| Abstract: | Alliances between Europeans and Ghanaian women usually were not supposed to last for the lifetime of the contracting partners. Although contracted for a limited time (as long as the European is in the country) these alliances were formally and socially recognized as being a form of marriage. The alliance was ended by giving the woman a parting present in money or providing her a means of livelihood. The parting gift or settlement in this kind of interracial alliance is a time-honoured convention of high respectability. Today frequently alliances are observed which, although tolerated by the girl's family, have not been officially recognized by society as being some kind of 'marriage', and which are viewed by the European involved as a friendship pattern entered into by two free and independent agents. To the European the parting gift may then appear as extortion or blackmail, while for the woman the settlement is an emotional necessity that allows her to preserve her self-respect. Such conflicts of moral valuation result not only from sociological but also from semantic misunderstanding. (See also: W. Ganyo Fumey, Moral paradoxes and expatriate ideas, in Ghana Jl. of Sociology. |
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