Discovering Who She was, Lead her to dig into Ghana's PAST! her findings will shock you
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- In this video, we'll take a look at some of the amazing discoveries our cameras have been given access to film over the years at the Chistianborg castle. On site at an ongoing archaeological excavation at the castle, our cameras have captured some incredible moments in history.
Rachel and her team are unearthing new secrets and stories every day, and our cameras are there to document it all. Watch this video to see some of the best discoveries our cameras have made over the years!
Christianborg Castle!!!!!! Also known as Osu Castle, it is a seventeenth-century building located in Osu, a suburb of Accra, the capital of Ghana. Christiansborg Castle is a former seat of The Danish slave trading post, the British colonial government, and the Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana.
The castle has played an important role in the history of Ghana and West Africa. It was the site of the signing of several treaties between European powers and African chiefs, and it was also used as a prison and a slave dungeon.
Today, the castle is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a popular tourist destination, attracting visitors from around the world who come to learn about Ghana's history and culture.
In recent years, the castle has been the subject of controversy, as some Ghanaians have called for it to be demolished or repurposed due to its association with the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, and colonialism.
However, others argue that the castle is an important heritage site that should be preserved and used to educate people about Ghana's past.
Rachel Ama Asaa Engmann is one of those advocates…. She is a critical heritage scholar, practitioner, and direct descendant of Carl Gustav Engmann a Danish Governor in the 18th century, who married Ashiokai, a Ga chief’s daughter. Now for full access to excavations and artifacts, our cameras have been given unprecedented access to film the team revealing and making discoveries that could rewrite our history…..…..
I really enjoyed the knowledge I just obtained in 30 minutes. Hello from Dallas, Texas
Beautiful Ghana. Let us tell our story the way it happened.
Love this project with all my heart.
I really appreciate the fact that Rachel made me know my ancestry history and helped me feather my education by participating in her project and funding for my education as well. Not only me but the Osu community as well.
Well done. You and the team are helping to uncover our history
*further
Hello Dentaa, please put english caption for the 3 gentlemen who were speaking Ga started around the 30th minute. Great work!👌 Thank you
thanks
Wud love to listen to her all day... Great learning experience. Her work is one to watch for. Dentaa has done it again 👏👏👏
Enjoyed this interview and Ms. Engmann’s work
We the leftovers from our ancestors past can only try to manage the destruction left behind; including atrocities, eradication of everything our ancestors fought for to survive and try to put the jigsaw puzzle back together, but we can never forget or get over it.
Thank you, Dentaa. This is a great interview. I pray that the Pan African Heritage Museum can collaborate with Rachel's team. Her work is very valuable. The museum will be in Winneba and is slated to receive stolen artifacts from foreign countries, ( France, Great Britain, Germany etc) that will be returned to the continent. It will be important to see some of the artifacts that were found right here in Ghana on display.🤔
Thank you - Ewura Dame Dentaa and Prof. Rachel Ama Esa Engmann! Hard as they are these stories need to be told. The descendants of enslaved Africans need to know the truth! They also need to know about the people who fought back!
Unfortunately, the truth is being distorted by some so called historians.
Initially, these traders built forts & castles to trade basic commodities. But ended up kidnapping people as slaves and later found ways to commercialize their slave trade.. take a look at the number of established institutions that participated in the Trans Atlantic slave trade; the money they made and their existence till this day speak volumes
Grt vid ❤️
She made it sound as if the Danes were more humanistic with their aspects of how they treated their slaves and the local people. She over simplified so many things in favour of the European slave and colonial masters
Great work ❤
Excellent work. The testimonies alone speak volumes about how proud they are to learn something about their ancestors. There should be more archeological work at other sites like they do in Egypt which naturally requires massive funding.
How gullible can we be. Thats one of the main problems with us as black people someone with a title behind their names or good at talking and no one question just accepting. ODana questions about whether the blackman will ever get over slavery some will who are intelligent enough to put things into prospectives but unfortunately most of us won't especially in the USA and Europe.
@@myrnajames1460 Well how can we move forward without active scientific search? It's in America that people talk all sorts and do nothing to investigate. We can't teach our kids without research, yes it's time-consuming and painstaking but it arrives at some truths. I'd say get out of the tribal BA or ADOS or whatever and search, one family at a time and discover patterns....there lies the answer.
Thanks for your dedication and honesty
this is totally brilliant
Thanks for sharing us great contents is very interesting. Thanks Dentaa.
