Willem Bosman

Bosman was a Dutch merchant who wrote a narrative about his experience of serving in the Dutch West India Company on the Guinean coast. Among other things, the book entitled “A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea” is a valuable source of how the African trade slave was conducted around 1700, and was translated in many languages.

Bosman was born in Utrecht and at the age of 16 joined the Dutch WIC which sought to monopolize the Guinea coast portion of the Atlantic slave trade that supplied free labor to plantations of the New World. He spent the following 14 years in their service becoming the second official in importance in Elmina factory. Elmina was the largest and the oldest European fort on the West African coast where coastal merchants sold slaves that they obtained from interior of continent. Bosman returned to Holland in 1702 and little is known of his life afterwards.