Book excerpt: In November 1701, David van Nyendael, an envoy of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was the first European to visit the royal court in Kumasi, capital of the emerging Ashanti empire in the hinterland of the Gold Coast. Three hundred years of Dutch-Ghanaian relations have passed since then. Merchants, missionaries and migrants focuses on various aspects of this long-standing and intricate economic, political and cultural relationship between the Ghanaians and the Dutch.