Good stuff for recent developments
We should all have an open mind and be ready to learn
It should not be demolishe. It our history, it's the world's history. So we will learn from it our mistakes not to repeat it again.
Thanks for sharing with us. Such an educative program
Wow, they are doing an amazing job. Very interesting....somthing to add to the narrative. I am trying to not ponder too much on Rachel and others finding the truth about their ancestors and their involvement in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Alot to wrap ones head around.✨️💫👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽
Kudos to Rachel.💖 And thanks to you Dentaa.❤
Lots of history and revelation. Great documentary.
Wow... thanks
Thank you too
An important aspect of Christiansborg's complex history is that the Fort was a prison for those captured as well as a sanctuary for the free Ga community which was terrorized and raided frequently by the Akwamu between 1677-1735.
In 1702, for example, Akwamu under King Akonno attacked Osu & Labadi in the night to raid for slaves. A few of the Osu people were able to escape to safety inside the Fort, whilst some women & children were sent to the Danish Fort near Senya Bereku, but about 2000 were captured as slaves that night. Goes to show, history is not black and white.
what's your source of this information, what is the source of that source?
@@rositascarborough674 the statue in the Volta I believe should be of Asameni, King Akonno's relative, who staged the plot to take over the Fort. King Akonno was not involved in the actual takeover as far as I know. Asameni had previously worked in the fort so he knew the layout and came up with the plan
@Rosita Scarborough for your info Akwamu is not in the Volta Region but Eastern Region
@@blackstargeneration3449 The original first-hand source was the Sub chief/caboceer named Odoi Okpoti who survived the raid on Osu- Labadi and relayed what he'd seen and experienced to Danish officials. Okpoti was an ancestor from the present day Okpoti Kumah We in La. One of the Danish officials was Johannes Rask, resident at Christiansborg from 1708 to 1713, who published "A Brief and Truthful Description of a Journey to and from Guinea". Another contemporaneous account was by FL Romer who was also stationed at Christiansborg in the early 1700s. His book "A true account of the Coast of Guinea" published in the 1700s describes the raid.
there is some constituency in GreaterAccra region who names ENGMMAN
THANKS FOR 👍👍👍
Great content
This is really amazing and very educative. It provides authentic, unadulterated or embellished historical info. The introductory headline said the Professor's finding will "sgock" me, but I think it's a wrong headline. This 32 minute documentary didn't "shock" me: it has Esther generated deep interest in the info being revealed, which provides a perspective of the history of our ancestors that's different from the popular version we learnt at school. I'm yearning for the next video. Thanks for the education. May God and our ancestors bless and protect you.
After her findings, we will still need more scholars from Ghana to scrutinize and confirm without partiality.
The benefit of telling this history accurately is more for Ghanaians than the diaspora. Ghanaians are willfully obtuse when it comes to the impact of slavery on their inter-tribal relationships. Dentaa is one of those people.
This is so true even for the non Afroeuropean bloodline. Like the Europeans, the Akans have always twisted history to their favour. The people who suffered most were the Guans, especially those who occupied the coast. It will be good to speak to Guans to capture their version of Ghana's history. I am Guan (Kyerepong) and will be happy to volunteer..
Fascinating. We in africa must write our own histories. A worthwhile PhD project, i feel inspired to do my own in an entirely different field - civil and structural engineering. May she prosper in this project.
Odana Network, please share this joke with her. Tell her "your life is in ruins" . Am sure she'll understand.
I don't know of a single Ghanaian who has called fior the Castle to be demolished.
She's also exaggerating a bit. The Danish time in the Gold Coast is one of the most documented in Ghana. I have three books, bought in Ghana, including a compilation of correspondences between successive governors and their monarchs back in Denmark.
The village of Sesimei at Ga East (Abokobi) has old farms and a home of Danish settlers, as well as the tree-lined paths they used to walk back and forth to Osu.
There you will even find the names of slaves, who seemed to have come from the entire coast, judging by their names.
We did not have the kind of Slavery in the Americas which was perpetrated on that continent
I am worried. Where is her source of funding? I know about Germany funding some "African-researchers-with-German-connections" for similar archaeological works in the former Togoland which includes the present-day Volta and Oti regions of Ghana. When these works are compared with non-German-funded works, one sees an attempt at a cover-up and blame-shifting. After all, if an indigene is leading the narrative, it must be true, right?! Follow the money, not the researcher.
True. Follow the money.
Someone who is a professor in the US, am sure she has the money to do that.
