THE BOND OF 1844: EVENTS LEADING TO THE BRITISH CONTROL OVER GHANA (1700–1900): THE TUSSLE BETWEEN THE ASANTEHENE AND THE BRITISH CROWN OVER THE RIGHTS TO RULE GHANA.

Although English traders had operated on the Gold Coast as early as 1553, the first 175 years of their presence there was devoted almost exclusively to the establishment and maintenance of their small trading stations (including trade in slaves). Events during these early years gave no indication of the role that the chartered companies which initially administered the settlements and then the British Government itself were eventually to play in Gold Coast politics, for throughout that period not only the British, but all European traders, were “merely tolerated by Africans because they were useful, but they were neither liked nor feared.”

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, a subtle change had begun to take place in the role of the Europeans on the Gold Coast. This change began to occur when the growing coastal trade led to the rise of new urban settlements near the walls of the various European built forts. In describing the effects of these new African settlements, J.D. Fage wrote that “The limits of these (new urban settlements) took no account of the boundaries of the traditional authorities. Their inhabitants included both permanent and transient emigrants from a number of states, some of them probably in the remote interior. The economically less successful of them were apt to make their living by performing services of various kinds for the occupants of the forts or even by finding regular employment as artisans, servants, or soldiers within them… There were indigenous ways in which Africans could solve the divisions and conflicts of authority arising in such cosmopolitan communities, but in the last resort, particularly when it came to the defense of the community against outsiders, authority naturally tended to reside with the commander of the forts and its soldiers and guns, and the inhabitants would also naturally tend to side with their own particular group of Europeans in conflicts between the various European nationalities.”

There existed almost from the very first, therefore, a moral obligation for the Europeans to protect Africans who had lost their traditional means of protection against the depredations of outsiders because they now resided along Forts controlled by these Europeans. This initial and highly nebulous obligation slowly but surely drew the British merchants and subsequently the Government into the mainstream of Gold Coast politics (in some ways they courted this deeper engagement). Eventually the growth in economic and political importance of these settlements and the subsequent claims to sovereignty over them eventually proved to be one of the major problems in Anglo-Asante relations.

In the meantime, however, there was yet another result of the European impact on the African situation which created the actual basis of the problem. This was the revolutionizing of the traditional economic and political pattern throughout the entire region of West Africa. In a comment on this revolution, J.D. Fage wrote: “In the broadest sense, what was happening to the Gold Coast, and to West Africa in general (in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) was that it was being turned about-face. With the development of European maritime trade on the coast (mainly in slaves), new foci of economic and political change were evolving in the south in the coastlands and in the adjacent forest country, instead of, as hitherto, in the northern savanna country bordering the Sahara with its camel-borne trade with North Africa.”

As a result of this changing trade pattern, two states arose on the Gold Coast where hitherto there had existed no indigenous states of comparable stature. These were the Fante in the coastlands and the Asante in the adjacent forest country. The Fante enjoyed the lucrative position of middlemen in the prevailing system of trade and they united in order to control the trade routes and thus establish their own conditions of trade. Conversely, the Asante had, by the end of the eighteenth century, secured control over the supply of slaves and gold to the coastal markets and of the distribution of the European imports received in exchange, over a wide area of the regions north of the upper reaches of the Pra River. The situation was one which could eventually lead only to conflict, for as the Asante Empire continued to grow in both power and influence, it could not accept its lack of direct access to the sea. It is true that the Asante had, by virtue of their capture (from the Denkyira) of the Dutch Note at Elmina Castle, been brought into direct contact with the coast as early as 1700. However, ownership of the castle did not in any way guarantee unimpeded access to the coast at Elmina because the Fante occupied the territory which lay between the southern portion of the ring of states which comprised provincial Asante and the coast. It was only natural, therefore, for the Asante to eventually undertake a drive to the sea in an effort to eliminate the coastal middlemen. Conversely, however, this was a move which those middlemen could not and would not permit without a struggle.

The Asante, clearly aware of the Fante attitude and the strength of the Fante states, combined with the latent hostility of their own restive provinces which bordered on Fante territory, were very cautious in their handling of the situation. Even so, by 1765, tensions had increased to such an extent that a clash between the two peoples appeared unavoidable. In fact, early in 1755 the Asantehene, Osei Kojo, actually began to gather his army for an invasion of Fante territory in retribution for what he viewed as a Fante act of treachery. This punitive expedition was abandoned at the last minute because Osei Kojo died before he could complete his preparations. A subsequent twenty-year period of successional disputes then made it impossible for the Asante to organize sufficient forces to carry out the operation. Nevertheless, this was only a postponement.

