¹ Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985), ch. 8.Google Scholar

² The fermented palm wine or sugar cane juice was boiled with a coiled copper tube running from the boiling container through a receptacle filled with cool water or a stream and into an empty container. Steam rises from the boiling palm wine or sugar cane juice, condenses as it passes through the cool water and drips as gin into the empty container. The standardized alcohol strength of akpeteshie today is between 40 and 50 per cent by volume. Palm wine contains between 3 and 5 per cent of alcohol by volume.

³ See, for example, Bosman, W., A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 189–90.Google Scholar

⁴ See, for example, Sarbah, John Mensah, Fanti National Constitution (London, 1968 [1906]), 5–6.Google Scholar

⁵ See, for example, Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), 97–8Google Scholar, and Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), 148–50.Google Scholar

⁶ Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1966 [1824]), 277 and 293;Google Scholar and Reindorf, C. C., The History of the Gold Coast and Asante (Basel, 1895), 133.Google Scholar On alcohol's links to spiritual and political power, see Akyeampong, Emmanuel, ‘Powerful fluids: alcohol and water in the struggle for social power in urban Gold Coast, 1860–1919’ (Paper presented at Northwestern University, Evanston, 01 1994).Google Scholar

⁷ Dumett, Raymond, ‘The social impact of the European liquor trade on the Akan of Ghana (Gold Coast and Asante), 1875–1910’, J. Interdisciplinary Hist., v (1974), 69–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁸ Dumett, , ‘Social impact of European liquor trade’, 80.Google Scholar

⁹ Although the Gold Coast was not declared a British colony until 1874, attempts by British administrators to tax Gold Coasters date from the 1850s. Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana 1850–1928 (Oxford, 1963), ch 4.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dumett, , ‘Social impact of European liquor trade’, 76.Google Scholar

¹¹ Metcalfe, G. E., Great Britain and Ghana: Documents of Ghana History, 1808–1957 (London, 1964), 428–30.Google Scholar

¹² Akyeampong, Emmanuel, ‘The state and alcohol revenues: promoting “Economic Development” in Gold Coast/Ghana, 1919 to the present’, Social History/Histoire sociale, xxvii (1994), 397.Google Scholar A similar situation developed in southern Nigeria before 1914. See Olorunfemi, A., ‘The liquor traffic dilemma in British West Africa: the Southern Nigerian example, 1895–1918’, Int. J. Afr. Hist. Studies, xvii (1984), 237–8.Google Scholar

¹³ Public Records Office (PRO), London, CO 96/597/15501.

¹⁴ See, for example, Ambler, Charles, ‘Drunks, brewers and chiefs: alcohol regulation in colonial Kenya, 1900–1939’, in Barrows, S. and Room, R. (eds.), Drinking: Behavior and Belief in Modern History (Berkeley, 1991), 165–83;Google Scholar and West, Michael O., ‘“Equal rights for all civilized men”: elite Africans and the quest for “European” liquor in colonial Zimbabwe, 1924–1961’, Int. Rev. of Soc. Hist., xxxvii (1992), 376–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ PRO, CO 96/692/6571. See Appendixes II and IV of the 1930 Report of the Commission of Inquiry Regarding the Consumption of Spirits in the Gold Coast for the liquor duties and licensing ordinances in force before 1929.

¹⁶ Pan, Lynn, Alcohol in Colonial Africa (Uppsala, 1975), 34.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Hereafter referred to as the colonial secretary.

¹⁸ For a summary of British liquor policy in Africa up to 1920, see PRO, CO 554/62/20621.

¹⁹ Pan, , Alcohol in Colonial Africa, 41–5.Google Scholar

²⁰ Interview with Nana Ewua Duku II, Sekondi, Dutch, 3 03 1992;Google Scholar and interview with Amartey, A. A., Accra, 31 08 1994.Google Scholar See also, Rattray, , Ashanti, 135.Google Scholar

²¹ Sampson, Magnus J., Gold Coast Men of Affairs (London, 1937), 113–18.Google Scholar

²² Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England, 1815–1872 (Pittsburgh, 1971), 187.Google Scholar For a history of the prohibition movement, see Dingle, A. E., The Campaign for Prohibition in Victorian England: The United Kingdom Alliance 1872–1895 (London, 1980).Google Scholar

²³ Pan, , Alcohol in Colonial Africa, 25.Google Scholar

²⁴ The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS) West Africa Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), microfiche box 11, Gold Coast District Synod Minutes, 1914.

