Republic Of Ghana History
Republic Of Ghana: Europeans have been in contact with the people of Ghana since the late 1400s, but it wasn’t until George Maclean took charge in the 1830s that the country became truly colonized. A group of British merchants operating on the coast chose him. The process, on the other hand, moved slowly at times.
In fact, it wasn’t until July 1874—after beating the Asante badly—that Great Britain chose to make the area south of the Pra-Ofin confluence a British crown colony and protectorate. Following that, Great Britain settled the country in two stages: from 1875 to 1890 and again from 1890 to 1901. From 1875 to 1890, the first phase of the country’s settlement proceeded in the same slow, hesitant, and almost forgetful manner as the previous phase.
Between 1874 and 1879, Britain was very interested in colonization. It took over the coastal areas east of the Volta as far as Anlo and Aflao and the rural areas as far as Agbosome, mostly to stop people from smuggling goods in those areas.
This excitement didn’t last long. But in 1884, Germany quickly took over the coast of Togo, which started the “scramble” for West Africa. In response, Britain moved east of the Volta to make treaties with the Ewe states of Anlo, Mafi, Vume, Tefle, and Krepi; with Akwamu in 1886; and with Anum in 1888. In 1888, Britain and Germany agreed that the area northeast of Yeji to Yendi would be a neutral zone.
Britain and Germany signed a deal in 1890 that split England in half. The British got the eastern half, which included Anlo, Some, Klikor, Peki, and Tongu, and made it part of the Gold Coast Colony. Germany took over the rest of Eweland and made it to Togo. In 1899, the neutral zone finally split, dividing the kingdom of Dagomba into British and German zones.
There is no better example of how reluctant and hesitant British settlement was during this time than the fact that Britain invaded and took over Asante in 1874 but then left the area alone. Most of the time, Britain didn’t send its first mission to sign protection treaties with Gyaaman and Atebubu, two states north of Asante, until 1889. In part, Britain took this action to halt French expansion northward and eastward from Côte d’Ivoire, and, in part to halt the rise of Asante’s power.
In response, the Fante leader George Ekem Ferguson went on a journey in April 1892 and was able to sign similar protection treaties with the chiefs of Bole, Daboya, Dagomba, and Bimbila. He also did this for the Mossi, Mamprusi, and Chakosi chiefs between 1893 and 1894. In 1895, the British and French were in a very close fight to take over Bole in the northwest and Gambaga in the northeast. The Anglo-German treaties of 1885 and 1890 set the eastern borders of Ghana. The Anglo-French treaties of 1889 and 1898 set the northern and western borders.
The British settlement of Asante was even more hesitant and unwilling. Britain didn’t really start to colonize Asante until 1891, when they offered a treaty of security. The British made the same offer again in 1894, this time promising to pay the Asante chiefs a monthly salary if they agreed to let a British person live in Kumasi, only to have it flatly rejected.
However, this too faced strong opposition. Concerned about the possibility of a French occupation and especially about the success of talks for an alliance between Prempe, the Asantehene, and Almami Samori, the great Mandingo leader, the new secretary of states for colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, ordered the invasion and conquest of Asante. Chamberlain was an anti-imperialist.
Prempe chose not to fight when the British army entered Kumasi in January 1896 to prevent the destruction of his kingdom and the removal of the Golden Stool. However, the British army caught him along with his mother, father, brother, and several Kumasi chiefs. They were sent to Sierra Leone in 1896, then to the Seychelles in 1900 as prisoners of war.
This put an end to the country’s land settlement. The traditional leaders of Ghana and the people who lived under them were not oblivious, as their rights and culture were violated. They fought back against colonization in many ways, including direct confrontation, armed conflicts, and rebellions.
So, starting in 1874, the Anlo rebelled and attacked Glover’s British troops. After their defeat, they had to sign a treaty acquiescing to British rule. In spite of this, they kept fighting against British rule in their area. In 1878, the people of Denu set fire to the Alex Miller Brothers and Company plant.
