Anomabo was the busiest slave-trading port on the Gold Coast, and it was busy because of men like John Corrantee.
Fort William, Anomabo — still standing, and for a long time a working prison.
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The Broker of Anomabo
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The Broker of Anomabo
Anomabo was the busiest slave-trading port on the Gold Coast, and it was busy because of men like John Corrantee.
Corrantee — Eno Baisie Kurentsi — was the leading Fante broker at Anomabo in the mid-1700s, and he was nobody's agent. He played the English against the French for decades and made both of them pay. He sent one son to be educated in England and another to France, at their expense, at the same time. When the English proposed a fort at Anomabo he negotiated the terms of it. When they annoyed him, he let the French start building a stone lodge to concentrate their minds.
His son William Ansah Sessarakoo was sent to England in 1749, was sold into slavery in Barbados by the ship's captain en route, was recovered when the outrage reached London, was brought to England, was received at court, was taken to the theatre and wept publicly at a play about a royal African sold into slavery — and became, for one season, the most famous African in Britain.
He came home to Anomabo and worked in the trade. That is the contradiction the port leaves behind: a man could be celebrated in Britain as a royal African and still return to a system built on other people's captivity.
If you visit Ghana. Fort William, Anomabo — still standing, and for a long time a working prison.
Anomabo was the busiest slave-trading port on the Gold Coast, and it was busy because of men like John Corrantee.
Corrantee — Eno Baisie Kurentsi — was the leading Fante broker at Anomabo in the mid-1700s, and he was nobody's agent. He played the English against the French for decades and made both of them pay. He sent one son to be educated in England and another to France, at their expense, at the same time. When the English proposed a fort at Anomabo he negotiated the terms of it. When they annoyed him, he let the French start building a stone lodge to concentrate their minds.
His son William Ansah Sessarakoo was sent to England in 1749, was sold into slavery in Barbados by the ship's captain en route, was recovered when the outrage reached London, was brought to England, was received at court, was taken to the theatre and wept publicly at a play about a royal African sold into slavery — and became, for one season, the most famous African in Britain.
He came home to Anomabo and worked in the trade. That is the contradiction the port leaves behind: a man could be celebrated in Britain as a royal African and still return to a system built on other people's captivity.