Abstraite
Abstract
This article examines conflicts around questions of policy formulation and the intrusion of private interests in official actions which arose between factions in the early British colonial administration in the Gold Coast. The circumstances surrounding the transfer of administrative control from the Company of Merchants to the Colonial Office generated distrust and hostility between two British factions on the coast: merchants and metropolitan appointees. Mercantile resentment stemmed from fear that metropolitan control was likely to erode the gains of the previous administration and undermine their commercial interests, since newly appointed officials lacked local knowledge and had no commercial or personal ties to the Gold Coast. These circumstances provided fertile grounds for the conflicts that embroiled officials of the colonial administration from 1844. However, when allowed the opportunity to influence administrative policy, merchants adopted cordial relations with the new officials and readily offered their cooperation. This study suggests that we cannot assume that colonial administrations functioned as coherent units. Another implication is that uncritically accepting the “colonizer” and “colonized” dichotomy obscures many important differences within each category and blinds us to the important social and political implications of these internal divisions.
Introduction
This article examines conflicts between factions of the early British administration on the Gold Coast. These conflicts arose around questions of policy formulation and the intrusion of private interests in official actions. The article contributes to recent revisionist scholarship which highlights the complexities of the colonial encounter and eschews homogenous conceptions of colonialism.1 But these insights have a longer history. As far back as 1945, Malinowski counseled anthropologists studying colonial societies to be attentive to the fact that European settlers in a colony were rarely a unified whole, but were often locked in conflicts of various kinds. Responding to this admonition decades later, Ann Stoler observed that this advice had largely gone unheeded, and that scholars had continued to take “the politically constructed dichotomy of colonizer and colonized as a given, rather than a historically shifting pair of societal categories that needs to be explained.”2 Colonial texts that were dissected were often taken to “express a shared European mentality, the sentiments of a unified, conquering elite”; officials in metropolitan centers and local colonial officials were assumed to form a homogenous category; and, in consequence, local colonial practices were taken to directly reflect metropolitan policies.3 Similarly, John Comaroff admonished scholars to avoid the tendency “to take an essentialist view” of colonialism, but instead to expand their analytic vistas to capture “its moments of incoherence and inchoateness.” In his own study of the contradictions among white settlers, administrators, and missionaries in nineteenth-century South Africa, he showed that “the terms of domination were never straightforward, never overdetermined.”4
The oversimplified image of colonialism which Comaroff and Stoler criticize is partly due to a tradition of colonial scholarship that pitted colonizers and colonized in implacable conflict. Recent studies are starting to revisit this image of colonial governments painted against a backdrop of a rigid dichotomy between “colonizer” and “colonized.” For instance, assumptions that colonial policies and practices were the product of conscious European initiatives are now yielding to a more complex picture. Lawrance et al.5 have shown that Africans were deeply involved in the day-to-day running of the machinery of colonial states, and that even low-level African personnel were able to manipulate the instruments of colonial rule for personal or sectional benefits,6 sometimes even undermining or truncating grand imperial objectives. In so doing, this revisionist scholarship has started to highlight the “moments of incoherence and inchoateness” to which Comaroff counseled students of colonialism to pay attention.
The focus of this paper is on one such period of inchoateness that resulted in “moments of incoherence” for colonial governance. Specifically, it examines factional struggles among British officials administering the Gold Coast in the years immediately following the reversion of administrative control to the British government. This reversion resulted in a series of debates around the nature of government appropriate for the Gold Coast. These involved, among others, questions of the administrative limits and territorial reach of British power on the coast, relationships between the British settlements and the surrounding coastal states, and the legality of the steady expansion of British control. The new administration was staffed with resident British merchants and newly-arrived officials who differed sharply on many of these issues. Having dwelt on the coast for years, the British merchants had developed commercial and personal ties, which furnished them with valuable local knowledge but also resulted in conflicts of interests in the execution of their public roles.
Thus, the question of who was best positioned to set government policy or exercise administrative control was a particularly contentious one. Examining these contentions affords us a unique window into the internal dynamics of colonial administrations. It is important to highlight this element of dynamism, because factionalism is a “phenomenon which can transform itself over time in response to incentives.”7 It allows us to examine the process by which colonial policies were formulated, the interests at stake, and how patterns of conflict or conciliation shaped outcomes. This paper draws primarily on archival research conducted in The National Archives (TNA) in Kew, England. The archival documents consulted included personal communications, official correspondences between governors and the Colonial Office, and petitions.
The pattern of conflicts I here analyze occurred throughout most of the colonial period. A descendant of one of the protagonists, Henry Swanzy, describes the British mercantile community on the Gold Coast as a fractious group, “always prone to quarrel in their narrow life and in the trying climate.”8 And disagreements among British administrators continued to the last days of colonialism. Ivor Wilks gives a very vivid picture of the sharp disputes that divided governors of the Gold Coast in Accra and Chief Commissioners of Asante stationed in Kumasi, who, by virtue of the uncertain administrative relationship between Asante and the colony, determined to assert their autonomy from gubernatorial control in Accra.9 However, in this paper, I focus on the period before the formal recognition of British jurisdiction in 1874, and limit myself to conflicts between merchants and Colonial Office appointees. In the sections that follow, I briefly examine the nature and exercise of British authority in the Gold Coast from the turn of the nineteenth century. I then give an account of the manner in which control of the British forts vacillated between government and mercantile control, setting up this checkered history as a background to the discussion of the factional controversies that dogged the administration after the final transfer of control to the Colonial Office. The main body of the paper examines the nature, rhythm, and reasoning behind the conflicts, and concludes with a statement of the implications of these factional disputes for the coherence of the Gold Coast administrative apparatus.
A Note on Colonial Governance in the Nineteenth-Century Gold Coast
This paper analyzes events that occurred after 1844. I do not thereby accord the date the status of a foundational moment in Gold Coast colonial history; but neither do I consider these events as mere prelude to formal colonialism. The Gold Coast officially became a British colony in 1874 following the issuing of the “Proclamation Defining the Nature and Extent of the Queen’s Jurisdiction on the Gold Coast.”10 But this official view of the start of colonial rule in the Gold Coast is misleading. Before then, British authority technically operated only within the walls of their coastal forts and castles. However, some form of de facto administrative power had been exercised beyond the walls of the English forts by British agents since at least the beginning of the nineteenth century. The essential institutions upon which the colonial government would run after 1874 were constructed in the decades preceding the Proclamation. For instance, a lieutenant governor was appointed by the Colonial Office in 1843, and in 1850, the office was elevated to that of a full governor. The office of Judicial Assessor was created in 1843, Executive and Legislative Councils were established in 1850 and Municipal Corporations in 1858.11
Moreover, British officials were performing the functions of a fully constituted government decades before the 1874 Proclamation. Even before the creation of the Judicial Assessor’s office in 1843, some judicial oversight over neighboring African societies was exercised by the British merchants then administering the forts. The creation of the Judicial Assessor’s office was a quasi-official recognition of this fact, a recognition which was further reinforced by the establishment of the Gold Coast Supreme Court and the office of the Chief Justice by ordinance in 1853.12 In addition to judicial functions, British officials also performed the crucial governmental function of revenue generation, which for most of the nineteenth century consisted mostly of duties on imports and exports. In the 1850s, the administration experimented with a scheme of direct taxation which lasted for a little over ten years. It further undertook some routine governmental tasks like the building and maintenance of some basic communications and transportation infrastructure.
