Child Slaves in the Modern World

8: British Magistrates and Unfree Children in Early Colonial Gold Coast, 1874–1899

157 8 british magistrates and unfree children in early colonial gold coast, 1874–1899 trevor r. getz The history of enslaved children in the early colonial Gold Coast (1874– 99) is located at the convergence of the histories of Britain, the Atlantic world, and West Africa. This chapter explores this intersection by looking primarily at the interface between unfree children (procured locally or imported into the Gold Coast from the West African interior) and colonial magistrates from Britain in the cosmopolitan context of the Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate. The principal vehicle by which it does so is the interpretation of records from the courts charged with prosecuting slavery and slave trading within the colony. slaves and children in the precolonial gold coast (1670–1874) The British Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate, which emerged in 1874, was the product of long and complex interactions between the inhabitants of this coastal West African region and the interior, and European states. It is difficult both to separate “indigenous” from “imported” social institutions and to attempt to contrast institutions across ethnic groups. Although several distinct ethnicities can be discerned within the region through analysis of language and culture, most precolonial polities were heterogeneous and identity was both fluid and assimilative . Ethnic labels such as Akan, Etsi, Ewe, Ga-Adangme, and Guan were probably less significant indicators of identity than an individual’s 158 trevor r. getz conception of his or her place within a constellation of statal and extended family affiliations. Across the region, both slavery and youth were important and, to some degree, linked statuses within this shifting web of identities. The origins of slavery in the Gold Coast remain the subject of widespread debate, but that institution probably developed as a useful tool for harnessing nonfamily labor in sophisticated cultivating societies seeking to overcome ecological obstacles to agriculture, such as the dense hinterland brush. Slavery in Gold Coast societies before the transatlantic slave trade was a generally assimilative institution. Slaves tended to be dependents of lineage groups and were rarely individually owned. Thus both their position and the condition of their captivity could change over time as they were drawn into kinship webs. However, they rarely became full members of the lineage group. Moreover, the social distance between slaves and free members of society greatly increased during the era of the transatlantic slave trade, especially after the 1670s, when the Gold Coast became a net slave exporter. The centuries-long participation of the Gold Coast in the transatlantic slave trade resulted locally in three linked transformations in slavery. The first was the expansion of slavery as an institution.1 During the eighteenth century, large numbers of slaves, many of whom originated in the north, passed through established markets in Asante and the Gold Coast. The abolition of the slave trade by Britain, in 1807, led to a concentration of slaves along the coast, where, because of the simultaneous expansion in global demand for West African agricultural goods—especially palm oil— there was increased local demand for labor. As a result, slave-worked “plantations ” developed both near major towns and on the palm oil huzas (strip plantations) of the eastern Krobo states.2 This development of a slave mode of production was in turn related to a second development, the reconceptualization of domestic slavery and debt bondage as commercial rather than lineage-based institutions. Underlying this trend was the weakening of the distinction between “export,” or “trade,” slaves on the one hand and assimilated domestic slaves and pawns on the other. Protections previously extended to long-serving unfree dependents , both domestic slaves and pawns, were undermined by the expanded commercial trade in slaves. Pawning, or debt bondage, had initially been a strategy for acquiring additional labor or authority that was temporary and was bounded by the rules of relationships within and among lineage groups. By the nineteenth century, however, interest rates on debts rose to such levels that pawning became an essentially permanent institution. Pawns also became liable to be sold to overseas merchants.3 Related trends british magistrates and unfree children in early colonial gold coast 159 included the development of new methods of enslavement and the expansion of old ones. These new modes of enslavement included panyarring, or kidnapping, and enslavement as punishment for losing parties in civil cases and as payment for debt caused by legal fees.4 Children were especially affected, not only as easy victims...