Administration, Revenue, &c.—The country is governed as a crown colony, the governor being assisted by a legislative council composed of officials and nominated unofficial members. Laws, called ordinances, are enacted by the governor with the advice and consent of this council. The law of the colony is the common law and statutes of general application in force in England in 1874, modified by local ordinances passed since that date. The governor is also governor of Ashanti and the Northern Territories, but in those dependencies the legislative council has no authority.
Native laws and customs—which are extremely elaborate and complicated—are not interfered with “except when repugnant to natural justice.” Those relating to land tenure and succession may be thus summarized. Individual tenure is not unknown, but most land is held by the tribe or by the family in common, each member having the right to select a part of the common land for his own use. Permanent alienation can only take place with the unanimous consent of the family and is uncommon, but long leases are granted. Succession is through the female, i.e. when a man dies his property goes to his sister’s children. The government of the tribes is by their own kings and chiefs under the supervision of district commissioners. Slavery has been abolished in the colony. In the Northern Territories the dealing in slaves is unlawful, neither can any person be put in pawn for debt; nor will any court give effect to the relations between master and slave except in so far as those relations may be in accordance with the English laws relating to master and servant.
For administrative purposes the colony is divided into three provinces under provincial commissioners, and each province is subdivided into districts presided over by commissioners, who exercise judicial as well as executive functions. The supreme court consists of a chief justice and three puisne judges. The defence of the colony is entrusted to the Gold Coast regiment of the West African Frontier Force, a force of natives controlled by the Colonial Office but officered from the British army. There is also a corps of volunteers (formed 1892).
The chief source of revenue is the customs and (since 1902) railway receipts, whilst the heaviest items of expenditure are transport (including railways) and mine surveys, medical and sanitary services, and maintenance of the military force. The revenue, which in the period 1894-1898 averaged £244,559 yearly, rose in 1898-1903 to an average of £556,316 a year. For the five years 1903-1907 the average annual revenue was £647,557 and the average annual expenditure £615,696. Save for municipal purposes there is no direct taxation in the colony and no poor-houses exist. There is a public debt of (December 1907) £2,206,964. It should be noted that the expenditure on Ashanti and the Northern Territories is included in the Gold Coast budget.
History.—It is a debated question whether the Gold Coast was discovered by French or by Portuguese sailors. The evidence available is insufficient to prove the assertion, of which there is no contemporary record, that a company of Norman merchants established themselves about 1364 at a place they named La Mina (Elmina), and that they traded with the natives for nearly fifty years, when the enterprise was abandoned. It is well established that a Portuguese expedition under Diogo d’Azambuja, accompanied probably by Christopher Columbus, took possession of (or founded) Elmina in 1481-1482. By the Portuguese it was called variously São Jorge da Mina or Ora del Mina—the mouth of the (gold) mines. That besides alluvial washings they also worked the gold mines was proved by discoveries in the latter part of the 19th century. The Portuguese remained undisturbed in their trade until the Reformation, when the papal bull which had given the country, with many others, to Portugal ceased to have a binding power. English ships in 1553 brought back from Guinea gold to the weight of 150 ℔. The fame of the Gold Coast thereafter attracted to it adventurers from almost every European nation. The English were followed by French, Danes, Brandenburgers, Dutch and Swedes. The most aggressive were the Dutch, who from the end of the 16th century sought to oust the Portuguese from the Gold Coast, and in whose favour the Portuguese did finally withdraw in 1642, in return for the withdrawal on the part of the Dutch of their claims to Brazil. The Dutch henceforth made Elmina their headquarters on the coast. Traces of the Portuguese occupation, which lasted 160 years, are still to be found, notably in the language of the natives. Such familiar words as palaver, fetish, caboceer and dash (i.e. a gift) have all a Portuguese origin.