The Colonial Office was fully aware of the flimsy basis upon which this colonial administrative apparatus had been erected. The exercise of this irregular jurisdiction was a source of soul-searching in London. For instance, while they contemplated the creation of the office of Judicial Assessor, the Colonial Office recognized that British representatives on the Gold Coast would have to “execute . . . Justice rather than Law”; an admittedly illegal move but one which was deemed ultimately justifiable with reference to their self-conception as heralds of civilization: “We are about to make a usurpation which the good of our motives, and the necessity of the Case are to justify.”13 Owing to this keen awareness of the irregularity of the jurisdiction which they were exercising, the history of British colonial incursions in the nineteenth-century Gold Coast is punctuated with many moments of official hesitation. As a result, factional disputes among British officials themselves were hugely consequential. The dilemma produced by exercising control under such circumstances was most vividly expressed by Governor B. Pine thus: “The anomaly of our position . . . cannot be more forcibly stated than by saying, that the Protectorate of England over these countries involves the violation of English law, and the moment that law is fully observed by our officers, that moment our jurisdiction is brought to an end.”14
This notwithstanding, from the 1850s, the administration increasingly monopolized the means of physical violence through the constabulary and the stationing of a detachment of the West African Regiment. It asserted its right to monopolize this violence through acts like arrest, trial, and imprisonment of both commoners and kings, all while fully aware of the non-existent legal basis upon which this apparatus stood. Thus, in the decades leading up to 1874, British officials increasingly exercised de facto colonial power on the Gold Coast although they lacked any de jure basis for these acts. Colonial rule did not suddenly become a fact of life in the Gold Coast in 1874. Instead, the apparatus of the colonial state emerged gradually such that by the time the Proclamation was issued, the colonial state was a fait accompli.15
Mercantile and Metropolitan Governance
The Company of Merchants administered the British forts and castles on the Gold Coast until it was dissolved in 1821.16 Sir Charles Macarthy was appointed governor under the direct control of the Colonial Office. Macarthy’s hostile attitude towards Asante led ultimately to war in 1824, resulting in his death and defeat for the British. In embarrassment, the British government decided to totally withdraw but the merchants requested to be allowed to stay and continue trading on the coast. The government gave in but cut the annual parliamentary grant for administrative expenses from over £10,000 to £4,000. After the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, commerce in West Africa took the form of “legitimate trade,” which involved the export of primary products and importation of manufactured goods. The main products exported were gold dust and ivory and later in the century, palm oil and rubber. Attempts at starting cotton plantations were made by missionaries and merchants but these proved unsuccessful. However, by the turn of the twentieth century, from mainly African initiatives, there was an explosion of cocoa farming, and cocoa came to far outstrip any other commodity export. Items imported into the Gold Coast included basic manufactured items such as metal tools (hoes, cutlasses, etc.), crockery, textiles products, and gunpowder. For much of the nineteenth century, British merchants engaged in trade and administration alongside a small group of wealthy and politically-engaged African traders.17
A watershed moment in Gold Coast history was the appointment of Captain George Maclean as president of the committee of merchants in 1830. He managed to end hostilities between Asante and the neighboring coastal states with a peace treaty and during his tenure, trade expanded considerably.18 Under Maclean’s personal influence, the sphere of British control also expanded.19 His personal reputation allowed him great influence on the Gold Coast.20 In England, however, he was less highly regarded. For instance, it was rumored in London that he was not doing enough to suppress slavery. In addition, the sudden death of his young socialite wife soon after her arrival on the Gold Coast resulted in considerable negative press in England. As a result of the mounting pressure, Dr. R. R. Madden was appointed as commissioner to inquire into the affairs of the Gold Coast. Based on Madden’s findings, a parliamentary select committee recommended that the government resume control of the Gold Coast. Madden had been bedridden for most of his time on the coast, and the merchants were resentful that his report, which they rejected as giving an inaccurate account, had been the basis upon which administrative control had finally reverted back to the Colonial Office.21 England-based merchants were equally resentful; Forster and Smith of New City Chambers, for instance, dismissed Madden’s report as full of “calumnious mis-statements.”22
Despite this hostility, the government still depended on the resident British merchants to administer the Gold Coast. For financial and other logistical reasons, running of the administration could not be done by exclusively resorting to officials directly appointed by the Colonial Office in England. As a result, African and European merchants occupied high administrative offices such as civil commandants, magistrates, and justices of the peace, and worked alongside officials appointed directly from England. The officials appointed directly by the London Colonial Office were forbidden to engage in trade. This raised suspicions in the mercantile community about the desire or ability of these metropolitan appointees to pursue policies conducive to commerce when they had no knowledge or personal experience of the peculiarities of trade on the Gold Coast. With this administrative arrangement, the hostilities between government and mercantile factions did not take long to manifest.
Henry Hill replaced Maclean as head of the administration. Almost immediately, he was locked in a series of intractable conflicts with his predecessor and the entire mercantile community. After a series of bitter personal clashes, Hill began digging into the records to find incriminating evidence against Maclean’s stewardship.23 So profound was the enmity between Hill and the merchants that they often refused to cooperate in the discharge of some official duties, and upon his departure from the Gold Coast, the African merchant, Joseph Smith, wrote to Maclean, then visiting England, that Hill “has not left any stone unturned to annoy people of all Classes in this Country.”24 His successor, James Lelley, was equally detested. This animosity he attributed to “a singularly acrimonious feeling . . . to everything and everyone connected with the Government and towards me in particular, for having, as [they] conceive, supplanted [them] in the administration of the Government.”25 However, the relationship between merchants and government appointees took a sharp turn with the appointment of Governor William Winniett in 1847. Winniett quickly struck a conciliatory tone with the mercantile community, and for a few years, harmony prevailed between the two opposing factions.
A Question of Administrative Control
The thawing of relations in the administration was an achievement due largely to Winniett’s conciliatory approach. But this entailed effective surrender of considerable administrative control to the leading English merchants at the commencement of his tenure. The clearest evidence for this comes from an expedition he led against the monarch of Appolonia (Nzema), King Kaku Aka, which was not approved by his metropolitan superiors. Appolonia was the strongest kingdom along the Gold Coat seaboard. Its strategic position allowed it to exploit rivalries between Asante, Dutch, and English interests. Kaku Aka had been involved in previous conflicts with British agents on the coast. In 1835, a conflict over debts that led to seizure of British goods resulted in Maclean leading a punitive expedition against the king, which in turn resulted in a negotiated settlement aimed at curbing Aka’s powers, although the British were never able to exert any effective control over the kingdom.26
As Winniett prepared to wage war against Appolonia in March 1848, he informed the Colonial Office that this was necessary because the king was a ruthless dictator, and his continuing impunity amounted to a “profanation of the British Flag.”27 The Colonial Office rejected these as legitimate grounds for military action and called the expedition a “[great] and dangerous mistake.”28 However, Winniett’s expedition had the full support of the mercantile community.29 From London, William Forster, one of the most important English traders to the Gold Coast, wrote a series of letters to convince the Colonial Office of the propriety of the steps Winniett had taken, and suggested that he deserved commendation, not condemnation, for his initiative.30 In fact, Winniett sailed to the battle on a vessel owned by Forster and Smith.31
Contrary to Forster’s claims about Winniett’s initiative, however, the decision had actually come from English merchants. Francis Swanzy, an old British resident trader whom Valsecchi describes as “a sworn enemy of Kaku Aka,”32 had drawn Winniett’s attention to the “necessity of putting a stop to his brutality.” Swanzy warned that failure to swiftly “bring this Chief to his senses” would diminish both the physical and moral force of the government, and would encourage other kings to act likewise.33 It would seem that a group of the British merchants had already reached a consensus on this matter before Swanzy suggested it to Winniett. Thomas Hutton, another English trader, informed his correspondents in England that “[a]t a special Meeting Mr Cruickshank, F Swanzy and myself came to the resolution of urging this necessary step upon his Excellency.”34 The resident English merchants were apparently controlling policy matters as weighty as the waging of war.
