Editing History of Ghana (section)

==== Early manifestations of nationalism in Ghana ====
By the late 19th century, a growing number of educated Africans increasingly found unacceptable an arbitrary political system that placed almost all power in the hands of the governor through his appointment of council members.<ref name="Duke University Press">{{Citation|title=Colonialism and the Educated Africans|date=2014|work=Postcolonial Modernism|pages=21–37|publisher=Duke University Press|doi=10.1215/9780822376309-002|isbn=978-0-8223-5732-2}}</ref> In the 1890s, some members of the educated coastal elite organized themselves into the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society to protest a land bill that threatened traditional land tenure.<ref>{{Citation |last=Power|first=Thomas P.|title=Land Tenure|date=28 October 1993|work=Land, Politics, and Society in Eighteenth-Century Tipperary|pages=119–173|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203162.003.0004|isbn=978-0-19-820316-2}}</ref><ref name="Duke University Press"/> This protest helped lay the foundation for political action that would ultimately lead to independence. In 1920, one of the African members of the Legislative Council, [[J. E. Casely Hayford|Joseph E. Casely-Hayford]], convened the National Congress of British West Africa.<ref name="Robin Hallett p. 353">Hallett, ''Africa Since 1875: A Modern History'', p. 353.</ref> The National Congress demanded a wide range of reforms and innovations for British West Africa.<ref name="Robin Hallett p. 353" />

The National Congress sent a delegation to London to urge the Colonial Office to consider the principle of elected representation. The group, which claimed to speak for all British West African colonies, represented the first expression of political solidarity between intellectuals and nationalists of the area.<ref>{{Citation|last=Korang|first=Kwaku Larbi|title=British West African National Congress|date=27 April 2010|work=African American Studies Center|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.47789|isbn=978-0-19-530173-1}}</ref> Though the delegation was not received in London (on the grounds that it represented only the interests of a small group), its actions aroused considerable support among the African elite at home.<ref name=emn>McLaughlin & Owusu-Ansah (1994), "Early Manifestations of Nationalism".</ref>

Notwithstanding their call for elected representation as opposed to a system whereby the governor appointed council members, these nationalists insisted that they were loyal to the British Crown and that they merely sought an extension of British political and social practices to Africans.<ref>{{Cite ODNB|title=Labour Representation Committee members of the British parliament elected in 1906|date=2007-05-24|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/96943|isbn=978-0-19-861412-8}}</ref> Notable leaders included [[Africanus Horton]], the writer [[John Mensah Sarbah]], and <!-- There is no Wikipedia article for [[S. R. B. Attah-Ahoma]], Please create a article if you can. Thanks-->S. R. B. Attah-Ahoma. Such men gave the nationalist movement a distinctly elitist flavour that was to last until the late 1940s.<ref name=emn />

The constitution of April 8, 1925, promulgated by Guggisberg, created provincial councils of paramount chiefs for all but the northern provinces of the colony.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Kratz|first=Corinne A.|date=1991|title=Paramount Chiefs of Sierra Leone|journal=African Arts|volume=24|issue=4|pages=86|doi=10.2307/3337047|jstor=3337047|issn=0001-9933}}</ref> These councils in turn elected six chiefs as unofficial members of the Legislative Council, which however had an inbuilt British majority and whose powers were in any case purely advisory.<ref name="auto2"/> Although the new constitution appeared to recognize some African sentiments, Guggisberg was concerned primarily with protecting British interests.<ref>{{Cite book|chapter=Moral Sentiments and Material Interests|title=Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life|
date=2005|publisher=The MIT Press|doi=10.7551/mitpress/4771.003.0004|isbn=978-0-262-27386-2}}</ref> For example, he provided Africans with a limited voice in the central government; yet, by limiting nominations to chiefs, he drove a wedge between chiefs and their educated subjects. The intellectuals believed that the chiefs, in return for British support, had allowed the provincial councils to fall completely under control of the government.<ref name="Baldwin 159–177"/> By the mid-1930s, however, a gradual rapprochement between chiefs and intellectuals had begun.<ref name=emn />

Agitation for more adequate representation continued. Newspapers owned and managed by Africans played a major part in provoking this discontent—six were being published in the 1930s.<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Figure 6.8. Immigrant-owned firms were more likely to be job creators |journal= |date=26 November 2019 |doi=10.1787/888934066425}}</ref> As a result of the call for broader representation, two more unofficial African members were added to the Executive Council in 1943. Changes in the Legislative Council, however, had to await a different political climate in London, which came about only with the postwar election of a British Labour Party government.<ref name=emn />

The new Gold Coast constitution of March 29, 1946, was a bold document. For the first time, the concept of an official majority was abandoned.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Burns, Sir Alan Cuthbert Maxwell (1887–1980)|date=28 November 2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|series=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography|doi=10.1093/odnb/9780192683120.013.30877}}</ref> The Legislative Council was now composed of six ex-officio members, six nominated members, and eighteen elected members, however the Legislative Council continued to have purely advisory powers – all executive power remained with the governor.<ref name="auto1">{{Citation|title=Ramanathan, Sir Ponnambalam, (1851–1930), KC 1903; MLC, Ceylon; a Member of Board of Education of Ceylon and of Council of Ceylon University College; HM's Solicitor-General, Ceylon, 1892–1906; the first elected member to represent the educated Ceylonese in the Reformed Legislative Council of Ceylon, 1912; re-elected for 1917–21; appointed by the Governor as a nominated unofficial member of the reorganised Legislative Council, 1921; re-elected by the people for five years from 1924|date=1 December 2007|work=Who Was Who|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.u215916}}</ref> The 1946 constitution also admitted representatives from Ashanti into the council for the first time. Even with a Labour Party government in power, however, the British continued to view the colonies as a source of raw materials that were needed to strengthen their crippled economy.<ref>{{Citation|last=Evans|first=Mark|title=Freedom of Information and Open Government|date=2003|work=Constitution-Making and the Labour Party|pages=187–214|place=London|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|doi=10.1057/9780230502260_8|isbn=978-1-349-41700-1}}</ref> Change that would place real power in African hands was not a priority among British leaders until after [[1948 Accra Riots|rioting and looting in Accra]] and other towns and cities in early 1948 over issues of pensions for ex-servicemen, the dominant role of settler-colonists in the economy, the shortage of housing, and other economic and political grievances.<ref name=emn />

With elected members in a decisive majority, Ghana had reached a level of political maturity unequalled anywhere in colonial Africa. The constitution did not, however, grant full self-government. Executive power remained in the hands of the governor, to whom the Legislative Council was responsible.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=October 1936|title=Members Elected by the Executive Council|journal=Africa|volume=9|issue=4|pages=543|doi=10.1017/s0001972000008986|s2cid=245910374 |issn=0001-9720}}</ref> Hence, the constitution, although greeted with enthusiasm as a significant milestone, soon encountered trouble. World War II had just ended, and many Gold Coast veterans who had served in British overseas expeditions returned to a country beset with shortages, inflation, unemployment, and black-market practices. There veterans, along with discontented urban elements, formed a nucleus of malcontents ripe for disruptive action.<ref>{{Citation|title=Medals of Honor Presented to Black Veterans of World War II (1997)|date=30 September 2009|work=African American Studies Center|publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.33755|isbn=978-0-19-530173-1}}</ref> They were now joined by farmers, who resented drastic governmental measures required to cut out diseased cacao trees in order to control an epidemic, and by many others who were unhappy that the end of the war had not been followed by economic improvements.<ref name=emn />