British Northern Territories

The savanna behind the Gold Coast, taken to keep the French out and then governed as a labour reserve. Britain declared the protectorate in 1902 over the territory north of Ashanti, after a decade of treaty-racing with France and Germany across the West African interior in which officers collected signatures from chiefs faster than they could survey the land. The region held the Dagomba, Mamprusi, Gonja and Wa states with long dynastic histories, alongside many acephalous communities without centralised chieftaincy, which frustrated a British administration that needed chiefs to rule through and in places invented them. Almost nothing was invested there. The colonial economy was built in the forest and on the coast, where cocoa, gold and the ports were, and the north's function in that system was to supply migrant labour walking south for the season. Missionary schooling was restricted for decades on the theory that educated northerners would be harder to govern, and the region entered independence with a fraction of the south's literacy. That gap is still measurable in Ghanaian development statistics a lifetime later. The territory joined Ghana in 1957 with the other three British administrations. Tamale is its principal city. The White Volta and Black Volta run through it. The protectorate covered roughly two-fifths of what became Ghana. Its northern boundary with French territory was fixed in 1898. Mole national park is in the region. Guinea worm and river blindness were long endemic along the Volta. Northern recruits were heavily represented in the Gold Coast Regiment in both world wars.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history