The expedition itself was brief and the victory was easy. It coincided with a period of intense internal divisions in the kingdom. Kaku Aka suffered betrayal at the hands of his trusted officials, the “gyaase, his permanent service body,” which consisted of a core body of servants and supporters.35 They quickly gave him up to the invading forces without much resistance. After the successful expedition, Winniett informed the Colonial Office of the great assistance he received from the mercantile community, especially from Cruickshank and Swanzy, whose “exertions were untiring and deserve all praise.”36
The African merchant princes were not passive in the ongoing administrative struggles.37 They tried to get the British government ever more involved in the affairs of the Gold Coast. In a public event organized in honor of Winniett in 1850, they read to him a letter which among other things, claimed:
It has been questioned by some, whether the present form of Government here directly under the Queen, or that under the President and Council, guided by a body of Merchants is the best for this Colony . . . And it is our unequivocal unanimously decided opinion than [sic] the existing form of Government that we now enjoy under the Queen is the best, and it is our wish that it remains unaltered. It is our glory and happiness to acknowledge Her Government and Administration as our natural parents, and we fervently pray, that no misdoings of our own, shall cause us to be disembowelled(?) or to be cast off to the care of others.38
Further, they promised that in the discharge of his duties, he would “ever find in us a faithful and willing obedience to render your arduous tasks less difficult.”39 Winniett, in response, thanked them for “a testimony so unanimous” of their appreciation of metropolitan oversight, and promised them a “ready access on all matters touching the interests of Your Country.”40
The consequences of the Appolonian affair were to haunt the administration for years to come. Ironically, it was Francis Swanzy, a key mastermind of the expedition, who most harried the administration over its eventual fallouts toward the end of the governorship of Winniett. For the greatest part of his incumbency, however, Winniett enjoyed the confidence and assistance of the traders, so long as they were allowed to influence policy. For instance, barely a month after the expedition, Winniett had cause again to recommend the service of Cruickshank to the Colonial Office: “I have on this, as well as upon all other occasions connected with the Expedition received the greatest assistance from Mr Cruickshank the late Acting Judicial Assessor who I am satisfied has the good of the Government and the welfare of the Colony at heart.”41
These expressions of gratitude and satisfaction on the part of Governor Winniett were duly reciprocated by the merchants. In July 1848, he received an address signed by nine persons connected with the trade and governance of the Gold Coast, who congratulated him for fighting and getting rid of “a Cruel scourge to the Natives,” restoring “the honor of the British Flag,” and opening up that kingdom to trade and commerce. Indeed, no sooner had Kaku Aka been deposed than British and African traders flocked to the conquered territory to cash in on new commercial opportunities. They hoped that Winniett would be rewarded with an acknowledgement of approval from London.42 Cruickshank, who forwarded the merchants’ goodwill, took the opportunity to heap further praises on Winniett:
I most sincerely join in the hope expressed in the address, that your Excellency may receive that reward for your important Services, which they so richly merit. I embrace this opportunity of thanking you for your uniform attention to all suggestions made by me in my Official capacity, which your own judgement led you to believe to be for the Public advantage.43
The remark that Winniett gave “uniform attention to all suggestions” is another indication of the ways in which governors’ attitude towards the English residents shaped the quality of relationships in the administration.
The Colonial Office, on the other hand, was unimpressed with Winniett’s course of action and remained unmoved by these encomiums: “The Gov has been informed that he cannot be relieved from all responsibility on account of this Expedition until he has apprized Lord Grey of his further proceedings in this serious affair.”44 One conclusion emerges from these exchanges: while the Colonial Office and representatives of the government were alive to the legal and jurisdictional constraints that limited the local administration on the Gold Coast, the English traders and residents paid little regard to these abstract constraints and concerned themselves more with the concrete solutions to the immediate problems of creating a conducive environment for the extension of their trade.45
“Intimate knowledge of the country”: Demands for a Legislative Council
Different understandings of the appropriate ways to project British authority contributed to conflicts between the merchants and metropolitan representatives. The merchants regarded the new officials as unqualified because of their ignorance of the country. They believed that this administrative ignorance placed their commercial interests in jeopardy. This tension is most clearly borne out in their demands for a Legislative Council. Even though resident merchants had been granted access to influence the direction of affairs during the governorship of Winniett, they wanted to institutionalize this influence. In February 1847, three members of the mercantile community, James Bannerman, B. Cruickshank, and J. Clouston penned suggestions for administrative reforms in a statement titled “Propositions for improving the Government and promoting the prosperity of the British Settlements on the Gold Coast.”46
The premise of their proposal was that maintaining order and tranquility in the settlements necessitated an intimate understanding of the different coastal states who were “nearly equally matched in strength and jealous of each other.” If the administrator had this knowledge, it would not be “difficult for the local Government, by judiciously balancing contending parties, to turn the scales in favor of justice.” This had, in fact, been the policy of the Maclean administration, and which had proved to be “perfectly adapted” to the social conditions of the settlements. The evidence of the effectiveness of this policy lay in the absence of fatal disturbances, the gradual abolition of customs offensive to British sensibilities, as well as the wide dissemination of the broad principles of English justice; leading, they claimed, to “a spirit of happy contentment and attachment.” Under this state of affairs, commerce had increased and flourished. But under the new regime, disturbances had become widespread, lives had been lost and trade had been interrupted; and faith in the local government was flagging: “. . . as our power there has been principally that of opinion which cannot fail to be much shaken by these Conflicts persisted in contempt of us. —They were unknown under the former system when confidence and unanimity prevailed.”47
They insisted that without the requisite acquaintance with the people, officials were bound to fail in their endeavors. Owing to the irregular jurisdiction being exercised, it was necessary for administrators to gain the confidence and goodwill of the people. Thus, it was necessary that “decisions are guided not by English law but by the Law of Equity between Man and Man, adapted (as far as is consistent with Justice), to the peculiar customs of the People, and to the State of Society among them.” The solution to this quandary, they proposed, was the establishment of a council to advice and constrain the governor:
Under the very peculiar circumstances of our position on the Gold Coast, where an acquaintance with the character of the people is so essential to the Governor, it is evident that a perfect stranger will encounter many serious difficulties, which might be obviated by having recourse to the Council of those, whose standing in the Country entitled their opinions to weight. —The Governor may, it is true, enjoy the benefit of such men’s Experience, without the trammels of a Council, but opinions expressed by irresponsible Persons are not entitled to the same consideration as those of a deliberative body legitimately appointed. We consider it therefore a point of no mean importance that a Council should be constituted to assist the Governor with their advice, and with the power of controuling [sic], to a certain extent, his acts.
They were careful to stress that these observations by no means implied a lack of faith in the present Governor Winniett, admitting, in fact, that a “Gentleman more devoted to the interest of the Settlement, and more anxious to meet the views of the Settlers, and to increase prosperity of the natives does not, we believe, exist.” They were, however, anxious to guard against contingencies “such as happened under the Government of his predecessor [James Lelley],” whom they accused of having acted in the “most arbitrary” manner.48
Continued demands for the establishment of this advisory council came from both England and the Gold Coast. In England, Forster, of New City Chambers, deplored the new arrangement whereby administrative control rested with “persons sent out at random from the lottery of Government patronage, wholly ignorant of the Country and the Natives,” and blamed this arrangement for disturbances on the Gold Coast.49 The Colonial Office rejected his call for a council on the grounds that it was not aware of disadvantages associated with the existing system.50 Bristling at the rebuff, Forster accused the Colonial Office of being anti-commerce. He had toiled for three decades to expand British trade in West Africa but “in place of being aided and assisted,” he had been “obstructed and discouraged by the Colonial Authorities, both at home and on the Coast.”51 Even worse, he claimed, was the clearly discernible historical pattern of metropolitan sabotage:
The Settlements on the Gold Coast were handed over to the Merchants in 1828 after being completely ruined and disorganised by Colonial Office misgovernance, under a threat that if the merchants did not take charge of them and uphold them on terms of £4000 a year, in place of from £30,000 to £40,000 a year, which the Colonial Office had expended in bringing them to the brink of ruin, they would be blown up and abandoned by the Crown.
After being restored to prosperity by local self government, the Colonial Office again resumed charge of them in 1842, and again we find, their prosperity imperilled [sic] by the blighting influence of that department. It is true that no disasters have yet occurred so serious and disgraceful to the British name as those which marked the previous short period of Colonial misrule at the Forts, but despite the moral influence which yet remains to us from the fourteen years previous good Government, symptoms are not wanting sufficient to excite the most lively apprehensions on the part of those exposed to the misfortunes that may result from a recurrence of similar misfortunes.52
It is clear from the above that the merchants considered the Colonial Office to be unwilling or unable to competently govern the Gold Coast. They were embittered by the anxiety that perceived misrule would place their commercial interests at risk.