²⁵ See the ‘Notes of Evidence’ in the 1930 Commission Report.

²⁶ See Akyeampong, Emmanuel, ‘Alcohol, social conflict and the struggle for power in Ghana, 1919 to recent times’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Virginia, 1993), ch. 4, for a detailed discussion of the Gold Coast temperance movement.Google Scholar

²⁷ Local African politics concerning liquor legislation and metropolitan temperance interests received a boost in the 1920s with the enactment of prohibition in the United States. The repeal of prohibition in the United States in the early 1930s deflated demands for prohibition in the Gold Coast. The onset of World War II further marginalized temperance politics in the Gold Coast.

²⁸ See Coast, Gold, Government Gazette, 29 09 1928, for the stipulations of the Spirit License Amendment Ordinance.Google Scholar

²⁹ Pan, , Alcohol in Colonial Africa, 71.Google Scholar

³⁰ Coast, Gold, Government Gazette, 25 10 1930.Google Scholar

³¹ WMMS (West Africa) Archives, microfiche box II. The WMMS Synod Minutes for the years 1928–31 highlight the intense involvement of the mission in the Gold Coast ‘liquor question’. The Gold Coast Synod Minutes of 1931 justifiably claimed that ‘the principal recommendations made therein [The 1930 Commission's Report] accord with our own and we believe a notable advance in the cause of Temperance has been made’. The Methodist Missionary Society did successfully influence the agenda of the commission of inquiry.

³² Governor Thomas, Shenton, Memorandum on Liquor Policy (Accra, 1934). Copy in PRO, CO 96/715/21702.Google Scholar

³³ Thomas, , Memorandum on Liquor Policy.Google Scholar

³⁴ PRO, CO 96/681/6204.

³⁵ PRO, CO 554/89/4495. Governor of Nigeria to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, 22 Dec. 1931. It is strange that the Nigerian government regarded illicit distillation as a recent phenomenon. Colonial records indicate a proliferation of illicit distillation in Nigeria around 1910. Olorunfemi, ‘Liquor traffic dilemma’, 241.

³⁶ PRO, CO 554/89/4495. Resident of the Calabar Province, ‘Memorandum on the illicit distilling in the Calabar Province’.

³⁷ PRO, CO 554/89/4495. Governor Slater to the Colonial Office, 16 Jan. 1932.

³⁸ PRO, CO 554/96/21446.

³⁹ PRO, CO 96/708/1660.

⁴⁰ See, for example, interview with Ano, Jeremiah Oman, Sekondi, 15 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁴¹ These impressions are based on the author's perusal of ADM 15 files (Law Officer's Department), the CSO 15/3 files (Criminal Investigations and Reports), and the Criminal Record Book of Nsawam District (SCT 38/5) housed at the Ghana National Archives (GNA), Accra. These ‘tribal’ categorizations, in the author's mind, were aided by the fact that Eweland was on the border of the colonial territory, hence Ewes were seen as being free of colonial restraints; by the prohibition of European liquor in the Northern Territories, hence the belief that European liquor was culturally and chemically powerful for northerners; and by the early establishment of mission schools in Fante territory, making educated Fantes the perfect perpetrators of fraud.

⁴² See Little, Kenneth, Women in African Towns (Cambridge, 1973);Google Scholar and White, Luise, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (Chicago, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴³ ‘Popular culture’ is used here in the sense defined by Fabian, Johannes, ‘Popular culture in Africa: findings and conjectures’, Africa, XLVIII (1978), 315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In particular, ‘it suggests contemporary cultural expressions carried by the masses in contrast to both modern elitist and traditional “tribal” culture’ and ‘it signifies, potentially at least, processes occurring behind the back of established powers and accepted interpretations…’. But the use of popular culture in this paper differs from Fabian's in that it posits no inherent tension between rural and urban culture. Areas of tension may exist, but popular culture also has the potential to link or integrate urban and rural social experiences.

