¹ Astley 1745, i, vii–viii.

² Barros 1552; Figueiredo 1614.

³ Pina 1792; Pereira 1892. A similar story applies to other Portuguese sources: see the entries in my bibliography for Foulche-Delbosc, Peres and Pulgar.

⁴ See Lach, D. F., Asia in the Making of Europe (New York, 1965), I, 151–4;Google Scholar Hair 1976, 20–1. It is conceivable that other Portuguese works on the Ivory and Gold Coasts were published and that the only surviving copies were destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; but this does not seem very likely.

⁵ See Jones, Adam, ‘Double Dutch? A survey of seventeenth-century German sources for West African history’, History in Africa, IX (1982), 141–53;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem. ‘Archival material on the Brandenburg African Company (1682–1721)’, History in Africa, xi (1984), 379–89.

⁶ For the French post at Assinie see Barbot 1732,430; Roussier 1935,95–6, 101–5, 157, 222–34.

⁷ See Bitterli, Urs, Die Entdeckung des schtuarzen Afrikaners. Versuch einer Geistesgeschichte der europdisch-afrikanischen Beziehungen an der Guineakuste im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Zurich, 1970), 53–4.Google Scholar Unfortunately this book neglects many of the major seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works on West Africa.

⁸ See Hair, P. E. H., ‘Barbot, Dapper, Davity. A critique of sources on Sierra Leone and Cape Mount’, History in Africa, I (1974), 25–54, pp. 36–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁹ See Ibid. 32–6; Dozy, C. M., ‘Olfert Dapper’, Tijdschrift van het Aardrijkskundig-Genootschap, 2nd series, iii (1887), 414–35;Google ScholarThilmans, G., ‘Le Senegal dans l'oeuvre d'Olfried Dapper’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., série B. xxiii (1971), 508–63.Google Scholar Dapper may have obtained information on the Ivory and Gold Coasts from Samuel Blomm(a)ert (1583–1654), an Amsterdam merchant who was a director of the Dutch West India Company (1622–9, ‘636–42, 1645– ?) and is known to have been well informed about the export of copper to West Africa (Kernkamp, G. W., ‘Brieven van Samuel Blommert aan den Zwedschen Rijkskanselier Axel Oxenstierna, 1635–1641’, Bijdragen en Mededeelingen van het historisch genootschap (Utrecht), xxix (1908), 3–196, pp. 5–23 and 67–73).Google Scholar The reference to Blommert in the preface suggests that Dapper had gained access to the latter's papers after his death. Dapper also had more recent information (particularly on the Anglo-Dutch clashes of 1664–5), possibly from Johan Valckenburgh, Director-General of Sao Jorge da Mina from 165510 1658 and from 1662 to 1667. Several of Valckenburgh's reports and descriptions of this region have survived, but most date from his first term of office.

¹⁰ Bitterli, Entdeckung, 61.

¹¹ Hair, ‘Barbot’ , 27–9.

¹² A plan which, incidentally, was also followed by Bosman.

¹³ Astley 1745, I, vii.

¹⁴ I do not, however, share Astley's opinion (1745, i, viii) that Bosman was one of these plagiarists (except in minor instances).

¹⁵ For a similar survey of sources for the Gabon estuary in this period see Bucher, Henry H., ‘Mpongwe origins: historiographical perspectives’ , History in Africa, ii (1975), 58–89.Google Scholar Cf. Ardener, Edwin, ‘Documentary and linguistic evidence for the rise of the trading polities between Rio del Rey and Cameroons, 1500–1650’ , in Lewis, I. M., ed., History and Social Anthropology (London, 1968), 81–126.Google Scholar

¹⁶ This applied also to other arts, especially music. Baroque composers borrowed freely from their contemporaries’ music and from their own compositions, in most cases without thereby damaging their reputation. See, for example, Roberts, John H., ed., Handel Sources (9 vols. New York, 1984–1985);Google ScholarShedlock, J. S., ‘Handel's borrowings’, Musical Times, xlii (1901), 4.50–2, 526–8, 596–600, 756;Google ScholarNeumann, W., ‘Über Ausmass und Wesen des Bachschen Parodieverfahrens’, Bach-Jahrbuch, Li (1965), 63–85.Google Scholar

