Joseph Dawson (1834- 18?) was active in helping draw up the constitution of the Fante Confederation in the 1860s, and later acted as an intermediary between the Asantehene, the ruler of Asante, and the British during the Sagrenti war of 1873-74.
He was born in 1834, and may have attended the Methodist Night School at Cape Coast. He was a Fante by birth, but there are no records of his parentage. In 1866 he was indicted for importing five persons from Ouidah, Dahomey, to Cape Coast as his domestic slaves. The five were ordered to be freed.
Subsequently, Dawson took a lively interest in the political affairs of the Gold Coast, and was the political correspondent of the ‘African Times’, published in London. He was a student of the ideas of Dr. J. Africanus Horton of Sierra Leone, author of ‘West African countries and Peoples’ (1868), concerning government and politics in Africa, and he drew on some of these ideas in helping to draft the constitution of the Fante Confederation.
One of the more important of the proposals he put forward concerned the establishment of a Fante parliament (which, like Horton, he called a “Diet”) consisting of two houses, one for the kings and one for the commons. He also proposed the creation of an executive committee of ministers. He tried to avoid discord among the kings by suggesting that they should take the presidency of the confederation in turn.
He also included detailed financial regulations, which provided for plenipotentiaries to submit to the Diet all accounts of revenue and expenditure. In addition, he appealed to the Fante people “to root out the love of prejudice and the desire to rise on the ruin of their neighbours, so as to make way for this Confederacy.”
Although he claimed to have been the Secretary of the Confederation, J. B. Amissah, who was recorded as being the Secretary in 1871, stated that he was a Clerk of the Court and Receiver-General of the Confederation.
When the Confederation government declared itself free of British control in 1869, the responsibility for its financial and military welfare fell on the shoulders of the kings and chiefs. The situation demanded the services of an experienced coordinator, and Dawson was appointed as the Confederation’s travelling commissioner.
In this capacity, he wrote several letters to King Ghartey IV (q. v.) of Winneba, the first president of the confederation, in which he gave his opinions about men and events. He sent reports to Mankesim, 20 mi (32 km) northeast of Cape Coast, the headquarters of the Confederation, which dealt with financial and political conditions, as well as about Asante intrusions into Fante territory.
Earlier, in 1868, when the British tried to end the war between the Confederation and Elmina, Dawson was one of three commissioners sent to negotiate peace terms with the Dutch and the people of Elmina.
Dawson and his colleagues were, however, unable to persuade the Confederation forces to end the siege, since the Confederation would not conclude a peace that permitted the Elminas to remain neutral in the event of another Asante invasion of the south.
After the ending of the Confederation, Dawson’s role as a mediator in the peace talks made him the choice of the British commander, Sir Garnet Wolsely, who led a force against Asante in the Sagrenti war of 1873-74, and who needed an experienced negotiator between himself and the Asantehene.
Later, in 1881, we hear of Dawson acting as a “political agent” of the French African Gold Coast Company in the Tarkwa district in what is now southwestern Ghana.
At this time both Dawson and Dr. Horton were prominent African concessionaires in this region. Here, in the early days of the gold-mining rush which occurred about that time, Dawson’s long experience in the Gold Coast business and affairs became useful.
For a time, until the arrival of a British district commissioner later in 1881, he was even able to influence the chiefs to the point of establishing his own courts to hear cases in an area where the traditional order was seriously disturbed by European gold mining activities.
We do not know more of Dawson’s activities after this, and his date of death is not recorded.
FRANCIS AGBODEKA
