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Repercussions of World War I in the Gold Coast*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Killingray
David Killingray
Affiliation:
Goldsmiths' College, University of London
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Extract

Although on the periphery of the war Gold Coast resources and manpower were mobilized for the imperial war effort. The educated élite and many traditional rulers were loyal and internal conditions, despite the withdrawal of personnel and troops, generally peaceful. Small-scale disturbances occasioned by the war occurred, the most serious in the Northern Territories. The direction and pattern of Gold Coast external trade changed; exports, with the exception of cocoa, contracted and the price of imports rose. Serious shipping shortages exacerbated difficulties. British ‘Combine’ firms increased their hold over Gold Coast commerce. A fall in government revenue held up public works, and railway construction was paid for by an export duty on cocoa. The war brought marked changes to the government fiscal system. Gold Coast troops were used in the West and East African campaigns and prepared for employment in the Middle East. Varying degrees of compulsion were used to recruit carriers and soldiers and resistance to this was widespread. Labour shortages and the withdrawal of whites provided new job opportunities for Africans. Cocoa and palm kernels were subject to imperial direction and control; Governor Clifford opposed the imperial preference scheme for palm kernels. Imperial wartime economic measures fuelled the nationalism of the NCBWA; the Gold Coast élite demanded political representation as a reward for wartime loyalty, while their economic resolutions attempted to displace European commercial interests strengthened during the war. Economic changes further weakened the position of traditional rulers; labour shortages provided wage labour with temporarily enhanced bargaining power. Post-war trouble from ex-servicemen was slight.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 39 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 The Colony mobilized its military forces on 31 July 1914 four days before the British declaration of war on Germany. See Grove, Eric J., ‘The first shots of the Great War: The Anglo-French conquest of Togo, 1914’, Army Quarterly, 07 1976.Google Scholar

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3 Public Record Office, London: CO. 96/534/32098, Clifford Conf. No. 627 to Harcourt, 25 Aug. 1913.

4 The Gold Coast Regiment of the West African Frontier Force numbered 1,500 men (2,020 in 1904). Other para-military forces were the 320 troopers of the Northern Territories Constabulary, mainly ex-servicemen, 330 volunteers and 790 police.

5 In 1918–19 Clifford resisted the demands of the Department of Agriculture for stronger legislation to control cocoa farmers on grounds of ‘political consideration’. See Kay, G. B. (ed.), The Political Economy of Colonialism in Ghana: a collection of documents and statistics, 1900–1960 (Cambridge, 1972), 13–15.Google Scholar

6 The Rev. Ahuma, S. Attoh, author of The Gold Coast Nation and National Consciousness (1911)Google Scholar, at Winneba offered ‘fervent and incessant prayers for the unqualified success of British arms’. Report from Gold Coast Methodist Synod Minutes, 1915, quoted in Debrunner, H. W., A History of Christianity in Ghana (Accra, 1967), 277Google Scholar. Much to the annoyance of Governor Clifford, who was on leave in the United Kingdom, the Acting Governor A. R. Slater enlisted the aid of the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society in the military recruitment campaign in the Fante district of Central Province in Feb. and Mar. 1917. See CO. 445/38/17329, Slater Conf. to Long 6 Mar. 1917. Clifford called this a ‘surrender’ to the A.R.P.S. and a ‘serious error of judgement’ which ‘will have had a great effect upon the native public opinion throughout the Colony.… There is no action that could have been taken locally which was more certain to impress the Chiefs and people with the idea that the Government was reduced to considerable straits’. CO. 445/39/31551, Clifford, to Long, , 29 May 1917.Google Scholar

7 The Gold Coast Leader, closely identified with J. E. Casely Hayford, in an editorial of 10 July 1915, said that now was ‘not the time to ventilate grievances which might prejudice the cause of England or lead her enemies to impugn the solidarity and loyalty of the sons and subject races of the British Empire. We shall play the role of passive spectators with loyalty, determination and devotion in order to qualify for greater trust’. In a similarly optimistic vein two years later an editorial supporting the recruiting campaign challenged: ‘… wake up men of the Gold Coast and answer the call with fervour and enthusiasm; for the day comes, and is at hand, when if we knock at the door of opportunity, we shall not be denied admittance’. Gold Coast Leader, 3 Mar. 1917.Google Scholar

