Land, Labor and Capital in Ghana: From Slave to Free Labor in Asante, 1807-1956 (review)

Abstract

as the simple product of European influence. The argument is persuasive, and is certainly in line with much recent Africanist scholarship, but it is worth noting that the material record he has uncovered is by itself probably insufficient to sustain the point. Throughout the work, DeCorse makes considerable and necessary use of the work of historians, though he has not himself examined the original documentary record in a systematic way. That record is extremely large and exists in multiple languages; there is much that the historians whose work he cites have not yet studied, and a fuller examination of the archival documentation might well change our understanding of the historical context within which DeCorse seeks to interpret the archeological data. The author might also have provided more comparative material drawn from historical archaeological investigations elsewhere on the continent to help put the Elmina case in continental perspective. Despite these shortcomings, there is no doubt that DeCorse’s work constitutes a important contribution to the historical literature on Ghana and West Africa.