Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Note on Names
- Maps
- Note on the Maps
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Context and Concepts
- Part II Social Relations of Production and Trade, 1807–1896: Absent and Imperfect Factor Markets
- Part III Slavery as Hobson's Choice: An Analysis of the Interaction of Markets and Coercion in Asante's Era of ‘Legitimate Commerce’, 1807–1896
- Part IV The Decline of Coercion in the Factor Markets of Colonial Asante: Cocoa and the Ending of Slavery, Pawnship and Corvée, 1896–c.1950
- Part V Social Relations of Production and Trade, 1908–1956: Towards Integrated Factor Markets?
- 14 Land Tenure: What Kind of Transformation under Cash-Cropping and Colonial Rule?
- 15 Capital and Credit: Locking Farms to Credit
- 16 Free Labour: Family Workers, the Spread of Wage Contracts, and the Rise of Sharecropping
- Part VI Freedom and Forest Rent, 1908–1956
- Abbreviations Used in the Notes
- Notes
- List of References
- Index
14 - Land Tenure: What Kind of Transformation under Cash-Cropping and Colonial Rule?
from Part V - Social Relations of Production and Trade, 1908–1956: Towards Integrated Factor Markets?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Note on Names
- Maps
- Note on the Maps
- 1 Introduction
- Part I Context and Concepts
- Part II Social Relations of Production and Trade, 1807–1896: Absent and Imperfect Factor Markets
- Part III Slavery as Hobson's Choice: An Analysis of the Interaction of Markets and Coercion in Asante's Era of ‘Legitimate Commerce’, 1807–1896
- Part IV The Decline of Coercion in the Factor Markets of Colonial Asante: Cocoa and the Ending of Slavery, Pawnship and Corvée, 1896–c.1950
- Part V Social Relations of Production and Trade, 1908–1956: Towards Integrated Factor Markets?
- 14 Land Tenure: What Kind of Transformation under Cash-Cropping and Colonial Rule?
- 15 Capital and Credit: Locking Farms to Credit
- 16 Free Labour: Family Workers, the Spread of Wage Contracts, and the Rise of Sharecropping
- Part VI Freedom and Forest Rent, 1908–1956
- Abbreviations Used in the Notes
- Notes
- List of References
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the changes and continuities in the tenure of land itself, and of the rents obtained by the ultimate owners of land from its users. Section A considers a fundamental issue of colonial rule in Africa: the extent to which land was appropriated for European use. In Asante this was a potential transformation that, despite some initial facilitation by the colonial government, did not occur and was then—retrospectively, in effect—ruled out by the government. I compare the colonial government's policies regarding land alienation to Europeans and, on the other hand, to non-Asante Africans. Section B traces a crucial change that did occur: the emergence of cocoa rent, levied by land-owning chiefs on ‘stranger’ cocoa-farmers. I also document the consequent scramble to claim and define boundaries between chieftaincies' lands. Section C discusses British policy on land tenure, showing that the colonial government actively defended the property rights of indigenous farmers over the trees that they planted.
Alienation to Europeans and to Non-Asante Africans
Asante never became a ‘settler’ or a ‘plantation’ colony. But because we know how the story ended it is all the more important to appreciate that at the start it looked as if things might go in a very different direction. During the 1910s it became clear that Asante's exchange economy was fast becoming dominated by the export of cocoa grown by a multitude of Asante farmers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Labour, Land and Capital in GhanaFrom Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807–1956, pp. 253 - 277Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2005