Afro-European relations were built upon multiple ties between the Gold Coast and the Bight of Benin. Slave ships would at times seek food provisions on the Gold Coast prior to sailing to the Slave Coast (Law, 2018, p. 8). Following the Europeans' example, African rulers recruited soldiers and obtained military support from polities on the Gold Coast (Dantzig, 1980a, p. 215; Law, 1991a, p. 229). By the mid-seventeenth century, Gold Coast African merchants had come to control the supply of akory beads, which were obtained on the Slave Coast and widely used on the Gold Coast (Law, 2011a, p. 8; Daaku, 1970, p. 25). The majority of the canoe men working for Europeans on the Slave Coast were recruited on the Gold Coast (Dantzig, 1975, p. 265; Law, 1989; Strickrodt, 2015, pp. 68-71; Heijmans, 2018, p. 131). By the early eighteenth century, diasporic movements by Gold Coast Africans seeking to escape the rise of Akwamu had prompted the foundation of Little Popo and other settlements on the Slave Coast (Law, 2005b, pp. 251-53; Gayibor, 1995, p. 200; Strickrodt, 2015, pp. 29, 75-8).