AN OVERVIEW OF THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY OF THE GOLDCOST: (1482 – 1957)
2.0: Introduction:
This chapter presents the political and economic history of the Gold Coast. It assesses the historical and nativity of its inhabitants and also the background to the arrival of the first missionary to the Gold Coast. The section on pre-colonial Gold Coast explains who the people of Gold Coast were; their land and indigenous economic activities before the arrival of the Europeans. Whiles the section colonialGold Coast also traces the reasons for European incursion in the Gold Coast and the economic reasons for the transportation of masses of people out of Africa to various parts of Europe and the New world. The abolishing of slave trade and its …show more content…
Foreign scholars make statements such as “the African has no history and the local people have no traditions of their own” to justify this claim.6 This assertion however could be much misleading when the preceding accounts could not be substantiated. Thus accounts on the original settlements before the citizens migrated to the Gold Coast were well known and documented. It could be possible that, earlier writers of the history of the Gold Coast had their own personal and national biases which might have been carried into their investigations and write ups. W. Claridge was therefore of the opinion that, such discrepancies as occurred between them were mainly attributed to international jealousies. In such circumstances, he claims that, it is not all together unnatural that each writer should incline towards that version of a particular occurrence which favors or give credit to their race or nationality especially when these facts have no written …show more content…
While it is probably true, West Africa was initially uninhabited by an earlier race before the Negros arrived, the existence of Paleolithic implements known as “mmoatia” (dwarfs) was also far-fetched. Several nations of the Sudan have tradition that the original inhabitants were a race of reddish complexion.8The historiography of the people of the Gold Coast seems to have begun with facts on the background of the Akan people who lived in the forest area. In fair terms to the non-Akan group, one must note that, no single group can lay claim to being the first to settle on the land called Gold Coast. Thus, it seems fairly clear that even the forest country of the Gold Coast was not settled by its present inhabitants: Most of the forest-dwelling tribes have traditions of northern origin. A.B. Ellis in his book “The Tshi- Speaking Peoples” affirms this speculation when he documents an oral traditional account of a possible migration from the interior, north of their present day settlement far beyond
2.0: Introduction:
This chapter presents the political and economic history of the Gold Coast. It assesses the historical and nativity of its inhabitants and also the background to the arrival of the first missionary to the Gold Coast. The section on pre-colonial Gold Coast explains who the people of Gold Coast were; their land and indigenous economic activities before the arrival of the Europeans. Whiles the section colonialGold Coast also traces the reasons for European incursion in the Gold Coast and the economic reasons for the transportation of masses of people out of Africa to various parts of Europe and the New world. The abolishing of slave trade and its …show more content…
Foreign scholars make statements such as “the African has no history and the local people have no traditions of their own” to justify this claim.6 This assertion however could be much misleading when the preceding accounts could not be substantiated. Thus accounts on the original settlements before the citizens migrated to the Gold Coast were well known and documented. It could be possible that, earlier writers of the history of the Gold Coast had their own personal and national biases which might have been carried into their investigations and write ups. W. Claridge was therefore of the opinion that, such discrepancies as occurred between them were mainly attributed to international jealousies. In such circumstances, he claims that, it is not all together unnatural that each writer should incline towards that version of a particular occurrence which favors or give credit to their race or nationality especially when these facts have no written …show more content…
While it is probably true, West Africa was initially uninhabited by an earlier race before the Negros arrived, the existence of Paleolithic implements known as “mmoatia” (dwarfs) was also far-fetched. Several nations of the Sudan have tradition that the original inhabitants were a race of reddish complexion.8The historiography of the people of the Gold Coast seems to have begun with facts on the background of the Akan people who lived in the forest area. In fair terms to the non-Akan group, one must note that, no single group can lay claim to being the first to settle on the land called Gold Coast. Thus, it seems fairly clear that even the forest country of the Gold Coast was not settled by its present inhabitants: Most of the forest-dwelling tribes have traditions of northern origin. A.B. Ellis in his book “The Tshi- Speaking Peoples” affirms this speculation when he documents an oral traditional account of a possible migration from the interior, north of their present day settlement far beyond