In 1849, the Acting Governor and Judicial Assessor of the British settlements on the Gold Coast, James Coleman Fitzpatrick, forwarded to the Colonial Office two tables providing an estimate, or rough census, of the population of Dixcove and Appolonia, two polities in the western Gold Coast, which, at the time, were under some form of British influence. The tables included details about territorial subdivisions, men, women, children and slaves and pawns (listed under the same headings). The document can be found in the Colonial Office papers, Original correspondence, in the National Archives of the United Kingdom. Considering the period and the area it deals with, the document is indeed a very rare, source both in terms of historical demography and the history of personal dependency and slavery in this section of the Gold Coast.
Free People, Slaves and Pawns in the Western Gold Coast: The Demography of Dependency in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Archival Source
VALSECCHI, PIERLUIGI
2014-01-01
Abstract
In 1849, the Acting Governor and Judicial Assessor of the British settlements on the Gold Coast, James Coleman Fitzpatrick, forwarded to the Colonial Office two tables providing an estimate, or rough census, of the population of Dixcove and Appolonia, two polities in the western Gold Coast, which, at the time, were under some form of British influence. The tables included details about territorial subdivisions, men, women, children and slaves and pawns (listed under the same headings). The document can be found in the Colonial Office papers, Original correspondence, in the National Archives of the United Kingdom. Considering the period and the area it deals with, the document is indeed a very rare, source both in terms of historical demography and the history of personal dependency and slavery in this section of the Gold Coast.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