In 1884 and 1885, the Anlo rebelled again with the help of a great trader named Geraldo de Lima. Led by their chiefs, Tsigui of Anyako and Tenge Dzokoto, they fought the police guard sent to arrest de Lima and freed him. He was caught again, though, and held at Elmina Castle from May 1885 to November 1893.
With an army of 3,000 people, Anlo attacked the district commissioner of Keta, fourteen miles west of Keta. Two Hausa soldiers lost their lives, and the district commissioner suffered severe injuries. Despite this, the armed revolt persisted until its suppression in 1889. In 1888, the people of Tavieve also took up arms to stop the British from putting Peki in charge.
The Asante, on the other hand, fought back the hardest and longest during that time. As previously mentioned, Prempe firmly and kindly declined the British offer to protect the Asantehene in 1891, marking the end of their hesitation. When the British made this offer again in 1894, Prempe turned it down and sent a group to England to argue for his cause of making sure his country would stay independent.
In November 1894, this strong group left Kumasi and got to England in April 1895. It stayed in London until November, but the British government wouldn’t take it. Indeed, it was while the group was in England that the secretary of state gave the order to invade and take over Asante.
As we’ve already said, Prempe refused to fight back, but he was caught with other people and sent away to Sierra Leone in 1896 and then to the Seychelles in 1900. Even the Asantehene never sits on the Golden Stool, which is a sacred symbol of the soul and the Asante people’s unity. In a rude and disrespectful gesture, the governor requested the Golden Stool for his own use. The old queen of Edweso, Yaa Asantewaa, who was about sixty years old, led the Asante rebellion in 1900 as a result of this in order to drive the British out of Asante.
In April, a group of 6,000 men besieged the governor in the Kumasi fort. The siege lasted until June, when the governor had to leave the fort for the coast “to risk death from rebel bullets rather than death by starvation.” He and his group fought their way through rebel forces before he got to the coast in July 1900.
With their new stockades, which they built all over the place, the Asante were able to keep the rescue columns and reinforcements sent from the coast from getting through. It wasn’t until November that the rebellion was put down. They caught Yaa Asantewaa and the other rebel leaders and sent them to live with Prempe in the Seychelles. Yaa Asantewaa, who was already very old, died there on October 17, 1921.
After putting down the rebellion, the British finished colonizing the country by passing three orders-in-council in September 1901 that made Asante, the Northern Territories, and the Crown Colony and Protectorate part of the British colony of the Gold Coast, which is now Ghana. In the areas south of the Pra, where colonization had been going on since 1874, the traditional leaders and their people also fought hard, but they weren’t able to drive the imperialists out.
Strategies they used here included less and less armed conflicts and more and more civil rallies, protests, campaigns in the press and literature, as well as petitions and protests to the colonial government or the government back in London. The traditional rulers initially formulated these plans at the local level. However, protonationalist movements and societies, led by the traditional rulers and the newly educated and professional class, began to make these plans at the national level starting in the 1860s.
These groups, including the Fante Confederation and the Accra Native Confederation, existed in the 1860s and early 1870s. They founded the Mfantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw (Fante National Society) in the 1880s, which later changed its name to the Aborigines’ Rights Protection Society (ARPS).
The groups sought representation on the legislative council. They accomplished this by sending newspapers like the Gold Coast Times, the Western Echo, and the Gold Coast Chronicle, as well as petitions like the one Mfantsi Amanbuhu Fekuw sent to the colonial secretary in 1889 and delegates to London by the ARPS in 1898.
They were strongly against direct taxes, the government taking over all “empty lands,” and criticizing African cultures, including names, clothing, religion, and customs. These early nationalist movements only got a few things done, like direct taxation, land ownership by Ghanaians, and a small voice on the legislative council. Until the 1950s and 1960s, they weren’t able to change the unfair, exploitative, and culturally smug aspects of colonization.
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