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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Establishing Control: Violence along the Black Volta at the Beginning of Colonial Rule |
Author: | Goody, Jack |
Year: | 1998 |
Periodical: | Cahiers d'études africaines |
Volume: | 38 |
Issue: | 150-152 |
Pages: | 227-244 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ghana |
Subjects: | violence colonialism history 1890-1899 1900-1909 1910-1919 Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Ethnic and Race Relations History and Exploration |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.3406/cea.1998.1802 |
Abstract: | At the time of the advent of colonial powers, levels of violence in the Volta region (present-day Ghana) were high. The author examines the kind of forces that were impinging on the lives of the inhabitants and the nature of the violence that obtained there, both external and internal, in order to see how the present incidence of political violence is structured by the earlier regimes, in the case of the successors of centralized States as well as of acephalous 'tribes'. Apart from local feuds and vengeance killings and apart from the conflict deriving from the advent of Europeans, there was considerable violence displayed not only by local States raiding for slaves but also by those trying to create their own dominions, such as Samory and Babatu. Colonial rule concentrated force in the hands of the new rulers who largely stopped these forms of violence (at the same time practising its own). The advent of independence and of appeals to majority voting has meant that the authority in traditional States has been threatened by subordinate groups, often constituting a majority, and their attempts to hold on to power have resulted in open conflict. Whereas violence was earlier the work of the 'tribal' areas, now it is often more common in traditional States. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. |