Book Reviews : Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana : End of an Illusion. Monthly Re view Press, 1966, 130 pp. $3.50
Abstract
Book ReviewsBob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana : End of an Illusion. Monthly Re view Press, 1966, 130 pp. $3.50 SAGE Publications, Inc.1967DOI: 10.1177/002190966700200312 Robert W. Wyllie Simon Fraser University, Canada Despite its "rush job" character, this book is probably the most adequate account to date of those events and processes which led to the overthrow of the Nkrumah regime in early 1966. Dissatisfied with analyses of the coup which concentrate on Nkrumah's personality, the authors promise "class analysis and historical analysis" and the avoidance of both "liberal psychoanalysis and 'radical' hagiography." The "historical analysis" amounts to a rapid account of the economic and political development of Ghana from the time of the independence struggles of the 1950's to that of the coup. This account is enlivened, though hardly illuminated, by amusin asides (verging on "radical hagiography") where in, for example, the Colonial Governor is likened to "the commander of an eighteenth century frigate." The "class analysis" consists of an attempt to interpret the shifting balance of political alignments and conflicts within Ghana in terms of developing economic interest groups. Although the authors gauge incorrectly the political leanings of the "lumpenproletariat" (they were among Nkrumah's earliest supporters and