28 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementposition as middlemen in the trade. Having consented to re-
strict their trading to a particular European nation, the Af-
rican coastal merchants would expect that nation’s military
support during disputes with their neighbors. Th e notes,
as these commercial papers were called, seldom remained
long in the hands of the same Africans, and the forts them-
selves rarely could be held for any great length of time by
the same European nation. Th e construction of forts was
not always the result of reciprocal contacts between Afri-
cans and Europeans. Oft en, forts were built against the will
of the local inhabitants, leading to war.
Bosman’s account of his experience in Africa, A New
and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, was written
during the waning years of the Dutch West India Compa-
ny’s power on the Guinea coast. Th e interior beyond Elmina
was highly unstable, as Africans raided their weaker neigh-
bors and sold them as slaves to Europeans, or fought each
other in an eff ort to control the trade routes leading to the
European coastal forts. Other Europeans, notably the En-
glish, French, and Portuguese, presented considerable chal-
lenges to the Dutch. Perhaps the most serious setback to the
strength of the Dutch West India Company, indeed a major
cause of its fi nal demise, were the intrusions of interlopers
who profi ted by ignoring the commercial prerogatives of the
company. Bosman complained that many interlopers were fi -
nancially supported by noncompany merchants in Holland.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Dutch West India Company;
Elmina; Factor; Gold Coast; Gulf of GuineaDavid M. CarlettaBibliography
Bosman, Willem. A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of
Guinea; Divided into the Gold, the Slave, and the Ivory Coasts.
A New Edition with an Introduction by John Ralph Willis and
Notes by J. D. Fage and R. E. Bradbury. New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1967.
Bosman, Willem. “Trading on the Slave Coast, 1700.” In Th e At-
lantic Slave Trade, edited by David Northrup, 71–74. Lexing-
ton, MA: D. C. Heath, 1994.Bunce Island
Bunce Island (or Bance), once the largest British slave castle
on the Rice Coast of West Africa, is a tiny island approxi-
mately 20 miles up the Sierra Leone River from the Atlantic
Ocean, in the largest natural harbor on the African continent.the countries of Gabon, Haiti, Côte d’Ivoire, Zambia, and
Tanzania recognized the Republic as an independent state.
Other countries such as France, the former Rhodesia, and
South Africa provided covert military aid. In 1972, follow-
ing the secessionist Biafran War, the ruling leader obliter-
ated everything with the name Biafra, thereby anointing the
area with the new name of the Bight of Bonny. Th is attempt
to eradicate Biafra’s historical value was unsuccessful as the
bight continues to garner academic and lay attention.
See also: Atlantic Slave Trade; Chesapeake Colonies; Equi-
ano, Olaudah; Igbo
Dawne Y. CurryBibliography
Brown, Carolyn A. Repercussions of the Atlantic Slave Trade: Th e
Interior of the Bight of Biafra and the African Diaspora. Tren-
ton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005.
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Slavery and African Ethnicities in the
Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2005.
Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1983.
Bosman, Willem
Willem Bosman (1672–?) was born in Utrecht, Holland. He
set out for West Africa at the age of 16 and spent 14 years in
the service of the Dutch West India Company on the Guinea
coast. Th e establishment of the company was a refl ection
of Dutch commercial designs on Spanish and Portuguese
possessions in Africa and the Americas. Th e company
sought to monopolize the Guinea coast portion of the At-
lantic slave trade that supplied captive labor to New World
plantations. In 1637, the Dutch succeeded in ousting the
Portuguese from São Jorge de Mina, also known as Elmina,
the largest and oldest European fort on the coast. Bosman
became the second most important Dutch offi cial on the
coast of Guinea aft er being appointed to the Dutch West
India Company’s Elmina factory, where African coastal
merchants sold slaves they obtained from the interior.
Besides Elmina, other Dutch West India Company
forts lined the Guinea coast, serving as ship repair stations,
as well as emporiums for ship supplies, trade goods, and
above all, slaves. Africans allowed the Europeans to con-
struct forts on their land in return for rent and were willing
to ally with Europeans because agreements protected their