Scholar Studies Interracial Relationships in Colonial Ghana
Carina Ray, Ph.D., is researching the sexualpolitics of Uk colonialism into the Gold Coast.Photo by Bruce Gilbert
In researching the changing nature of intimate relations between Africans and Europeans in colonial Ghana, Carina Ray, Ph.D., found a telling historic snapshot.
Within an 1845 account of his trip to the Gold Coast, as Ghana ended up being understood, U.S. Navy officer Horatio Bridge noted that “all for the Europeans have actually indigenous wives,” meaning that interracial marriages between European guys and African ladies had been typical.
Throughout the after century, nevertheless, the regularity among these unions reduced dramatically. Precisely a hundred years later on, in 1945, Ray discovered that colonial authorities described the marriages of four Uk officers to Gold Coast females being an “epidemic” and additional pathologized them as a “form of madness.”
“While these marriages had been as soon as quite definitely accepted, a hundred years later on, they delivered the colonial management into a panic,” stated Ray, an assistant teacher of history.
A professional in contemporary African history, Ray is currently composing a manuscript that interrogates the contested racial politics of colonial guideline. This woman is documenting just how colonial authorities and silver Coasters changed their some ideas about interracial intimate relationships throughout the colonial duration. Those modifications, she stated, had been markedly distinctive from past hundreds of years.
Through the late 1400s to the mid-1800s, it absolutely was quite typical for European guys to marry African females in the Gold Coast. “These marriages produced prominent trading families who have been crucial that you the commercial and governmental reputation for the seaside areas,” Ray stated. “But as of this belated 1800s, whenever Britain finally chose to formally colonize the Gold Coast, these relationships had been increasingly frowned upon.”
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