It is not easy to see that these employees were of African descent. As for possible links to African nationalists, first there was the very real risk of being seen to be associated with the 'wrong local people' and it would seem that unless correspondence has survived, evidence would be slight. Barbour-James wrote a book (preface dated London 14 July 1910) and as well as thanking various known-to-be-white colonials he thanks S S A Cambridge (an Afro-Guyanese law student in London), the Crowther Nicolls and E J Hayford (West Africans) and seven men - J W Yorke, J H Bissue, L A Archer, T. M. Tulley, H. M. Bruce and W W White. I think Archer was Afro-Caribbean.
Back in 1984 I contributed a 4 page article to Ghana Studies Bulletin # 2 which notes the absence of 'race' in the CO files.
I quote from that article
Gold Coast annual report 1902 says 589 men in the police force 'officered by European officers and four West Indian Superintendents'.
Governor Nathan told the CO in London 'we should again try B. Guiana. Our experience with other West Indian Colonies in this matter has not been encouraging'.
The post office had no White supervisors in 1902 and Barbour-James took two of his BG clerks with him according to his own papers.
The Gold Coast administration in the 1900-1911 period numbered 450 and at least 40 were Caribbeans.
B-J's daughter Amy, born London 1906, was raised in London and heard about the Gold Coast from her father and step-mother (from 1919) Edith Goring. She told me there were "hundreds" of West Indians in the colony.
Jeff Green
========================================
Message Received: Aug 12 2014, 01:01 PM
From: "Grannum, Guy"
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: PhD student on BWI colonial officials in Africa needs advice
There may be material in The National Archives on colonial administrators such as correspondence, appointments and promotions - a good source to start with is the Colonial Office list statement of services (annual from 1865) because these tend to give place of birth for colonial administrators - appointed by the colonial office. Depending on the grades of the people he is looking for the annual blue books of statistics (from 1820) give details of appointments for people appointed by the colonial office, governor and local government but not lower positions - these don't give place of birth.
My great-grandfather and his brother from Barbados both served in various roles in West Africa before finally retiring in Kenya and Mauritius respectively. Although both had English wives there is no evidence that they had close ties to the UK. I don't know how common it was for West Indian colonial administrators who worked in Africa to move to the UK - why would they - it was cold and grey!
Ethnicity / colour is not recorded on application forms and rarely in correspondence unless it is relevant. I don't know how relevant ethnicity is to his research.
Guy
----------------------------
Guy Grannum
Discovery Product Manager
The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, TW9 4DU, UK
tel: +44(0)20 8392 5330 x 2307
url: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: The Black and Asian Studies Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
Sent: 12 August 2014 09:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: PhD student on BWI colonial officials in Africa needs advice
If the remit of this research were to extend to cover missionary societies, there are records of at least one instance (and there may have been more) of the London Missionary Society employing a Caribbean couple as missionaries in the very early years of the C20, ca 1900-1910, in North-Eastern Rhodesia. They get a mention in one of Robert Rotberg's books on Christian missions in Northern Rhodesia / Zambia, and details will be found in the LMS/Council for World Mission Archive in SOAS. The LMS regarded this as something of a failed experiment, if I remember rightly.
Peter
Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
Editor, University of Edinburgh Journal
Edinburgh
Email: [log in to unmask]
On 12/08/2014 08:05, msherwood wrote:
> A PhD student from the USA has asked for advice - other than Jeff
> Greene, whom else could he ask for help? Or for sources (I told him to
> go to the National Archives, and ask Rhodes House and the Royal Af.
> Society)
>
>
>
>
>
> I am a Phd student at the University of Wisconsin, and I am working on
> a project about "Caribbean colonizers," people from the Caribbean who
> worked for the French and British colonial administrations in Africa.
> I am also interested in finding links between these colonizers and
> black intellectuals and black internationalist organizations during the interwar years.
> .....
>
> I've been doing some searching in Gold Coast newspapers, and have
> found a number of names of West Indian Police Superintendents,
> Sanitation inspectors, customs officers, postmasters, etc. I have not
> found any strong connections to black internationalist groups in
> London. So far the main lead I have is John Alexander Barbour-James, a
> man from British Guiana who worked as a postmaster in the Gold Coast,
> and then moved to London where he was involved in the African Progress
> Union, and likely other movements. His wife Edith Rita Goring seems to have followed a similar trajectory.
>
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