Osei Bonsu became Asantehene in 1800 and by 1806 he had completed a series of punitive wars within the Empire which secured his position as Asantehene and reestablished his authority over the provinces of the Empire. He was thus ready to pick up Osei Kojo’s quarrel and when the Fante refused to surrender a fugitive to the Asantehene’s Justice, he had a legitimate excuse for waging war. Even at this stage he was reluctant to engage the Fante in open warfare. Nevertheless, after several futile attempts at negotiation, the Asante army was finally launched into Fante territory early in 1806.

The resultant campaign was short and decisive. The Asante won several small victories in the border country and then advanced swiftly toward the sea. By May 1806, the main Fante army had been met and utterly defeated within four miles of Cape Coast, near the town of Abora. The military reputation of the Fante as the strongest power in coast politics was utterly destroyed and the Asante army swept virtually unimpeded from one end of the coast to the other.

Brief flare-ups of Fante resistance required follow-up campaigns in 1811 and 1814, but the 1806 invasion had clearly decided the issue and the balance of power on the coast had been completely altered. Not only had the military power of the Fante been broken but so also had the of Akyem and Akwapem. In addition, the Asantehene had gained, by right of conquest, the Notes for certain of the coastal forts thus forcing the Dutch and the British to recognize Asante supremacy by virtue of paying the stipulated rent to Kumasi. Moreover, the Fante states were formally incorporated into the Asante Empire by being placed under the rule of Asante governors. The result or all this was political chaos; but worse was yet to come.

At the very height of the political upheaval, the economic balance of the Gold coast received a strategic blow. In 1807 the British Government abolished the Slave trade. With one stroke some nine-tenths of the trade of the British African Company of Merchants trading to Africa had become illegal. At first, the Company made an unsuccessful attempt to have the application of the abolition Act postponed. This was followed by an application to the Government for an increased grant while “making a general tender of their (the Company’s) services in the execution of whatever policy the Government should decide to pursue in that part of Africa in the future.” Just like the British merchants, this abolition of the slave trade hit the Asante empire pretty hard. Their main reason for fighting the Fante and other coastal powers for control of trade routes to the coast was based on the lucrative nature of the slave trade. Given that they were getting the slaves from the interior and north of present-day Ghana, they did not want any middleman taking a cut from their bounty in human flesh. The stage was then set for conflict with the British.

In the circumstances, it is rather surprising that the British Government did not decide that it had no further use for the Gold Coast Forts. The Abolitionists in Britain, however, were strongly opposed to reducing the British interests in Africa (One of the double-edged natures of supposed allies to black people among white Europeans). Zachary Macaulay, and those who thought like him, rather wished to see British influence extended to promote the “civilization” of Africa, particularly by fostering new branches of ‘legitimate’ and less harmful trade. It was in response to this prompting that the Government decided to send a Commission of Inquiry to the Gold Coast in order to collect information about the potentialities of West Africa. The Commissioners reported in July 1811, and although they recommended that certain of the forts be given up, they were in agreement that the British presence should be maintained on the coast in order to ensure that positive steps were taken to stop the slave trade.

With their continued existence on the Gold Coast thus assured, the Company’s officials were faced with the task of adjusting themselves to “a new state of affairs in which their chief trade had ceased to exist, and what may be called “the Asante Question” came more and more to occupy their attention. Certainly, some form of agreement had to be reached between the British and the Asante if the Company was to achieve its prime objective: the assurance of steady ‘legitimate’ trade and open trade routes. That is, a means had to be found whereby the perpetual threat of new Asante invasions caused by disputes with the coastal states over large yet vague and unsettled claims to authority, tribute or compensation, could be removed.

