Editing History of Ghana (section)

==== Colonial administration ====

The gradual emergence of centralized colonial government brought about unified control over local services, although the actual administration of these services was still delegated to local authorities. Specific duties and responsibilities came to be clearly delineated, and the role of traditional states in local administration was also clarified.<ref>{{Citation|title=Chapter I. Internal Organization of Local Authorities|date=31 December 1960|work=Financial Administration in Local Government|pages=13–26|place=Toronto|publisher=University of Toronto Press|doi=10.3138/9781487579906-003|isbn=978-1-4875-7990-6}}</ref> The structure of local government had its roots in traditional patterns of government. Village councils of chiefs and elders were responsible for the immediate needs of individual localities, including traditional law and order and the general welfare.<ref name="Baldwin 159–177">{{Citation|last=Baldwin|first=Kate|title=Chiefs and Government Responsiveness across Africa|work=The Paradox of Traditional Chiefs in Democratic Africa|year=2016|pages=159–177|place=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|doi=10.1017/cbo9781316422335.009|isbn=978-1-316-42233-5}}</ref> The councils ruled by consent rather than by right: though chosen by the ruling class, a chief continued to rule because he was accepted by his people.<ref name=ca /><ref>{{Cite journal|title=Politics. Seleukid rule and the Hellenistic ruling class.|journal=Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum|doi=10.1163/1874-6772_seg_a60_1990}}</ref>

[[File:Elmina slave castle.jpg|thumb|The Portuguese-built [[Elmina Castle]] as purchased by Britain in 1873. It is now a World Heritage Site.]]
British authorities adopted a system of indirect rule for colonial administration, wherein traditional chiefs maintained power but took instructions from their European supervisors. Indirect rule was cost-effective (by reducing the number of European officials needed), minimized local opposition to European rule, and guaranteed law and order.<ref>{{Citation|title=From Indirect to Direct Rule|work=The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy|year=2014|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|doi=10.1057/9781137318275_10 |isbn=978-1-137-31827-5}}</ref> Though theoretically decentralizing, indirect rule in practice caused chiefs to look to Accra (the capital) rather than to their people for decisions. Many chiefs, who were rewarded with honors, decorations, and knighthood by government commissioners, came to regard themselves as a ruling aristocracy.<ref name="Baldwin 159–177"/> In its preservation of traditional forms of power, indirect rule failed to provide opportunities for the country's growing population of educated young men. Other groups were dissatisfied because there was insufficient cooperation between the councils and the central government and because some felt that the local authorities were too dominated by the British district commissioners.<ref name=ca /><ref>{{Citation|title=Because We Were Different|work=Too Soon to Tell|year=2009|pages=135–139|place=Hoboken, NJ, US|publisher=John Wiley & Sons, Inc.|doi=10.1002/9780470422403.ch28|isbn=978-0-470-42240-3}}</ref>

In 1925 provincial councils of chiefs were established in all three territories of the colony, partly to give the chiefs a colony-wide function. The 1927 Native Administration Ordinance clarified and regulated the powers and areas of jurisdiction of chiefs and councils.<ref>{{Citation|title=Recommendations for Police Chiefs and All People Interested in Supporting a Democracy|date=27 July 2017|work=Police Leadership in a Democracy|pages=153–156|publisher=Routledge|doi=10.1201/9781439808351-18|isbn=978-0-429-25087-3}}</ref> In 1935 the Native Authorities Ordinance combined the central colonial government and the local authorities into a single governing system.<ref>{{Cite journal|date=October 1935|title=Central and local authorities|journal=Tubercle|volume=17|issue=1|pages=43–44|doi=10.1016/s0041-3879(35)80807-6|issn=0041-3879}}</ref> New native authorities, appointed by the governor, were given wide powers of local government under the supervision of the central government's provincial commissioners, who made sure that their policies would be those of the central government.<ref>{{Citation|title=12. The Means of Control by the Central Government over the Local Authorities|date=31 December 1934|work=English Local Government|pages=287–322|publisher=Columbia University Press|doi=10.7312/fine91018-012|isbn=978-0-231-88164-7}}</ref> The provincial councils and moves to strengthen them were not popular. Even by British standards, the chiefs were not given enough power to be effective instruments of indirect rule. Some Ghanaians believed that the reforms, by increasing the power of the chiefs at the expense of local initiative, permitted the colonial government to avoid movement toward any form of popular participation in the colony's government.<ref name=ca />