Journal of African History, 37 (1996), pp. 215-236 215 Copyright © 1996 Cambridge University Press WHAT'S IN A DRINK? CLASS STRUGGLE, POPULAR CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF AKPETESHIE (LOCAL GIN) IN GHANA, 1930-67* BY EMMANUEL AKYEAMPONG Harvard University Wunni ntramma na wo se nsa nye de When you do not have cowry shells, you say wine is not sweet (Twi Proverb). SOCIAL revolutions or movements of popular protest often begin innoc- uously. They are initially preoccupied with 'bread-and-butter' politics and with no sophisticated ideology of class-consciousness or a desire to overturn the social order. Adherents to such movements — the weak and poor — seek to minimize the disadvantages of the 'system' for their lives. 1 In the Gold Coast from the 1930s, an excellent arena for popular protest centered on African demands to distill akpeteshie (local gin). Distilled from fermented palm wine or sugar cane juice, and requiring a simple apparatus of two tins (usually four-gallon kerosene tins) and copper tubing, 2 akpeteshie quickly became a lucrative industry in an era of economic depression, incorporating extensive production and retail networks. But, far from being associated with just the right to distill spirits, akpeteshie became embroiled in African politics under colonial rule as world depression, World War II and the intensification of nationalism prompted an African re-evaluation of the colonial situation. Local distillation of akpeteshie became widespread in the Gold Coast after 1930, when temperance interests secured restrictive liquor legislation raising the tariffs on imported liquor. As previous increases in import duties on liquor had not adversely affected import levels and the liquor revenues so * Research for this article was made possible by research grants from the African Development Foundation in 1991-2 and from the William F. Milton Foundation (Harvard University) in the summer of 1994. The paper is based on archival research (official and missionary), contemporary Gold Coast newspapers, highlife music, comic opera and oral interviews conducted in Ghana. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1994 African Studies Association Conference in Toronto. This current version has benefited from the comments of Charles Ambler, Luise White, Leroy Vail and the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of African History. 1 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak : Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985), ch. 8. 2 The fermented palm wine or sugar cane juice was boiled with a coiled copper tube running from the boiling container through a receptacle filled with cool water or a stream and into an empty container. Steam rises from the boiling palm wine or sugar cane juice, condenses as it passes through the cool water and drips as gin into the empty container. The standardized alcohol strength of akpeteshie today is between 40 and 50 per cent by volume. Palm wine contains between 3 and 5 per cent of alcohol by volume. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853700035209 Published online by Cambridge University Press