The first move toward finding some form of settlement came sometime about 1810. At that time the Asantehene asked the Governor of Cape Coast Castle to send an officer to reside in Kumasi. For reasons which have never been made clear, this initiative was never acted upon. There therefore followed a period of some twenty years of confusion before the situation was even partially clarified. Unsuccessful attempts were made in 1817 and 1620 to negotiate an Anglo-Asante treaty which would settle the problem. The failure of the British to honor those treaties so angered the Asantehene that in mid-1820 he ordered the Asante traders to cease visiting Cape Coast Castle and other British forts, and to trade only with the Danes and the Dutch. This action then prompted the British to become more and more concerned with the protection of their own traders and the costal ethnic groups in particular the Fante, from what might possibly have been an irresistible Asante drive to the sea.

Despite the passage of time, the situation remained unimproved. The dispatches written by Mr. John Hope-Smith, the Governor-in-chief from 1816 until 1622, clearly illustrate how completely at variance were the fundamental assumptions of the two parties. On the one hand, the Governor firmly denied that the Asante had any jurisdiction over Cape Coast. On the other hand, the Asantehene insisted that the inhabitants of cape Coast were as much his subjects as the rest of the Fante. Neither side would concede anything and trade, which the Asantehene’s blockade had already caused to dwindle to almost nothing, ceased altogether during the first months of 1621. Unfortunately, these negotiations did not take place because a new development was injected into the situation.

In their reports, the 1816 and 1817 Select Committees had recommended that the Company should continue to administer the Gold Coast, but that the Governor should be appointed by the British Crown. These recommendations, combined with the advice of several influential Britons, convinced the Government that something had to be done. It was therefore decided to abolish the Company and institute Government control of the Gold Coast Forts. In July 1821 the transfer was effected, and the Gold coast settlements were placed under the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Charles MacCarthy. This move coincided with the final tightening of the Asante blockade of Cape Coast.

On his arrival at Cape Coast in April 1822, MacCarthy therefore inherited the strong probability of a war with the Asante. Even so, he made no overtures to Kumasi because he felt the Asante blockade to be merely a local quarrel not affecting the British generally. In the face of this lack of diplomatic initiative, it required only one spar to detonate the explosive situation. This spark was provided by the Asante at Anomabo when they arrested a Fante sergeant in the British service there. Commenting on the significance of this incident, Metcalfe writes: “This unfortunate (sergeant) summed up the conflict in his own person. As a soldier he was a subject of King George. As an Anomabo he was claimed as a subject of the Asantehene. The prestige of either power was so involved that neither could admit the others claim. For the British a climb-down would have condemned them to continue in the forts merely on sufferance: for the Asantehene it would have been the signal for the defection amongst the recently conquered and still restless tribes.”

Although initially in favor of a passive approach to the problem, MacCarthy was forced to take strong measures when the sergeant was put to death. A punitive expedition was dispatched in response to this outrage’ and, badly bungled though it was, this military effort attracted offers of assistance from many neighboring chiefs who were always alert for any opportunity to secure their independence from the Asante. Thus, the complexion of the dispute was completely changed, for such an offer actually constituted a revolt against the Asante authority over these states established in the 1807 defeats of these Coastal groups. Unfortunately, the new Governor does not appear to have understood this and the offer was accepted with the result that the alliance soon included all of the coastal states except Elmina. Subsequently, the alliance assumed even greater significance when the inland states of Wasaw and Denkyira also went into rebellion by joining the allies after the allied repulse of a rather tentative Asante invasion of the coastal region in August 1823.

In the face of this popular support, MacCarthy felt that the Asante would come to terms and that an early peace would be arrived at. Thus, he clearly misunderstood the implications of his policy for the Asante could never accept the loss of their newly acquired southern provinces so casually. Indeed, they reacted immediately to the latest defection. Asante armies moved south early in 1824 and on the 21st of January, they met and defeated a small force under Sir Charles himself at Adamanso. Sir Charles was killed in action and the Asante, who numbered more than 10,000, went on to crush any and all resistance. They then remained in the south until July 1824, when the combined effects of the rains, smallpox, dysentery, and the news that the Danish Governor of Christiansburg was organizing an expedition into Akim to attack them on the flank, decided them to abandon their campaign and return to Kumasi.

