Records relating to the Gold Coast Settlements from 1750 to 1874

DETAILED RECORDS OF THE BRITISH SUBJUGATION AND COLONIZATION OF MODERN GHANA
first edition 8vo. xii, 557, [1 (advt.)]pp., coloured frontispiece map, maroon cloth gilt, small bruise on spine, else a very nice copy. Uncommon.
This book collects and prints a mass of original documents relating to the European, in particular British, scramble to control the wealth and trade of regions adjacent to the western African coast and the consequent progressive militarisation and colonization the region. It covers "the period from the formation of the last African Company of Merchants in 1750 to the conclusion of the third Ashantee War in 1874" during which British, Dutch and Danish interests bought and sold each other coastal forts without "any consultation whatsoever with the tribes concerned therewith" and garrisoned these forts with British army units (regular troops, the Royal African Corps and troops imported from the West Indies). Slaving was obviously a major source of wealth. Crooks knew the region well since he had served in the Ashanti wars and had been administrator of Sierra Leone (from where the British possession in the Gold Coast, now Ghana, were controlled for a period in the 1840s).
Crooks (Queen's County, now Laois, 1842 - 1928), Irish soldier, colonial administrator and writer, was educated at the Royal Hibernian Military School, Dublin where he stayed until 1857 when he enlisted in the British Army. He served in west Africa during the third Anglo-Ashanti War in an Army Service corps, probably in the Royal Artillery, from 1873 to 1874. He was promoted from Staff sergeant to assistant commissary on probation on 8th September 1873 and later became a Deputy Commissary with the rank of Major. He was for a time colonial secretary or administrator of Sierra Leone. On retirement and return to Dublin he published a series of books on military and colonial history. There is a full account Crooks services in the Dec. 1898 issue of Hibernia. Quarterly Magazine of the Royal Hibernian Military School but we have not been able to examine a copy (only recorded copy in B.L.). He apparently had a great interest in that magazine and was a frequent contributor. This copy was until recently in Crooks family ownership.