An English company built a fort at Kormantine previously to 1651, and some ten years later Cape Coast Castle was built. The settlements made by the English provoked the hostility of the Dutch and led to war between England and Appearance of the English. Holland, during which Admiral de Ruyter destroyed (1664-1665) all the English forts save Cape Coast castle. The treaty of Breda in 1667 confirmed the Dutch in the possession of their conquests, but the English speedily opened other trading stations. Charles II. in 1672 granted a charter to the Royal African Company, which built forts at Dixcove, Sekondi, Accra, Whydah and other places, besides repairing Cape Coast Castle. At this time the trade both in slaves and gold was very great, and at the beginning of the 18th century the value of the gold exported annually was estimated by Willem Bosman, the chief Dutch factor at Elmina, to be over £200,000. The various European traders were constantly quarrelling among themselves and exercised scarcely any control over the natives. Piracy was rife along the coast, and was not indeed finally stamped out until the middle of the 19th century. The Royal African Company, which lost its monopoly of trade with England in 1700, was succeeded by another, the African Company of Merchants, which was constituted in 1750 by act of parliament and received an annual subsidy from government. The slave trade was then at its height and some 10,000 negroes were exported yearly. Many of the slaves were prisoners of war sold to the merchants by the Ashanti, who had become the chief native power. The abolition of the slave trade (1807) crippled the company, which was dissolved in 1821, when the crown took possession of the forts.
Since the beginning of the 19th century the British had begun to exercise territorial rights in the towns where they held forts, and in 1817 the right of the British to control the natives living in the coast towns was recognized by Ashanti. In 1824 the first step towards the extension of British authority beyond the coast region was taken by Governor Sir Charles M’Carthy, who incited the Fanti to rise against their oppressors, the Ashanti. (The Fanti’s country had been conquered by the Ashanti in 1807.) Sir Charles and the Fanti army were defeated, the governor losing his life, but in 1826 the English gained a victory over the Ashanti at Dodowah. At this period, however, the home government, disgusted with the Gold Coast by reason of the perpetual disturbances in the protectorate and the trouble it occasioned, determined to abandon the settlements, and sent instructions for the forts to be destroyed and the Europeans brought home. The merchants, backed by Major Rickets, 2nd West India regiments, the administrator, protested, and as a compromise the forts were handed over to a committee of merchants (Sept. 1828), who were given a subsidy of £4000 a year. The merchants secured (1830) as their administrator Mr George Maclean—a gentleman with military experience on the Gold Coast and not engaged in trade. To Maclean is due the consolidation of British interests in the interior. He concluded, 1831, a treaty with the Ashanti advantageous to the Fanti, whilst with very inadequate means he contrived to extend British influence over the whole region of the present colony. In the words of a Fanti trader Maclean understood the people, “he settled things quietly with them and the people also loved him.”[2] Complaints that Maclean encouraged slavery reached England, but these were completely disproved, the governor being highly commended on his administration by the House of Commons Committee. It was decided, nevertheless, that the Colonial Office should resume direct control of the forts, which was done in 1843, Maclean continuing to direct native affairs until his death in 1847. The jurisdiction of England on the Gold Coast was defined by the bond of the 6th of March 1844, Danish and Dutch forts purchased. an agreement with the native chiefs by which the crown received the right of trying criminals, repressing human sacrifice, &c. The limits of the protectorate inland were not defined. The purchase of the Danish forts in 1850, and of the Dutch forts and territory in 1871, led to the consolidation of the British power along the coast; and the Ashanti war of 1873-74 resulted in the extension of the area of British influence. Since that time the colony has been chiefly engaged in the development of its material resources, a development accompanied by a slow but substantial advance in civilization among the native population. (For further historical information see [Ashanti].)
For a time the Gold Coast formed officially a limb of the “West African Settlements” and was virtually a dependency of Sierra Leone. In 1874 the settlements on the Gold Coast and Lagos were created a separate crown colony, this arrangement lasting until 1886 when Lagos was cut off from the Gold Coast administration.
Northern Territories.
The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast form a British protectorate to the north of Ashanti. They are bounded W. and N.—where 11° N. is the frontier line except at the eastern extremity—by the French colonies of the Ivory Coast and Upper Senegal and Niger, E. by the German colony of Togoland. The southern frontier, separating the protectorate from Ashanti, is the Black Volta to a point a little above its junction with the White Volta. Thence the frontier turns south and afterwards east so as to include the Brumasi district in the protectorate, the frontier gaining the main Volta below Yeji. The Territories include nearly all the country from the meridian of Greenwich to 3° W. and between 8° and 11° N., and cover an area of about 33,000 sq. m.