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Making the Town: Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra (Social History of Africa)
Making the Town Ga State and Society in Early Colonial Accra - Social History of Africa Author:John Parker Making the Town is the social history of a West African urban community, the Ga people of Accra, Ghana, from the 1860s to the 1920s. Its focus is town politics, and it shows how the Ga townspeople actively shaped Accras transition from pre-colonial city-state to colonial port city. Making the Town is a history of an African urban community, the ... more »Ga people of Accra. The focus is town politics, and in particular the ways in which Ga political action shaped Accra's transition from pre-colonial city-state to colonial city from the 1860s to the 1920s. It has often been assumed that colonial port cities were built largely in spite of, rather than in active dialogue with, any vestiges of indigenous African urbanism. Far from being marginalized by British power and the processes of urbanization, the Ga demonstrated a striking cultural resilience. Making the Town examines the rich fabric of African urban life by charting continuities and discontinuities in a variety of political, economic, legal, religious, and domestic relationships. By focusing on Accra's early colonial period, it challenges the tendency to consider the transition to colonial rule in Africa as a sudden leap from one structural state to another.« less