Denmark was an active player in the Atlantic slave trade and responsible for the export of about 100,000 slaves from West Africa in the period 1660–1806. From the end of the seventeenth century Danish trade centred at Christiansborg Castle in Accra, and by the mid-1780s the Danes could operate from a string of forts along the coast from Accra east to the Volta and beyond: Christiansborg, Fredensborg at Ningo, Kongensten at Ada, and Prindsensten at Keta. The early 1780s had been a boom period for Danish trade, which also sustained geographical expansion of activities on the Coast. By the late 1780s the tide turned, and Danish company trade experienced severe recession. By 1792 the Danish king decreed a ban on Danish trans-Atlantic slave-trading, with effect from 1803.

In 1788, when the slave trade was on the decline and abolition was in the offing, the Danish government supported an initiative by a former ‘surgeon’ at Christiansborg, Paul Erdmann Isert. He had returned to Copenhagen with plans to establish a Danish agricultural settlement in the hilly area of the Gold Coast hinterland, plans inspired by a wish to create a viable alternative to the slave trade. With government support Isert came back to the Gold Coast and managed to establish a small settlement in Akuapem which he called Friederich-snopel. He died shortly afterwards, and the experiment never became a success although the Danes held on to the place for a number of years.