Race, gender and status in Gold Coast Methodism, 1885-1920

Cotterrell, Ann Zillah (2025) Race, gender and status in Gold Coast Methodism, 1885-1920. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

Abstract

This is a study of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the British colonial Gold Coast (now part of Ghana) between 1885 and 1920. It focuses on the framing of differences defined by race and gender, and develops the discussion of conflict in this area to encompass changing perceptions of manhood and womanhood on the part of both European missions and African congregants and ministers. The thesis adds to research on racial divisions and hierarchies constructed and contested in British colonial West Africa from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries through a focus on the structures and rules of the Methodist Church. Membership of the Church, and the education provided by the church, conferred status, dignity and respectability, but also, in this period, relegated Africans to subordinate and inferior positions within the Church hierarchy. Africans, some of whom were educated, longstanding Methodists, did not accept the status and authority claimed by inexperienced missionaries who arrived with cultural and racial predispositions formed in Britain. This situation, along with British criticism of African culture, and racial segregation in the twentieth century, offended African Methodists and they demanded greater autonomy, expressing their demands in terms of ‘manhood’. Demands were heightened following the First World War as Gold Coast Methodism became more independent economically. The growing assertiveness within the church contributed to the parallel processes within coastal elites that took expression in the form of modern political and national organisations. While men claimed respect and autonomy in terms of ‘manhood’, African women engaged with the imposed new gender ideology and the requirements of ‘womanhood’ in British Methodist culture. Methodist education for girls aimed to produce cultural changes in Gold Coast family life, but also demonstrated new forms of autonomy and independence for women. The thesis argues that the defence of male and female honour systems was maintained during a lengthy process of ideological change, punctuated by dissension, in which British perceptions of race, gender, and status were constantly challenged. Using sources from the archives of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, the Wesley Deaconess Institute, and African newspapers, the study is informed by the writings of French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, and by comparative historical research on other colonial contexts.

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