# Afro-Atlantic communities on the Gold Coast  
Early African interaction with Europeans along the Gold Coast illustrates the social, economic and cultural dynamics that undergirded the creation of Afro-Atlantic communities. Portuguese merchants were lured to the Gold Coast because of the region's large production of gold. An existing gold trade had long connected the region to the great empires of the Sahel. Mande traders travelled from the Gold Coast to Djenné, Timbuktu and other regions in western and  
central Sudan (Abaka, 2012, p. 82). African gold was the central pillar of a 'presixteenth century world economy', and at least eleven coastal trading settlements existed by the time the Portuguese arrived (Kea, 1982, p. 58; Kea, 2012, p. 348). With the collapse of Songhay, Atlantic trade with the Portuguese became key to the Gold Coast economy (Dantzig, 1980a, p. 86; Gomez, 2018, p. 332). Despite Portuguese and Dutch attempts to reach gold mining regions directly (one Portuguese traveller ventured approximately 400 kilometres inland), African states, including Akwamu, Denkyira and Asante controlled the flow of this mineral from the interior to the coast (Dantzig, 1973, pp. 169-85; Valsecchi, 2013, pp. 35, 46).  
The Castle of São Jorge da Mina (in present-day Ghana), which was built in 1482, embodied Portuguese power on the Gold Coast and allowed them to control the coastal gold trade while also developing diplomatic relations with African polities inland (Vogt, 1979; Ballong-Wen-Mewuda, 1993; DeCorse, 2001). Elmina provided a framework for commercial, political and social exchanges with Africans that outlasted Portugal's presence as a major power on the Gold Coast. Europeans sought to influence African politics, but their power was largely limited to the coast. From the mid-sixteenth century, other European nations challenged the Portuguese grip and sought to make headway on the Gold Coast (Klooster, 2016, p. 24). However, they largely replicated the Portuguese model of trade and social relations with Africans (Valsecchi, 2013, p. 41).