From the Gold Coast, Francis Swanzy and Henry Smith also wrote to impress upon the Colonial Office the necessity of constituting a council. Citing their backgrounds “as two of the Senior Magistrates and oldest residents on the Gold Coast,” they claimed to have “an intimate knowledge of the country and the customs of its inhabitants,” in contrast to the inexperience of the new appointees: “[a] Governor appointed to the Gold Coast is, as Your Lordship knows, generally unacquainted with the Country, its customs, laws, wants, trade, etc. which are all peculiar and different from those of any other Colony or Settlement, and which require particular management and policy.” And they invoked the most frightful specter of the era: the “danger which might occur by the least imprudence or mismanagement of the Governor in bringing on a War at any time with the Ashantee.”53
The Colonial Office again rejected these demands.54 But Swanzy was tireless in his campaign for reform. He drew attention to even more disturbing consequences of the existing administrative arrangements. For instance, the Judicial Assessor’s office was chaotically run and lacked any explicit rules regulating it, allowing the assessor to exercise very wide discretion, in which he may “make his own laws . . . and give different judgments in similar cases.”55 This danger would be easily averted if a council existed. And since governors under the new regime were especially ignorant of the society they had been tasked to govern, they needed to be “advised by a council of men whose experience has been gained by long residence on the Coast.”56
Swanzy finally found a sympathetic audience in the Colonial Office. Earl Grey noted that after “fully considering all the reasons which have been urged in favour of the measure I have determined upon advising H. M. to constitute a Legislative Council at Cape Coast Castle.”57 The Legislative Council was duly constituted in April 1850. It was presided over by the governor, William Winniett, and had four members: the Judicial Assessor, James Fitzpatrick; Collector of Customs, Edward Staunton; and Civil Commandants, James Bannerman and Brodie Cruickshank. Bannerman and Cruickshank sat on the Council as representatives of the mercantile interests.58
However, establishing the Council was only a first step. Once a foothold was gained, the next goal for the merchants was to extend its control. Months after being instituted, Smith and Swanzy again expressed dissatisfaction with the Council’s composition. Under Maclean’s administration, council members needed to have satisfied a twelve-month minimum residency requirement. Hence, there were serious problems with giving the numerical majority to government appointees who were “ignorant of the trade and nature of the Country,” were not personally or financially invested in the country, and only considered their service there “as a stepping stone to a better appointment some where else.” Smith and Swanzy alleged that because new officials lacked any connection with the country, the new regime lacked the respect and confidence of the people, and would face difficulties in the performance of their duties.
Under these circumstances, the administration, by necessity, had to rely on the English merchants in order to govern.59 However, they were unwilling to extend any assistance to the government until their membership on the Council was increased. They asked for “not one, or two, but four members elected by the Merchants and respectable inhabitants, in addition to those selected by the Governor for your Lordship’s approval.”60 The Secretary of State, of course, dismissed this request.61
Strategic Neutrality: Bannerman and Cruickshank
Although they were the first to raise the question of a Legislative Council, Bannerman and Cruickshank maintained a strategic neutrality in the ensuing struggle to increase mercantile representation. Their aloofness from the fray ensured that they retained their influence in the administration. This strategic stance sometimes meant that they had to side with government officials against other merchants. James Fitzpatrick, a new Judicial Assessor, benefited from this softened stance. In many of his early conflicts with resident merchants, he was supported by Bannerman and Cruickshank.62
On the question of the new administrative arrangements, Bannerman and Cruickshank rejected claims that the administration would be better conducted under mercantile leadership. Against claims that the administration was weaker because metropolitan appointees lacked local knowledge, they asserted that, in fact, the administration was doing rather well and that those opponents of the government who claimed otherwise were misled by the discontent which was the natural reaction to social improvements, but which they had “unthinkingly attributed to the misconduct of the Government.” They expressed their confidence in the new government. However, to further consolidate these gains, they urged the necessity of further administrative reforms, including a restructuring of the police force and a proposal for a gathering of chiefs, to be called “The Assembly of Native Chiefs,” to function as a means of communication between the Governor and the general population.63
Their conciliatory approach proved to be more effective than the confrontational method of Smith and Swanzy. Earl Grey was pleased with their representations, especially with their recommendation of an assembly of chiefs. Their previous administrative “experiments” had “been crowned with a success” commensurate with the effort, but “the time has nevertheless, arrived when the present system of Administration requires to be expanded and modified, so as to meet the exigencies of the rapidly changing state of society.”64 Their strategic stance yielded personal gains as well. Both Bannerman and Cruickshank were, at different times, appointed to lieutenant governorships.
“Despotic power”: James Fitzpatrick against the Merchants
Relations between government officials and merchants became frosty again with the appointment of James Fitzpatrick as Judicial Assessor. Fitzpatrick came into full collision with the merchants in 1849 during the months when he acted as governor in Winniett’s absence. At the core of their discontent were the perceived effects of the administrative policy since 1844. They perceived the changes to be detrimental to their commercial interests. In September 1849, Mr. Sandeman, a merchant “of ten years residence on the Coast,” brought a charge of unlawful termination of contract against Fitzpatrick.65 Sandeman claimed his contract to provide coconut oil for the lighthouse at Fort William had been terminated abruptly by Fitzpatrick. He took the occasion to level charges of maladministration against the acting governor, and called for increased mercantile influence on the Council to curb the “despotic power” the governor wielded:
It is surely a very hard case as well as Unconstitutional, that a man who risks his all, life, health and property, in such a place as this should neither have a vote in the making of bye laws & regulations, nor get in Magisterial appointment, the abuses in both departments having been carried to an extent amounting to ridicule.66
Winniett, then on leave in England, blamed the problem on the anomaly of the official position that circumstances had forced upon Fitzpatrick. He had not abused his power, acted indiscreetly, or been negligent in his duties, but had been forced to fuse judicial and executive powers, since he now occupied the roles of Judicial Assessor and Acting Governor: “it is therefore of that arrangement, and not of Fitzpatrick personally, that I have more particularly to speak.”67 Winniett admitted that hostility against Fitzpatrick was widespread among both Africans and Europeans on the coast, and suggested that adding the duties of governor had exacerbated it.68 To forestall future recurrences, Winniett recommended that the method of appointing an acting governor be reformed, suggesting that the governor be given discretion to appoint the acting officer. The Secretary of State accepted this proposal, but instead of giving the discretion to the governor, he issued a Commission under the Royal Sign Manual appointing James Bannerman as lieutenant governor upon the death or absence of the governor.69
In the meantime, accusations of Fitzpatrick’s administrative excesses kept pouring in. J. Clouston contradicted Winniett’s defense of Fitzpatrick, alleging that Fitzpatrick had personally abused his positions:
As Judicial Assessor Mr Fitzpatrick acted as discreetly as could have been expected &c. But no sooner was he installed in the post of Acting Governor than he appears to have thrown off all restraint. In that exercise of his temporary authority he has strained it to the extent of illegality, asserting Judicial Cognizance and power over Europeans. —in one instance proclaiming himself Judge, Jury, and Prosecutor and acting in that anomalous capacity.70
Clouston also accused Fitzpatrick of exercising powers which he did not have in relation to the African population. Andrew Swanzy, brother of Francis Swanzy, provided corroboration of this charge, referring to Fitzpatrick’s attempt to suppress a “native custom” in Cape Coast. “I myself saw a Proclamation which was sent to Mr Cruickshank for publication at Annamaboe,” but he claimed that Cruickshank had refused to publish the proclamation “on account of the illegality & rashness of such a measure.”71 From England, Forster again urged the necessity of administrative reforms to safeguard the interest of British merchants against the highhandedness of colonial officials.72
“Such proceedings are not honorable to the British character”: Swanzy vs. Fitzpatrick
The sole incident that had united the two hostile camps later became the source of another implacable conflict. The war against Appolonia in 1848 ended with the overthrow of Kaku Aka. Winniett had chosen Bahyinnie, Chief of Atambo, as the king’s replacement. He had then charged the Appolonians with the cost of the expedition, and had placed the responsibility for repayment on Bahyinnie. When the payment was not forthcoming, Fitzpatrick, as acting governor, went to Appolonia with an army detachment to enforce payment, but commotion had ensued, during which Fitzpatrick and some of the soldiers were attacked and wounded. The king was arrested, together with some elders, and brought to Cape Coast Castle, where they were tried, sentenced, and publicly flogged.
