Effects of British Colonialism in West Africa

Through the dominant western cultural framework there is often the tendency to view colonialism as a fixed entity, akin to something physical; boxed off, separate and standing alone, a plan imposed on the colonized others. This envisioning of colonialism works to conceal the mutual relationality of colonial connections and how the colonized shaped both the colonizers and the nature of colonialism itself. There is of course some truth in the image of oppressive colonial regimes, yet the dominant European version of history hides the effect that the colonies had of England and how they greatly shaped the metropole. 

When we box off categorize we miss all the connections and entanglements. It is important to move away from the static view of colonialism as an institution, since it conceals the processes that saw it being constantly worked out, Although Imperialism was built on a set of ideological beliefs about racial hierarchy and European superiority, however, this seems to have come later, almost as an afterthought, fabricated as a form of justification which functioned to hide the true economic incentives of colonialism. African responses to colonial regimes and the presence of Europeans were dynamic and varied. British presence on the African West Coast was monitored, controlled and even facilitated by the African peoples. In many cases the unstable colonial regime seems to have only succeeded due to the co-operation and facilitation of particular African societies. The colonized people were not ‘victims’, but Africans had agency and resisted and manipulated colonial rule in a variety of ways.

History, similarly to colonialism is also often seen as fixed rather than a process. With the European expansion and domination of the colonial era, the world’s history was (re)written and imagined by Europeans, and Europe of course was placed firmly in the centre of it all as if it was inevitable and had always been (Stahl 2011: 3). Western history is often taken as near fact and functions in such a way that serves to highlight some aspects whilst concealing others thus concealing that there is not just one history, but many versions. Within this framework, the history of nations stands alone, boxed off, distinct and unrelated, through this Africa is often envisioned in isolation from the rest of the world. This is in no small part due to the ways the west tends to categorize everything into neat, bounded and distinct spheres. The ways in which such distinctions and separations are created, especially within academia serves to hide the processes of global entanglements (Stahl 2011: 3). Although there is the tendency to see colonized places as distant and distinct, they are in fact not so separate but completely tangled up with the larger metropole, each affecting the other. So much effort is put into trying to maintain boundaries and classifications, yet as with all categories, it is not really so distinct; the edges blur into one another and everything merges; politics is not so distinct from economics, class cannot be separated out from race and gender, in the same way that national histories never stand alone. The history of Britain is not isolated, but was created by-and is still entangled with- colonial encounters, interactions and processes that tend to remain hidden (Stahl 2011: 8)

Often hidden from view with the European telling of the colonial story is the fact that economic gains seemed to be the driving force behind many colonial encounters and policies and this is certainly the case with Africa. Primarily, Britain’s dealings with Africa were in the form of trade and it was gold that first interested them, with the slave trade growing in importance later (DeCorse 1998: 360).  However, Europeans were not the first; the African west coast was influenced and affected by other areas prior to European contact. It had contact and trade networks across Sahara and into the Middle East and there existed extensive long-distance trade in luxury items long before (DeCorse 1998: 358-359), Africa then was not “the primitive isolate” it was imaged to be (DeCorse 1998: 359). The arrival of Europeans in the late 1400’s “began the sustained economic and cultural interactions [with Africa]” (DeCorse 1998: 358), numerous European countries were all vying for economic power and superiority against each other after the Portuguese lost their advantage (DeCorse 1998: 360). Britain’s trade with Africa became predominantly based on the textiles market, although they often found themselves competing with France and Indian in particular, whose colourful, lightweight cloth was preferred by the African market. (Steiner 1985: 92-94). Britain found that it needed to adapt to and be sensitive to the desires of its African clientele in order to succeed in the market and spent a great deal of energy on this since their success depended directly on the African consumer (Steiner 1985: 91).

