Tetteh Quarshie. The Ascension of a Pioneering Cocoa Farmer to a Ghanaian 'lieu de mémoire'

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject History - Africa, grade: 1,0, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften), course: Agriculture and Colonialism in Africa, language: English, abstract: This paper aims at examining the mythical figure Quarshie and its interpretation. How have the narratives about the beginnings of cocoa cultivation in the Gold Coast changed throughout the 20th century and how was Tetteh Quarshie constructed as an enduring national 'lieu de mémoire' that has continued to trigger fascination within the Ghanaian society? This paper will try to give an answer to this question. The paper proceeds in three steps: Firstly, it presents the introduction of cocoa into the Gold Coast in order to enlighten this complex process marked by a few different actors, among these prominently stands Quarshie. Different sources as well as assessments in the later literature are analysed in this context. The second chapter deals with the evolution and structures of the ensuing cocoa boom in Ghana that, despite temporal declines, still continues today. As many historians have underscored, cocoa cultivation was successfully performed by local smallholder farmers largely independent from British influence - as a consequence, the construction of Quarshie as a 'lieu de mémoire' further accentuates the indigenous and emancipatory character of the Ghanaian cocoa industry. In a third step, the commemorative culture about the beginnings of cocoa cultivation in the Gold Coast is retraced, from earlier diverging interpretations to the incremental exaltation of Quarshie. Both theoretical literature on commemoration culture and topical Ghanaian newspaper articles are thereby used. In fact, the current project of the Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Museum proves that cocoa and its history remain at the core of the Ghanaian self-image - and that Quarshie's name seems indispensable in this regard. It is thus high time to track down this highly questionable narrative of the cocoa introduction in the Gold Coast, which has not been done yet in detail. In addition, a goal on the theoretical meta-level of the paper is to underline the merits of the 'lieux de mémoire'-approach, particularly in the (West) African context where this has not yet been widely applied.