MIZOBE Yasuo    Department   Undergraduate School  , School of Global Japanese Studies    Position   Professor
Date	2012/05/04
Presentation Theme	Gold Coast Press and British Censorship during World War II: A Case Study of the Ashanti Pioneer, 1939-1945
Conference	2012 Annual Conference of Canadian Association of African Studies
Promoters	Canadian Association of African Studies
Presentation Type	Speech (General)
Contribution Type	Individual
Details	This paper examines the relationship between the African local press and British censorship during World War II, based on the case of the Ashanti Pioneer that was published in the British Gold Coast. The Pioneer, Asante’s first daily newspaper, was first published in November 1939. Originally, the Kumasi-based newspaper mainly published articles related to local affairs and took a neutral stance towards the recent war. However, around the turn of the decade (1939–40), it gradually shifted its stance towards a pro-war position. With regard to the Pioneer’s change of stance during WWII, the existing study (Israel 1992) also points out factors such as ‘colonial government censorship’ and ‘political pressures emanating from conservative African nationalist politicians’. However, this research does not refer to any official documents that highlight the relationship between censorship and the shift in stance. This study is chiefly based on documents filed as ‘Newspapers General’(ARG 1/28/3) in the Kumasi Branch of the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD, Ghana), as well as original articles of the Pioneer, which are stored in PRAAD’s Cape Coast Branch and Newspaper Library at Colindale, UK.