Kingdoms, Rulers & ResistanceFantedocumented history
The Constitution That Was Written and Then Was Not Allowed
In 1868 the British and the Dutch swapped forts along the coast without consulting a single African polity whose land they sat on.
Mankessim, where they met.
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The Constitution That Was Written and Then Was Not Allowed
In 1868 the British and the Dutch swapped forts along the coast without consulting a single African polity whose land they sat on.
The Fante states did not accept it. They met at Mankessim, and over the next three years they did something that made the Colonial Office extremely uncomfortable: they wrote a constitution.
The Fante Confederation of 1871 proposed a king-president chosen by the chiefs, a representative assembly, a national fund raised by agreed taxation, roads and schools to be built with it, courts, and an army. It was drafted by Africans, in English, by men educated on that coast — and it was, in the plain sense, a modern West African state proposing itself, eighty-six years before independence.
The British administrator arrested the leaders for treason.
They were released, and the Confederation was allowed to die of pressure and lack of money, and within three years the Gold Coast was formally a Crown Colony.
Nkrumah's generation knew exactly what had happened at Mankessim. So did the men who founded the UGCC. It is the same argument, restarted.
In 1868 the British and the Dutch swapped forts along the coast without consulting a single African polity whose land they sat on.
The Fante states did not accept it. They met at Mankessim, and over the next three years they did something that made the Colonial Office extremely uncomfortable: they wrote a constitution.
The Fante Confederation of 1871 proposed a king-president chosen by the chiefs, a representative assembly, a national fund raised by agreed taxation, roads and schools to be built with it, courts, and an army. It was drafted by Africans, in English, by men educated on that coast — and it was, in the plain sense, a modern West African state proposing itself, eighty-six years before independence.
The British administrator arrested the leaders for treason.
They were released, and the Confederation was allowed to die of pressure and lack of money, and within three years the Gold Coast was formally a Crown Colony.
Nkrumah's generation knew exactly what had happened at Mankessim. So did the men who founded the UGCC. It is the same argument, restarted.