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11 In 1921 over 50 per cent of the Gold Coast political staff were in their first two years of service. Staniland, M., in The lions of Dagbon. Political change in Northern Ghana (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, divides the colonial administrators of the ‘northern interest’ by the war—those who worked in the Northern Territories before 1919 and those after that date who had served in the war: see pp. 48–9. In the Northern Territories Chief Azure of Nangodi was reported as saying: ‘… people were always saying “now the white has gone!” It was a common saying. It commenced shortly after the Company of Constabulary was withdrawn from Zouaragu’. CO. 96/570/47495, report by T. W. Breckenridge Prov. Comm. N.E. Province Northern Territories, 16 Nov. 1916, Encl. IA in Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long, 3 Jan. 1917. See also Kimble, , A Political History, 489.Google Scholar

12 An official analysis of the Aug.-Sept. riots is in CO. 96/557/23490, Clifford conf. to Harcourt, 1 May 1915.

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16 See further Cox-George, N. A., ‘Studies in finance and development: the Gold Coast (Ghana) experience 1914–18’, Public Finance, 13 (1958).Google Scholar

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18 CO. 96/548/39121, Clifford conf. to Harcourt, , 24 Sept. 1914.Google Scholar

19 Gold Coast exports by value to the United States in 1914 amounted to £93,383, 2 per cent value of total foreign trade; this trade increased by four times in the boom of 1918–19 to reach a figure of £3,465,699, 33 per cent of total foreign trade.

20 Kimble, , A Political History, 48–9Google Scholar. During the war the number of African exporters increased: see the chapter on ‘Cadbury, cocoa and the First World War’, in Southall, R., ‘Cadbury on the Gold Coast, 1907–38: The dilemma of the model firm in a colonial economy’ (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Birmingham University, 1975)Google Scholar. Davies, P. N., in his The Trade makers. Elder Dempster in West Africa, 1852–1972 (London, 1973), 198–9Google Scholar, claims that in monetary terms Elder Dempster and the other British shipping companies associated with it constantly secured moderate but adequate returns on capital even after all previously non-requisitioned ships were taken over at ‘Blue Book’ rates early in 1917.

21 CO. 96/558/26205, minute by Clifford on desp. Acting Governor Slater to Long, 19 May 1915. In 1907 Governor Rodger of the Gold Coast had also opposed the West African shipping ring as ‘an unmitigated evil': CO. 96/458/24936, Rodgers no. 267 to Elgin, , 21 June 1907.Google Scholar

22 Department of Education Reports, 1914 and 1919Google Scholar. Guggisberg in the Legislative Council Debates, 4 Feb. 1918, referred to the removal of Basel Mission education work as ‘the greatest blow which education in the country has ever received’. For an outline of the activities of the Basel Mission during the war see Smith, Noel, The Presbyterian Church in Ghana, 1850–1960 (Accra, 1966), 145–54Google Scholar; and Debrunner, , A History of Christianity, 277–90.Google Scholar

23 Shipping tonnage on the Gold Coast declined by 50 per cent in 1913–15: Trade Report, 1915. In 1913, 693 ships entered Gold Coast ports, by 1918 only 256, an increasing number of them sailing vessels and U.S. ships: see Cox-George, , ‘Studies in finance…’, 149.Google Scholar

24 Firewood cutting placed an added burden on labour shortages especially in the gold mines; lack of coal for the pumps caused Accra harbour to finally silt-up. Imported foodstuffs, standard fare for most Europeans, rose in price, were harder to come by, and late in arrival.

25 See CO. 96/557/23477, Clifford desp. no. 377 to Long, 1 May 1915. Customs and railway revenue in 1914 amounted to £1,331,712 which was c. £30,000 more than in 1913; customs and railway rates for 1915 equalled £1,441,000. In his speech to the Legis lative Council on 25 Oct. 1917 Clifford said that ‘judged from a purely financial standpoint the year 1916 was easily the most prosperous that this colony has yet experienced … the revenue collected … was the largest ever recorded’.

