These essays reexamine European forts in West Africa as hubs where different peoples interacted, negotiated and transformed each other socially, politically, culturally, and economically. This collection brings together scholars of history, archaeology, cultural studies, and others to present a nuanced image of fortifications, showing that over time the functions and impacts of the buildings changed as the motives, missions, allegiances, and power dynamics in the region also changed. Focusing on the fortifications of Ghana, the authors discuss how these structures may be interpreted as connecting Ghanaian and West African histories to a multitude of global histories. They also enable greater understanding of the fortifications contemporary use as heritage sites, where the Afro-European experience is narrated through guided tours and museums.1. Introduction: Interpreting West Africa's European Fortifications
2. Grossfriedrichsburg, the First German Colony in Africa?: Brandenburg-Prussia, Atlantic entanglements and national memory
3. 'Far from my native land, and far from you': reimagining the British at Cape Coast Castle in the nineteenth century
4. Viewed from a Distance: eighteenth-century printed images of fortifications on the coast of West Africa
5. Illusions of Grandeur and Protection? Perceptions and (mis)representations of the defensive efficacy of European-built Fortifications on the Gold Coast, 17thearly 19th Centuries
6. Female Agency in a Cultural Confluence: Women, trade and politics in seventeenth and eighteenth century Gold Coast society
7. Fort Metal Cross: commercial epicentre of the British on the Gold Coast
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