat slechts één harer schepen eenmaal per jaar de Kust aanliep).
The Dutch government concluded “that it would be in everyone’s interest if the coast came under the authority of England alone; she may thereby have harboured the secondary thought that a transfer to England could be played out to obtain a free hand in North Sumatra” (dat het in ieders belang zou zijn zoo de kust onder het gezag kwam van Engeland alleen; zij mag daarbij de nevengedachte hebben gekoesterd dat een overgave aan Engeland kon worden uitgespeeld om de vrije hand in Noord-Sumatra te verkrijgen).
The 1871 convention and the Wet of 1872
“On 25 February 1871 a tractate tending to the cession was concluded. Ratified on 17 February 1872, it has been promulgated as the Wet of 20 January 1872 (Staatsblad No. 6)” (Den 25 Februari 1871 is een traktaat strekkende tot den afstand gesloten. Geratificeerd den 17 Februari 1872 is het afgekondigd als Wet van 20 Januari 1872 (Staatsblad No. 6)). The Dutch public “had left itself rather unprotesting; the deliberations in the First Chamber had however been broadly set up, they also penetrated deeper to the core than in the Second Chamber. Watched was that the transfer was complete, so that there could be no question of a ‘sale’” (Het Nederlandsch publick had zich tamelijk onbetuigd gelaten; de beraadslagingen in de Eerste Kamer waren niettemin breed opgezet geweest, zij drongen ook dieper tot de kern door dan in de Tweede Kamer. Gewaakt werd, dat de overdracht volkomen was, zóó dat er niet zou kunnen worden gesproken van een ‘verkoop’).
The 6 April 1872 transfer
“In the morning of 6 April 1872 was, on the Castle S. Jorge, simultaneously with and next to the Netherlands flag, an English one hoisted. Then the acting Netherlands Governor Ferguson handed over the colony to the Governor-General of the English Possessions on the West Coast of Africa, Sir J. Pope Henessy. At the setting of the sun both flags were taken down, the tricolour for ever, the cross of St. George to take up with the beginning of the next day the sole rule over the landscape” (In den morgen van den 6den April 1872 werd, op het Kasteel S. Jorge, gelijktijdig met en naast de Nederlandsche vlag eene Engelsche geheschen. Toen gaf de waarnemend Nederlandsch Gouverneur Ferguson de kolonie over aan den Gouverneur-Generaal der Engelsche Bezittingen ter Westkust van Afrika, Sir J. Pope Henessy. Bij het ondergaan der zon werden beide vlaggen neergehaald, de driekleur voor altijd, het kruis van St. George om met het begin van den volgenden dag de alleenheerschappij over het landschap te voeren).
The Sumatra Treaty of 1871 and the question of linkage
Van der Kemp introduces the cession in his study of Raffles’ Acheh agreement of 1819 in order to examine — and largely to qualify — the widespread Dutch belief that the surrender of the Cape was the price paid by the Netherlands for the British abandonment of the Acheh reservation.
The Sumatra Treaty of 1871 had, by its principal article, released the Netherlands from the British reservation in favour of Achehnese independence that had been attached, almost casually, to the Treaty of 17 March 1824. It was widely asserted in the Netherlands — and is asserted, Van der Kemp notes, by public opinion to this day — that the two treaties of 1871 “stood and fell together,” and that the abandonment of the Acheh reservation could not have been obtained without the sacrifice of the Cape. De Waal, the former minister of colonies, stigmatised this view in his Onze Indische Financiën as “a historical inaccuracy.” According to De Waal he himself, as minister, had offered the Cape to England “without particular occasion,” simply in order to put an end to the inter-tribal warfare among the negroes — “a pretty idea” — and only later had England demanded that the two treaties “should stand and fall together.”
Van der Kemp accepts that public opinion in the Netherlands underrated the importance of the Acheh concession; that an incoming ministry, under whom the treaties were adopted by the legislature, was able to declare that the contention that it was easier to recruit forces on one’s own territory than under a foreign flag had “no shadow of ground” — a declaration Van der Kemp finds inexplicable. But he does not press the question of linkage. The mere fact, he suggests, that the two treaties were concluded in the same year, and that the abandonment of the Acheh reservation could not have been obtained had not the Cape been offered, was enough to fix the impression that the two were linked; and the public could hardly be blamed for feeling the weight of the sacrifice even where it did not grasp the precise diplomatic sequence.
