There are three major themes which recur throughout this study and which , it is argued , represented the main determinants of the development of rural politics in South- Central Ghana between 1919 and 1951.The first theme is the attempt by the colonial Government from about 1927 onwards to introduce an increasingly interventionist system of indirect rule. Before the 1920s the Government interfered very little in the administration of the traditional states. It concentrated on administration and development at the colonial level and left the day-to-day government of the states to the chiefs and state councils. Officials usually intervened in local affairs only in matters concerned with the administration of justice and the prevention or settlement of disputes which were likely to lead to a breach of the peace. After about 1927, however, the Government took a much greater interest in local administration and development. It attempted to extend its influence into the local political arenas and to incorporate the chiefs to a much greater extent in the machinery of colonial administration

• to make them the agents of the colonial Government in the rural areas. The chiefs were given direct responsibility for the implementation of central Government policies at the local level and for the initiation of local development schemes under official supervision. The main result of this new approach was to increase the amount of interference by officials in the day to day affairs of the traditional states. The second major theme i s the transformation of factions within the states into ' parties'. Before the mid-1920s, political conflicts within the states were generally concerned with purely local issues and were fought in purely local terms. After the mid-1920s, · however , colonial issue s were introduced into the local political arenas and became the subject of disputes between local factions. Conflicts over colonial issues reinforced existing conflicts over local issues and gradually transformed factions into pro- and anti-Government ' parties ' within each state. These parties usually had a somewhat more stable membership and a stronger commitment to general normative principles than the more impermanent, transactional factions of the earlier period. The third major theme is the role in these developments of the educated elite in Cape Coast. It is argued that a certain section of the educated elite, led by Kobina Sekyi and the rump of the Aborigines Rights Protection Society, resented the new role of the chiefs, and the reduction of the influence of the educated elite, under the system of interventionist indirect rule. They therefore attempted to undermine the machinery of indirect rule, not only by petitions and propaganda at the colonial level, but also by sabotaging the implemention of the policy at the local level, within the traditional states. This they did by encouraging the formation and activities of the anti-Government parties within the states. Such parties would probably have arisen without the assistance of the A.R.P.S., but the A. R.P.S. helped to strengthen and co-ordinate their activities by providing legal and political advice and by promoting widespread local propaganda against such instruments of interventionist indirect rule as the Provincial Councils and the stool treasury system.