Conference: Marine Environmental Politics in the 21st Century: MacArthur Program on Multilateral Governance, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Paper Abstracts:
Barbara Walker
Institute of Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, UC Santa Barbara
Colonial economic initiatives in the Gold Coast, West Africa, concentrated on terrestrial agricultural exports, such as cocoa and timber. Marine fishing was only vaguely considered to be a potential source of foreign capital. Nevertheless, fishing communities and fishing practices were transformed during the colonial era due to the close geographical, legal, and economic relationships between colonial outposts and fishing villages. As early as 1486, European traders hired local fishermen to transport cargo from ship to shore through the "burning" surf. By the time the British Colony at Cape Coast was established in 1874, the adjudication of resource conflicts in coastal villages had been shifted from local leadership hierarchies to the colonial courts. This paper reviews key colonial legal decisions over fishing conflicts, and shows how European paradigms of fisheries exploitation were thus imposed on Gold Coast fishing communities. The legacy of these decisions shall be brought to bear on Ghana's contemporary fishing industry.
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