¹⁷ This does not mean that seventeenth-century authors and publishers took no steps to protect their works. Several Dutch and French books on West Africa - Van Linschoten, De Laet, Dapper, Villault, Voogt, Prévost – contained a copy of the ‘privilege’ or copyright granted by their governments (either to the author or, more often, to the publisher) for a period ranging from seven to twenty years. For an early attempt to distinguish between plagiarism and legitimate citation, see Astley 1745, 1, viii.

¹⁸ See van Dantzig, Albert, ‘English Bosman and Dutch Bosman: a comparison of texts’, History in Africa, 11 (1975) et seq.Google Scholar

¹⁹ See Hair, ‘Barbot’ , 26–32, 41–3. The examples which Hair gives for Sierra Leone could be matched by numerous instances in Barbot's and Dapper's descriptions of the Gold Coast. Together with P. E. H. Hair and Robin Law, I am engaged in editing Barbot's manuscript of 1688 and the additional material contained in his book of 1732. See also Law, Robin, ‘Jean Barbot as a source for the Slave Coast of West Africa’, History in Africa, ix (1982), 155–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ See Jones, ‘Double Dutch’, n. 23. Two articles have touched briefly on these links: Ly, A., ‘Conséquences des cas Labat et Loyer’, Bulletin de l'I.F.A.N., xv (1953), 751–66;Google ScholarThilmans, G. and de Moraes, N.I., ‘Villault de Bellefond sur la côte occidentale d'Afrique. Les deux prémieres campagnes de l'Europe (1666–1671)’, Bulletin de 1’ I.F.A.N., serie B, XXXVIII (1976), 257–99, P. 261.Google Scholar

²¹ I do not mean to imply that an eye-witness account is always per se better than any other account.

²² The second quotation (referring to Ruiters) is from Hopkins, A. G., An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), 19.Google Scholar Many recent works on African history display even greater indifference towards the origins of their information.

²³ Algemeen Rijksarchief (The Hague), Leupe 743, map dated 25 Dec. 1629. Cf. Dapper 1668, 434 (= 1676 11, 63).

²⁴ See Kea, Ray A., Settlements, Trade, and Polities in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982), 285–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ Here I agree with Daaku, K. Y., Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast 1600–1720 (Oxford, 1970), 145, 161.Google Scholar It has been suggested, however, that the original centre of what became Asante was probably Tafo (just north of Kumase) and that this name might refer to the ‘people (-fo) of Inta’ : Albert van Dantzig, personal communication (1983).

²⁶ I hope to deal elsewhere with another kind of source for the same region and period - the illustrations contained in the books listed in the bibliography. A further source, cartography, raises basically the same problems of interpretation as texts, but it is more difficult to pin down precisely the relationships between the work of different cartographers, or even between maps and written sources. The policy of the Portuguese crown probably hindered the spread of cartographic information in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but in the seventeenth century the number of maps and charts of West Africa in circulation seems to have grown rapidly. Not until about 1660, however, did the printing of cartographic material become common. For those interested in cartographic inter-borrowing in this region, a good starting-point would be: da Mota, A. Teixeira, Topónimos de origem portuguesa na costa occidental de África (Bissau, 1950);Google ScholarCortesao, A. and da Mota, A. Teixeira, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (6 vols. Lisbon, 1960);Google Scholar Kea, Settlements, 23–32.

²⁷ For example Hair, ‘Barbot’ ; Van Dantzig, ‘Bosman’; Heintze, Beatrix, ‘Translations as sources for African history’, History in Africa, xi (1984), 131–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁸ De Marees 1602,15b (my translation). Cf. Dapper 1676,11,98; Müller in Jones 1983, ‘57.

²⁹ For links between Müller and De Marees see Jones, ‘Double Dutch’, 144.