Akwaaba!
Welcome to Digital Kormantin, an NEH-funded project using computers and emerging technologies to do and share historical and archaeological research in new ways. We explore English Castle Cormantine and Dutch Fort Amsterdam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Ghana , Great Britain's first permanent outpost in Africa and invite you to virtually visit the site yourself using an immersive, interactive exploration portal and learn about this internationally important but remote historical site.
About us
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Kormantin, Ghana, has been inhabited since at least the 1400s, when people from the forested interior built a village on a hilltop near modern-day Abandze, Ghana. Fante people later arrived and settled around them. Portuguese, French, and English ships traded here in the 1500s.
In 1632, the English Guinea Company built a lodge here, fortified it, and made Castle Cormantine its headquarters for all African trade. In 1665 the Dutch West India Company captured it in a fierce battle and built Fort Amsterdam atop the English ruins. It was an active gold and slave trade entrepot until 1807, when an Ashanti army sacked the fort.
Research
Despite its age and importance as England's first African outpost, very little archival research had been done before the DK project. To reconstruct the fort and village's intertwined history and guide archaeological excavations, we gathered maps, sketches, accounts, letters, shipping manifests, and photographs in U.S., British, Dutch, and Ghanaian archives and libraries dating back to the 1550s to more fully reconstruct the site's 400-year history and help interpret archaeological finds. The timeline presents much of this primary-source information. Careful research also informs the virtual heritage visit we built to provide digital explorers with our most accurate evidence-based understanding of the Kormantin and Fort Amsterdam sites
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Date
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Sep 19 2019 - Sep 19 2019
Archaeology
Archaeological excavations conducted in 2019 and 2023 have helped assess the stability of Fort Amsterdam's ruins and revealed part of the footprint of English Castle Cormantine beneath it. Recovered artifacts are shedding light on building construction methods, the fort's 1665 capture, interaction with Abandze village and inland traders, and the lives of soldiers and Dutch West India Company ``fort slaves`` who lived here. NEH-funded excavations under Syracuse University's Dr. Christopher DeCorse fully involve local community members and GMMB staff.
