Constitution of the Fante Confederacy

Impact

The 1871 Constitution of the Fante Confederacy is significant for a variety of reasons. First, it is a constitution that has all the hallmarks of a modern political document. It is important to remember that the constitution was written in the 1870s, during the early stages of the European conquest of Africa. This was a period that witnessed a heightened sense of the notion of African inferiority. Yet a group of educated Africans, with the support of traditional rulers, was able to fashion a document that reflected the enlightenment ideas of the rule of law; economic, political and social progress; and improved educational opportunities. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it was the very education that the British provided many of these men that enabled them to turn around and use British ideas to mount a self-determination movement.

Second, the constitution is a document that has a blueprint for economic development. For the framers of this constitution, economic development was not an end in itself but a means to enhance the social and economic well-being of the Fante people. They recognized the key role of good infrastructure and industrial projects in sustaining economic growth. Finally, the Constitution of the Fante Confederacy was a nationalist document. It was a document that sought to create the institutional framework for Fante unity, prosperity, and patriotism.

The Fante Confederacy, however, did not last, and a rapid succession of events led to its undoing. After it was formed, the confederacy created an army of some fifteen thousand soldiers. Under the leadership of King Otoo of Abura, the army marched to the coastal town of Komenda in an effort to prevent the Dutch from taking control of a fort that had been abandoned by the British. Otoo then tried to seize the coastal city of Elmina, the main center of Dutch influence, but this effort failed, and Otoo's forces became mired in a lengthy war. After the constitution was promulgated, it became apparent that the war was exhausting the confederacy's resources; efforts to collect a poll tax were unavailing, and the British resisted any attempt to tax trade in the area. Ghartey (along with his brother) tried to support the confederacy out of their own resources, but that money, too, was soon exhausted. The British were of little help in supporting the confederacy. While some in Britain welcomed the notion of a self-governing state in Africa, others saw it as a dangerous, anti-British development. Chief among these opponents was Charles Spencer Salomon, the British governor of the Gold Coast, who saw the confederacy as a treasonous conspiracy at a time when the “scramble for Africa”—a phrase often used to describe European competition for colonies in Africa and treaties designed to carve out spheres of influence—was at its height. Accordingly, he had various participants in the formation of the confederacy arrested.

Meanwhile, the Dutch were finding that the war was too costly and abandoned the Gold Coast, giving the British a free hand. The British agreed to help defend the Fante against the Ashanti in exchange for annexation of the Fante into Britain's Gold Coast colony. Accordingly, the confederacy dissolved in 1873, though both the confederacy and its constitution continue to serve as a rallying point. In the decades that followed, the Fante Confederacy and its constitution provided a model for other efforts toward self-determination in Africa. In 2007 the people of Ghana began celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the confederacy's formation, and that nation's National Commission on Culture used the anniversary to call for formation of a new confederacy whose aims—the fight against colonialism, exploitation, poverty, illiteracy, disease and underdevelopment—would remain the same.