This chapter examines the changes and continuities in the tenure of land itself, and of the rents obtained by the ultimate owners of land from its users. Section A considers a fundamental issue of colonial rule in Africa: the extent to which land was appropriated for European use. In Asante this was a potential transformation that, despite some initial facilitation by the colonial government, did not occur and was then—retrospectively, in effect—ruled out by the government. I compare the colonial government's policies regarding land alienation to Europeans and, on the other hand, to non-Asante Africans. Section B traces a crucial change that did occur: the emergence of cocoa rent, levied by land-owning chiefs on ‘stranger’ cocoa-farmers. I also document the consequent scramble to claim and define boundaries between chieftaincies' lands. Section C discusses British policy on land tenure, showing that the colonial government actively defended the property rights of indigenous farmers over the trees that they planted.

Alienation to Europeans and to Non-Asante Africans

Asante never became a ‘settler’ or a ‘plantation’ colony. But because we know how the story ended it is all the more important to appreciate that at the start it looked as if things might go in a very different direction. During the 1910s it became clear that Asante's exchange economy was fast becoming dominated by the export of cocoa grown by a multitude of Asante farmers.