A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races by Harry Johnston

Although, as will be seen in a succeeding chapter, British seamen were the first adventurers of other nationalities to follow the Portuguese in the exploration of the African coasts, the Dutch, as settlers and colonists, are almost entitled to rank chronologically next to the Portuguese and Spanish. The Dutch made their first trading voyage to the Guinea Coast in 1595, 16 years after throwing off the yoke of Spain. On the plea of warring with the Spanish Empire, which then included Portugal, they displaced the latter power at various places along the West coast of Africa-at Arguin, at Goree (off Dakar, purchased from the natives 1621), Elmina (1637), and at Saõ Paulo de Loanda about the same time; while they three times threatened Mocambique on the East coast (1604, 1607, 1662), and possessed themselves of the island of Mauritius (1598), which had been a place of call for Portuguese ships. Mauritius, discovered in 1505 by the Portuguese sea-captain, Mascarenhas (after whom the "Mascarene" Islands-the Mauritius-Réunion-Rodriguez groups-have been named), was uninhabited at the time and possessed enormous quantities of a large and monstrous ground fruit-pigeon, the Dodo, which the Dutch sailors and their imported herds of swine exterminated in the course of about a hundred years. On the West coast of Africa, besides supplanting the Portuguese, the Dutch established themselves strongly on the Gold Coast by means of 16 new forts of their own[86], in most cases alongside British settlements, which were regarded by the Dutch with the keenest jealousy.

Dutch hold on the Gold Coast was responsible for an enormous increase of the Slave Trade between West Africa and America and is the reason why such a large proportion of the United States, West Indian, and Guiana negroes are of Ashanti (Coromanti, Kormantyn) and Fanti descent; as is evident from their folk-lore, legends and the linguistic evidence of their dialects. The Dutch were not loath to mingle their blood with that of the Gold Coast negroes; and their long occupancy of these forts produced an impression in the shape of a race of Dutch half-castes, which endures to this day, and furnishes useful employés to the British Government in many minor capacities. But after the abolition of the slave trade Dutch commerce with the Guinea Coast began to wane, and their political influence disappeared also; so that by 1872 the last of the Dutch ports had been transferred to Great Britain in return for the cession on our part of rights we possessed over Sumatra. Meantime Dutch trade had begun to take firm hold over the Congo and Angola Coast; and it is possible that, had the cession of the Gold Coast forts been delayed a few years longer, it would never have been made, for Holland possesses a considerable trade with Africa, and there has been a strong feeling of regret in the Netherlands for some time past at the exclusion of that country's flag from the African continent.