@@niiadu1983 Didnt you hear jer said she received funds and as soon as she did she started her archeological work
i was thinking exactly the same. what she is saying are assumptions which are easier on her conscious i 100% believe she is not lying but her explanations are over simplified not holistic unfortunately we will never know fully who collaborated with who.
@@healthylifestyleletshareid6060 The name Tema is not the correct word the actual name was called TOR'MAA the ethnic group of Ga"s living till date and they misappropriated to Tema
Another castle in Axim
Very deep, complex and messy history in deed and this was in the pipeline, done on purpose to hid the truth.
She was shocked, but not ashamed???
Shock can be negative or positive, so she needn't say she was ashamed to express a negative emotion.
If you lived in it castle, kidnap in it dungeon
I hope there are also researchers looking into African history migration, civilization, science etc. Would be nice to learn something else other slavery which lasted five seconds in the grand span of history
Relationship saving a man's life while killing and destroying the lives of thousands.
I want to know my history before slavery too
Why didn't they bring their women with them 🤔
Those who are calling for the demolition of the castle are shameful. It is the to remind us how our ancestors were treated.
They are fearful of the weight of history. No demolition. Period.
For all you know, they are digging for hidden treasures. Go figure.
I went to the carpe coast And visited the castle it was heart breaking to know what out black people went through tor hear. terrible thing what I saw crime to human being wicked heart's
Save a slave trader's life🤔
why was the youngman speaking the ewe cut short from talking and explaining his finding,tribalism in Ghana so exist
For your info information, That is all he said couple to the fact that, the Camera man and the editor are all VOLTARIANS.. Please get yours facts before concluding on matters..tx
See fool!sh comment… fueling what doesn’t exist because of inferiority complex. Akans represent almost 50% of Ghana’s population, who voted in a plebiscite so Ewes will become part of Ghana, there has never been any marginalization nor conflicts between the clear majority of Ghanaians who are mostly Akans and the Ewes, intact ewes today are part of the majority employed in public sector work though being a minority and you’re here spewing nonsense about tribalism.
It wasn’t the same practice as the pale Arabs and Europeans did. Slaves could marry into families etc
I call this Slave Dungeons Castle, not just a Castle.
She is portraying her great-grandfather's situation as not too horrible.
just like pims and the girls who work for them. You could say they are part of the cause,
How do you bargain with someone brandishing a weapon?
Yeah, we have problems with one another as humans that can lead to many other things if they are not addressed carefully.
African communities don't practice slavery in the same manner that European societies do; we house and feed our slaves you may not know they're slaves.
Don't downplay this heinous conduct by the colonizers by implying that we're also to blame.
The paradox of this fort is that some of the Akan and Ga traders/chieftains who used to bring people to sell at Christiansborg, ended up on slave ships themselves in the 1700s. Eventually, many in the diaspora are also going to have to come to terms with the fact that their enslaved ancestors were once slave traders and raiders in Africa too before finding themselves on the other side of the Atlantic.
I am consern that this woman cannot be objective, there are numerous reasons why the indigenous people sold members of there racesuch as fair for themselves or close family members being taken. The African may have had slaves but the did not ill treat then as the Europeans did and still do to this day. The people in Africa were never stripped of the name culture and correct me had their children taken from the and treated in humanely. She has to make her descendants look good so she can feel that her great great great grandfather did not take her great great great great grand mother was taken as a concubine slave who bore him children like the American President did, and was not legally married. All slaves took their masters name. She is coming from her funders prospectives. Lots of questions needs to be asked before one can h
ave the audacity to rewrite history which is impossible to do. The american slaves, the Caribbean slaves and the Affrican slaves experience were Completely different. Sorry I find her comments hard to swallow.
No no no no no for your guest, Ama Engmann, to compare the kind of slavery practiced in precolonial Ghana to that of Chattle slavery which was practiced by Europeans, is DEAD WRONG. I NOTICE SHE'S PART DANISH, SO SHE HAS TO STRADDLE THE LINES. BUT COME ON 😮
She is portraying her great-grandfather's situation as not too horrible; I am of the same opinion.
just like pims and the girls who work for them. You could say they are part of the cause,
How do you bargain with someone brandishing a weapon?
Yeah, we have problems with one another as humans that can lead to many other things if they are not addressed carefully.
African communities don't practice slavery in the same manner that European societies do; we house and feed our slaves you may not know they're slaves.
Don't downplay this heinous conduct by the colonizers by implying that we're also to blame.
