Ethnic Emancipation and Urban Land Claims: Disenfranchisement of the Ga of Accra,Ghana

Several Sub‐Saharan African countries have experienced an upsurge of land claims by various ethnic groups whose lands were acquired by both the colonial and the post‐colonial State through compulsory acquisition. Ethnicity has been used as the basis of emancipating some ethnic groups from perceived disenfranchisement and impoverishment caused by the State acquiring their land. In some cases such land claims result in violence that threatens the social fabric of these countries. An urban example of such a land claim has been made by the GaDangme Council (GDC) in Ghana. This paper assesses the land claim by GDC and argues that its claim of disenfranchisement is more a perception than reality. The paper also investigates why GDC perceives the Ga ethnic group as impoverished and disenfranchised. It concludes by providing structural and pragmatic ways for solving problems centred on Ga land acquisition by the State. Resolving the Ga case may provide lessons for other countries experiencing similar problems.     

Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial Northern Nigeria

This article scrutinises attempts by the British Foreign and Colonial Office to control information in its colonies between 1946 and 1950. Several factors combined to alter the ground on which colonial officials operated in this period: an emerging ‘Cold War’ between Britain and its wartime Soviet ally, international debates about creating an enforceable catalogue of ‘human rights' and a heightened emphasis on public relations within British colonies as a strategy for imperial governance. These factors converged in the response of colonial officials to the writing of one of the most notorious anti-colonial activists in Britain at the time, George Padmore. By analysing British Colonial Office reports of Soviet propaganda in their colonies, the article suggests new analysis about some of the ways in which the rhetoric of the Cold War impacted on Britain's approach to empire after the Second World War.     

The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society

When scholars consider Spanish colonialism in the Philippines their impressions are based largely on documentary evidence of their 377-year colonial presence and on romanticized impressions of the larger Spanish empire. In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the systemic context these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural style, city plan, and diet. Today, however, archaeologists working in Luzon, Cebu, and Mindanao are revealing vast differences between the nature of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and that seen in the Americas. There, the remoteness of the colony from Europe, combined with its geographical position on the doorstep of China, created a unique Spanish colonial adaptation that reveals the significance of Asia in the world economic order.     

Capac Women and the Politics of Marriage in Early Colonial Peru

During the major Inca civil wars, Atahualpa had almost exterminated Huascar’s kin. Only a few capac women, those who descended from Manco Capac, the founder of the Inca dynasty, remained alive. Atahualpa had planned to take them as his principal wives since only this type of marriage could successfully maintain the authority of the Incas over a large Andean territory. The Spanish arrival in 1532 interrupted his plans, but it did not eliminate Inca claims of sovereignty through marriage. In fact, it was through marriage that Atahualpa aimed to establish political alliances with Francisco Pizarro. While both Incas and Spaniards understood marriage on their own terms, there were many instances in which both were willing to redefine their own concepts of marriage in their struggle for power. In all of these, the women engaged in these unions were not only conscious about their political roles, but agents in the main historical events of this period.     

Making Territory Visible: The Revenue Surveys of Colonial South Asia

Once the British became a colonial power in south Asia in the eighteenth century, they had to struggle to determine the internal divisions and boundaries of the territories under their control. In north India, these units had been organized around various pre‐colonial administrative divisions, such as parganas, which had never been mapped. With the introduction of detailed revenue (cadastral) surveys in the early nineteenth century, the British were able to map the parganas and other administrative units, thereby creating a durable record of property holdings. In the nineteenth century, they also allowed the colonial administrators to reorganize the old divisions into a well‐defined and more coherent pattern that endured to form the geographical template of the modern state.