The Taviefe Massacre, 1888

Violence and Colonial Rule in British Ghana

Bibliographic Data

ID4440586
AuthorsSarah Balakrishnan (0000-0001-8134-5737, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume124
Issue1
Pages127-143
Publication date2025-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Atlantic Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-2876 • E-ISSN: 1527-8026
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00382876-11557857
OpenAlexW4406747702
LanguageEN
References cited19

Between June 18 and 24, 1888, the British colonial government of the Gold Coast killed an estimated eight hundred people on the small borderland town of Taviefe. This essay studies the massacre at Taviefe as a central event in the colonization of the Gold Coast. Although Taviefe existed on the margins of the colony-and in fact, it would soon be consigned to German rule-the massacre shocked Gold Coast communities everywhere, signaling that European rule had fundamentally changed. The concept of interregnum is studied as an analytical framework for colonization. This essay argues that the Taviefe Massacre initiated a period of interregnum on the Gold Coast, plunging communities into a state of morbid suspense, the old political order having clearly been abandoned but the new regime not yet established. Furthermore, the essay suggests that the reason the Taviefe Massacre has remained absent from histories of the Gold Coast and Ghana is because it occurred during this liminal period of transition, belonging neither fully to the precolonial nor colonial eras

Archaeology · Colonial rule · Colonialism · Ethnology · Political science · Sociology · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History

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