Researching Colonial Childhoods: Accessing the Voices of Children in the Gold Coast (Ghana) 1900 -1957

Colonial archives hold an abundance of materials about Indigenous children’s lives. However, very little of the information stored in archives comes from the perspective of children growing up in colonized societies. Hence, children are clearly visible in colonial archives, but their voices are largely silent. This results in limited insights into children’s own understandings of their experiences of colonial rule and the impact it had on them as children and later as adults. This paper contributes to extant literature on researching colonial childhoods by reflecting on a study which supplemented archival research with oral history methods, to directly access the voices of individuals reflecting on their childhoods experienced during British colonial rule in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana). The paper starts by critiquing the silence of children’s voices. The few exceptions to these silences, gathered through archival research, are presented before I outline how supplementing this approach with oral history methods enabled me to gain more holistic insights into children’s lived experiences. As oral history methods are not a panacea, I call for an approach to accessing the perspectives of children growing up under European colonial rule in sub–Saharan Africa that systematically integrates archival and oral history methods.