ABSTRACT
This chapter presents new data on the problem of mortality in West Africa, data from the eighteenth century, but of a long term nature, data which present a far different picture of European mortality on the West African coast. Since 1482, when the Portuguese first built the castle Sao Jorge da Mina, Europeans have been in constant contact with the Gold Coast of West Africa. The most common generalization is that the West African coast was a ‘white man’s grave’, a place where mortality rates for Europeans were higher than anywhere else Europeans travelled. By 1719, the West India Company maintained twelve forts on the Gold Coast from Axim to Accra. The death toll was in fact high everywhere outside Europe, especially in the tropics: ‘Europeans discovered at a very early date that they experienced high mortality rates overseas’, probably five to ten times higher or more, than if they stayed at home.
