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| Title: | The Emergence of Capitalist Relations in South Asante Cocoa-Farming, c.1916-1933 |
| Author: | Austin, Gareth |
| Year: | 1987 |
| Periodical: | The Journal of African History |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 259-279 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | dual economy Ashanti polity cocoa Labor and Employment Economics and Trade History and Exploration colonialism Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/181549 |
| Abstract: | In Amansie district, Asante, capitalist:.j relations of production in cocoa-farming developed as a result rather than as a cause of the cocoa 'takeoff, c. 1900-1916. This paper examines their emergence, which occurred largely during the subsequent period of much slower growth and generally lower prices. The introduction and spread of regular wage labour, the widening and deepening burden of rent on 'stranger' cocoa farms, the proliferation of 'advances', and the introduction of farm mortgaging are described, together with the accompanying decline of slavery, pawning, and other non-wage forms of labour. Colonial officials ineffectually deplored the growth of money lending and, to a lesser extent, that of wage labour. From the mid-1930s, however, the tendency towards greater separation of labour from control of the farm was partly reversed by a new insistence by northern labourers on the replacement of annual wage contracts by a managerial form of share-cropping. This demand was sustained against the opposition of farmowners and despite persistent unemployment, an achievement made possible by the migrants' continued foothold in subsistence agriculture in their home areas. Notes, ref. |
