Book Description

Excerpt from A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti, Vol. 1 of 2: From the Earliest Times to the Commencement of the Twentieth Century Since the manuscript of Dr. Claridge's monumental History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti first came into my hands in the summer of 1915, its publication in suitable form has been to me a matter of keen personal interest. It is not often that one of our Crown Colonies has the good fortune to number among the officials serving in it a man who possesses so many of the qualities that go to the making of a really good historian - diligence in research, meticulous accuracy, a capacity for marshalling facts, the nice sense of proportion which allots to each question or incident its full, but no more than its due place in the general picture, a strongly critical habit of mind, and a thorough command of appropriate language. The exercise of all these, together with years of patient but enthusiastic labour, have been devoted to the production of the present work, and Dr. Claridge has thereby rendered to the Colony, with which he has long been connected, a service of conspicuous value. In the past, too, it has not infrequently happened that when labour of this description has been performed by a servant of Government during his not over-abundant leisure, the result of his toil has been suffered to reach the public either at his own expense, or under the auspices of some learned body, whose imprimatur is apt to have upon the general reader an effect comparable to that which scare-crows are piously supposed to exercise upon the fowls of the air. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.