26 CO. 96/560/47873, minute by Fiddes, , 21 Oct. 1915Google Scholar, reporting on a discussion with Clifford, on Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long, 30 Sept. 1915. A year later when the export tax on cocoa was introduced Clifford suggested that the ‘spending capacity of the population in the Colony and Ashanti has not been diminished … there is probably a larger quantity of ready money in the hands of the natives than ever before’, CO. 96/566/24852, Clifford conf. to Long, 8 May 1916.

27 The war substantially altered revenue sources in British West Africa. In 1913 nearly 80 per cent of Gold Coast revenue came from import duties and receipts from government-owned railways. During the war import duties were increased and in Oct. 1916 an export duty was for the first time imposed on cocoa. The cocoa duty was one farthing per lb or is. 3d. per load; in Sept. 1917 this was reduced to Is. per load, in July 1919 raised to 2s. 6d. per load. In 1919 and 1920 yield from the cocoa duty equalled about 25 per cent of total revenue. The export duty was lowered in 1922 back to one farthing a load, by which time it had become an accepted revenue source providing the territory with capital sums for the development programmes of the 1920s. Immediately following the war similar export duties were imposed on kola and timber, a differential duty on palm kernels, and later a duty on diamonds. By 1920 export duties contributed over 25 per cent of total revenue. These export duties were increased and retained after the war to compensate for the loss of revenue following the prohibition on the importation of ‘trade’ spirits introduced by the British authorities in West Africa in Mar. 1919 in anticipation of the Convention of St Germain—itself a product of the Paris peace negotiations—concluded in Sept. 1919. The Report of a Committee on Trade and Taxation for British West Africa (London, 1922), Cmd. 1600, p. 25Google Scholar, said that this prohibition ‘effected a sudden revolution in the fiscal system of the British West African Colonies’. In 1913 spirits contributed about 64 per cent, of the total customs revenue of the Gold Coast; in 1920 only 6 per cent.

28 CO. 96/572/58099, Min. by Flood on Clifford desp. no. 840 to Law, A. Bonar, 13 Nov. 1916.Google Scholar

29 CO. 96/561/59283, PS. by Clifford in secret desp. to Law, A. Bonar, 4 Dec. 1915Google Scholar. Another reason for the coin shortage was that the Royal Mint was heavily engaged in munitions work. Cowries returned to circulation in the Northern Territories during the war: Northern Territories Report, 1919.

30 CO. 554/33/36050, Colonial Sec. to Crown Ag., 2 June 1917. An indication of the rate of inflation and the growth of the internal economy is given by the accelerated velocity of circulation of currency. In 1914 there was £463,750 in circulation, by 1918 £2,171,237: see Cox-George, ‘Studies in Finance’, 156Google Scholar. Hill, Polly in The Gold Coast Cocoa Farmer: a preliminary survey (Oxford, 1956), 36Google Scholar, quotes an informant on figures for annual rates paid to cocoa labourers at Asafo in Akim Abuakwa as £4 in 1914, £6 in 1916 and £10 in 1918.

31 Kimble, , A political history, 45.Google Scholar

32 Simensen, J., ‘The asafo of Kwahu, Ghana, a mass movement for local reform under colonial government’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Stud., viii, 3 (1975), 384.Google Scholar

33 See also Kimble, , A Political History, 458.Google Scholar

34 Reporting on the unrest at the Obuasi mine in late 1919 the manager wrote that it was due to ‘dissatisfaction with the existing rates of pay which are the same as in prewar days’. Ashanti Goldfields Corporation papers (Guildhall Library, London), 14, 171/46, p. 126, Watkins, to Mann, , 17 Nov. 1919.Google Scholar

35 See Kimble, , A Political History, 102–4Google Scholar. Clerks of the Gold Coast Regiment in 1916 complained of their wages lagging behind other departments and claimed that ‘promotion among us is very slow and dull': CO. 96/567/29087, letter from Solomon Aidoo and 12 other clerks to Col. Rose, O.C., G.C.R., Kumasi, 3 Apr. 1916, encl. in Clifford desp. no. 396 to Law, A. Bonar, 1 June 1916.Google Scholar

