To what extent did the colonial state openly side with metropolitan capitalist interests and missionaries lobbies against indigenous interests?
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published 12/07/2006
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SummaryGhana was a victim of the British Empire’s colonialism, from the establishment of the South as a Crown’s possession in1874 to the independence of the country in 1957.
Basically, colonialism can be defined as a particular form of imperialism: the colonial imperialism, notion mainly developed by economists, political scientists and historians.
For the Marxists (notably Lenin ) and their heirs (the Neomarxist ‘dependency’ theorists ), colonial imperialism first means economic exploitation. Thus, for them, the colonial Ghanaian state would be simply a committee for managing the businesses of the metropolitan British bourgeoisie .
But, the political scientists and the historians tried to go beyond the Marxist economic reductionism. For them, colonial imperialism, as a form of totalitarianism, also deals with the idea of racial and ‘civilizational’ superiority and, as a particular shape of imperialism, it also implies the will to universalise a culture by assimilation or, at least, acculturation . Thus, this scholars would see in the Ghanaian colonization not only a economic exploitation but also a British empire’s attempt to spread the ‘Civilization’ notably by imposing Judeo-Christian ways of thinking and believing in Ghana trough collusion between State and Church. Civilizing mission and evangelising mission became the two facets of the ‘White man’s burden’ popularised by Rudyard Kipling , the main justifications of political domination.
These two visions of colonial imperialism tend to make think that colonial state was the simple expression of the interests of the expatriate bourgeoisie and clergy. It is interesting to discuss the pertinence of this hypothesis by wondering to what extent did the colonial Ghanaian state openly side with metropolitan capitalist interests and missionary lobbies against indigenous interests?
This essay will try to show that if most of the time the state acted on the behalf of British businessmen and men of church against the ‘Natives’ (I), certain factors sometimes qualified its partial behaviour (II)
Basically, colonialism can be defined as a particular form of imperialism: the colonial imperialism, notion mainly developed by economists, political scientists and historians.
For the Marxists (notably Lenin ) and their heirs (the Neomarxist ‘dependency’ theorists ), colonial imperialism first means economic exploitation. Thus, for them, the colonial Ghanaian state would be simply a committee for managing the businesses of the metropolitan British bourgeoisie .
But, the political scientists and the historians tried to go beyond the Marxist economic reductionism. For them, colonial imperialism, as a form of totalitarianism, also deals with the idea of racial and ‘civilizational’ superiority and, as a particular shape of imperialism, it also implies the will to universalise a culture by assimilation or, at least, acculturation . Thus, this scholars would see in the Ghanaian colonization not only a economic exploitation but also a British empire’s attempt to spread the ‘Civilization’ notably by imposing Judeo-Christian ways of thinking and believing in Ghana trough collusion between State and Church. Civilizing mission and evangelising mission became the two facets of the ‘White man’s burden’ popularised by Rudyard Kipling , the main justifications of political domination.
These two visions of colonial imperialism tend to make think that colonial state was the simple expression of the interests of the expatriate bourgeoisie and clergy. It is interesting to discuss the pertinence of this hypothesis by wondering to what extent did the colonial Ghanaian state openly side with metropolitan capitalist interests and missionary lobbies against indigenous interests?
This essay will try to show that if most of the time the state acted on the behalf of British businessmen and men of church against the ‘Natives’ (I), certain factors sometimes qualified its partial behaviour (II)
Table of Contents
- The colonial state sided with European capitalists and missionaries against Ghanaians: the working and the logics of the colonial system
- A constant of the Ghanaian government policy during the whole colonial period
- The causes of the governmental partiality
- The limits of the usual attitude of colonial state towards expatriate communities and 'Natives': conflicting dynamics as system failures
- The colonial state did not always act on the behalf of the bourgeoisie and the clergy: conflicts between the administration and the expatriate communities
- The colonial state did not always act against the indigenous population: the 'plurality' of the colonial state or the internal administrative conflicts
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