This book presents a broad analytical framework for the history of southeastern Ghana within the context of a representative study of one of the country’s most important political and economic forces. The 150,000 Krobo are the most numerous of the Adangme-speaking peoples. They are located in the mountains just inland from the coast and are the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. During the nineteenth century they were one of the small states of the Gold Coast in the formative stages of political and cultural development. After the middle of the nineteenth century they became economically and politically one of the most important groups in the country because of their dominant role in commercial production of export crops. Historical research on Ghana has produced mostly case studies of the large, centralized Akan states. Wilson’s study is an account of one of the smaller societies without which a history of Ghana would be incomplete.

Louis E. Wilson is an associate professor and chair of the African Studies Department at Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063.