Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (review)

Making the Town richly documents the transformation of Accra from a precolonial Ga city-state to a British colonial port city. After laying the foundation for precolonial Accra from anthropological and historical sources, Parker explores Ga political action in the evolving sociopolitical, cultural, economic, and religious contexts associated with British colonial rule between 1860 and the 1920s.

In reviewing competing social science conceptions of African cities, Parker emphasizes the importance of Ga ideas of town and country for understanding the dynamics of the Accra social system. Throughout the book, Parker's analysis demonstrates not only the continuity and adaptability of Ga institutions in responding to changing political and economic realities but also the importance of Ga institutions in shaping the early colonial city of Accra. "Accra was at once the headquarters of the new colonial order and the epicenter of an older Ga world. The tension between these two contrasting urban identities underlies the transformations of the early colonial period" (xix).

For each decade, Parker identifies two or three major analytical topics, such as the Ga middleman role during and after the slave trade, the Ga warrior ethos and political community, slavery within the Ga community, and its impact on the colonial administration, on politics and commerce in early colonial Accra, on religion and politics over time, or on urban growth and politics in Accra. Each such topic is explored through a generously detailed analysis of political action and personalities, of social forces and political factions, or of developmental processes and social continuities. Through his densely detailed discussion of such broad analytical topics and considerations, Parker demonstrates his mastery of contemporary social science scholarship pertaining to African cities and Ghanaian societies and his familiarity with documentary sources for the Gold Coast and Accra in governmental and missionary archives, as well as with newspapers of the period.

Making the Town is an exemplary social history of a West African city. It reveals the richness of the documentary sources for Accra in the early colonial period and the validity of an ethnohistorical approach for understanding the sociopolitical dynamics of a coastal colonial city evolving from an indigenous precolonial city-state.