When these two very different cultures collided, Africa is often portrayed as the victim of the oppressive, powerful colonial regime and although there is some truth to this, it is never that simple. There was not one response to European presence, but reactions were varied and dynamic (DeCorse 1998:364). The colonial encounters were not as completely one-sided as they are portrayed to be and there was certainly a great deal of “active agency on the part of African societies in shaping the nature of the contact setting” (DeCorse 1998:363), they controlled, manipulated and resisted British endeavours of the west coast in a variety of ways (DeCorse 1998:363, Steiner 1985: 96). The success of the English textile trade in West Africa “lay entirely in the hands of the African consumer” (Steiner 94), they “determin[ed] demand for- and equally disinterest in-imported goods” (Stahl 2011: 4). British producers had to adapt to serve their aesthetic desire, these consumers then held at least some power and agency and “often challenged European producers” (Steiner 1985: 95). When France introduced harsh anti-British taxation on imported cloth to protect their own economic interested, the African people resisted by easing to buy European goods and instead started producing indigenous textiles again (Steiner 1985: 94-96). African societies also dictated how things should be done, for instance, they forbade Europeans from fortifying their trading lodges, they disobeyed colonial policy and when in response to British attacks on towns would just relocate the settlement as a form of resistance (DeCorse 1998:368). The African people “interpreted [European presence] through indigenous ideology and social constructs” (DeCorse 1998:362), the British had to accommodate them of face being denied trade access (DeCorse 1998:362). In some cases it seems that the success of colonial endeavors succeeded due to the co-operation and facilitation of particular African societies. Success of slave trade relied on having close ties within certain African polities (Richardson 2005: 43) and it was of course

“not coincidental that two of the areas of west Africa that saw the most the most intensive European activity were regions that afforded comparatively easy access to the gold-producing areas of the interior” (DeCorse 1998:364).

Africans were then actively involved in the colonial process, as well as resisting British colonial rule, some African states and polities such as the Ashanti embraced European goods and ideas and were known to be loyal to the British government and its economic causes (Boyle 1968: 21).

Once again, it was not the ideological reason that came first, but commercial ones; incorporating Africa into the European mercantile system was done for economic reasons (DeCorse 1998:363). This economic entanglement also affected the metropole; Britain’s wealth was built on its colonial interactions and its towns grew and prospered as a result of trade and wealth built on colonialism. The major port towns of Bristol, Liverpool and London owed their economic fortune to the growing slave trade (Richardson 2005: 36). This trade in particular created an immense amount of wealth within Britain and facilitated the emergence of a merchant class; the new middle class and allowed for social mobility in England (Richardson 2005: 39, Stahl 2011: 5). The slave trade became controlled by this ‘new wealth’ and the middle classes dominated, which  had the effect of changing the class dynamics within Britain; it was no longer about being landed gentry but based instead on wealth, taste and values, accumulated in no small part through colonial endeavours (Richardson 2005: 39-40, Stahl 2011: 5-6). However, it was not just the trade in African slaves, but the associated luxury goods that made British ports and merchants rich, “in this respect slave trading became closely interwoven into the wider commercial and economic fabric of eighteenth –century [port towns]” (Richardson 2005: 39). As the middle class began to expand, it created more and more demand for these luxury items, produced by slave labour, which in turn fueled more slavery (Stahl 2011: 5). New luxury items, such as mirrors, sugar, tobacco and coffee were all made avaliable by colonial entanglements and these items profoundly changed british culture; they became bound up in the building and maintain of status; luxury items facilitated by colonialism shaped English practices of social distinction and class (Boyle 1968: 23, Stahl 2011: 5, Richardson 2005: 39). Circulations of these luxury items “shaped cultural practice” (Stahl 7) and created social class and distinction. Thus, colonial entanglements then profoundly changed the metropole, affecting all manner of things, from peoples diet to the material culture, even the spacial layout of towns, thus life in England was created in no small part through its African connections  (Stahl 2011: 5-8).

Shannon Turner-Riley
ANTH 365: Colonialism and Daily Life
Instructor: Dr Ann Stahl
Wednesday 23rd March, 2011

References Cited

Boyle, Laura.

1968 Diary of a Colonial Officer's Wife. Oxford: Alden Press.

DeCorse Christopher R.

1998 Culture Contact and Change in West Africa. In Studies in Culture Contact: Interaction, Culture Change and Archaeology. James Cusick, ed. Pp. 358-373. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.

Richardson, David.

2005 Slavery and Bristol’s ‘Golden Age’. Slavery and Abolition  26(1): 35–54

Stahl, Ann B.

Circulations through Worlds Apart: Georgian & Victorian England in an African Mirror

In press, In Materializing Colonial Encounters: Archaeologies of African Experience, edited by François G. Richard & M. Dores Cruz. Duke University Press. To appear 2011.

Steiner, Christopher B.

1985Another Image of Africa: Toward an Ethnohistory of European Cloth Marketed to West Africa, 1873-1960. Ethnohistory  32(2): 91-110.