Disputes Over Transfers of Belonging in the Gold Coast in the 1870s

This chapter considers fostering and pawning relationships to have been adjacent or contiguous relationships in the southeastern Gold Coast in the nineteenth century, because people described a situation under dispute through these different relationships: they were similar enough in some of their shared rules and norms that people could argue that a particular situation was one or the other. The chapter highlights how people in the colonial Gold Coast imagined fosterage to be both distinct from and similar to pawning. It discusses three court cases that hinge directly on the nature of a person's belonging to others and come from the Civil Commandant's Court in Ussher Town, Accra, in the early 1870s and were ruled on by various people appointed as magistrates or by the Commandant himself. Keywords:debt pawning; fosterage; nineteenth century; southeastern Gold Coast

Archaeology · Business · Debt · Geography · Gold coast · Political science · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Finance

• “He remains a second person no matter the age”

  Robin P Chapdelaine•Journal of West African History•2021

  Incluir item

• Not a Nurse, Not Househelp

  C Coe•Ghana Studies•2016

  Incluir item

• Family and labour in an Angolan cash-crop economy, 1910

  Open Access•Jelmer Vos•The History of the Family•2023

  Incluir item

• Longing for a House in Ghana

  Open Access•C Coe•Ethos•2016

  Incluir item

• An Enduring Institution? Child Fostering in Sub-Saharan Africa

  Open Access•C Cotton•Population and Development Review•2021

  Incluir item