Fantes and the Legal Abolition of Domestic Slavery in Gold Coast

This presentation seeks to reveal a distinct Fante ideological position on the subject of domestic slavery from the 1860s onward. It attempts to understand the direction of Fante discourse on domestic slavery in the nineteenth century and locate an abolitionist strand within it. In the local language, “domestic slavery” connotes a spectrum of dependency, resulting in local debate on the boundary between “acceptable” and “unacceptable” practices. This was the way in which slavery and abolition were discussed in the Fante region during the period under study. The paper draws from local press as well as colonial correspondence, court records, UK parliamentary papers, early Fante dictionaries and other secondary materials. It first addresses the period from the late 1860s to 1874, when the colonial abolition of domestic slavery in Gold Coast was announced. Next, it situates the Fantes in the context of the process of colonial abolition in Gold Coast (1874/75). Finally, it discusses the years after 1874. Focusing on the Fante people allows for a reading that is grounded in the common history, political reality, language and social behaviours from which a common ideological response to domestic slavery emerged.