Brandenburger Gold Coast
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The Brandenburger Gold Coast, later Prussian Gold Coast, was a part of the Gold Coast that was colonised by Germans before the German unification of 1871.
[edit] Brandenburger Gold Coast
Since May 1682 a chartered company from the margravial electorate of Kur-Brandenburg, the core of the later Prussian kingdom, the Brandenburg African Company (Kurfurstliche Afrikanisch-Brandenburgische Compagnie), founded 1682, established a small West African colony consisting of two Gold Coast settlements on the Gulf of Guinea, around Cape Three Points in present Ghana:
- Groß Friedrichsburg, now Pokesu: 1682-1717], which became the capital
- Fort Dorothea, now Akwida: April 1684-1687, 1698-1711, April 1712-1717], which in 1687 - 1698 the Dutch occupied.
The German governors during this Brandenburger era were:
- May 1682 - 1683 Philip Peterson Blonck
- 1683 - 1684 Nathaniel Dillinger
- 1684 - 1686 Karl Konstantin von Schnitter
- 1686 - 1691 Johann Niemann
[edit] Prussian Gold Coast
On 15 January 1701 the small colony was renamed Prussian Gold Coast Settlements, long before the Brandenburg electorate itself was renamed Prussia. From 1711 to April 1712 the Dutch occupied Fort Dorothea again.
In 1717 the colony was physically abandoned by Prussia, so that 1717-1724 John Konny (or in Dutch Jan Conny) was able to occupy Groß Friedrichsburg, from 1721 in opposition to Dutch rule.
In 1721 the rights to the colony were sold to the Dutch, who renamed it Hollandia, as part of their larger Dutch Gold Coast colony.
The Prussian era governors were:
- 1701 - 1704 Adriaan Grobbe
- 1704 - 1706 Johann Münz
- 1706 - 1709 Heinrich Lamy
- 1709 - 1710 Frans de Lange
- 1710 - 1716 Nicholas Dubois
- 1716 - 1717 Anton Günther van der Menden