36 The Gold Coast Regiment was led by white officers. The rank and file, for the most part illiterate, was recruited mainly from the Northern Territories or from neighbouring French territory. In 1914, 41 per cent of the G.C.R. came from within the N.T. and 59 per cent from outside, mainly from French territory. The latter figure had declined to a mere 5 per cent by 1918: from an approximate calculation given in Thomas, Roger G. ‘Military recruitment in the Gold Coast during the First World War’, Cahiers d'études Africains, xv, no. 57 (1975)Google Scholar. CO. 879/121/1098, Report on the Combatant Manpower of the Native Races of British West Africa, 1923Google Scholar, gives the following figures for the totals of West Africans involved in the war effort: On the role of the Gold Coast Regiment in the war see Lucas, , The Gold CoastGoogle Scholar; Gorges, E., The Great War in West Africa (London, 1920)Google Scholar; SirClifford, H., The Gold Coast Regiment in the East African Campaign (London, 1920)Google Scholar; Haywood, A. and Clarke, F. A. S., The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Aldershot, 1964).Google Scholar

37 Haywood and Clarke, op. cit., 173.

38 CAB 1/23/2, Printed conf. memo misc. no. 331, Jan. 1917, ‘On steps taken to increase the supply of (a) coloured troops, (b) coloured labour…’, gives the following figures for the Gold Coast contingent in East Africa: 1,385 combatants and 400 carriers with a reinforcement rate calculated at 135 per month. Nigeria had 2,600 combatants and 1,000 carriers in East Africa and reinforcement rate was 360 per month. Service conditions in East Africa were extremely harsh as the casualty figures clearly show.

39 In the War Cabinet discussion of 23 Mar. 1916 on labour supply, CAB 42/11/9, both Lloyd George and Bonar Law suggested African labour. There were other proposals for using West African labour–in the docks of the French Channel ports, for building munitions factories in the U.K., and Gold Coast miners for tunnelling on the Western Front. Strachey at the Colonial Office minuted a view shared within that department when he said ‘…it is a complete delusion to suppose that there is a large field for the recruitment of labour of any kind in West Africa …’. CO. 554/31/40535, on letter from War Office, 24 Aug. 1916. The following month EUis, the head of the West Africa department at the CO., argued that India's 300 millions should be used as a labour source for Mesopotamia and that ‘proportionately to population the Gold Coast has done more in men and money than India’. CO. 554/31/47393, minute on letter from War Office, 29 Sept. 1916.

40 CO. 445/33/17128, Inspector General W.A.F.F. conf. Report on Gold Coast Regiment 1913, encl. in Clifford, to Harcourt, , 1 May 1913.Google Scholar

41 CO. 445/42/27100, Haywood, to Adj. Gen. War Office, 2 May 1917.Google Scholar

42 Ash. Gold. Corp, 14, 171/36, p. 74, Samson, W. to Mann, , 11 Aug. 1914.Google Scholar

43 See Boyle, D., With ardours manifold (London, 1959), 160–7Google Scholar; also tne Transport Department Report, 1916.

44 CO. 445/42/11383, Clifford conf. to Long, , 7 Feb. 1918Google Scholar. The war provided Africans with new technical skills that contributed to the economic development of the Gold Coast in the 1920s.

45 CAB/37/136/19, Conf. memo to Cab., 18 Oct. 1915, ‘Question of raising native troops for imperial service’. See also CO. 537/604, secret, 8 Oct. 1915.

46 CO. 445/37/55281, Brade of War Office to Under Sec. of State Colonial Office, 10 Nov. 1916.

47 CAB 42/17/5, secret ‘Note on the campaign in East Africa’ to Cabinet from War Office, 7 Aug. 1916. See also CO. 445/37/42406, War Office to Colonial Office on the Nigerian and Gold Coast contingents for East Africa, 4 Sept. 1916.