Francis Swanzy was roused to indignation. He avowed that he was outraged by the treatment of the king, but the desire to embarrass the government might have been a greater motivation. His own derogatory characterization of the previous Appolonian king indicates that he had not always held the traditional leaders in high esteem. Nevertheless, he claimed that his interest in the case was out of a “sense of justice towards a people among whom I have resided many years.” He insisted that the unfair treatment of the king had undermined the integrity of the government.73
This case provided another opportunity to point out the structural weaknesses of the administration: “as in most other cases Mr Fitzpatrick was Judge, Jury, and Persecutor, as Governor and Judicial Assessor he was uncontrolled, and against his verdict there was no appeal.” Swanzy pointed out that the disturbance of which these men were accused was caused by Fitzpatrick’s “own injustice and illegal measures.” In fact, he was shocked that given the provocation they had suffered, the Appolonians had actually not done something more desperate. What was the crime of this noble king, except that of “not immediately satisfying the Governor’s demand for Gold”? Such occurrences undermined British moral authority on the coast:
What must have been the feelings of these men while receiving the allotted number of Lashes, and how much they must have regretted that, instead of submitting quietly to the fancied clemency of Europeans, they did not use the power they had, and set Mr Fitzpatrick at defiance, your Lordship will be able to judge . . . My Lord such proceedings are not honorable to the British character, are deeply injurious to our influence in that Country, and calculated to alienate the goodwill of the people.74
When Winniett returned to the coast, he was instructed to investigate the case.75 After he “personally made a strict investigation into the whole affair,” assisted by the senior magistrate, Mr. J. Hutton, and the Wesleyan missionary, Revd. T. B. Freeman, Winniett exonerated Fitzpatrick.76 The Colonial Office was satisfied with this report but Swanzy was not so easily appeased. He called the inquiry “a mockery of Justice” and declared it his “duty” to get redress.77 Instead of a “strict enquiry,” Winniett had constituted a committee composed of “Two private Gentlemen” at which “[n]ot a single Appolonian, no representative of Bahyinne was there present; none of them were even invited to appear or informed of the approaching investigation.”78 Appointing himself as their spokesperson, Swanzy announced that “the Chief and people of Appolonia are not disposed to let the matter rest here.”79 He claimed that Winniett’s self-serving inquiry was only possible because of the inefficient way in which the Legislative Council was then operating, making the members unable to effectively rein in the governor.
About five months later, Swanzy addressed another complaint to London—writing through Bannerman, now Lieutenant Governor after Winniett’s death—worried that the Colonial Office seemed uninterested in solving this case whereas they had in the past been interested even in trivial cases: “How different the conduct of Mr Fitzpatrick accusations of the most grave character against an Officer filling the responsible functions of Governor and Judge were smothered by what it was pretended to call an enquiry . . .”80 It was now evident that even Bannerman, a merchant himself, was getting fed up with Swanzy’s continuing belligerence. “I had hoped this matter had been set at rest, and very much regret to perceive Mr Swanzy has revived it,” he moaned to the Colonial Office.81
But Swanzy persisted, dispatching statements from Appolonians to London. His persistence finally paid off. London officials eventually came to agree that a more rigorous enquiry needed to be made:
Mr Fitzpatrick I believe made a very good defence and I have not the remotest wish to imply any doubt respecting him: but when representations such as these are addressed to the Secretary of State, it appears to me that they ought to be scrupulously and impartially examined within this office, and that pains should be taken to ascertain how far they may contain anything, which throws doubt on the propriety of the manner in which authority has been exercised at the Gold Coast, and that if they were only to be disposed of by showing them to the Party accused, it would open the door to the most serious complaints on the part of those who are entitled to appeal to the Secretary of State for protection against any alleged abuse of power.82
In his response, Fitzpatrick attributed the charges to ill feelings against him and the government. He produced a letter from Cruickshank bearing testimony to his competence and personal integrity. While modestly claiming to be unworthy of Cruickshank’s “lavish encomiums,” Fitzpatrick still submitted them as proof that “I succeeded in attaining one of the objects, which should be the ambition of every one holding a Judicial Situation, namely, to win & secure the respect of those, who are themselves respectable.”83 But Cruickshank’s support of government officials did not last long, however. When Fitzpatrick’s actions started affecting the commercial interests of the entire mercantile community, it resulted in a direct clash between the two.
“Unauthorized proceedings”: Cruickshank Penalizes Fitzpatrick
The conflicts in which James Fitzpatrick had been embroiled up to this point were with individual members of the mercantile class. However, subsequent events brought him up against the entire English mercantile class following his second brief spell as acting governor in 1853. To forestall the problems which had occurred when Fitzpatrick acted as governor, the Colonial Office directed him to give up the acting governorship to Cruickshank. But this was not before Fitzpatrick had taken action on a matter which led to an instant uproar among the merchants.
When one of the resident English merchants died, Fitzpatrick took it upon himself to administer the estate. He personally took charge of the disposal of the assets, and paid himself a percentage of the proceeds realized from the sales. Because of the shortage of currency on the coast, trade was carried out by a widespread system of debit and credit.84 Since the deceased was a debtor to many of the merchants on the coast, they felt personally invested in the matter. The trading houses in London that had agents on the Gold Coast also felt invested in the case.85
The merchants were especially outraged that Fitzpatrick had taken the liberty of paying himself for services which they claimed not to have requested.86 The bitterest reaction to Fitzpatrick’s action came from Cruickshank. He pronounced Fitzpatrick “guilty of maladministration of the Estate” of the deceased, and held him responsible for all losses resulting from the steps he had taken. Fitzpatrick was a “Self Constituted Receiver of Unrepresented Estates,” who “had neither Authority or [sic] Justification for doing so.” Feeling the mercantile community threatened by Fitzpatrick’s arbitrary ways, Cruickshank felt “compelled . . . to apply to Your Grace [the Secretary of State for the Colonies] for protection for myself and the Mercantile Community generally from the unauthorized proceedings.”87
In his response, Fitzpatrick made capital out of Cruickshank’s having acted as an agent for Forster and Smith, charging that Cruickshank’s position on this and other issues affecting the administration were affected by his compromised position: “Mr Maclean and Mr Cruickshank therefore found the usual difficulty in serving two Masters of opposite interests, the Public and Messrs Forster and Smith. Neither Mr Maclean nor Mr Cruickshank would be allowed to make any matter in which that firm was concerned the subject of pen and Official examination.”88
Cruickshank was appointed acting governor about a month after this controversy erupted.89 He wasted no time in getting rid of Fitzpatrick through a compulsory leave of absence.90 The ostensible cause of this “punitive” action was a petition against Fitzpatrick, brought by the rulers of Cape Coast, through four African merchants, viz. Henry Barnes, William De Graft, Thomas Hughes, and Joseph Smith. They accused him, among other things, of being oppressive in the discharge of his functions, and of treating them with contempt. The last straw was when Fitzpatrick had the king of Cape Coast, Kofi Amissah, tried before a jury of commoners, thus lowering his prestige in the eyes of the people. These grievances had excited a great agitation in Cape Coast, and they had threatened not to appear in court before Fitzpatrick anymore.
Cruickshank dismissed some of the charges as “absurd and frivolous,” but he admitted that Fitzpatrick practiced “over-severity in the amount of fines imposed” in his court. But at the heart of the matter lay “what has now become a rooted antipathy to Mr Fitzpatrick, chiefly to an ungracious manner in his intercourse with the Native Chiefs and Headmen; to a disregard of their peculiarities; and to a contempt not concealed of their dignitaries.”91 These had generated widespread ill-feeling for him in the town, the most deeply felt was “the trial of the King, which seems to have filled up the measure of their indignation against Mr Fitzpatrick, and to have roused them to the desperate resolution of refusing to appear before him in Court.”92 He described the trial as “unprecedented and injudicious,” since a king had never been tried in that manner before, in all cases a “delinquent King” being summoned before the governor or the assessor, or tried by a jury of his peers. To a “sensitive People tenacious of forms and usage,” Cruickshank suggested, this act of Fitzpatrick was bound to cause great consternation, as, indeed, it had:
. . . the excitement against Mr Fitzpatrick is so great, that it would be impossible for him in their present temper to continue in the discharge of his duties without a collision between the Government and the Natives of the Town, which would lead to very disastrous consequences. It would not be a difficult matter to force obedience, but it would be at the point of the bayonet; and I cannot reconcile myself to the idea of commencing any temporary administration of the Government in this manner; especially as I am satisfied, that I can by the exercise of a little prudent discretion, restore affairs to their former state.93
In light of this, Cruickshank reported having no other option than to suspend Fitzpatrick from office, who then proceeded to England.