⁴⁴ These were not the only pillars of the new urban popular culture, other aspects included film and sports. But drinking- and dance-bars, with their associated paraphernalia of popular music and comic opera, were particularly relevant to the history of akpeteshie. From the 1940s, highlife bands doubled as concert parties. They staged plays theatricalizing urban life and punctuated with music, the lyrics of which underscored the themes in the play and with the actors as singers. This genre has been dubbed ‘comic opera’ by scholars, but ordinary Ghanaians prefer the term ‘concert’.

⁴⁵ Frimpong Ansah, Jonathan H., The Vampire State in Africa: The Political Economy of Decline in Ghana (Trenton, 1992), ch. 4.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ GNA, ADM 5/2/3. Coast, Gold, Census of the Population, 1911, 50;Google Scholar and Cardinall, A. W., The Gold Coast, 1931 (Accra, 1931), 158–9.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ For the social life of railworkers and miners, see Jeffries, Richard, Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana: The Railwaymen of Sekondi (Cambridge, 1978);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Crisp, Jeff, The Story of an African Working Class: Ghanaian Miners' Struggles, 1870–1980 (London, 1984).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Gold Coast Independent, 31 08 1918.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ GNA, Sekondi, No. 140 (‘Optimism Club’).

⁵⁰ The striking similarities between the rural palm wine bar and the urban drinking bar as centers of social activity are apparent.

⁵¹ Collins, E. J., ‘Ghanaian highlife’, African Arts, x (1976), 62–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarAgovi, Kofi E., ‘The political relevance of Ghanaian highlife songs since 1957’, Research in African Literatures, xx (1989), 194, points to the greater significance of lyrics over instrumentation in highlife songs.Google Scholar

⁵² Coplan, David, ‘Go to my town, Cape Coast! The social history of Ghanaian highlife’, in Nettl, Brunno (ed.), Eight Urban Musical Cultures (Urbana, 1978), 100.Google Scholar

⁵³ On comic opera, see Collins, E. J., ‘Comic opera in Ghana’, African Arts, ix (1976), 50–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁴ Fabian, , ‘Popular culture’, 317.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Coplan, , ‘Go to my town, Cape Coast!’, 101.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Interview with Cudjoe, Laurence, Annan, J. K., Ackon, Joseph and Sekondi, Arhu, 27 05 1992.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Mandelbaum, David G., ‘Alcohol and culture’, Current Anthropology, vi (1965), 281CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points out that in complex societies, ‘the drinking patterns of each subgroup or class may reflect its special characteristics as well as the cultural frame of the society’.

⁵⁸ The guitar-bands became famous for their ‘palm-wine music’, a style of highlife that emphasized the trials of life in its lyrics. The lyrics of palm-wine music contrasted with the lofty images of love, comfort and happiness portrayed by dance-bands.

⁵⁹ Gold Coast Times, 9 08 1930.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ See Gold Coast Independent, 10 and 17 01 1925.Google Scholar

⁶¹ The close association between drinking places like Colombia Bar and prostitution in Sekondi and Takoradi was pointed out by interviewees like Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar In his social survey, K. A. Busia counted 127 known prostitutes in Sekondi-Takoradi in 1947–8. Busia, K. A., Social Survey of Sekondi-Takoradi (London, 1950), 107.Google Scholar

⁶² Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 5 03 1992.Google Scholar

⁶³ Interview with Segbedzi, Novisi, Accra, 14 06 1992.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Helen Bradford points out the paradox that by sexist definition women could not be a threat to law and order. The arrest, manhandling and jailing of women during women's demonstrations against municipal beerhalls in Natal in 1929 had the effect of bringing their men into the struggle against the government. Bradford, Helen, ‘“We women will show them”: beer protests in the Natal countryside, 1929’, in Crush, Jonathan and Ambler, Charles (eds.), Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa (Athens, 1992), 208–34.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 5 03 1992.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Interview with Segbedzi, Novisi, Accra, 14 06 1992;Google Scholar and interview with Akwei, Tsotso Alice, 14 06 1992.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See, for example, interview with Akwei, Adotei, Ntoaso, 11 07 1992;Google Scholar and interview with Blankson, George, Ntoaso, 11 07 1992.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Interview with Agbeve, Samuel, Accra, 26 02 1992;Google Scholar and interview with Adenyo, Sylvester, Ntoaso, 26 02 1992.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Interview with Oman Ano, Jeremiah, Sekondi, 15 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Interview with Segbedzi, Novisi, Accra, 14 06 1992.Google Scholar

⁷² Sampson, , Gold Coast Men of Affairs, 114–15.Google Scholar

⁷³ Cocoa seedlings had been introduced into the Gold Coast by the Basel Missionary Society in 1858.

