caa a22 4500 386344159 CHVBK 20180307111805.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e198911 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1017/S0021853700024476 doi S0021853700024476 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.1017/S0021853700024476 Rathbone Richard S.O.A.S., University of London A Murder in the Colonial Gold Coast: Law and Politics in the 1940s [Elektronische Daten] [Richard Rathbone] This article looks at a murder case which resulted from allegations of ‘ritual murder' in the course of Nana Sir Ofori Atta's final funeral rites in Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana, in 1944. At the level of the Akyem state, the accusations came from an affronted section within the polity, the Amantow Mmiensa, who had been defeated by the Stool in the course of the 1932-3 disturbances arising from the Native Administration Revenue Ordinance but whose grievances against the Okyenhene were of greater antiquity. The accused were all descendants of past kings of Akyem. At the level of the Gold Coast state, the case provided an arena for some of the best lawyers in the country to use their mastery of colonial law to challenge the legal and hence colonial establishment both in Accra and in London. At the imperial level, opponents of the Labour Government both from the right and the left were able to use the case to belabour a weak Secretary of State for the Colonies both within and outside the House of Commons. The Governor, Sir Alan Burns, was ultimately confronted with an entirely legal if eccentric challenge to his authority in the Gold Coast, and serious assaults on his competence in London. The article argues that the case poisoned relations between Dr J. B. Danquah, the inspiration behind the defence case, and the colonial establishment in Accra so much that the constructive relationship between some of the intelligentsia and the Governor before 1944 was destroyed. This in turn influenced the nationalists' reception of the reformed 1946 constitution and the attitude of the administration to the United Gold Coast Convention. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989 The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/3(1989-11), 445-461 0021-8537 30:3<445 1989 30 AFH https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700024476 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700024476 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Rathbone Richard S.O.A.S., University of London NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- The Journal of African History Cambridge University Press 30/3(1989-11), 445-461 0021-8537 30:3<445 1989 30 AFH CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge