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| Title: | Producing a Received View of Gold Coast Elite Society? C.F. Hutchison's Pen Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities |
| Author: | Doortmont, Michel |
| Year: | 2006 |
| Periodical: | History in Africa |
| Volume: | 33 |
| Pages: | 473-493 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | elite biography colonial period History and Exploration Architecture and the Arts |
| About person: | Charles Francis Hutchison |
| External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_in_africa/v033/33.1doortmont.pdf |
| Abstract: | In the 1920s, the African urban elite of merchants, educators, and missionaries in the Gold Coast (Ghana) faced an onslaught of change in all parts of society. Control over the economy fell more and more into the hands of European businesses, and the elites' social, economic and political status was undermined. One of the weapons in the battle against the British colonial authorities was the written word. Knowledge about African achievements was molded in the form of biographies, especially collective biographies. This paper deals with one of these collective biographies, written by the Gold Coast businessman C.F. Hutchison, and entitled 'Pen Pictures of Modern Africans and African Celebrities', a well-known source for the history of the Gold Coast. The paper examines what view of 1920s Gold Coast society Hutchison is presenting, what its origins were, and how Hutchison's observations relate to other biographical studies. It focuses on Hutchison's role as a mediator in the acquisition, production and formulation of knowledge. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
