Browsing by Subject "prison"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Open Access
Imperial policing and the antinomies of power in early colonial Ghana
(International Journal of African Historical Studies, 2020-01-01) Balakrishnan, S
In the nineteenth century, constabulary officers in the British Gold Coast were emancipated slaves purchased for conscription. From 1870 to 1900, British officials bought enslaved men of “Hausa” origin, hailing from the Northern territories and the Niger hinterland. In Britain’s eyes, Hausas constituted a venerable “martial race,” ideal for policing. But to local communities, they were an ethnic group known for their enslaved past. This essay reassesses dynamics of policing and imprisonment in the colony through the histories of slavery and abolition. It argues that one result of Britain’s recruitment practices was that police wanted to escape the colonial state as much as the convicts under their care. The colonial prison was riven by a phenomenon of mutual escape. These conditions formed the antinomies of power in early colonial Ghana.
Open Access
OF DEBT AND BONDAGE: FROM SLAVERY TO PRISONS IN THE GOLD COAST, c. 1807–1957
(The Journal of African History, 2020-03) Balakrishnan, S
AbstractContrary to the belief that prisons never predated colonial rule in Africa, this article traces their emergence in the Gold Coast after the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. During the era of ‘legitimate commerce’, West African merchants required liquidity to conduct long-distance trade. Rather than demand human pawns as interest on loans, merchants imprisoned debtors’ female relatives because women's sexual violation in prison incentivized kin to repay loans. When British colonists entered the Gold Coast, they discovered how important the prisons were to local credit. They thus allowed the institutions to continue, but without documentation. The so-called ‘native prisons’ did not enter indirect rule — and the colonial archive — until the 1940s. Contrary to studies of how Western states used prisons to control black labour after emancipation, this article excavates a ‘debt genealogy’ of the prison. In the Gold Coast, prisons helped manage cash flow after abolition by holding human hostages.
Open Access
Prison of the Womb: Gender, Incarceration, and Capitalism on the Gold Coast of West Africa, c. 1500–1957
(Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2023) Balakrishnan, S
Abstract To date, studies of imprisonment and incarceration have focused on the growth of male-gendered penal institutions. This essay offers a provocative addition to the global study of the prison by tracing the emergence of a carceral system in West Africa in the nineteenth century that was organized around the female body. By examining archival testimonies of female prisoners held in what were called “native prisons” in colonial Gold Coast (southern Ghana), this essay shows how birthing, impregnation, and menstruation shaped West Africa penal practices, including the selection of the captives, the duration of their time in prison, and how the prison factored into the legal infrastructure around tort settlements for debts and crimes. The term “prison of the womb” is used here to describe how the West African prison held bloodlines captive, threatening the impregnation of a female kin member as a ticking clock for tort settlement. Furthermore, it will be shown that this institution was imperative to the spread of mercantile capitalism in nineteenth-century Gold Coast.