Slavery and Abolition in the Gold Coast

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 1 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 1998 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 11 SLAVERY AND ABOLITION IN THE GOLD COAST Colonial Modes of Emancipation and African Initiatives KWABENA OPARE AKURANG-PARRY The British abolished servile institutions in the Gold Coast after the nominal conquest of Asante in 1874. The formulation of the British policy of abolition for the Gold Coast is well known; Raymond Dumett’s study is the most exhaustive to date.1 However, historians of the Gold Coast have portrayed the official British-Indian2 mode of emancipation as the only one that manifested, and the various analyses that inform it remain exiguous.3 Gerald McSheffrey indicates that slave desertions undermined the effectiveness of the British-Indian model.4 His view has been disputed by Dumett and Marion Johnson, whose conclusions suggest that the British-Indian model was successful because the majority of former slaves chose to stay with their holders.5 More recently Akosua Perbi has affirmed the conclusions of Dumett and Johnson.6 1. Raymond Dumett, “Pressure Groups, Bureaucracy, and the Decision-making Process: the Case of Slavery Abolition and Colonial Expansion in the Gold Coast, 1874,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, IX (1981), 193–215. See also W. W. Claridge, A History oftheGoldCoastandAshanti (London, [1915] 1964), 2, 176–87; David Kimble, APoliticalHistory of Ghana (Oxford, 1963), 303–4; Suzanne Miers, Britain and the Ending of the Slave Trade (New York, 1975), 157–9; John Grace, Domestic Slavery in West Africa (New York, 1975), 34–9; Gerald McSheffrey, “Slavery, Indentured Servitude, Legitimate Trade and the Impact of Abolition in the Gold Coast, 1874–1901: A Reappraisal,” Journal of African History, 24 (1983), 350–4; and Raymond Dumett and Marion Johnson, “Britain and the Suppression of Slavery in the Gold Coast Colony, Ashanti, and the Northern Territories,” in Suzanne Miers and Richard Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988), 88–9. 2. For an explication of the British “Indian Model,” here referred to as the “British-Indian ” mode or model for clarity’s sake, see Richard Roberts and Suzanne Miers, “The End of Slavery in Africa,” in Miers and Roberts (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa, 12–13. 3. See for example, Claridge, History of the Gold Coast, 2,181–3; Francis Agbodeka, African Politics and British Policy in the Gold Coast 1868–1900 (London, 1971), 56–7; Grace, Domestic Slavery, 35–8; Dumett, “Pressure Groups,” 209–10; McSheffrey, “Slavery,” 351–4; Dumett and Johnson, “Gold Coast,” 79–80; and Akosua A. Perbi, “A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana from the 15th to the 19th Centuries,” PhD thesis (University of Ghana, 1997), 262–5. 4. McSheffrey, “Slavery,” 351–61. 5. Dumett and Johnson, “Gold Coast,” 84–95 and 105–7. 6. Perbi, “Indigenous Slavery,” 262–5. 12 Ghana Studies • volume 1 • 1998 Thus, compensation, self-redemption,7 and emancipation by degrees, all proposed by the Colonial Office, and kin redemption,8 an African initiative, are missing from the literature.9 This study re-evaluates the British-Indian model, investigatestheothermodesofemancipationanddiscusseshowsomeofthem became vehicles of freedom and why others paled into insignificance It offers a more detailed analysis of slave and pawn desertions and the alteration in the British-Indian model. It delineates that this mode of emancipation operated only in the vicinities of the coastal forts and castles and the Christian missionary enclaves in the interior. In addition, it reveals that self-redemption, based on land tenurial arrangement, and kin-redemption also occurred. These affected post-proclamation relations of production and land tenure. Further, this study expatiates on African responses and initiatives in the emancipatory process. Lastly, it shows that the failure to compensate holders led to various forms of protest politics, while emancipation by degrees faded into obscurity. The discussion of modes emancipation between the Colonial Office—derived from parliament debates—and the colonial government had two major interrelated objectives. One was to prevent a cataclysmic response to abolition, and consequently a crisis in the social structure and alterations in the political economy, while the other objective was to prevent any economic cost to Britain .10 In the end, the Colonial

Ancient history · Archaeology · Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Commonwealth · CONQUEST · Economic history · Emancipation · Ethnology · Gold coast · PARRY · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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