in Burma, Ceylon, and India, many of these soldiers returned home and found themselves destitute. According to the Ex-Serviceman’s Union, the colonial government had made promises—of paid employment, disability pensions, business grants, and affordable housing—that were never fulfilled.2 Singing old war songs and marching in unison, the ex-servicemen, accompanied by more than two thousand supporters, were stopped en route by a group of armed police and instructed to turn back.
The official commission of inquiry that was appointed in the following weeks to investigate the events reported that the confrontation quickly became aggressive. The crowd, determined to pass, hurled stones and insults at officers. A few minutes later, just after 3:00 p.m., the head of police ordered his men to open fire in order to “control the mob.” Three demonstrators were shot dead and several others were wounded. The angry crowd retaliated. Yet they did not attack the governor’s residence, just a few blocks away, nor other centers of government power against which the men had been protesting; instead they burned and looted offices, warehouses, and wholesale and retail stores owned by Europeans and other foreigners.3
What became known as the Accra Riots have long been familiar to historians of Ghana. That day in February 1948 features consistently in nationalist narratives as a watershed moment that pushed the country on the path toward independence from Britain, which would come less than a decade later in 1957. But few have closely analyzed what it meant for a very different (though inextricably linked) path that the country was on—toward becoming an emerging nation of African consumers.4 Although sympathy for the veterans no doubt rallied supporters that Saturday afternoon, much of the crowd also consisted of those fed up with the restrictive economy that had been imposed under Britain’s rule. For decades the colonial government had enabled large foreign trading firms, mostly European, to control the West African import-export market. Allowed to operate with little government regulation, large firms dominated the commercial scene, controlling commodity prices, credit terms, and channels of distribution. During the war, essential imported commodities like rice, sugar, milk, kerosene, and cotton piece goods were in short supply, and the resulting spike in prices fueled resentment against these large firms, who by that point controlled more than two-thirds of all goods that were imported and sold in the colony.5 Various groups including African nationalists, businessmen, retailers, cocoa farmers, and consumers accused foreign firms, especially those belonging to the Association of West African Merchants (AWAM), of artificially inflating prices, conspiring with the colonial government, monopolizing trade, and cheating customers.6 Though some of these accusations were overblown, many were on target. Firms associated with AWAM had engaged in price fixing and engineered market sharing agreements that cut Africans out of commercial trade and restricted consumer aspirations.
The Accra Riots were thus about a broad and growing sense of economic injustice and financial frustration as much as they were about the soldiers themselves. The government-appointed commission that investigated the underlying causes of the protest reported that the administration’s failure to seriously address rising prices and allegations against AWAM firms paved the way for “the resentment which manifested itself in the looting and useless destruction which took place in Accra and elsewhere.”7 After all, this was not the first time Gold Coasters had protested the practices of foreign firms. Cartel-like behavior and price fixing were among the primary causes of the Gold Coast cocoa hold-ups organized by farmers, brokers, and chiefs in 1920, 1930–31, and 1937–38.8 Similarly, in 1947, Nii Kwabena Bonne II, an Accra chief and businessman, created the Anti-Inflation Committee and sent an ultimatum to the city’s chamber of commerce demanding that firms lower profit margins and reduce retail prices. Several local chiefs supported the campaign and established Anti-Inflation Committees in their own districts. Underestimating the seriousness of these grievances, foreign firms brushed these demands aside. As a result, in January 1948 a month-long boycott of imported goods ensued.9
February 28, 1948, was not just the day ex-servicemen marched in protest; it was also the day several firms were to finally announce price cuts in an attempt to end the boycott.10 As the commission of inquiry under the chairmanship of Aiken Watson pointed out, a number of “spectators and sympathizers” that afternoon had actively participated in the boycott during the previous month.11 The marginal reductions announced by firms, however, were not enough. As the veterans were gathering at the Old Polo Grounds, organized looting and violence broke out in towns throughout the Colony and Ashanti regions, and intensified later that day as news of the shootings in Accra spread.12 The destruction ensued for several days. In response, on March 5, 1948, Governor Charles Noble Arden-Clarke declared a state of emergency. Special constables, including the European employees of a number of trading firms, were sworn in and provided with rifles and other equipment to police towns. The colonial government also brought in military forces from the Northern Territories and Nigeria to support the effort.13 In the end, losses from damage to property and looting were considerable, with costs estimated to be over one million pounds.14 Another loss was less obvious but more portentous: within days of the events, AWAM member firms also agreed that the association should be dissolved, a decision that forced companies to re-evaluate their business activities and finally address long-standing public criticism.15
The Accra Riots, and the simultaneous boycott, hint at the importance of consumer politics to decolonization but, just as important, they help us situate these and many other postwar dramas as part of a longer and larger struggle within Ghanaian society over access to commodities and consumer markets. Contrary to what nationalist narratives would have us believe, not all Gold Coasters joined the 1947 boycott, and events that followed were less black and white than they are often portrayed as being. For instance, Nii Bonne recalled that certain Kwawus, especially those in Korforidua, still bought from those boycotted firms “on the sly,”16 and a Union Trading Company (UTC) agent reported to his superiors that the women in Winneba “abused the menfolk” for obeying orders given by the chief and the police to not participate in the looting.17 Further, while African-owned businesses were supposedly spared, African sales managers and storekeepers employed by foreign firms received physical intimidation and death threats from looters at their homes and shops.18 Some of these threats turned fatal. In Sekondi, a group of men armed with bows and arrows attacked a United Africa Company (UAC) store and killed a watchman there.19 In a letter to the general manager of the UAC it was also reported that loyal African staff were denounced as “stooges” and their names posted on signs all over towns.20
High prices were not the only source of contention among angry consumers. Equally infuriating were the firms’ practices, carried out by both European and African staff, including behind-the-counter sales, conditional sales, refusal of sales, and favoritism given to employees’ relatives, wives, and girlfriends. Consumers complained that these actions contributed to artificial shortages. More important, they argued that such practices led to unfair distribution or sales based on a person’s ability to tap into personal networks.
This frustration was not new. In 1943, the colonial government had set up a commission of inquiry to investigate wartime shortages. Led by W. E. Conway, who was then the comptroller of customs, the commission conducted informal interviews with representatives of all the major firms, collected and examined evidence, and invited members of the public to submit complaints and suggestions in writing. It also held thirteen public hearings and listened to fifty-seven witness accounts. As one Accra customer testified, “During peacetime, I could go to any store and buy commodities such as tobacco, cigarettes, kerosene, candles, sugar, drinks, and drugs. But now it is impossible. . . . Whilst I cannot obtain these things in stores I could, provided I pay black market prices, obtain them from petty and private traders.” He later described purchasing kerosene from a woman’s private residence in Adabraka and declared to the commission, “I have been forced to buy on the black market.”21
Another Accra witness recounted how firms’ agents and shopkeepers regularly reserved goods for their “market women friends” and influential people in town, such as “certain lawyers and pressmen,” to gain their favor.22
