/Book Review/

Kwame Arhin, ed,, West African Colonial Civil

Servants in the Nineteenth  Centuryt_ _ African

Participation  in British Colonial Expansion  in

West Africa°  Research Reports No. 25»  African

Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands, 1985,

ppo  vi  56.  Dfi 7,50*

This slim volume  consists of three biographical essays on notable

British West African colonial civil servants of the nineteenth  century:

George Ekem Ferguson of the Gold Coast, by Kwame Arhin;  Thomas George

Lawson of Sierra Leone, by David &« Skinner;  and John Augustus Otonbo

Payne of Nigeria, by Go0. 01usanya»  They  all played  crucial roles in

forming the present  day character of the countries in which they worked,

especially  in (respectively) their economic geography, administration

and legal system.,  There is also a short  introduction  by the editor»

Together these essays provide an unusual opportunity  for insight

into the lives and times of members of the educated  class on the coast

during the period  when the foundations for the nation states of today

were being laid, even if the individuals concerned did not think in

quite those terms.,  There is a tendency to think of the period of

imperialist  expansion as a hostile intrusion into West African life,

between the pre-colonial and the modern periods of political indepen-

dence, during which Africans were not active  shapers of policy, but

merely the fundamentally  passive bearers of a conservative  traditional

61

system.  That  is, they  are thought  of as resisting change, not initia-

ting it.  Such a view implies that  west Africans were not the major

actors in their own history  during that time.  It further implies that

they are not  responsible  for the character of the  states they  inhabit

today, for the boundaries of those  states, with all their economic and

political implications, and the way  relations have developed within them

between the traditional and the modern ways of doing things, are held

to be a totally European  creation imposed upon West Africa by  imperialist

might.  The editor of these essays is to be congratulated  on having been

able to look beyond this essentially Eurocentric view of the matter-

What we are told of the lives of these three men is extremely pro-

vocative, in many directions*  The editor points out  (pg. v) that

Ferguson's ancestry  was partly  British, but the other two were  entirely

Africanc  However, it is noteworthy that Payne and Lav/son were also in

some way  separated  from traditional life*  Although Payne  seems to have

claimed Ijebu identity, he was born in Sierra Leone where his parents

were re-captives, i.e. freed by the British during the suppression of

the slave trade, and we are not told the origins of his mother, or that

his father ever returned to Nigeria, or that Payne himself ever actually

spent time in Ijebu land apart  from visiting on missions..  Lawson was a

full-fledged member of a ruling clan, but chose to make his career away

from home*  It is true that this was probably  influenced by his English

education  (his home was Anecho), but it is also true that in Freetown he

could distance himself from traditional life in a way that would have

62

been difficult  if not  impossible at home,,  iiven Ferguson, who  returned

from education in Freetown and London to his birthplace, seems to have

spent most  of his brief but  brilliant  career on trek to places that  in

those days (or even today) an Anomabo man would not consider  "homeuo

It is clear from these stories that the expectation of leaving

home to study and sometimes to work developed early on the west coast,

and one would like to know more about education in those times and how

the affected individuals reacted to ito  Perhaps, in the absence of

personal letters that express personal feelings  (as well as facts),

this is too much to hope for*  Similarly, Skinner's piece on Lawson pro-

vides fascinating glimpses of 19th  century Sierra Leone high  society and

its mores - for instance, it seems to have been the in thing to marry

from the Anglican cathedral, but be buried from the Baptist  chapel. Again

one wishes for more, and wonders whether the necessary  material exists.

One also wonders about their informal education.  All three were

regarded by the European  colonial authorities as extremely  knowledgeable

experts on everything to do with the native peoples and their customs.

It is not obvious how they acquired  this knowledge, since even Lawson,

the only one who may have had a strictly  traditional childhood, had left

home by the age of eleven  (pg- 2*0.  Ferguson  clearly got most of his

knowledge by fieldworke  His main advantage over European  colleagues was

linguistic, and this was no doubt the case for the others:  Payne pre-

sumably  spoke Yoruba, and we are told that Lawson had a ;!vast knowledge

63

of African languages" (pgo 2*0 - this reader c.t least is curious to

know whose judgment this was, and how arrived at.  All were in a posi-

tion to inanipulate the attitudes of the colonial authorities, but it

appears they were also themselves influenced by European attitudes-of

the day (see e«,g«. page 1b)o  Europeans in Africa at this time and later

are often to be found working quite schizophrenically, one moment

devoutly quoting the authority of current anthropological and philoso-

phical speculation about racial and cultural inferiority, and the next

moment quite sensibly discussing observations and data that make non-

sense of those armchair theoriesc  (See e=go Johannes Fabian, Language

on the Road:  Swahili in Two Nineteenth Century Travelogues, Hamburg

1985 for an interesting discussion of this phenomenon in Swahili studies)

The development and interrelatedness of academic, colonial, and indi-

genous attitudes and beliefs about West African national and cultural

identity is a fascinating area, which could bear further exploration.

The;,careers of the three principals invite comparison in several

respects, but the articles themselves are not always as helpful as they

could have been, and as closer editorial attention might have made themo

The reader will naturally wonder to v/hat extent 'the thr&e were contem-

porary o  The title of the article on Ferguson gives his dates as i86*f -

1897, which are, as is normal, the dates of his birth and death res-

pectively.  It also turns out that his active career began in 1881,

ending with his death„  The dates given in the title of the article on

Lawson, 1846 - 1889, turn out to be the dates of his active- career, and

it is only by careful  reading and arithmetic- -t.hr.t the reader discovers

he was born in 1817 -and died in 1891°  This matters;, because one then

realizes that Ferguson started out half a century  later than Lav/son, at

a much earlier age, and then get ahead much faster (.comparing their

salaries at different  stages) <,  Their careers overlapped in time very

little, Ferguson's apparently  being much more  involved in the "scramble

for Africa" than Lawson's«

Payne was born in 18J9 (pg° ^+)« twenty-two years after Lawson

and twenty-five years before Ferguson, and began his career in 1863,

but we are not told when-he  retired or died*' Payne's 'situation and

career must have been rather different  from both Lawson's and Ferguson's,

for Governor Rowe of the Gold Coast  (in 1u79'?) is quoted as saying he

was not to be trusted with any mission (pg» 5 0 ). This contrasts greatly

with official attitudes to the other two, but we are not given  enough

information to be able to judge whyo  indeed, the author seems less

concerned with investigating the career of his subject than with defen-

ding him against the charge of being an agent of imperialism.,  I find

this a great pity*  Throughout the nineteenth  century  said well into

the twentieth, "imperialism'* was very far from being the term of

opprobrium  that it has become today, when the term  "imperialist" is

often used as a general insult„  For many  thinking people, both  African

and European,  imperialism as a political and economic policy meant

progress, and to be against it often meant to be against local develop-

ment and native education-  Whether it was the correct course to follow

from the West African point of view is another matter, but it does not

do justice to Payne's undoubted intelligence to insist so strongly that

he did not know v/hat he was doin.r; when he acted in the interest of Bri-

tish imperialism-

The book is attractive and easy to handle, and the print, reduced

typescript, is clear and easier on the eyes than most productions of

this kind, although there are too many minor spelling or typing errors-

At the price, we can hardly complain, but only ask for more<>

M.E, Kropp Dakubu