Smh I'm not gonna finish watching this nonsense. She appears to be a European & slave trade apologist
@@abuchiagu6887 Word ✊🏾
You know your, history WHY keep the slave masters name??
Wow,very impressive,in-depth and great work.Thank you for blessing us with such a great history of our past.👏👏👏👏🫶🏾
Anytime a supposedly scholar comes to the slavery topic and says “without the participation of Africans, transatlantic slave trade as we know it, wouldn’t have happened”…they lose credibility. How about saying that if the Europeans hadn’t specifically built ships in Europe and traveled thousands of miles over the Atlantic ocean for the sole purpose of kidnapping Africans, transatlantic slave trade as we know it wouldn’t have happened? Talk about putting the cart before the horse. If the Europeans had any morals they wouldn’t have put chains on the Africans because they knew the Africans would run away or worse destroy them and that’s kidnapping.
The Africans didn’t build ships to send their war captives off the continent before the arrival of Europeans. Africans didn’t build massive structures to hold prisoners before the Europeans arrived. Slavery in Africa before European chattel slavery was totally different. Even scholars are getting brainwashed!
Lastly, if the Europeans didn’t write in their journals or letters back in Europe that they actually married these African women, how did this scholar know it wasn’t ra#@? Sounds like this lady is protecting, embellishing or whitewashing the actions of her ancestors. There’s no evidence that any European governor was a saint.
While I applaud her for the research, she needs to be careful to maintain credibility and apportion blame appropriately and not try to protect any bad actions of her direct ancestors.
Thank you, my brother. Such free-ranging, free-wheeling and often casual interviews do not evoke the complete picture necessary in the treatment of such sensitive topics. The omission of one major contributor/factor that fed the trans-Atlantic trade, such as captives from local tribal wars, for example, may leave viewers with the impression it was all about locals selling family or others into slavery.
I'm also left wondering how important this particular location was, compared to the 2 in the Central Region, to the transatlantic slavery. Mention was made in the video of the Dutch, Swedes and Danes role, however, no numbers were given as to findings from the research into colonialists' records to locations such as U.S. Virgin Islands. This is not to say that the archeological exploration is any less important, but to have some pertinent information also presented in the interview for a complete picture.
Yes, sir! Nuff said, Mr. Boye
@@nanaasafu-adjaye4239 the historian clearly mentioned that there were several sources of slaves not just family members. She mentioned that some were criminals convicted of serious crimes, others were already indigenous /domestic slaves, some were pawns who couldnt be redeemed, some were kidnapped and others were prisoners of war. As to the volume of trade, Denmark (and Bradenburgh) were two of the smallest operators in the Transatlantic slave trade. Denmark transported an estimated 111,000 people to the Carribean whilst the largest actors were the Brits, Portuguese and Dutch who transported a few million among themselves.
She knows because there are actual marital records in the Danish Archives showing the marriages brokered btwn local women & European men. These were known as "cassare" marriages and initially followed the same format as a traditional wedding but were later conducted by chaplains from the Moravian missionary attached to the fort. Once a cassare marriage was recorded, the local wife was automatically entitled to a portion of her European husband's salary and pension if he died or retired. The Danes established what was known as the "Mulatto chest" and depending on rank, the staff would have to apportion 4-50% of his month's wages to the Mulatto chest and these deductions were recorded in the Company Book. e. g records show that when Governor Pahl died, his local wife was owed 14 months' wages.
Moreover, although the men wouldn't write about their personal lives in the official reports sent home to Copenhagen, a few did leave letters and diaries describing their relationships and others left wills conferring their properties to their African spouses and children. The book "Daughters of the Trade: Atlantic Slavers and Interracial Marriage on the Gold Coast" by Pernille Ipsen details some of these marriages.
There are also references to the African wives of Danish officials in their debt books because the wives were allowed to take goods on credit from the fort in order to trade in the markets. So there are myriad written sources confirming these marriages as well as of course local family accounts
@@tvs9978 …you talk as if the African women involved were educated enough to know the marital laws in a distant foreign land in Europe. Fact is, there was no convertible currency back then and if indeed these women were legally married and entitled to whatever, the Danish currency was of no use in Africa. It’s the same ridiculous comment people make about slavery making African kings rich when there was no currency to pay the Africans and in fact it was the Africans who were rich and dealing with poor European sailers and mercenaries. The only logical exchange of gold, diamond and slaves from the Africans was guns from the Europeans. The guns destabilized the African societal systems and perpetuated enslavement of Africans which was totally designed by the Europeans. Tribes were forced into fights to keep their people safe by getting rid of other tribes out of fear that the other tribe would get guns and try to enslave them. You enslave or be enslaved.
