As was the case in other parts of the world, the discovery of gold in Wassa in the 1870s stimulated the development of infrastructure for the exploitation of this metal, as well as the implementation of governance mechanisms to keep in check a large wave of unruly immigrants. Yet the slow speed and limited capacity of such advancements in the region set West African mining apart. Many of the earliest entrepreneurs in Wassa during the first gold rush in the 1870s and 1880s were former political officials and local European traders who tried to keep up production in spite of rather costly and irregular means transportation, since their petitions for public investment and services for the mining centers largely fell on deaf ears. Still, they hoped to make a considerable return from local gold deposits using alluvial mining techniques and light stamps that were generally transported to the interior either on the Ankobra river or on the heads of female porters. The construction of a government railway was slow moving. As a result, it took some twenty years for it to connect the area to the coast. Still, this was an accomplishment that played a key role in attracting an influx of significant South African mining capital, which in turn drew in more experienced mining directors and working-class miners from Britain, South Africa, and Australia in the early twentieth century. Also instrumental to the making of the second gold boom, which was referred to as the “jungle boom” in the international press, was the installation of heavy machinery, which brought West African gold-mining capacity up to global technological standards starting in the 1890s.

Debates over the labor question show that if efficient transportation was slow to arrive, proper colonial administration lagged even further behind. Therefore, this chapter introduces the colorful group of entrepreneurs whose ideologies, politics, and cutthroat promotion helped to shape large-scale mining in this loosely governed British protectorate, located far from colonial headquarters in Accra. It attempts to capture the character and background of the most prominent mining men during both boom periods. In the nineteenth century, when lobbying for the mining sector was in its earliest stages, mining magnates held a wide range of opinions on how best to tackle the labor question.

By 1910 the port of Sekondi in the western protectorate of the Gold Coast had already been serving as an entrepôt between Wassa and the expansive Atlantic world for several centuries. Dutch officials initially took an interest in the location because it possessed a good landing beach that was fairly well sheltered from strong winds and because of its close proximity to Wassa, which was known to be a rich source of gold. Although initially only land and water trade routes led to the gold-producing interior region, under the British colonial administration a government railway was constructed, reaching Tarkwa in 1901, Obuase in 1902, Kumase in 1903, and Prestea in 1911. Unlike the cocoa and palm oil trade that determined the success of colonial ports in the eastern protectorate, to the west, the gold trade stood above all else, putting Sekondi in a dominant position as neighboring ports fell into a state of decay. It was a place of comings and goings, not just in trade (other primary exports included timber and rubber) but also in people. When the mechanized gold mines were established in the 1870s, miners from Britain, Australia, and the United States landed there in large numbers by way of a surfboat on their way to Wassa, as did most Liberian contract workers, for whom it was safer to travel along the coast by sea. By the turn of the century, Sekondi began to attract a growing number of migrant workers traveling on foot as well. Although some undertook the risk of a solo voyage, most of them arrived in Sekondi as part of a small gang led by an African labor agent. Sekondi was where agents serving the gold mines usually came to engage new recruits for contract work on the concessions or other types of wage work.

But if a port is the greatest signifier of a region's integration into the world economy, then the story that Sekondi told was one of haphazard incorporation. Although British officials had clearly invested time and money in the port city, its potential had simultaneously been tempered by mediocre expectations and missed opportunities. After a brief stay here during her travels through West Africa, the novelist Mary Gaunt described “a pretty place” straggling “up and down many hills.”

This study provides a number of important insights into the global labor history of imperial gold mining in Wassa, as well as in a wider West African context. It has shone a spotlight on West African male and female laborers and labor agents in the mining sector to highlight their contributions to and positions in the socioeconomic and political transformations that touched their societies during the first decades of colonial rule. Capitalist intensification evoked a variety of responses by local actors. We have seen that mining concessions in Wassa relied on a wide variety of labor relations to keep up production, including contract workers, piece workers and tributary workers. This study demonstrates these laborers’ active and creative engagement with casual and contract work, and the related processes. Indigenous labor agents, responsible for bringing groups of contract men to the mines, negotiated much of the politics of labor control for European employers in the mechanized gold mines. Mine managers did not fully dictate the process of limited class formation, either. Many local and migrant laborers also worked out their potential gains and losses, using their bargaining power to develop a work schedule that fit their lifestyles and priorities. The bargaining power of African mine workers in Wassa also helped them to secure regular cash advances, high wage rates, and better treatment by their employers. They employed a variety of political and economic tools to carve out the best possible future for themselves, a future that tended to involve a continued preoccupation with agricultural production. Rarely were they wage slaves, though the coercive power of the mining firms should not be understated.