After this experience, both McCarthy’s successor, major- General Charles Turner, and the British Government entertained second thoughts about the advisability of remaining on the Gold Coast. The Government in England now wished only to patch up the peace with the Asante and reduce their coast establishments to Cape Coast Castle and Accra. General Turner questioned if even these were worth keeping and he suggested that the only effective alternative to complete withdrawal was to secure control of the whole coastline and detach the Gold Coast from Sierra Leone. However, the Colonial office was not prepared to consider either total abandonment or new annexations and the Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Bathurst, was in the process of preparing a new Commission of Inquiry under Mr. C. Rowan, when matters were taken out of his hands by events on the coast.

In January 1626, a new Asante army invaded the Fante territory. After foraging unchecked up and down the land for seven months this army attacked Accra to punish them for having abandoned their earlier alliance with Asante. General Turner had died and his replacement, Sir Neil Campbell was told to make peace if possible, and if not, to defend the forts and leave the locals to their own devices. Before he arrived on the coast however, the British had already won a decisive victory over the Asante army. Lieutenant-Colonel Purdon, the Acting Governor, had ignored his orders, taken to the field and, with some of the eastern chiefs, won a decisive victory against the Asante at Katamanso on August 7th, 1826. In Ward’s words, this complete defeat of the main Asante army decided the fate of the Gold Coast”

After the battle of Katamanso, the Asante returned to Kumasi and a long series of abortive negotiations began late in 1827. At first it appeared that peace would be easily established. However, the allied Coastal chiefs did not think this a fitting time to offer terms to the Asante and refused to enter into negotiations. The intransigence of the African allies, the negligible and declining trade, and the findings of Commissioner Rowan, who had managed to conduct his inquiry despite the war, all combined to prompt Governor Campbell to urge a drastic reduction of the scale of the local British establishment to the Dutch or Danish level. Lord Bathurst was prepared to go further and he issued orders for the forts to be abandoned at the end of 1827. But for this to be done without endangering the British merchants, it was necessary that further efforts be made to establish peace on the coast. Governor Campbell’s death in August 1827, placed his deputy, Major. H. J. Ricketts, in the position of mediator and by December 1827, terms of settlement had been agreed upon. But two events caused the negotiations to collapse. First, the Fante insisted on blockading Elmina to revenge themselves for the help the Elmina people had given the Asante. Second, the people of Osu refused to give up their Asante prisoners, including Pusua, a wife of the Asantehene. The Asante, who had released their prisoners, protested vehemently against what they viewed as the treacherous actions of the Fanti and Osu and negotiations were broken off. Ricketts tried to resolve the dispute but he left the Gold Coast in September 1829 without having succeeded.

This failure caused the British Government, which had thus far resisted pressure from various British commercial interests opposed to abandonment, to drop its plans for disengagement and agree to devise some permanent arrangements whereby the British merchants residing in the Gold Coast might be aided to protect themselves. These arrangements were worked out in the course of 1828 and under the terms of the agreement, the future management of Cape Coast and James Fort at Accra, as vested in the resident merchants. After some subsequent negotiation it was agreed that an annual grant of 4,000 pounds was to be administered by a committee of three London merchants approved by the Government. On the other hand affairs on the coast were to be conducted by a full-time, non-mercantile President who would preside over a council of five coast merchants elected from among their numbers by the merchants resident on the coast.

There were two immediate results from the reinstitution of Company control on the Gold coast. First, the search for a detente with the Asante appeared to come to a successful conclusion. Second, there began a period during which British influence among the coastal states increased greatly. These changes were largely due to the work of Captain George Maclean, the first-and-only President of the Council.

Maclean’ first task on arriving at Cape Coast in February 1830 was to conclude peace negotiations with the Asante; a task which was finally accomplished in April, 1831. Aside from a provision calling for a bond to keep the peace and return hostages, this treaty contained several articles that were of vital importance to future Anglo-Asante relations. These provided that (a) trade should be unrestricted, ‘panyarring’ (debt-slavery/debtor prisons), denouncing and ‘swearing on or by any parson or thing whatsoever’ were forbidden: (b) Denkyira, Assin, “and others formerly his subjects” were free from any allegiance to the Asantehene, but were prohibited from insulting him: (c) all quarrels were to be decided as already agreed by the parties. The significance of this last provision was that it mutually bound “the three parties, British, Asante and Fante allies, by precise rules” and the superior authority of the former is definitely acknowledged by the implied agreement of the other two to accept the Governor as referee in any case of dispute. There was also a tacit understanding that the allies would be afforded British protection in the event of any further aggression on the part of the Asante.

