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Northwestern University Library Microfilm Collection of Dutch Archival Records

During 1976-1981 the Melville J. Herskovits Africana Library of Northwestern University acquired a substantial microfilm collection of archival material from the Netherlands' Algemeen Rijksarchief (National Archives). A brief description of part of that collection was published by David Henige in History in Africa, 4 (1977). At this writing the collection numbers 301 microfilm reels, of which 165 have been cataloged (Film A374). It is no exaggeration to state that the collection places at the disposal of historians an indispensable--and so far underutilized--corpus of documentary source material for reconstructing the political and social history of the eighteenth and nineteenth century Gold Coast. The overwhelming majority of the records are in the Dutch language, though there are several reels containing original correspondence with the English forts on the Gold Coast for both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In general the quality of reproduction is good to excellent; however, a number of reels, particularly those containing eighteenth century material, reproduce documents that have water damage or are otherwise difficult to read. It is important to note that much of this damaged or fragile material is not let out to readers by the Algemeen Rijksarchief staff, and must be consulted on microfilm at the archive. One of the major objectives in putting together the Northwestern collection was to obtain as complete a set as possible of the so-called Elmina Journals, that is, the daily record of events on the coast maintained by successive governors based at the Dutch headquarters at Elmina.