48 The parliamentary campaign for the Black Army was led by Col. Wedgewood, J. C.. In Sept. 1916 the COGoogle Scholar. rejected a request from the War Office for 6,000 personnel from East and West Africa for use as supply companies for siege battalions on the Western Front. CO. 537/952, secret, 8 Sept. 1916, minute by Flood, 9 Sept. 1916: ‘I think it is high time that W.O. were told bluntly that the idea of collecting a large force from the thinly populated W.A. Colonies is chimerical… In any case we could not agree to let W.A. negroes be murdered by France's winter climate simply to make a R.G.A. [Royal Garrison Artillery] holiday’.

49 CO. 445/45/21634, Memo on Inter-Departmental Conference at Colonial Office on the West African Service Brigade, 5 May 1918. See also CAB 27/8 WP-72, secret memo by Hankey to War Cabinet on ‘Military policy of the Empire’, discussed by Cabinet, , 13, 14 and 20 June 1918.Google Scholar

50 CO. 445/45/46814, C-in-C France secret tel. to War Office, 19 Sept. 1918 and War Office reply of 20 Sept. 1918.

51 C. O. 445/42/27100, minute by Strachey on Report by Haywood, to Adj. Gen. War Office, 2 May 1917.Google Scholar

52 See D'Almeida-Topor, Hélène, ‘Les populations dahoméenes et la récrutement militaire pendant la prèmiere guerre mondiale’, Revue française d'histoire d'outre-mer, lx (1973), 196–241CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Echenberg, M. J., ‘Paying the blood tax: military conscription in French West Africa 1914–29’, Canadian J. Afr. Stud., ix, 2 (1975)Google Scholar. Harding at the Colonial Office described French conscription policy as ‘a new and particularly objectionable form of slavery’ (CO. 445/45/7565), while Clifford said that a policy which forced Africans ‘to risk their lives in a struggle in which they are only concerned at second hand… appears to me indistinguishable from the old slave traffic to the West Indies…’ (quoted in a minute by Ellis, , CO. 96/579/31547. 3 July 1917).Google Scholar

53 Thomas, , ‘Military recruitment’Google Scholar, deals in detail with the recruiting drive and shows that the image of ‘volunteer’ enlistment suggested by Kimble and Crowder is an ‘oversimplified description of the situation’. For a parallel study of recruitment in Nigeria, see Barrett, John, ‘The rank and file of the Colonial Army in Nigeria, 1914–18’, J. Modern Afr. Stud., xv (1977)Google Scholar. Haywood writing in 1923 said that ‘far greater energy in organizing the recruiting campaign was displayed by the Gold Coast than in other West African dependencies': CO. 879/1 /1098, Conf. Print (Africa).

54 CO. 445/38/5946, Omanhene to District Coram., Kwahu, as reported by Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long, , 31 Jan. 1917.Google Scholar

55 See Armitage, Chief Comm. N.T. to Colonial Secretary, enclosed with Northern Territories Report 1918, 20 Sept. 1918, in CO. 96/604/57959Google Scholar. There was a total of 9,890 Gold Coast troops in the West African Frontier Force during the war; 5,680 were recruited during the war of whom 4,908 enlisted in the recruiting drive 1917–18; 3,879 recruits (61 per cent) came from the Northern Territories. Gold Coast casualties during the war were as follows: in Togoland 14 killed, 58 wounded; Cameroons, 44 killed/died of wounds/accidentally killed, 18 died of diseases, 115 wounded; East Africa, 221 killed/died of wounds/accidentally killed, 309 died of disease, 24 missing, 693 wounded and 531 invalided. The source for these very high figures is CO. 445/50/15672, Rose O. C. Gold Coast Regt. to Governor, 10 Feb. 1920, in Guggisberg, to Milner, , 26 Feb. 1920Google Scholar. Crowder in Crowder, and Ajayi, , History of West Africa, 493Google Scholar, gives lower figures without citing a source. In 1929 about 440 ex-servicemen were in receipt of disablement pensions although this official figure did not include every man entitled to such awards: see correspondence in CO. 820/6/13269. Deaths in the influenza epidemic of 1918–19, spread in part as a consequence of the war, were in the region of 4 to 5 per cent of the total population.