With the signing of this treaty, relations between the Asante on the one hand, and British and the coastal states on the other, were ostensibly settled and peace was restored. In fact, with the exception of some handful of quarrels which almost led to open warfare, the peace remained unbroken for more than thirty years. However, the lack of direct armed conflict notwithstanding, future events would prove that the seeds of discord had been sown by the very treaty which made this peace possible.

This was mainly due to the fact that the 1831 treaty formally recreated a semblance of the political organization which had existed prior to the war of 1807. That is, there once more existed the three political groupings of Asante, Fante and the British Forts. There were, however, several vital changes in the situation. Asante had been deprived of the fruits of the 1807 campaign and had even lost several territories which she had considered on her own even before that conflict. In addition, the Fante no longer enjoyed the military and political power which they had previously possessed for their pre-1807 military and political unity no longer existed. Finally, and of equal importance, the British situation had changed considerably. The most important of these changes was the official assumption of the role of arbiter in any future disputes between the African signatories to the treaty. Also, of major importance, however, as the recognition of the fact that as a result of the victory at Katamanso, the British had become the owners of the land on which their forts and castles stood (due to rights of conquest). Thus, the payouts of ground rent on the Notes, which had been such a source of trouble in the past, ceased.

These changes are most important because they indicate the three basic elements which would decide the course of events on the Gold Coast were destined to follow. First, the British, who were now operating from a position of some strength, were better able to exert some influence over the conflict-prone conditions in the immediate coastal hinterland. Second, the faction ridden coastal region was turning in its weakness more and more to the British in their search for a solution to both their internal problems and the constant threat from the Asante. Third, the Asante themselves harbored a deep-seated resentment over the loss of their southern provinces and the access which these provinces gave to the coast for lucrative trade.

It was to be the slow and tortuous expansion of British influence in response to the growing dependence of the coastal states which would cast the British in the role of Protecting Power when the Asante finally decided to redress this basic grievance. The development of the British ‘Protectorate’ on the Gold Coast is therefore a basic factor in the growth of the Anglo-Asante dispute and for that reason it should be reviewed in some detail.

Having established some kind of peace, Maclean proceeded to attempt the improvement of the economic situation on the Gold coast mainly to allow for the British merchants and traders to improve their trade and businesses. To accomplish this, he had to work to encourage the establishment of peace and security in the coastal states where the social and political organization had been severely damaged by the slave trade and the Asante invasions. He therefore began to attempt the extension of his Judicial authority far beyond the official limitations imposed by London.

He was very successful in this venture. However, even though this extension of British influence beyond the forts is of immense historical significance, it must be remembered that what ultimately proved to be a quasi-political authority was based solely or Maclean’s reputation as a wise and honest man among the chiefs. The British Government had expressly forbidden any extension of British territory, and to ensure compliance had restricted Maclean’s power to the forts alone. Consequently, although his influence was great — his extra-legal jurisdiction over African litigants of every rank and station expanded rapidly — he possessed no legal authority beyond the forts. The region within which MacLean’s de facto’ power and influence developed was referred to as the Protectorate among contemporary Britons with interest in the Gold Coast.

The area of the Protectorate was bounded on the east by the Volta and on the west by the Pra, and reached inland as for as the Asante Border. Not every state in this area accepted Maclean’s influence, however. “Most of the Accra plains were under Danish influence, and Elmina, Axim and other towns were under Dutch influence. On the other hand, certain areas to the west of the Pra including Wassa, Apollonia and Dixcove were in the British sphere. Roughly speaking, however, we may regard the British sphere as reaching from the Pra to the Volta, a distance of about 100 miles, and from the sea-shore inland to an average depth of about forty miles.

The limitations to Maclean’s authority and his need to rely heavily on personal influence required that he be most circumspect in his application of any power which African political figures consented to give him. For this reason, he did not interfere in the customs of ethnic groups who were not British subjects unless he thought that such customs were dangerous social evils.

The subtleties of MacLean’s position were lost on many people in England, in particular the anti-slavery advocates. As a result of complaints inspired by this lack of understanding and also because of several other complaints lodged against Maclean personally and against his administration, Lord John Russell, the Colonial Secretary at that time, decided that the only way to ensure the prompt application of the laws against the slave trade was for the Government to resume control of the forts. At the urging of the Treasury, however, he agreed to postpone taking any action until a special commissioner had visited West Arica and reported on the situation.

