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Chapter 11 - Railways: Commerce and Crafts, Urbanisation and Public Health
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177 Chapter 11 Railways: Commerce and Crafts, Urbanisation and Public Health Commerce and Crafts The railways had an impact on commerce and traditional crafts. By stimulating trade in imports and exports, railways were instrumental in transforming the spatial distribution and organisation of commerce as well as output and employment in craft production. Broadly speaking, there were three important aspects of change: 1. the physical penetration of European commercial and financial institutions into the interior; 2. a simultaneous expansion and contraction of opportunities for African merchants and traders; and 3. the changing fortunes of traditional crafts under the impact of imported mass-produced goods. Before the railways arrived, European trading activity was confined to the coast and trade was conducted with the interior through a network of independent African middlemen and traders. The control and organisation of this trade was a source of conflict not only between the coastal principalities and the inland state of Ashanti, but also between European merchants and their African counterparts.462 Indeed, the decision to expand British colonial rule beyond the frontiers of the Gold Coast colony was made partly to protect free access to the hinterland trade.463 Although British rule removed some of the institutional barriers to the smooth conduct of trade464 there was no immediate change in the traditional organisation of commerce. Trade continued to operate through the longestablished middleman system but, more importantly, the European trading firms were reluctant to penetrate directly into the interior. ‘European companies’, it was observed, ‘do not make use of the Volta, and individual merchants do so only if the canoe owner takes all risk of loss.’465 Despite active encouragement from the authorities, who believed that increased penetration would augment trade and in turn enhance the revenues of the 178 newly acquired territories of Ashanti and the north,466 European firms failed to respond. As late as 1901, other than the Basel Mission’s trading store at Akropong-Akwapim and the firms of F. and A. Swanzy which operated branch stores at the river port towns of Akuse and Kpong on the Volta, there was no direct expatriate commercial activity in the interior.467 The railways facilitated what Hopkins has called ‘the second partition of Africa’. They were directly responsible for the spatial diffusion of the trading firms into the interior. In 1904, the year the railway reached Kumasi, eleven European firms opened branches there468 and, followed by the Bank of British West Africa two years later, ‘the town is now fast developing into the trading centre of the whole of Ashanti’.469 The Ashanti-Obuasi Trading Company Limited, a subsidiary of Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, commenced operations at Obuasi, Sansu and Akrokeri in 1906.470 The following year, the Basel Mission Factory took the unprecedented step of opening a branch store way beyond the Kumasi railway at Kintampo ‘and there appears to be no reason why other firms should not shortly follow its example, and for the town to become a flourishing centre’.471 In the eastern cocoa belt, the penetration of the trading firms also followed close on the heels of the railways. In 1909, F. and A. Swanzy and two other European firms had branches at Nsawam, and many others, including the Bank of British West Africa, were negotiating for building sites at principal railway stations.472 By 1911, expatriate stores were firmly established at Koforidua, Kukurantumi, and Tafo.473 From then on, expansion of European firms accelerated, so that by 1915 ‘there are now numerous villages boasting one or more European stores, where a most varied assortment of goods can be obtained’.474 The railways also carried a large import traffic in specie, which was distributed regularly at all principal railway stations ‘and the markets are filled with imports of greater variety . . . besides locally grown foodstuffs, and they daily present scenes of the greatest activity’.475 By opening up the country to European commercial activity, the railways were instrumental in the spread of the money economy into many parts of the country. The penetration and intensification of expatriate commercial activity into the interior had important implications for African traders and merchants. Elsewhere in West Africa, it is argued, penetration of European firms resulted in the gradual decline of African middlemen from being ‘wealthy entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth century to petty traders after 1930’.476 No comparable attempt has been made to investigate how the twentieth- [3.232.108.171] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 05:56 GMT) 179 century Gold Coast middlemen...