56 CO. 445/38/6236, Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long, , 11 Jan. 1917.Google Scholar

57 See correspondence and end. on Recruiting in CO. 445/39/31551, Clifford conf. to Long, , 19 May 1917Google Scholar. Col. Potter, the officer commanding the Gold Coast Regt. at Kumasi, said that the Regt. was becoming the ‘sink of the Northern Territories’, full of ‘men unfitted for any sort of manual work’. CO. 445/43/11226, ‘Notes on recruiting’ to Governor enclosed in Clifford conf. to Long, , 11 Dec. 1917.Google Scholar

58 CO. 445/39/11226, Read, B. Mountray to Acting Colonial Secretary, 27 Apr. 1917, enclGoogle Scholar. 2 in Clifford conf. to Long, , 19 May 1917Google Scholar. For an example of enforced conscription of a man who had fallen foul of the law, see Braimah, J. A. and Goody, J. R., Salaga: The Struggle for Power (London, 1967), 64–5.Google Scholar

59 CO. 445/39/31551, Clifford conf. to Long, , 17 May 1917Google Scholar. There were some genuine volunteers in the G.C.R. Part of the Volunteer Force, which consisted mainly of clerks and educated men, served in the Cameroons campaign and also in East Africa.

60 Some chiefs refused to provide recruits for the military in 1916–17 for fear of losing their peoples’ respect and undermining their political authority. Chiefs had responded in a similar way when they resisted the demand for carriers under the Compulsory Labour Ordinance, 1895: see Kimble, , A Political History, 466.Google Scholar

61 CO. 445/38/17329, Capt. Challenor to Acting Colonial Secretary, 7 Mar. 1917, end. 3 in Acting Slater, Governor to Long, , 6 Mar. 1917.Google Scholar

62 Ash. Gold. Corp., 14, 171/41, p. 89, Watkins, to Mann, , 23 Mar. 1917Google Scholar; and CO. 445/39/22646, Acting Slater, Governor to Long, , 9 Apr. 1917.Google Scholar

63 On the question of mine labour, see Thomas, Roger G., ‘Forced labour in British West Africa: the case of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast 1906–1927’, J. Afr. Hist., xiv (1973)Google Scholar. There seems little evidence to support the contention of Cox-George, , ‘Studies in Finance’, 155Google Scholar, that military recruitment ‘depleted’ the able-bodied and skilled elements in the ranks of the agricultural labour force. Most recruits came from the Northern Territories and represented a very small proportion of the total working population.

64 Thomas, ‘Forced labour’, 90.Google Scholar

65 Ash. Gold Corp., 14, 171/41, p. 9, Watkins, to Mann, , 26 Mar. 1917Google Scholar; also CO. 445/39/22646, Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long, , 9 Apr. 1917.Google Scholar

66 Asiwaju, A. I., ‘Migration as revolt: the example of the Ivory Coast and the Upper Volta before 1945’, J. Afr. Hist., xvii (1976)Google Scholar. Movement was both ways across the frontier to avoid military recruitment. Duncan-Johnstone, District Commissioner at Lohra in the Northern Territories, described how in early 1918 the Lo Wiili chief of Korohora removed ‘himself, his goods, and his cattle into French territory where he still remains’, to avoid providing recruits. Local Franco-British co-operation in the Northern Territories to return deserters was described by one recaptive: ‘The French and British are now like two fingers on the same hand’, Annual Report, Lorha, 1918, copy in Duncan-Johnstone papers, Rhodes House Library, Oxford, MSS. Afr. S. 593/4.Google Scholar

67 CO. 96/579/23855, Minute by Ellis, , early 1917.Google Scholar

68 CO. 96/578/12640, Prov. Comm. Sekondi to Acting Colonial Secretary, 9 Feb. 1917, encl. in Acting Governor Slater conf. to Long conf. A, 15 Feb. 1917.

