The Gold Coast Land Question, 1894-1900: Some Issues Raised on West Africa's Economic Development

Abstract

British West Africa's fortunate escape from the worst forms of European economic exploitation has conventionally been explained in very simplistic terms. For instance, it is often asserted that the mosquito and the climate saved West Africa from the kind of treatment the Coingo received at Belgian hands or Rhodesia and East Africa received from the British.' This kind of explanation, while valid up to a point, has serious limitations. The experience of British enterprise in other tropical regions of the world like India and the West Indies indicates that uncongenial climate and the peculiar diseases of the tropics were not indomitable barriers to large-scale European capitalistic enterprise.2 More significantly, it often ignores the fact of African resistance and that of the British trading and humanitarian interests to the legislation that would in the long run have opened up British West Africa to more intensive capitalist enterprise. One episode which not only clearly illustrates the strength of this resistance but had far-reaching consequences on the formulation of a colonial development policy for West Africa is the land question in the Gold Coast in the last decade of the nineteenth century. This study examines the legislation attempted in 1894 and 1897 with particular emphasis on its economic rather than political implications. The latter have already been painstakingly covered both by historians and nationalist writers.3 The importance of land policy in colonial development cannot be