Nested Patriotism: Revisiting Collaboration, Resistance and Agency in Colonial Ghana
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Date
2019
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International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society
Abstract
This paper presents an account of the Gold Coast elite in the nineteenth century and their
patterns of interactions with the emerging colonial state. Known as the merchant princes,
they acted as intermediaries and played essential roles in colonial administration. Their
government involvement was consistent with the belief among some British administrations that ‘allies must be purchased over to our side’ to evoke a friendly spirit
favorable to our purposes’. Drawing on archival documents, including petitions, official
correspondences, and newspaper reports, the paper shows that the relationship between
merchant princes and colonial administration was a fundamentally ambivalent one. There
was equivocation on both sides, the merchant princes often vacillating in their responses to
colonial policy, while colonial officials constantly viewed them with suspicion. This
ambivalence shaped political developments on the Gold Coast in the nineteenth and turn
of the twentieth century. The merchant princes straddled their natal societies and the
emerging colonial order, embodying a nested patriotism. The fundamental roles that they
played in the emergent colonial order necessitate revisiting the contentious ‘collaboration
versus resistance’ debate which reduced responses to colonial rule to either opposition to
colonial domination or betrayal of one’s country. The paper argues that these concepts
could be useful analytical tools if employed in the analysis of actions rather than actors.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
Colonialism, Collaboration, Resistance, Agency, Nested patriotism