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purposes, and to subjects of other Paramount Stools for cocoa production,
raised more problems and occasioned more conflicts than could
immediately be solved. For one thing, boundaries between tracts of waste
land belonging to different Stools were not always clearly determined, and
the selling of such lands inevitably caused boundary disputes. As there were
no registered titles, neither for the chiefs nor for the concessionaires, the
same plot ofland was sometimes granted to several buyers. Moreover, the
seller was not necessarily a Paramount Chief but, as in the case of the Akim
Abuakwa land sales (cf. Hill 1963: 139), might well be some sub-chief.
If anything reflects the loosening of the land tenure system since
colonization, it is that the sub-chiefs did not obey the two fundamental rules
which formed the backbone of Akan communal land tenure. Firstly, they
did not consult the Paramount Chief on the alienation 0 fland to non-Stoo I
subjects; and secondly, they did not hand over the required 'one-third' of
the receipts to the Omanhene who, in fact, received nothing at all (cf.
Ibidem: 138-60). All this, together with the fact that chiefs might well
squander the land (which, after all, also belonged to their subjects) or
appropriate the entire income from land sales for private purposes, led the
Colonial Government in 1894 to propose the Crown Lands Bill. This, it was
assumed, would ensure the concessionaire of a firm title while it would also
allow the Government to raise so much revenue from concessions and sales
of land that it would be able to provide all areas with adequate
transportation and communication. In view of the fact that the
metropolitan government in London required colonial dependencies to
shift for themselves financially, this was a highly important reason for
bringing land transactions under government control.
We are not concerned here with the details of the proposed 1894
Crown Lands Bill nor with the subsequent proposed Lands Bill of 1897.
While referring the reader to the relevant literature,19 we want to draw
special attention to the opposition that arose against both proposals and
which, under the direction of the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society
(ARPS) founded at Cape Coast in 1897, swelled to an irresistible flood
which ultimately made the Colonial Government desist from any
substantive lands legislation.
Although the object of these Bills was commonly interpreted as
being 'to take away from the people all theirlands' (Kimble 1963: 335), and
although Kimble saw no reason to suppose that the opposition movement,
so successfully led by the ARPS, was not conducted 'on behalf of the general
interest' (Ibidem: 343), we do not thin k this view correct. It was, of course,
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