69 Kimble, , A Political History, 105.Google Scholar

70 ‘A remarkable day’, anonymous writer in Clifford, Lady, editor, Our days in the Gold Coast (London, 1919), 76–7.Google Scholar

71 Debrunner, H. W. in A Church between Colonial Powers. A History of the Church in Togo (London, 1965), 146 ff.Google Scholar, says that the departure of the Mission from southern Togoland ‘brought a revival of open paganism’. There are probably close links between Christian revivalism and wartime economic and social changes, for example the decline of the timber export trade of Eastern Province in 1914 and the Harris movement, and influenza and the cocoa slump of 1919–20 and the rapid growth of Samson Oppong's church in central Asante.

72 See Kimble, , A Political History, 105–9.Google Scholar

73 For a brief account of the cocoa indultry and trade during the war see Hill, Polly, The Gold Coast Cocoa Farmer, 108–13.Google Scholar

74 Kimble, , A Political History, 48–9.Google Scholar

75 See Hancock, W. K., Survey of British Commonwealth affairs II. Problems of economic policy 1918–39, part 1 (Oxford, 1942) 113 ff.Google Scholar

76 CO. 96/572/58090, Clifford desp. no. 823 to Law, A. Bonar, 8 Nov. 1916.Google Scholar

77 CO. 96/581/45894, Clifford conf. to Long, , 15 Aug. 1917Google Scholar. Clifford further argued that ‘from the point of view of a Tropical Colony, which has no manufactures, but which is a large producer of raw material,… every effort should be made to recover those lost markets [i.e. Germany] and that no steps should be taken the effect of which will be to limit or restrict any doors that were open to our produce before the outbreak of war’: see the Gold Coast correspondence on the Committee on Commercial and Industrial Policy, printed in CO. 885/25, misc. no. 330, Appendix.

78 The Empire Resources Development Committee, like the ‘Million Black Army movement’, was part of the wartime mythology of endless African resources. Founded in Oct. 1916 (the inaugural meeting was chaired by Milner), the ERDC advocated developing the imperial estates ‘for State purposes, under State auspices’, or, as a hostile Colonial Office put it exploiting ‘the colonies for the benefit of His Majesty's Government’. At one time over 200 members of parliament belonged to the British Empire Development Parliamentary Committee which was chaired by Arthur Bigland, the wartime Controller of Oils and Fats. The War Cabinet examined the ERDC proposals in Jan. 1919, and Amery, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, told the House of Commons in Feb. 1920 that ‘sympathetic consideration’ would be given to the proposal for a select committee to consider ERDC ideas. The ERDC enjoyed support while the colonial export market boomed; interest waned with a depressed market and by Nov. 1920 the Colonial Office referred to the lobby as a ‘very dead horse’. Nevertheless the ERDC appears to have had a great influence in mobilizing West African political thinking; there are constant references to it in the Gold Coast press between 1917 and 1920. See further Hancock, , Survey, 106–10Google Scholar; Bigland, Alfred, The Call of Empire (London, 1926)Google Scholar; and two articles by W. F. Hutchinson, a Gold Coast journalist working in London, ‘Empire development or Empire plunder’, The African Times and Orient Review, June and July 1917.Google Scholar

79 Gold Coast Independent, 10 Aug. 1918Google Scholar. See CO. 554/33/1865, Clifford conf. to Long, , 12 Dec. 1917Google Scholar, for the impact of ERDC propaganda in the Gold Coast.

80 This was an alliance of conservative Africans and European mercantile interests who feared a loss to confer advantage on British manufacturers and consumers.

81 CO. 554/37/4068, Clifford desp. no. 641 to Milner, , 29 May 1919.Google Scholar

82 See further the Report of a Committee on Trade and Taxation, 1922.Google Scholar

83 The Gold Coast Leader, 5 Jan. 1918Google Scholar, described the bill as ‘the thin end of the wedge of the Empire Resources Development Committee propaganda’. See also Cox-George, , ’Studies in finance’, 175Google Scholar. When diamonds were discovered in Akim Abuakwa in 1919 the Secretary of State suggested that the colonial government take over the diamondiferous lands. The Acting Governor and the unofficial members of the Legislative Council were opposed to government control: see Greenhalgh, P., ‘An economic history of the Ghana diamond industry 1919–1973’ (unpub. Ph.D., Birmingham University), 1974, 96, 184–5.Google Scholar

84 CO. 96/548/39120, Clifford conf. to Harcourt, , 24 Sept. 1914Google Scholar, encl. from Armitage CCNT, and CO. 96/544/42087, 29 Sept. 1914.

