'Purchased allies' or 'thorns in the side of the government'?: African Merchants and Colonial State Formation in the Nineteenth Century Gold Coast

This dissertation examines the formation of the Gold Coast colonial state. In order to foreground the essential roles that Africans played in the process, it moves beyond conceptions of colonialism that overstate the power of colonial governments. It also moves beyond conceptions of the African elite as either collaborating sell-outs or valiant resisters of colonial oppression in order to examine actual patterns of conflicts and cooperation which shaped Gold Coast politics in the 19th century. I argue that the politics of the Gold Coast defies a coherent narration because of the paradoxes and policy indecisions that marked its critical historical junctures. In addition, administrative policies were wildly unstable because governors, who typically served for short durations, came to their jobs with different temperaments and leadership styles. As well, the Gold Coast Colonial administration faced a number of challenges. It was divided by internecine conflicts between British government officials and merchants. Many of these conflicts were of a very personal nature, but underlying them was a struggle over administrative control. Colonial administrative capacity was also limited by the fiscal constraints of the government, its lack of a sure jurisdictional basis, and normative commitments which sometimes precluded its resort to force. A reflection of these challenges was the administrative policy of incorporating into the government African merchants, who maintained close ties with the small resident European community. The ensuing patterns of interaction are not reducible to simple terms such as co-optation, resistance, or sabotage. I illustrate the implications of these factors which shaped colonial state formation by examining the politics of colonial fiscal policy. The results of the government's attempts to raise internal revenue were heavily dependent on these patterns of alliances and conflicts. I argue that by their centrality in these processes, the African merchants became essential agents in the formation of the Gold Coast colonial state.