⁷⁴ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar Anita is from a family of distillers, and she was recounting what her grandfather told her. Susan Diduk points out that ‘Basel missionaries came from rural areas of southern Germany and Switzerland where they were well acquainted with home brews like most, prepared from fermented apples’. Diduk, Susan, ‘European alcohol, history, and the state in Cameroon’, African Studies Review, XXXVI (1993), 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid.

⁷⁷ See Konadu, Asare, The Wizard of Asamang (Accra, 1988), 114–15.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Southall, Roger J., ‘Polarisation and dependence in the Gold Coast cocoa trade 1890–1938’, Trans, of the Hist. Soc. of Ghana, XVI (1975), 93–115.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Scott, , Weapons of the Weak, 317.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Interview with the Western Region Distillers Cooperative Management Committee, Takoradi, , 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁸¹ Interview with Amartey, A. A., Accra, 31 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁸² PRO, CO 96/715/21702. Eastern Province Commissioner's Report, 28 Dec. 1933.

⁸³ Co-op Distillers News, No. 1 (01–03 1992).Google Scholar

⁸⁴ Interview with Oman Ano, Jeremiah, Sekondi, 15 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ Interview with Annan, J. K., Sekondi, 27 05 1992.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ Interview with Segbedzi, Novisi, Accra, 14 06 1992.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ PRO CO 96/708/1660. Thomas, to Cunliffe-Lister, , 7 01 1933.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Interview with Oman Ano, Jeremiah, Sekondi, 15 08 1994.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ PRO, CO 96/715/21702. Report of the Senior Commissioner of Police, Kumasi, , 16 11 1933.Google Scholar

⁹¹ PRO, CO 96/715/21702. Coast, Gold, Correspondence and Statistics Relating to the Consumption of Spirits in the Gold Coast (Accra, 1934), 161. The Catholic Mission of Keta was the only mission in the Gold Coast that favored the reimportation of cheap gin.Google Scholar

⁹² PRO, CO 554/98/33522. Hodson, to Cunliffe-Lister, , 3 05 1935.Google Scholar

⁹³ Thomas, , Memorandum on Liquor Policy.Google Scholar

⁹⁴ See the report of the Social Welfare Committee in the WMMS's Gold Coast Synod Minutes of 1946 (box 1241).

⁹⁵ PRO, CO 96/715/21702.

⁹⁶ PRO, CO 554/103/33522 (1936).

⁹⁷ PRO, CO 554/119/33522 (1939).

⁹⁸ PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B (1943), conveys the Foreign Office's acute em barrassment at having to seek unilaterally an amendment to an international liquor agreement.

⁹⁹ PRO, CO 554/127/33522 (1942).

¹⁰⁰ PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B (1943).

¹⁰¹ On the ‘Durban System’, see Hausse, Paul La, Brewers, Beerhalls and Boycotts: A History of Liquor in South Africa (Johannesburg, 1988).Google Scholar

¹⁰² PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B (1943). Resident Minister (Accra) to the Colonial Secretary, 24 Oct. 1942.

¹⁰³ PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B. ‘Memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, dated 28 Apr. 1943.

¹⁰⁴ PRO, CO 554/127/33522/B. T. Hoskyns-Abrahall, Nigerian Secretariat (Lagos), to Resident Minister (Accra), 9 Aug. 1943.

¹⁰⁵ PRO, CO 554/142/33522 (1946).

¹⁰⁶ For excellent studies of nationalist politics in Ghana, see Austin, Dennis, Politics in Ghana 1940–1960 (London, 1970);Google Scholar and Allman, Jean Marie, Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana (Madison, 1993).Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Examples of such highlife songs include Kumasi Dramatic Choir's ‘CPP wobedzi kunyim’ (‘CPP will emerge victorious’); and Kojo Bio's ‘Ko hwe CPP Assembly ho’ (‘Go and look at the CPP in the Legislative Assembly!), composed after CPP's 1951 election victory.