The Commissioner selected was Dr. R.R. Madden, “one of the most exalted of the anti-slavery advocates, who, in the temper of 1840, was hardly likely to do justice to Maclean’s activities in the Gold Coast. Indeed, Madden’s report was so obviously skewed against Maclean that the Colonial office, by that time under the direction of Lord Stanley, refused to act on its recommendations before a Select Committee of the House of Commons had gone into the whole question of West African affairs.

As a result, the Madden Report became virtually a dead letter and the British Government was guided instead by a number of the recommendations made by the Select Committee which was formed in 1842. Acting on the Committee’s advice, the British Government instituted two important measures. First, the Committee had recommended that the Crown should resume control of the Gold Coast and thus separate the judicial function, which had been such a major feature of Maclean’s work, from the political authority of the Queen’s representative. Accordingly, in 1843 the Government resumed direct control of the British forts on the Gold Coast, placing them under a Lieutenant-Governor responsible to a Governor-in-Chief in Sierra Leone. Under this new arrangement, Maclean was appointed Judicial Assessor (Chief Justice with a special responsibility for the administration of justice among the allied coastal states).

Maclean’s new post stemmed directly from the second Committee recommendation accepted by the Government. Having been most favorably impressed with MacLean’s work in the extension of British influence through the operation of his court, the Committee had recommended that the unofficial jurisdiction which had resulted from Maclean’s efforts be regularized in some manner. To implement this recommendation, the Government utilized the terms of the Foreign jurisdictions Act of 1843 which empowered the British government to exercise Jurisdiction in non-British territories provided that such jurisdiction was authorized by treaty between Britain and the foreign state concerned. The new Governor, Commander W. H. Hill, negotiated such authorizing treaties — generally known as the Bonds of coastal states in 1844.

First signed by eight chiefs, including those of Denkyira, Anomabu, Cape Coast and Assin, the Bond clearly and simply legalized and defined Maclean’s hitherto informal Jurisdiction. The agreement bound the coastal rulers to protect the rights of individuals and of property; to abolish such regressive customs such as human sacrifices and ‘panyarring’ and to authorize British judges to help them try crimes such as murder and robbery; so that the customs of the country would become molded to the general principles of British law. By 1849 the Akyem Abuakwa, many divisions of the Akyem Kotoku, the Wassaw, the Agona and other nations between the sea and the upper Pra had also signed the Bond. The number of coastal states adhering to the Bond was increased even more in 1850. In that year the Danish forts were purchased and although the British only inherited what had been a vague Danish influence over the Akuapem and Akyem which was not unlike that which had been enjoyed by themselves before the Bonds, the chiefs of these newly acquired areas of influence became adherents to the Bond soon after the transfer.

The Bond of 1844 has received a lot of attention among Ghanaian historians, scholars, and pan-Africanists. It is often ridiculed as Africans signing away their sovereignty to foreign powers. But this agreement as can be seen from the reading and events leading to it above, was done as a result of a complex local political system and events. For the myriad of coastal polities, this agreement served as a way to protect them from the rampaging Asante empire which had previously conquered them and not only exacted both death and destruction, but also exacted crushing tributes to the Asantehene. At the time of the signing of the bond, the British had not yet made demands for taxes from these coastal states partly because they were not yet fully established as rulers of the Gold Coast. So, in the eyes of these states, the British were obvious better overlords compared to the Asante. The truth of this position is in contention today because we have seen over the ages how the British turned to crushing taxes after they consolidated their colonial power over the Gold Coast. The Bond of 1844 established formal British rule over present day Ghana. But the Asante, still nursing the loss of their territory and subjects were not to be cowered easily as they will unsuccessfully launch multiple wars, historically now called the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th, Anglo-Asante wars in 1863–4, 1873–4, 1895–96, and 1900 respectively. After these wars, which resulted in the complete defeat of the Asante, the British formally took control of the entirety of resent day Ghana including wresting control of present-day Northern Ghana and Volta from the Germans after World War 1.

ADAPTED BY Umar MF AND EXPANDED ON FROM A 1960 THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA FOR A MASTERS DEGREE IN HISTORY BY PETER BARTON KILBY.