Fitzpatrick’s suspension turned out to be another instance of “unauthorized proceedings.” This resulted in an outrage at the Colonial Office. London officials were perplexed at inconsistencies between this action and Cruickshank’s own earlier avowal of confidence in Fitzpatrick.94 Opinion in the Office hinted at suspicions that Cruickshank’s motivations were more cynical:
You are well aware of the ancient feud between the mercantile interest at Cape Coast, i.e. the mercantile firms in London which trade there, & their agents & dependents in the colony & neighborhood, & the local government. The dissatisfaction of the merchants has been pressed on this office in many ways (ever since the government was taken out of their hands some years ago in consequence of the recommendation of a Parliamentary Committee) and particularly in a series of complaints against Mr Fitzpatrick the judicial assessor. . . . Mr Brodie Cruickshank, the now acting Governor, is (or was until he became acting governor) agent to Messrs Forster & Smith, the chief of these London houses. He is also a man of much ability, and influence on the coast. He has moreover a violent personal quarrel with Mr Fitzpatrick (on the subject of the admin. of estates.) Mr Brodie Cruickshank was sworn in on the 27th August, & in ten days he had got rid of his “Chief Justice & Judicial Assessor” . . . on account of his “unpopularity” which convince Mr C. that the government could not be carried on while he continued to deal justice to the natives.
This unpopularity merely rested on the natives’ “belief that they had grievances” a belief which no doubt Mr Cruickshank’s employers and friends have done their utmost to encourage. 95
The Colonial Office conveyed to Cruickshank its extreme displeasure at the course he had taken.96 He was eventually replaced and the new governor requested the Colonial Office to immediately send out Fitzpatrick, who was then in England, to resume his duties as Judicial Assessor.97 But Fitzpatrick’s actions caught up with him in England and he would never again return to the Gold Coast. The London merchants, whose interests had been affected by his disposal of the deceased merchant’s estate, brought a suit against him in the Chancery Court.98 He resigned his position on the Gold Coast in order to fight these legal battles, which eventually brought him to financial ruin.99
Factions and Colonial Politics
The circumstances surrounding the reversion of the Gold Coast administration to Colonial Office control generated distrust and hostility between two British factions on the coast: merchants and government officials. The hostility between these factions often broke out in open conflict because they needed to work together in the same administration. Mercantile resentment stemmed from the sense of being entitled to administer the Gold Coast. This sense of entitlement derived from their contention that, with limited metropolitan assistance, they had been able to steer the affairs of the colony with great success after the government had decided to withdraw from the coast. They thus perceived the resumption of direct metropolitan control as a move likely to undermine the results of their decades-long effort and jeopardize their commercial interests. Indeed, looking back decades after the resumption of direct metropolitan control, they maintained that “the security and peace” which mercantile administration had secured had been destroyed “under the expensive but ineffective system which followed.”100
These circumstances provided fertile grounds for the pattern of conflicts that rocked the administration from 1844. Embittered by the fact that they had been supplanted in the administration that they themselves had built up, the merchants took every opportunity to antagonize the new officials whom they considered to be usurpers. When allowed the opportunity to influence administrative policy, the merchants adopted cordial relations with the new officials. But more than informal control, what the merchants most desired was to instigate administrative reforms which would institutionalize their influence in the new regime.
The two main reasons upon which they premised their campaign for a Legislative Council elucidate their antipathy to their colleague officials. First, they reasoned that “intimate knowledge” of the country was necessary to govern effectively, and as long-time residents, they were the most qualified for the task. In contrast, their rivals arrived on the coast totally ignorant of the country they had been appointed to rule. The second premise of their campaign was that as traders who had resided on the Gold Coast for years, they had developed commercial and social attachments to the country which compelled them to place the welfare of the public first. To legitimize their demands, they constantly claimed that they had gained the acceptance and trust of the African population. Reflecting on aspects of this history in 1956, a member of the Swanzy family pointed out that the name had survived “in the folk-memory with a certain social magic, and its symbol, the unicorn, which is the family crest, [was] still used in ways that make it more than a simple trade mark.” He observed with apparent pride that “the name [had] accumulated a personality which [was] still redolent and alive,” even decades after the Swanzy firm had folded up.101 Fearing the Colonial Office appointees who took over the administration lacked such depths of connection with the societies over which they had been called upon to govern, the merchants found them illegitimate and feared they would be given to recklessness in the discharge of their duties.
These patterns of conflicts between English merchants and government officials continued well into the late colonial period. The factional antagonisms sometimes expressed themselves in attempts by some merchants at deliberate obstruction. British merchants sometimes joined forces with African elites to challenge many government actions, such as protests over the imposition of taxes, increases in customs duties, or struggles for increased representation of Africans or merchants in the colonial government.102 When in 1852 Governor Hill attempted to start the process of abolishing domestic slavery by forbidding educated Africans from domestic slaveholding, Francis Swanzy, a member of the Legislative Council, challenged the legality of making a legislation which was intended to apply to only one segment of the population.103
Similarly, when opposition arose against British attempts to raise revenue through a poll tax, English merchants joined the African opposition.104 This pattern of opposition continued even after the Gold Coast was formally declared a colony in 1874. On certain issues, they found willing allies in the African mercantile community, and made common cause with them to protest against those grievances. As Comaroff observes, these “struggles create spaces and places in which some blacks were to discover new, if limited, modes of empowerment.”105 A dramatic instance of such protests took place in 1893 against an ad valorem duty of four percent on imports. In a well-coordinated protest which drew support from the important commercial centers along the coast, African and British merchants attacked the entire basis of the government’s fiscal policy, and demanded to be given an increased voice in the policy direction of the colony because “the whole basis of the Government rests . . . [upon] the trading community.”106
Conclusion
This article has tried to shed light on some “moments of inchoateness and incoherence” for the Gold Coast administration in the nineteenth century. In particular, it has examined factional conflicts within the Gold Coast administration. The reversion of control of British possessions on the coast to the Colonial Office resulted in conflicts between resident English traders and newly-arrived officials. These conflicts brought up issues of the nature of jurisdiction and, especially, of administrative control. Examining these conflicts has provided insight into the process by which colonial policy was formulated, the conflicts which attended this process, and the factions involved. It shows that even among British officials, interests widely diverged and administrative visions often clashed. The intensity of internecine conflicts analyzed in this article suggests that the Gold Coast administration often lacked the kinds of operational efficiency which the early colonial historiography tends to assume. This implies that scholars need to take more seriously, and study more cautiously the network of personal and factional relations in which colonial officials were involved, and the implications of these sets of relationships for colonial policy formulation. It would also mean that, as scholars like Comaroff, Cooper, and Stoler have urged, we should adopt a more open approach to the common categories of colonial studies.
This does not mean that terms like “colonizer” and “colonized” should be discarded. However, as Cooper had admonished, they should be considered as terms which serve to open up lines of inquiry, rather than foreclosing careful analytical work.107 As this article has shown, uncritically accepting the categories of “colonizer” and “colonized” not only obscures the many important differences within each category, but, more crucially, blinds us to the important social and political implications of these internal divisions. Although there were so many potential lines of division in any colonial society—colonial officials, merchants, missionaries, travelers, and the like—my focus on only two of these groups has shown the extent to which these divisions undermined the coherence of the colonial government.
Footnotes
↵1. John L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 661–85; Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question. Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Matthew Lange, James Mahoney, and Matthias Vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies,” American Journal of Sociology 111, no. 5 (2006): 1412–62; Benjamin N. Lawrance, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
↵2. Ann Laura Stoler, “Rethinking Colonial Categories: European Communities and the Boundaries of Rule,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31, no. 1 (1989): 136.
