ABSTRACT
DURING the first half of the nineteenth century, rapid social change had been confined to a narrow coastal belt where the development of commercial activities had created a chain of small urban centres. The second half of the century was to witness a dramatic increase in the extent of British political control over not only the coastal towns but the territories of the Ashanti Confederacy and those areas which now comprise the Northern Region of contemporary Ghana. In less than fifty years, peoples whose previous contact with the British had been minimal or non-existent, were to be incorporated into a wider political framework, which also included those coastal groups who had already experienced a prolonged period of culture contact.
