Colonial Ambition, Common Sense Thinking, and the Making of Takoradi Harbor, Gold Coast

Bibliographic Data

ID9399567
AuthorsNate Plageman (0000-0002-5295-4696, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume40
Issue1
Pages317-352
Publication date2013-06-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory in Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/hia.2013.8
OpenAlexW2085327593
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited35

Throughout the 1920s, British officials in London and Accra dedicated considerable time and bureaucratic energy to the planning and construction of Takoradi harbor, an ambitious project that, they expected, would revolutionize the Gold Coast’s economic prospects. But by 1930, their efforts had created a structure beset with constructional defects, considerable flaws, and financial shortcomings. This article seeks to explain the sizeable gap separating Takoradi-envisioned from Takoradi-realized by examining the massive paper record compiled during the harbor’s planning and construction. Demonstrating that the structure was born largely from illusion, affect, and a particular version of “common sense” thinking, it encourages historians to not only give further attention to the detailed, and often overwhelming, corpus of blueprints, reports, and correspondence that such projects engendered, but to use them to reflect upon the ways in which colonial statecraft actually sought to limit, rather than expand, the knowledge it had at its disposal

Archaeology · Blueprint · Bureaucracy · Colonialism · Common sense · Geography · Gold coast · Political science · Politics · Sociology · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

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