What Happened At Elmina? What Famous Castle Is There?

The lower part of Africa below the Sahara, that area was never really isolated but it was hard and difficult to contact. Between 800 and 1500 C.E the contact with the “outside world” grew intensely.

Even though slavery was no more in Britain, this was not so on the Gold Coast. There was still slaves here, mainly growing palm trees. With the importance of palm oil being so high the English taxed the oil more because for this rich this was great deal of income. Abina was a slave in one of the regions, she decided one night that she was going to escape her master to go to Cape Coast because “They say that in Cape Coast all are free” . She found out that she needed a job, a piece of paper stating her freedom, as well as a place to stay or the police could put her in jail. This is Abinas’ barrier with the ‘civilizing mission’.

Africa had been the target of colonialism and slavery for many years. The colonies that European’s developed during fifteenth and sixteenth century were the main reason that started slave trade in Africa.

Queens played great roles during the period of New kingdom Egypt. They were known as the Great Royal Wife's of the pharaohs and contributed politically, religiously and diplomatically influencing the roles of women during this period, and even future queens.

The Kingdom Ghana in western Africa flourished. Ghana gained control of the salt-and-gold trade (Doc. 2). This was important because Gold was used as a currency,

Abina and the Important Men is the tale of an west African woman from Ashantee who was abducted twice and sold multiple times as a slave. The book is about her trial at court and her prosecution against Quamina Eddoo. Quamina Eddoo is a wealthy man that farms palm oil that owns young slaves. Slavery in the Gold Coast at the time was illegal due to British colonization and their abolition of slavery. Enforcing British rule against slavery was difficult in the Gold Coast. British rule clearly dictates that slavery is illegal, however, slavery was what kept the Gold Coast economy going and was apart of their tradition. At the time, palm oil was one of the staples of their economy, in which the British profited from significantly, and child slaves did the field work. If the British enforce their slavery laws against all the rich landowners who produce this oil, it would destroy the economy and relations with the powerful locals. Abina’s case was one of horrible circumstance, but provides a unique approach of historical significance.

She manage the slaves and organize the animals, preventing the kingdom from falling apart or losts it power. At night she would cry and long for her husband to come home ( Atwood 85-89).This show the loyalty because she waited and devoted for him for many years and took care of his possession to made him to be proud of her. She still keep hope of him returning home and does not want him to be disappointed when he returned and see his kingdom. She put his priority as if it were her and took care of it to show her devotion and loyalty toward him.

2) What are some of the themes that are central to the film? How have they been communicated?

Immediately the reader is made aware that Hartman is physically aware of her surroundings in Ghana, “I chose Ghana because it possessed more dungeons, prisons and slave pens than any other country in West Africa..”(Hartman 7). Hartman is physically aware of her purpose in Ghana: she is here because it contains the most physical remnants of the slave trade than most other countries in West Africa. Hartman know where she will travel while in Ghana, Elmina, Salaga, Gwolu, and she knows she will find the physical remnants of the slave trade in these places: slave forts, markets, roads and castles. Hartman finds these physical remains of slavery in Elmina, the castle that once held slaves before they entered the middle passage, Salaga, the largest slave market, and Gwolu, the wall that was used to keep slave traders away. Both Kincaid in her memoir A Small Place and Phillips in his memoir The Atlantic Sound are similar to Hartman in this way, as both possess intense awareness of their physical surroundings. Kincaids memoir, although dealing with Antigua and not Ghana, contains awareness from the perspective of a native, “Antigua is beautiful. Antigua is too beautiful. Sometimes the beauty of it seems unreal”(Kincaid 76). Kincaid additionally addresses the physical remnants of slavery in Antigua, like Hartman, “In the Antigua that I knew we lived on a street named after a maritime criminal Horatio Nelson...In the middle of High Street was the Barclays Bank… [who] were slave-traders”(Kincaid 24-26). Phillips also provides insight to the tangible pieces of slavery, when discussing

The narrative by Olaudah Equiano gives an interesting perspective of slavery both within and outside of Africa in the eighteenth century. From these writings we can gain insight into the religion and customs of an African culture. We can also see how developed the system of trade was within Africa, and worldwide by this time. Finally, we hear an insider's view on being enslaved, how slaves were treated in Africa, and what the treatment of African slaves was like at the hands of the Europeans.

In this section of the worksheet, you will see how all the course materials start to come together. If you were writing an essay, you would want to draw your conclusions and make your inferences using a wide variety of examples to make your points and provide supporting evidence (which would likely lead to an “A” paper). Keep this in mind as you answer the rest of the questions here.

The external setting of this work consisted of 3 element: time, place and social environment. In 2006, the movie was filmed in a Scots Pine forest situated in the Guadarrama mountain range, Central Spain by the talented Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

(Preview these questions before you watch the film. Take notes as you watch the film, then answer on a separate paper.)

1. What is the true subject or the theme of the film, and What kind of statement, if any, does the film make about the subject? Which elements and which themes contributed most to addressing the theme of the film?

Angola is one of the many African countries which suffered from the Portuguese colonisation in earlier years. The colonisation these African countries suffered from (specifically Angola), began in the mid eighteenth century (Santos, 2010), where European countries identified the many resources that these countries were rich in, and found an opportunity to possess them through migrating to these countries and taking over the governance in these countries, changing the system in a way that was best suitable for them.