The Ashanti Rubber Trade with the Gold Coast in the Eighteen-Nineties

Extract

This study of the Ashanti rubber trade with the Gold Coast in the closing years of the last century explores further a theme with which I have for some time now been occupied. The theme is the nineteenth-century background to Ashanti economic development in the present century. In an earlier study of Ashanti trade with Hausa, Mande, and Mossi caravans I suggested that Ashanti experience with the kola trade provided a significant foundation for the successful introduction of cocoa cultivation early in this century, and that an adequate explanation of the latter requires a knowledge of the tools and the social framework of kola production and also of the organization of kola distribution from the areas of production to the kola markets in modern north-central Ghana in the previous century (Arhin, 1970). The rubber trade was complementary to Ashanti trade in the north, and a close look at it should throw more light on the economic outlook and organizational methods developed in the previous century which account for the eagerness with which the Ashanti took to cocoa cultivation and the success they made of its distribution before the era of the lorry. Secondly, there was an interesting link between the rubber trade and the domestic slave trade with Samory which presents the Alymany in the role of a stimulant to the Ashanti economy; one tends to think of him solely in terms of his military-politico activities. Thirdly, the Government of the Gold Coast, which took a keen interest in the rubber trade, sent officials to observe its production and sale in the interior so that written reports may be compared with oral information. After a brief note on changes in the basis of, and the personnel involved in, Ashanti trade with the European establishments on the Gold Coast in the nineteenth century, I shall examine the beginning, growth, and importance of the rubber trade; the categories of traders and the different modes of rubber collection; and lastly, the organization by which rubber reached the exporting agencies. The emphasis throughout will be on those features of the rubber trade which are significant for twentieth-century developments.

Résumé

LE COMMERCE ASHANTI DU CAOUTCHOUC AVEC LA GOLD COAST AU 19^ème SIÈCLE

Le commerce du caoutchouc avec la Gold Coast débuta en 1860, mais à la fin de 1880 les incisions destructrices avaient épuisé les arbres à caoutchouc dans l'arrière-pays, si bien que les producteurs durent chercher leur approvisionnement dans les forêts Ashanti. Trois types de commerçants, se distinguant selon leurs modes d'obtention du caoutchouc, l'exportaient vers la Gold Coast. C'étaient des agents de firmes européennes, des commerçants indépendants, et des producteurs locaux. Mais on peut classer de façon plus intéressante ces commerçants en fonction de leur ‘statut’, c'est-à-dire selon qu'ils sont occasionnels ou professionnels; le ‘statut’ du commerçant détermine, en effet, sa façon d'obtenir le caoutchouc, le personnel utilisé pour l'acheminer jusqu'à la côte, et la manière dont finalement il réserve le caoutchouc à l'exportation. Ce sont les commerçants professionnels, par l'extension et les méthodes opératoires ainsi que par les profits réalisés par ce commerce, qui ont favorisé le développement économique ultérieur des Ashanti. La guerre de Samory fut aussi un facteur important du développement du commerce du caoutchouc.