Strategies for Decolonization: The Mercantile and Service Sectors

Abstract

The disturbances in 1948 and the constitutional reforms that followed not only prompted British firms collectively to review their representative machinery, but also focused discussion within companies on future policies designed to bolster their standing in the Gold Coast and to take account of changing conditions in the colony. Different companies devised different strategies, but these nevertheless had many common features. Public relations and Africanization had become the concern of all expatriate companies by the 1950s. Political circumstances and the new Convention People's Party (CPP) initiatives in the banking and cocoa sectors also explain redeployment occurring in the mercantile sector and expansion in banking; in the shipping sector British lines set about dealing with the potential competition posed by the CPP's ambition to establish a national shipping line. Given their discussions over collective strategies for decolonization, mercantile firms as well as firms in the service sector also adopted changes previously implemented by other companies.