↵3. Stoler, 135. See also Steinmetz, Devil’s Handwriting.
↵4. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience,” 662, 680–81.
↵5. Lawrance, Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks.
↵6. For a discussion of a similar situation in colonial India involving Islamic magistrates, see Hussin Iza Hussin, “The Pursuit of the Perak Regalia: Islam, Law, and the Politics of Authority in the Colonial State,” Law & Social Inquiry 32, no. 3 (2007): 759–88; “The Making of Islamic Law: Local Elites and Colonial Authority in British Malaya,” in Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2009), 155–74.
↵7. Françoise Boucek, “Rethinking Factionalism: Typologies, Intra-Party Dynamics and Three Faces of Factionalism,” Party Politics 15, no. 4 (July 2009): 456.
↵8. Henry Swanzy, “A Trading Family in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast,” Transactions of the Gold Coast & Togoland Historical Society 2, no. 2 (1956): 98.
↵9. Ivor Wilks, “Asante Nationhood and Colonial Administrators,” in Ethnicity in Ghana (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 68–96.
↵10. George Edgar Metcalfe, Great Britain and Ghana: Documents of Ghana History, 1807–1957 (London: Nelson, 1964. Published on behalf of the University of Ghana by Nelson [1964], 1964), 371.
↵11. Kofi Takyi Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?: African Merchants and Colonial State Formation in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast” (Ph. D. diss., Northwestern University, 2016); David Kimble, A Political History of Ghana: The Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850–1928 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963).
↵12. Antony N. Allott, “Native Tribunals In The Gold Coast 1844–1927,” Journal of African Law 1, no. 3 (1957): 163–71.
↵13. Memoranda and Draft, Mr. Hope, 26 December 1843, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA): CO 96/2, emphasis mine.
↵14. B. Pine to Colonial Office, 1 October 1857, TNA: CO 96/41.
↵15. This argument does not, however, support an alternative account, widespread in Ghanaian public memory, that asserts that British colonialism in the Gold Coast began with the signing of the Bond of 1844. Although significant as a historical document, the Bond did not symbolize a ceding of sovereignty by the coastal kings to the British, and the Colonial Office was under no illusion that it had the right to rule by virtue of the Bond. On the eve of Ghana’s independence, scholar and nationalist historian, J. B. Danquah published a paper which provided detailed jurisprudential refutation of the claim that the Bond was the foundational document of Gold Coast colonialism, but the belief has persisted in the public imagination nevertheless. In a speech to commemorate the 60th anniversary of independence, President Nana Akufo-Addo declared that “the signing of the Bond of 1844 marks the formal start of the Gold Coast colony”: Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo, “Full Text: Akufo-Addo’s Ghana@60 Independence Speech,” March 6, 2017, http://www.myjoyonline.com/politics/2017/march-6th/full-text-akufo-addos-ghana60-independence-speech.php; Joseph Boakye Danquah, “The Historical Significance of the Bond of 1844,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 3, no. 1 (1957): 3–29.
↵16. There were at this time three different European powers—British, Danish, and Dutch—that were active in the Gold Coast. The British acquired the Danish forts in 1850 and the Dutch forts in 1872.
↵17. Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?”; Raymond E. Dumett, “African Merchants of the Gold Coast, 1860–1905—Dynamics of Indigenous Entrepreneurship,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 4 (1983): 661–93; Susan B. Kaplow, “The Mudfish and the Crocodile: Underdevelopment of a West African Bourgeoisie,” Science & Society (1977): 317–33; Edward Reynolds, “The Rise and Fall of an African Merchant Class on the Gold Coast 1830–1874 (Progrès et Déclin d’une Classe Commerçante En Gold Coast, 1830–1874),” Cahiers d’études Africaines, 1974, 253–64.
↵18. George E. Metcalfe, “After Maclean: Some Aspects of British Gold Coast Policy in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Transactions of the Gold Coast and Togoland Historical Society 1, no. 5 (1955): 178–92; Matthew Nathan, “Hístorical Chart of the Gold Coast and Ashanti,” Journal of the Royal African Society 4, no. 13 (1904): 33–43; Roger Gocking, The History of Ghana (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005).
↵19. Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa: Including an Account of the Native Tribes and Their Intercourse with Europeans, vol. 1 (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1853).
↵20. Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford, “Decentralisation: Its Advantages and Disadvantages,” The Gold Coast Review 11, no. 1 (1926): 34–36; John Mensah Sarbah, “Maclean and the Gold Coast Judicial Assessors,” Journal of the Royal African Society 9, no. 6 (1910): 349–59.
↵21. Madden’s arrival on the coast was described as an “evil hour.” Andrew Swanzy, “On Trade in Western Africa with and without British Protection,” Journal of the Society of Arts 22, no. 1, 109 (1874): 484; Swanzy, “A Trading Family in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast.”
↵22. Forster and Smith to Colonial Office, 30 August 1843, TNA: CO 96/3.
↵23. H. Hill to Colonial Office, 15 October 1844, TNA: CO 96/4. The conflict between Hill and Maclean started soon after Hill assumed the reins of government. He reversed many Maclean-era policies, and Maclean refused to answer to Hill on many occasions. In a letter to Maclean dated 7 March 1845, Joseph Smith, an African merchant, has made the same charge against Hill, saying that “Among the information he is raking against you, he has caused to be summoned before the Judicial Assessor Quashie William, formerly a Blacksmith in the Fort, and the two Bricklayers who represented themselves, when working in the Fort, as belonging to Mr George Brown, in order to elicit from them what he could have against you.” TNA: CO 96/8.
↵24. J. Smith to G. Maclean, 7 March 1845, enclosed in Maclean to Colonial Office, TNA: CO 96/8.
↵25. Ibid, emphasis in original.
↵26. Pierluigi Valsecchi, “The Fall of Kaku Aka: Social and Political Change in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Western Gold Coast,” Journal of West African History 2, no. 1 (2016): 4.
↵27. W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 23 March 1848, TNA: CO 96/13. According to Valsecchi (op. cit.), calls for British intervention also came from Appolonia’s neighbours.
↵28. A blistering letter was accordingly written to Winniett and a copy also sent to his wife in England (Minute by Lord Grey on letter from W. Winniett of date 23 March 1848, TNA: CO 96/13).
↵29. Expanding their sphere of trade was one of their motivations. Soon after the fall of Kaku Aka, they poured into the conquered territory to establish trading posts.
↵30. Forster to Colonial Office, TNA: CO 96/14. In an internal memo, colonial officials in London observed that “Mr Forster like all the other merchants has no objectn to using the Govt to undertake warlike operatns wherever it is fancied their own interests can be promoted by doing so.” Internal Colonial Office minutes on despatch from W. Winniett, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵31. Colonial Office to W. Winniett, 3 July 1848, TNA: CO 96/13, TNA.
↵32. Valsecchi, “The Fall of Kaku Aka,” 4.
↵33. F. Swanzy to W. Winniett, 6 September 1847, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵34. Thomas Hutton to W. M. Hutton, 3 April 1848, TNA: CO 96/14.
↵35. Valsecchi, “The Fall of Kaku Aka,” 7.
↵36. W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 24 May 1848, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵37. For more on the merchant princes, see Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?”; Dumett, “African Merchants of the Gold Coast, 1860–1905”.
↵38. Native Merchants of the Gold Coast to W. Winniett, 14 August 1850, enclosed in W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 15 August 1850, ADM 1/2/5, Public Records and Archives Department, Accra (hereafter PRAAD).
↵39. Ibid.
↵40. W. Winniett to Native Merchants of the Gold Coast, 14 August 1850, enclosed in W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 15 August 1850, PRAAD: ADM 1/2/5. The enthusiastic expression of loyalty to British rule masked a more complex pattern of relationships between the African merchant princes and the colonial administration, which defies any attempt to tag them as simply collaborators or resisters of colonial rule. For an account of the patterns of cooperation and conflict between African merchants and the colonial administration, see Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?,” especially Chapter 3.
