Ghana Studies

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 1 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 1998 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 135 THE DIARIES OF A. C. DUNCAN-JOHNSTONE A Preliminary Analysis of British Involvement in the “Native Courts” of Colonial Asante VICTORIA B. TASHJIAN In the evening a most successful Concert was given by the newly formed Native Officials Club. The Concert was held in the Court House. There was one most excellent sketch, showing a Native Court and the administration of justice followed by an appeal to the D.C.’s Court. Amongst the good things in the sketch were: Mr. Martinson as the D.C. telling off the Omanhene ’s clerk for bad writing and unintelligible English; Mr. Ennin, a Government School teacher, as the Omanhene telling the D.C. that this clerk had been trained by the D.C. before he got him; Mr. Asamoah as the public letter writer whispering to the Omanhene what to tell the D.C.; Mr. Diogo as a Police Superintendent warning the D.C. against Asamoah, a dangerous man known as a mosquito, and shouting to his Police to stop these people talking; Mr. Acheampong in his original role of Court Registrar ordering the witnesses out of Court. The sketch was the hit of the evening and kept everyone in roars of laughter.1 Excerpt from the diary of A.C. Duncan-Johnstone, District Commissioner Ashanti Akim Juaso, Ashanti, 12 November 1923 1. A.C. Duncan-Johnstone, “Confidential Diary.” Rhodes House, Oxford, MSS.Afr.s.593, Volume I (1), 12 November 1923. This paper, an earlier version of which was presented at the African Studies Association annual meeting in 1996, draws primarily on material collected during a research trip to Rhodes House, Oxford in June 1996, which was made possible by a St. Norbert College Faculty Development Fund Summer Grant. This paper also draws upon research conducted in Kumase, Ghana in 1990, which was funded by the MacArthur Foundation , the Graduate School of Northwestern University and the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University. I am most grateful to Jean Allman, Larry Yarak and an anonymous reader for their perceptive and very useful critiques of various drafts of this essay. 136 Ghana Studies • volume 1 • 1998 Introduction This paper explores the nature of British influence in the so-called native courts or native tribunals which operated in the colonial territory that the British designated Ashanti. According to colonial policy, these courts were supposed to follow local, not British, legal customs. This neat picture is muddied, however, by the existence of British interventions in these courts. This paper takes a preliminary look at the way in which one British official, A.C. DuncanJohnstone , involved himself in the native courts, and the effects of his involvements on the courts. A brief introduction to the career of Duncan-Johnstone is called for before delving into his diaries, which detail his various intrusions into the Asante courts. Angus Colin Duncan-Johnstone was born on 24 June 1889.HewaseducatedatTrinityCollege,Glenalmond,andpassedtheEntrance Examination for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1908. Though he spent much of his career in Britain’s West African territories, he first served with a British Red Cross Expedition to Turkey in 1912–13. Duncan-Johnstone then moved on to West Africa, where he arrived in September 1913. Between 1913 and 1920 he held a variety of posts; starting as an Assistant District Commissioner in Asante, he quickly moved on to serve as Acting District Commissioner in various postings in Asante and the Northern Territories. During these years he also spent some months attached to the Chief Commissioner of Asante’s office, and two and one half years attached to the Gold Coast Regiment , during which time he also served as Officer in Charge of the Military Police and Prisons in neighboring Togoland. In 1920 Duncan-Johnstone received a promotion to Class II Political Service, and subsequently served as District Commissioner of various districts in the Northern Territories and Asante. The diaries examined for this article date from this stage of his career, and cover the period when he served as District Commissioner of Ashanti Akim (Asante Akyem) from...