¹⁰⁸ Collins, , ‘Ghanaian highlife’, 67.Google Scholar Albert Ocran, one of the Sekondi Railwaymen who supported the CPP in its early days, emphasized the relevance of these plays in explaining the nationalist ideology to illiterates. Interview with Albert Ocran, Sekondi, 15 Aug. 1994.

¹⁰⁹ See Akyeampong, , ‘Alcohol, social conflict and the struggle for power’, ch. 6Google Scholar, for a detailed study of popular culture and nationalist politics in Ghana. For a study of the political relevance of drinking bars in nationalist politics, see Ambler, Charles, ‘Alcohol, racial segregation and popular politics in Northern Rhodesia’, J. Afr. Hist., XXXI (1990), 295–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹⁰ Interview with Revd. Col. Asare, Kofi, Accra, 30 06 1992.Google Scholar J. D. Wireko (MP) would remind the CPP government of these electoral promises in 1958. Ghana, , Parliamentary Debates, 23 07 1958.Google Scholar

¹¹¹ See, for example, Rathbone, Richard, ‘Businessmen in politics: party struggle in Ghana, 1949–57’ J. of Dev. Studies, IX (1973), 391–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹² See, for example, Spectator Daily, 14 09 1939;Google ScholarGold Coast Observer, 5 03 1943;Google Scholar and Sunday Mirror, 4 04 1954.Google Scholar

¹¹³ Interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

¹¹⁴ Interview with Prempeh, Albert, General Secretary of the Ghana Cooperative Distillers Association Limited, Accra, 29 07 1992.Google Scholar

¹¹⁵ Zonophone JLK 1015.

¹¹⁶ Zonophone JVA 160.

¹¹⁷ Interview with Amartey, A. A., Accra, 31 08 1994.Google Scholar

¹¹⁸ Coast, Gold, Legislative Assembly Debates, 25 03 1955.Google Scholar

¹¹⁹ PRO, CO 554/1302/235/251/04 (1956).

¹²⁰ Mandelbaum, , ‘Alcohol and culture’, 282Google Scholar, accurately points out that: ‘Among other symbolic uses of drink are its diacritical functions, as when one group or class within a larger society follows drinking patterns that serve as a badge marking them off from others’.

¹²¹ Legislative Instrument 239, ‘Manufacture and sale of spirits regulation, 1962’.

¹²² Ghana, , Parliamentary Debates, 23 07 1958.Google Scholar

¹²³ GNA, Accra, ADM 13/1/26. Cabinet Minutes of 12 Mar. 1957; and GNA, Accra, ADM 13/1/27. Cabinet Minutes of 23 May 1958.

¹²⁴ On the eve of independence, British Togoland (now part of Ghana) was threatening to secede and join French Togoland, Asante was in a state of political unrest, and the Ga Standfast Association had raised the banner of opposition in the capital of Accra.

¹²⁵ Coast, Gold, Legislative Assembly Debates, 2 11 1955.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Interview with the Western Region Distillers Cooperative Management Committee, Takoradi, , 16 08 1994;Google Scholar and interview with Mensah, Anita, Takoradi, 16 08 1994.Google Scholar

¹²⁷ See Thompson, E. P., ‘Eighteenth-century English society: class struggle without class’, Social History, III (1978), 133–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹²⁸ Jeffries, , Class, Power and Ideology in Ghana, 78.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Ibid. 181.

¹³⁰ Or as Ivan Karp would put it: akpeteshie-drinking became the ‘social theory’ of the working class, ‘expressing ideas about the nature of their social world and their experience of it’. Karp, Ivan, ‘Beer drinking experience in an African society: an essay in formal sociology’, in Karp, I. and Bird, Charles S. (eds.), Exploration in African Systems of Thought (Bloomington, 1980), 83.Google Scholar

¹³¹ Interview with Hormeku, P. K., Accra, 8 09 1994.Google Scholar

¹³² Ghana, , Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Manner of Operation of the State Distilleries Corporation (Accra, 1968), 6–7.Google Scholar

¹³³ Interview with Prempeh, Albert, Accra, 29 07 1992.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Ibid.

¹³⁵ Ibid.