↵41. W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 30 June 1848, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵42. Address by merchants, magistrates, and residents of the Gold Coast to W. Winniett, 10 July 1848, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵43. B. Cruickshank to W. Winniett, 10 July 1848, TNA: CO 96/13.
↵44. Minute by Mr. Elliot on W. Winniett’s despatch of date 12 July 1848, TNA, CO 96/13.
↵45. For a discussion of the unstable legal basis of British power on the Gold Coast for most of the nineteenth century, see Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?”
↵46. “Propositions for improving the Government and promoting the prosperity of the British Settlements on the Gold Coast,” by J. Bannerman, B. Cruickshank, and J. Clouston, 6 February 1847, TNA: CO 96/12.
↵47. J. Bannerman, B. Cruickshank, and J. Clouston to Mr Forster, 12 February 1847, TNA: CO 96/12, emphasis mine.
↵48. Ibid.
↵49. Forster to Colonial Office, 7 April 1847, TNA: CO 96/12.
↵50. Colonial Office to Forster, TNA: CO 96/12.
↵51. Forster to Colonial Office, 7 April 1847, TNA: CO 96/12. He included an excerpt of a letter written by a merchant in Sierra Leone expressing much the same sentiments: “I think our Colony is “progressing” as the Yankees phrase it, but I cannot trace this advancement to our friends in Downing Street. Indeed, I look upon the assistance we receive from home, whether in the shape of the annual parliamentary grant or the measures recommended from the Colonial Office, as the greatest hindrance to its progress.”
↵52. Ibid.
↵53. F. Swanzy and H. Smith to Colonial Office, TNA: CO 96/17.
↵54. Colonial Office to F. Swanzy and H. Smith, 29 October 1949, TNA: CO 96/15.
↵55. The Colonial Office was fully aware of this situation. Indeed, when the assessor’s office was being created in 1843, an official in London noted enigmatically that the assessor was going to exercise justice rather than law.
↵56. F. Swanzy to Colonial Office, 7 December 1849, TNA: CO 96/17.
↵57. Ibid.
↵58. W. Winniett to Colonial Office, 30 April 1850, TNA: CO 96/18.
↵59. For instance, in reference to government attempts to raise local revenue via increased import duties, they said, “Much will depend on the view the principal English inhabitants take of the question. If they are permitted to have only one solitary representative in the Council and that one appointed by the Government, it can scarcely be expected they will facilitate the proposal. But should your Lordship grant them a more suitable form of Council, we think it likely that the in habitants of the English Settlements will be induced to cooperate and that all opposition to a moderate and safe rate of duties may be removed.” Smith and Swanzy to Colonial Office, 16 August 1850, TNA: CO 96/21, TNA.
↵60. Smith and Swanzy to Colonial Office, 16 August 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵61. Colonial Office to Smith and Swanzy, 10 December 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵62. See, for instance, J. Bannerman and B. Cruickshank to W. Winniett, 22 August, 1850, TNA: CO 96/19 (where they defended Fitzpatrick against Swanzy).
↵63. They claim that their intention was not to “by these remarks to disparage the administration of affairs by the President and Council.” J. Bannerman and B. Cruickshank to W. Winniett, 22 August, 1850, TNA: CO 96/19.
↵64. Colonial Office to W. Winniett, 18 December, 1850, TNA: CO 96/19.
↵65. Sandeman to Colonial Office, 30 September 1849, TNA: CO 96/17.
↵66. Sandeman to Colonial Office, 30 September 1849, TNA: CO 96/17. Responding to the charges, Fitzpatrick accused Sandeman of disorderliness and disturbance of the peace. He also listed Sandeman as one of the obstinate foes of the government: “I should mention to Your Lordship that Mr Sandeman since the transfer of the Forts to the Crown in 1843 has pertenaciously [sic] endeavored to obstruct the Government and bring the Authorities into disrepute with the Native population though few Men derive more advantage from them. Even since the hearing of this case I have recovered debts for him to a considerable amount, from Natives in the interior and paid them over to him.” J. Fitzpatrick to the Colonial Office, 22 October 1849, TNA: CO 96/16.
↵67. W. Winniett to the Colonial Office, 30 May, 1850, TNA: CO 96/18.
↵68. Ibid.
↵69. Colonial Office to W. Winniett, 10 August, 1850, TNA: CO 96/18. The was one of the pay-offs of Bannerman’s earlier strategic stance. In the document appointing him, Bannerman was referred to as “Trusty and Well Beloved.”
↵70. J. Clouston to Colonial Office, TNA: CO 96/19.
↵71. A. Swanzy to Forster, enclosed in letter from Forster to Colonial Office, 31 December, 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵72. Forster to Colonial Office, 20 May, 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵73. F. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 29 July, 1850, TNA: CO 96/21. Retelling the story a hundred years later, a Swanzy descendant admitted not being able to tell if F. Swanzy pursued this case out of altruistic or selfish motives Swanzy, “A Trading Family in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast.”
↵74. F. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 29 July, 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵75. Minute on 31 July 1850 by Mr. Elliot on F. Swanzy’s letter to the Colonial Office, 29 July, 1850, TNA: CO 96/21.
↵76. W. Winniett to the Colonial Office, 5 October, 1850, TNA: CO 96/19.
↵77. F. Swanzy to J. Bannerman, 16 January 1851, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵78. F. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 29 July 1850, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵79. F. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 29 July 1850, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵80. F. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 24 May 1851, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵81. J. Bannerman to the Colonial Office, 24 May 1851, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵82. Colonial Office minute on letter from J. Bannerman to the Colonial Office, 14 July 1851, TNA: CO 96/23.
↵83. J. Fitzpatrick to the Colonial Office, 8 November 1851, TNA: CO 96/22.
↵84. Kaplow, “The Mudfish and the Crocodile”; Reynolds, “The Rise and Fall of an African Merchant Class.”
↵85. Forster and Smith to the Colonial Office, 17 June 1853, TNA: CO 96/29.
↵86. The merchants themselves insisted that they could find one of their own members to discharge the function much more efficiently and at a much lower fee than what Fitzpatrick had charged, or even free of charge: A. Swanzy to the Colonial Office, 10 August 1853, TNA: CO 96/29.
↵87. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 26 July 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵88. J. Fitzpatrick to the Colonial Office, 2 August 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵89. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 1 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵90. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 9 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/29.
↵91. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 7 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵92. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 10 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵93. B. Cruickshank to the Colonial Office, 7 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵94. Minute by Peel on B. Cruickshank’s letter to the Colonial Office, 7 September 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵95. Ibid.
↵96. Colonial Office to B. Cruickshank, 24 November 1853, TNA: CO 96/28.
↵97. S. Hill to the Colonial Office, 26 January 1854, TNA: CO 96/30.
↵98. Forster to the Colonial Office, 17 March 1854, TNA: CO 96/32.
↵99. J. Fitzpatrick to the Colonial Office, 3 May 1854, TNA: CO 96/32.
↵100. Swanzy, “On Trade in Western Africa with and without British Protection,” 478.
↵101. He also claimed that “A Swanzy rum, complete with the unicorn, [was] still retailed in places as far apart as Ashanti Mampong and Keta, while the cloth Swanzy Ayeyi, “In praise of Swanzy”, [was] still to be seen on some ladies of the older generation . . .”: Swanzy, “A Trading Family in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast,” 87.
↵102. Asante, “‘Purchased Allies’ or ‘Thorns in the Side of the Government’?”; Kimble, A Political History of Ghana.
↵103. But Brodie Cruickshank, the other British merchant on the Legislative Council, had supported the government. TNA: CO 96/25, Legislative Council proceedings, enclosure in S. Hill to Colonial Office, 23 April 1852.
↵104. Forster and Smith to Colonial Office, 21 May 1855, TNA: CO 96/37.
↵105. John L. Comaroff, “Images of Empire, Contests of Conscience: Models of Colonial Domination in South Africa,” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989): 681.
↵106. Dispatch from Governor Sir W. Brandford Griffith, K.C.M.G., forwarding a Memorial from Merchants, Agents, and Traders of the Gold Coast Colony, with his Observations and the Secretary of State’s Reply (London, 1893), 54.
↵107. “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1516–45.
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