The substantive Dutch gain of 1871 was accordingly the Sumatra Treaty, by which Britain renounced “all remonstrances against the extension of Netherlands authority in any part of the island of Sumatra,” and therewith renounced the Acheh reservation of 1824. Van der Kemp records that the abandonment was accorded, in the words of the treaty, “with the relinquishment of the proviso in this respect occurring in the notes exchanged by the Netherlands and British plenipotentiaries at the conclusion of the treaty of 17 March 1824.” The Cape of Guinea cession, whether linked or not, was the smaller of the two transactions of that year; but it was the more visible, and it has therefore remained in Dutch memory as the symbol of the price paid for the Acheh expedition of 1873.
The discussion serves to introduce the celebrated Second Chamber statement of Van Bosse of 17 January 1872, in which the minister of colonies acknowledged that “it is Article 3 of the treaty of 1824 that has given rise to the conflict.” The reader is left to draw his own conclusion as to whether the abandonment of the Cape was the price of the Acheh reservation or merely its occasion; but Van der Kemp clearly inclines to the former view, since he records De Waal’s disclaimer without endorsing it.
The Atjeh-Oorlog context and the Ashanti parallel
The closing Atjeh reference in Stapel’s De Koloniën is in the sentence immediately following the 6 April 1872 transfer: “The Netherlands could now undisturbed prepare for the Atjeh-Oorlog: England got the war against the Asjantijnen in prospect, which, if in less acute phases, would also come to last until about the year 1900” (Nederland kon zich nu ongestoord opmaken tot den Atjeh-Oorlog: Engeland kreeg den oorlog tegen de Asjantijnen in het vooruitzicht, die, zij het in minder acute phasen, ook tot omstreeks het jaar 1900 zou komen te duren).
The parallel is exact: the Dutch Atjeh War (1873–c. 1904) and the British Ashanti wars (1873–1900) are presented as the simultaneous colonial commitments that the Gold Coast cession enabled on both sides. The cession released the Dutch from West African entanglement at the cost of opening them to the largest colonial war in their nineteenth-century history; the British assumption of the Gold Coast brought them into the long Ashanti contest that would close the century.
Significance
The Gold Coast cession is the closing Atjeh-related event in Stapel’s De Koloniën, and the explicit linkage between the end of the Dutch Atlantic empire and the opening of the Aceh War is the strongest single statement of the connection between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean theatres of Dutch colonial policy. The cession is also the moment at which the long Dutch West African presence — opened in the seventeenth century — finally ends, and the moment at which the long Dutch Acehnese presence — opened in 1598 with the Houtman brothers’ voyage — enters its largest and most costly phase.
The reference to the Atjeh-Oorlog is the only explicit mention of the nineteenth-century Aceh War in Stapel’s De Koloniën, and it appears as the closing bookend of a narrative that has followed the Dutch-Acehnese relationship from its 1598 opening. The Gold Coast cession is therefore the structural pivot between the early-modern Dutch-Acehnese story that is the subject of the Westkust chapters and the modern Dutch-Acehnese story that would dominate the nineteenth century.
Van der Kemp’s discussion of the Cape of Guinea cession is, in effect, a footnote to his larger argument about the Sumatra Treaty of 1871: it serves to mark the public impression of the treaty at the time of its conclusion, and to introduce the Van Bosse statement of 17 January 1872. Stapel, writing a generation later, makes the linkage explicit: the cession is the event that “freed Dutch hands” for the Atjeh-Oorlog, and the simultaneous Ashanti war on the British side is the structural counterpart of the long Dutch-Acehnese war.
See Also
- Sumatra Treaty of 1871
- Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London (1824)
- Van Bosse’s Second Chamber statement (17 January 1872)
- E. de Waal
- Article 6 controversy
- Cape of Guinea
- Gold Coast
- Ashanti Empire
- Castle S. Jorge
- Acheh
- Aceh War
- First Dutch voyage to Atjeh (1598-1599)
- 25 February
- 17 February
- 6 April
- 1871
- 1872
- 1900
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 42–43 (tekst bij blad 7-10: De Nederlanders in Guinee en Brazilië — Opper-Guinee van 1648-1872 — Afstand en Overdracht, 1872).