Political Concepts Used in the “Constitution of the New Fantee Confederacy” in the Gold Coast 1870 – A Case of Adopted or Hybridised European Concepts?

Probably the earliest African attempt to frame an innovative political structure to deal with encroaching European power was the establishment of the Fanti Federation in the Gold Coast in 1870. Their foundational document, the “Constitution of the New Fantee Confederacy” is a uniquely progressive document both from a developmental and from a democratic point of view. It stipulated policy aims more ‘advanced’ than almost all in Europe at the time, from “.. establishing school for all children within the Confederation..”, and “schoolmistresses procured to train and teach the female sex..”, to “To determine, according to the majority votes of the people, the succession to the stool of any king or chief”. The document derives from meetings in the town of Mankessim between kings and chiefs of the Fanti (Coastal) region of the Gold Coast and thus clearly contradicts the common-place view that early African ‘nationalism’ (or democratic thought) is a European import. This still raises the question what political concepts were used in the Fantee Federation discourses, how they were used, and how they relate to more mainstream European uses of those concepts. The paper analyses key concepts in the Fantee Federation discourse by means of both qualitative and quantitative hermeneutics (scoring frequencies and shifts in specific meanings of concepts), and finally asks the question if we should speak here of borrowing, hybridisation, vernacularisation, or simply re-invention of concepts.