Mediators, Contract Men, and Colonial Capital takes a more nuanced view of colonial commerce by illustrating the impact of political culture on economic conditions in the Gold Coast. Although the actions of foreign mining entrepreneurs often indicated a strong intention to limit the process of industrialization (especially as it related to restricting workers’ tactics), the labor market was also shaped by their lack of control and limited influence over their new surroundings. In the context of imperial gold mining, mining magnates encountered different socioeconomic and political obstacles in different parts of the globe.

As we saw in chapter 1, rapid commercial expansion and the loose political relationship between the mines and the colonial administration promoted a special brand of economic pragmatism in West African gold mining. This chapter examines the consequences of these conditions through the lens of the labor market. Although the Gold Coast's emancipation proclamation of 1874 might have helped to bring some individuals into the employment of the mines who otherwise would have been forced to work for their masters, most former slaves did not seek out wage labor as a primary means of supporting themselves. And although the mines drew the large part of their labor force from southern Ghana during the first and second gold booms, many mine managers still viewed local labor as a problem that needed solving. Local Akan men and women tended to work on a casual and flexible basis, which in the eyes of the managers was too costly and inconsistent an option. On the other side of the labor spectrum stood one particular category of employee: the “agreement boy,” or contract man. Most managers agreed that it was vital “to encourage the boys to work on contract.” As one manager in neighboring Asante explained, “We get more work done and its [sic] far cheaper [and] it gives better satisfaction to both parties.” Men working on a contract-basis were favored by the companies because they required less supervision and less immediate capital due to the extended pay system. Furthermore, over the course of time they achieved a level of skill and efficiency that was essential to underground mining. Migrant laborers made up the bulk of this group in the nineteenth century. They were overwhelmingly Liberian Kru laborers, whom foreign employers often referred to as the “Irishmen of West Africa,” due to their humble yet hard work in the burgeoning palm-oil trade, as well as their diligent service in the British Royal Navy's antislavery patrols. They became the mining sector's most valuable workers during its initial decades of existence for their ability “to handle machines, to stoke, and generally to show the other natives both how to work and to exercise care.” Nevertheless, mine managers did not always get what they wanted.

The influx of capital into the Wassa mines reached a new low in 1905, leading many mining companies to cease production, and leaving just a few more-established and technically better-equipped ventures to prove that the industry could indeed pay its way. This period marked the end of the second gold boom in Wassa. The reduction in the number of competing mines did not, however, improve recruitment in the long term. The surplus of labor that had resulted from the closing of the smaller companies was quickly neutralized, because laborers continued to opt for work in the agricultural sector, especially cocoa farming. Therefore, within just a few months’ time, the gold mines found themselves on the verge of another severe labor shortage. For 1906, Frank Cogill, the secretary for mines, reported that as anticipated, “there has been a shortage of labour, which, although not sufficient to stop the mines from working, had the effect of forcing some companies to pay higher wages than those adopted by the Mine Managers’ Association.” This was the moment when the mines and the administration came together to collaborate on a new labor experiment, one made possible by colonial territorial expansion into the north as well as the expansion of the government railway. The discovery of labor-dense pockets in the savanna region of the north brought employers in the gold mines significant relief. Recruiting from these areas, generally directly through chiefs and colonial officials, forcibly detached wages from the demands of the market. As political promises infiltrated the recruitment machinery from the Northern Territories and became a huge motivating factor for local authorities, wage rates no longer had to adhere to the laws of supply and demand. However, in spite of all the cost-cutting measures and deception involved, this pattern of recruitment became the source of sharp political and social conflict.

This study has thus far aimed to show indirect recruitment through African labor agents as a system of voluntary bondage that could be precarious for both recruits, as well as recruiters, albeit in different measure and with different implications. It has done so in order to expand the discussion of the mobilization of African workers after the legal end of slavery, which has been dominated by the theme of colonial forced labor and other forms of mobilization similar to slavery.