Abstract
Ghana was a victim of the British Empire's colonialism, from the establishment of the South as a Crown's possession in1874 until the independence of the country in 1957. Basically, colonialism can be defined as a particular form of imperialism: the 'colonial imperialism', notion was mainly developed by economists, political scientists and historians. For the Marxists and their heirs, colonial imperialism first means economic exploitation. Thus, for them, the colonial Ghanaian state would be a committee for managing the businesses of the metropolitan British bourgeoisie . But, the political scientists and the historians tried to go beyond the Marxist economic reductionism. For them, colonial imperialism, as a form of totalitarianism, also deals with the idea of racial and civilizational superiority, and, as a particular shape of imperialism, it also implies the will to universalise a culture by assimilation or, at least, acculturation . Thus, these schola, see in the Ghanaian colonization not only an economic exploitation but also a British empire's attempt to spread the Civilization, notably by imposing Judeo-Christian ways of thinking and believing in Ghana trough collusion between the State and the Church. Civilizing mission and evangelising mission became the two facets of the White man's burden, popularised by Rudyard Kipling , the main justifications of political domination. These two visions of colonial imperialism tends to make us think that 'colonial state' was a simple expression of the interests of the expatriate bourgeoisie and clergy. It is interesting to discuss the pertinence of this hypothesis by wondering to what extent did the colonial Ghanaian state openly take sides with metropolitan capitalist interests and missionary lobbies against the indigenous interests? This essay will try to show that most of the time, the state acted on behalf of the British businessmen and the men of the Church against the natives and that certain factors sometimes qualify in their partial behaviour.
