Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T15:32:34.126Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Ex-Servicemen at the Crossroads: Protest and Politics in Post-War Ghana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Adrienne M. Israel
Affiliation:
History Department, Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina

Extract

Before the late 1960s, historians generally agreed that World War II had increased mass support for African nationalism. Initially, they claimed that soldiers returned home politicised by war-time experiences and looking for opportunities to spread new ideas acquired through contacts with Asian nationalists. Subsequent scholars gradually chipped away at these assumptions, some completely discarding them as ‘myths’. Current opinion suggests that the way African soldiers reacted to the war depended on their ethnicity, class origins, education levels, and military occupations, and that their role in independence politics depended on local conditions.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Three studies in the late 1960s focused attention on the post-war influence of ex-soldiers: (I) Olusanya, G. O., ‘The Rôle of Ex-Servicemen in Nigerian Politics’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), 6, 2, 08 1968, pp. 225–32, conceded that the returning veterans had become politically important in Ghana, but not in Nigeria where ethnic competition among nationalists and the vastness of the country had stifled their political potential.CrossRefGoogle Scholar (2) Schleh, Eugene P. A., ‘Post-Service Careers of World War Two Veterans: British East and West Africa with Particular Reference to Ghana and Uganda’, Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1968, concluded that ex-servicemen in Ghana played no greater rôle in politics than other interest groups, and that those in Uganda had little, if any, influence.Google Scholar (3) Shiroya, Okete J. E., ‘The Impact of World War II in Kenya: the rôle of ex-servicemen in Kenyan nationalism’, Ph.D. dissertation, Michigan State University, East Lansing, 1968, described Kenya's ex-soldiers as unorganised agents of political development whose impact, although indirect, was an important factor in the independence movement.Google Scholar

2 Fortes, Meyer, ‘The Impact of the War on British West Africa’, in International Affairs (London), 21, 2, 04 1945, p. 211.Google Scholar

3 Rathbone, Richard, ‘Businessmen in Politics: party struggle in Ghana, 1949–57’, in Journal of Development Studies (London), 10 1973, p. 392.Google Scholar

4 Baynham, Simon, ‘The Ghanian Military: a bibliographic essay’, in The West African Journal of Sociology and Political Science (Ibadan), 1, 1, 10 1979, p. 84.Google Scholar

5 Easterbrook, David, ‘Kenyan Askari in World War II and their Demobilization, with Special Reference to Machakos District’, in Three Aspects of Crisis in Colonial Kenya (Syracuse, NY, 1975).Google Scholar

6 Echenberg, Myron, ‘Tragedy at Thiaroye: the Senegalese soldiers' uprising of 1944’, in Cohen, Robin, Copans, Jean, and Gutkind, Peter C. W. (eds.), African Labor History (Beverly Hills and London, 1978) pp. 115–27.Google ScholarCf. also Echenberg, Myron, Colonial Conscripts: the tirailleurs sénégalaīs in French West Africa, 1857–1960 (London and Portsmouth, NH, 1991).Google Scholar

7 Killingray, David, ‘Soldiers, Ex-Servicemen, and Politics in the Gold Coast, 1939–50’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 21, 3, 09 1983, pp. 523–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Page, Melvin E. (ed.), Africa and the First World War (New York, 1987), introduction.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Lunn, Joe Harris, ‘Kande Kamara Speaks: an oral history of the West African experience in France, 1914–18’, in Page, (ed.), op. cit. pp. 45–9.Google Scholar

10 Letter from Lt.-Colonel Watson to Brigadier C. E. M. Richards, dated 30 April 1943; Ghana National Archives (G.N.A.), Adm. 11/1893.

11 Colonial Office, Annual Report on the Gold Coast (London), 1946, p. 14,Google Scholar and Legislative Council Debates, Gold Coast Colony (Accra), 27 04 1948.Google Scholar

13 Colonial Office, Demobilisation and Resettlement (London, 1945), p. 13.Google Scholar

14 Asante, S. K. B., Pan-African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian crisis, 1934–1941 (London, 1977), pp. 110–11 and 122–3Google Scholar. According to Asante's sources, the founders of the Ex-servicemen's Union were Emmanuel Cobina Lartey, William Neequaye, Nortey Moffat, and Kojo Sackey. They were later joined by Prince R. T. Dodoo and B. E. A. Tamaklo.

15 Bernard Kwamlah Abbey, 10 June 1980, Accra.

16 Interviews: Michael Adjivon, 10 February 1980, Accra; Peter Ahinakwa, 20 February 1980, Accra; Kobina Ansah, 1 March 1980, Ashiaman: Joseph Kobina Baku, 30 April 1980, Sekondi; Abudu Bazabarimi, 25 February 1980, Accra; F. A. Bruce-Thompson, 27 February 1980, Accra; Edward Neeamon Djanie, 18 August 1980, Accra; King Kwanbisa Emisang, 15 March 1980, Ashiaman; Jordan Nortey Oku, 24 February 1980, Accra; and Reuben Tackie, 20 August 1980, Accra.

17 Isakah Yayah, 15 March 1980, Ashiaman.

18 Ashanti Pioneer (Kumasi), 4 07 1947.Google Scholar

19 Langley, J. Ayodele, Pan-Africanism and Nationalism in West Africa, 1900–1945: a study in ideology and social classes (Oxford, 1973), pp. 217–19.Google Scholar

20 Charlie E. Bart-Addison, 26 May 1980, Cape Coast.

21 Abbey, op. cit.

23 Ahinakwa, op. cit.

24 Sam K. Osei Yaw, 14 July 1980, Kumasi.

25 The Gold Coast Observer (Cape Coast), 28 February 1948.Google Scholar

26 Coast, Gold, Report on the Labour Department for the Year 1948–49 (Accra, 1950), p. 1.Google Scholar

27 The Gold Coast Independent (Accra), 28 02 1948.Google Scholar

28 Colonial Office, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Disturbances in the Gold Coast, 1948 (London, 1948), Appendix 15.Google Scholar

29 Ibid. p. 12.

30 Abbey, 10 June 1980, Accra.

31 E. K. Frempong, 12 June 1980, Accra, and 20 June 1980, Koforidua.

32 Report of the Commission of Enquiry, p. 14.

33 Aidoo, Frank W., letter from Takoradi, 6 July 1980.Google Scholar

34 Emmanuel Kelly Hagen, 1 May 1980, Takoradi.

35 Report of the Commission of Enquiry, Appendices 8 and 10.

36 Haywood, Colonel Austin H. and Clarke, Brigadier F. A. S., The History of the Royal West African Frontier Force (Aldershot, 1964), pp. 474–6 and 517.Google Scholar

37 Report of the Commission of Enquiry, Appendix 14. See also, Nkrumah, Kwame, Ghana, an Autobiography of Kwame Nkrymah (New York, 1957), p. 77.Google Scholar

38 The Gold Coast Observer, 16 April 1948.

39 Report of the Commssion of Enquiry, p. 7.

40 Ibid. pp. 20–4.

41 The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, p. 71.

42 Ahinakwa, 6 February 1980, Accra.

43 Michael Reginald Asante, 29 July 1980, Kumasi.

44 Ahinakwa, 6 February 1980, Accra.

45 Alarabi Lagos, 24 July 1980.

46 Ashanti Pioneer, 24 January 1951.

47 Nkrumah, Kwame, Inaugural Address, 6 March 1957, Accra; House of Africa Video, North Hollywood, California, n.d.Google Scholar