85 CO. 96/549/46959, Clifford memo to Harcourt, , 30 Oct. 1914Google Scholar. See also Louis, W. Roger, Great Britain and Germany's lost colonies 1914–1919 (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar

86 There were frequent demands by the African élite in the Gold Coast that the whole of Togoland should be brought under British control. The National Congress of British West Africa took up the case for Ewe unification; one Ewe chief asked that the claim for union with the Gold Coast might be ‘considered side by side with those of Alsace-Lorraine at the time of the German occupation in 1871’.

87 The importation of motor vehicles into the Gold Coast, on the eve of the revolution in transportation, perhaps gives an indication of the boom and slump in the economy in 1919–21: 1919 = 532, 1920 = 2,040, 1921 = 294.

88 Langley, J. Ayodele, Pan-Africanism and nationalism in West Africa 1900–1945 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar, discusses the formation of the National Congress of British West Africa. See also Kimble, , A Political History, chs. 2, 10 and 13.Google Scholar

89 The Gold Coast Independent in its first issue, June 1918, said: ‘But the war has proved our loyalty, our equal sacrifice in lives and money; in fact it has opened our eyes that both white and black have a common destiny and a common goal to be reached by all.’ See further the press comments quoted by Langley, , Pan-Africanism, 107, 165–6Google Scholar; and Kimble, , A Political History, 105.Google Scholar

90 See especially Langley, , Pan-Africanism, 164–77.Google Scholar

91 Langley, ibid., 199, says that ‘fundamentally their very constitutionalism was a defence of their own interests’.

92 The West Africa Conference argued that as India was represented at the peace negotiations then West Africa was similarly entitled to a voice over the ‘disposal of the German colonies which West African blood and treasure have aided in recovering for civilization’: Resolution of the Gold Coast section of the West African Conference, 24 Feb. 1919, encl. in Clifford desp. no. 189 to Long, 7 Mar. 1919, CO. 96/598/18863. Demands for West African representation at the Imperial War Conference appeared in the Gold Coast press in the first half of 1917: see Kimble, , A Political History, 376–7Google Scholar. J. G. Casely Hayford addressing the League of Nations Union in London in Oct. 1920 said: ‘In the great war, we all united for the common cause in common sacrifice for common hopes, and, surely if this concession [representative government] is made to Ceylon, why not to British West Africa?’: reprinted in Sampson, M. J., West African Leadership (Ilfracombe, 1949), 47.Google Scholar

93 CO. 96/567/29277, Clifford conf. to Law, A. Bonar, 26 May 1916.Google Scholar

94 CO. 98/36, Western Province Report, 1921.

95 Ash. Gold. Corp., 14, 171/45, pp. 187–8, Watkins, to Mann, , 20 June 1917.Google Scholar

96 Ash. Gold. Corp., 14, 171/46, p. 71 and p. 96, Samson, to Mann, , 19 Sept. 1919 and 17 Oct. 1919.Google Scholar

97 Kimble, , A Political History, 44–5.Google Scholar

98 Asante, S. K. B., ‘The Italo-Ethiopian conflict: a case study in British West African response to crisis diplomacy in the 1930s’, J. Afr. Hist., xv, (1974), 296.Google Scholar

99 The war did demythologize the white man in the eyes of many Africans. In the immediate post-war years very many observers commented on the effect that this might have: for example, SirJohnston, Harry ‘The Africa of the immediate future’, J. Royal Africa Soc., xviii, 71 (04 1919), 161–82Google Scholar; and his The Black Man's Part in the War (London, 1917)Google Scholar; Allégret, Elie ‘The missionary question in the French colonies’, International Review of Missions, 04. 1923, p. 163.Google Scholar

100 See Wilson, E. T., Russia and Black Africa before World War II (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; and also Langley, , Pan-Africanism.Google Scholar