The Europeans I read actually diabolically exchanged old and used guns with the Africans and thus the reason the Ashantis decided to learn to repair and reengineer guns in a place to this day called Suame near Kumasi.
As a Historian, I respect the research, but this sounds like the same old story that is told by all the European enslavers over and over again. Do they have some kind of historical template? And, why are the archival records always written by the European enslavers while the oral histories always come from the African nations? Especially since It is now a known fact that many of these so-called "oral histories" were fabricated by European historians and are not always authentic or reliable.
Also, why is it that in every story, the first Europeans that engage with these so-called African slave trading chiefs are missionaries who convince them to convert to Christianity and then these same European men always end up marriying and having children by the daughters of the chiefs? I know all of this is up for debate, but in my research, I have found that these mixed-race relationships were not often based on mutual attraction and freedom of choice. Also, while I was doing research on Sudan, I discovered that in many of these cases, the chiefs were made Chiefs by European invaders or so-called "traders" and then they ruled indirectly through them.
Simple. Because, in this case, the specific African nations in this region were not literate. A largely illerate society cannot produce written archival records. They will naturally pass down their history through oral stories. The historian also didn't claim that the interracial marriages/relationships were brokered due to mutual attraction and free choice. Few marriages anywhere in the world in the 1600s and 1700s were a matter of free choice even within the local population. The fact is that wherever there is a group of single men in a new land, be it American soldiers in Vietnam or Japan, French fur traders in Canada and the US, European traders in Asia and Africa, or even African soldiers fighting in Indonesia in the 1800s, the men will mate with and/or intermarry with local women for companionship and strategic survival. It's a universal human experience
Something terrible happened to Africans it sad only God will heald us all.
@@rositascarborough674 symbols and written language are not the same thing. The Adinkra symbols, while able to convey concepts, lessons and proverbs, cannot and do not convey detailed chronological histories so equating the two is erroneous. The tradition across most groups in this specific region was to have designated elders who would commit stories to memory and pass on these stories to selected youth for posterity.
@@rositascarborough674 my reference to written language did not in any way cite Western Academia as the standard as after all those were not the only literate Medieval or pre-colonial societies and you have a plethora of written texts from both the muslim-dominated and Aramaic African territories. As to the scroll you refer to in Kumasi, what are the multiple historical sources which have corroborated its details? Beyond that the presence of a limited number of scrolls does not indicate a largely literate soceity otherwise there would similarly be extensive libraries or archives of written material produced by those societies in their local languages which present generations could examine.
@Tvs @Tvs I'm sorry, but I totally disagree with the theory or suggestion that Africans were illiterate at the time of European and/or Arab arrival. This is not the space for a thesis defense, but how is it that Africans built great kingdoms all over the African continent (nort, South, east and west) (which by the way, has also been well documented by these so-called European and Arab explorers) but they were illiterate? And especially during the 1600s, which was centuries after the great learning centers in Timbuktu were built.
Also, in this specific case, these were not everyday average people who were supposedly involved in these trading transactions, these would have been members of the ruling elite, so they definitely would not have been illiterate. And, for me, this complicates the whole question of language translation and trade regulation which I have found were in many cases carried out by either an African with questionable heritage, a Euro-African offspring, an individual who was connected to one of the "European Merchant Companies ( British West African Co., East African Co., etc.)" and/or a combination of the three.
Now, as far as the relationships are concerned, I agree to a certain extent, particularly within a typical mating situation. However, we know that the Trans Atlantic, nor the East African/Arab Slave Trades were not typical mating situations, and most African women were notoriously subjugated and violated by European/Arab enslavers or "so-called" tradesmen for bloodline corruption/access or individual pleasure. What's also ironic to me is that whenever I run accross an image of these African traders, men or women, they are always adorned in European/Arab garb and look more like Europeans/Arabs than traditional Africans.
Small players, big players what is the difference? There are too many people like this woman who are too happy to lay equal blame at the door of local tribe leaders and the Europeans who started and engaged in the slave trade. How could she compare the transatlantic slave trade to local repression of people?
The Ashantis were not close to the slave trade. She confuses Akans with Ashantis. Although Ashantis are Akans not all Akans are Ashantis. I rather we do not give airtime to such researchers they do more harm than good.