SARBAH, JOHN

John Sarbah (c. 1834-1892), father of John Mensah Sarbah, the nationalist lawyer, was one of the most prosperous African merchants on the Gold Coast in the last three decades of the 19th century, and one of the first African members of the Gold Coast Legislative Council.

Not much is known of his early life, but he probably belonged to the royal family of Anomabu. As he was a Methodist school teacher till 1870, it is inferred that he received his education from the Methodist Mission, of which he remained a staunch member throughout his life. He married Sarah Dutton, the daughter of Joseph Dutton of Cape Coast.

When he left teaching for full-time trading, he opened a big store in Cape Coast, and by the 1870s had small stores in ten coastal towns. He had considerable capital and engaged first in the export of palm oil, which had a good market in Europe. When the market for palm oil declined, he traded in palm kernel, and to cut costs employed his labourers to crack the nuts and take them to the coast for shipping abroad. He also traded in rubber, which became an important commodity in the 1880s.

Sarbah was particular about keeping accurate accounts. Though his accounting system was not advanced, he managed to balance his budget and to divert some of his capital into other forms of productive enterprises. He trained young men to be efficient managers, clerks, and trading agents and paid his managers on a commission basis to ensure greater efficiency. He advanced money to hawkers and travelling middlemen, but made sure that the money was paid back. He sent agents into the interior to trade, and so had an advantage over those merchants who stayed in the coastal towns. His business acumen gave him a good reputation among the merchants of London, Liverpool, and Manchester.

Seeing the advantage of trading with the Ivory Coast to the west, he opened permanent stations and depots in the vicinity of the Gold Coast-Ivory Coast frontier, where he had launches which carried goods along the coastal lagoons. He also engaged in import trading, dealing principally in textiles, and in a variety of goods including cooking utensils, matchets, mirrors, soap, and sewing machines.

During the gold rush of the 1880s, Sarbah, together with F. C. Grant, James Amissah, and James Hutton Brew, established the Gold Coast Native Concessions Purchasing Company Ltd. in 1882, with Sarbah as managing director. The company aimed to buy leases of mining concessions from the chiefs and sell them at huge profits to the European mining companies. The venture, however, was short-lived and collapsed after a year.

Sarbah took a continuing interest in education, and when the Methodists decided to abandon the Wesleyan High School at Cape Coast, (later to become Mfantsipim School) he was one of those who contributed money to revive it. He did military service, and was a captain in the Gold Coast Rifle Volunteer Corps, formed in 1863. Under his leadership as captain, the Volunteer Corps took part in the Sagrenti War of 1873-74, against Asante.

Although he played no part in the Fante Confederation, he agitated in the 1880s for African representation on the Legislative Council. In 1887 he was one of those appointed as Extraordinary members of the Legislative Council, of which he subsequently became a member from 1888-92. His speeches in the council dealt with superfluous government expenditure, and he advocated the improvement of trading conditions and an increase in government-sponsored technical schools. But he did not live long enough to take part in the nationalist activities of the late 1890s, in which his son John Mensa Sarbah participated.

His wealth enabled him to send his children to Taunton School, Devon, England, for their education, and one of them Joseph Dutton Sarbah, died there in 1892. Unlike most of the merchants who were his contemporaries, his business did not collapse after his death, but continued until 1921, even though his famous son, John Mensah Sarbah preferred legal practice to business.

GRACE BANSA