Between the Sea and the Lagoon

A thin ribbon of land constitutes the heart of Anlo state and society, poised between the pounding surf on the beaches to one side and the glistening expanse of the Keta Lagoon to the other...Nowhere else in Ghana does the on-going struggle between humansettlement and the forces of nature seem so apparent as in the watery landscape of the country's far south-eastern corner. It is the history of this uneasy dialogue between culture and nature that forms the subject of Emmanuel Akyeampong's new book, which sets out to offer a social interpretation of environmental process in the Anlo-Ewe region...This learned, accessible study contains many original insights into the historical interaction between the Anlo people and their distinctive regional landscape...the most effective sections of the book are focused on what might be termed moral economy (or moral ecology )...Between the Sea and the Lagoon represents a notable contribution to the growing body of work on the environmental history of Africa.' - John Parker in Journal of African History 'Eco-social history is a relatively new field (ignored by Chambers Dictionary) and could easily be misread as a combination of economic and social history. But this is a more interesting approach, tracing the interconnections between ecology and society in a specific political and cultural context. ...Certainly this will be an important source for students of Ghanaian history, society and culture, and for ecologists everywhere...the publishers are to be congratulated on recognizing the original quality of this work, and on producing it impeccably, right down to the footnotes, which actually appear at the foot of each page - a great convenience for the reader, especially as some contain shrewd comments.' - in Progress in Development Studies

• Migration, topography and early settlement in the Keta Lagoon basin; abolition, British influence and smuggling in the Anlo lowlands up to c.1890; commercial prosperity, urbanization and social life in early colonial Keta; unstable ecology - belief, knowledge and the enigma of sea erosion in colonial Keta, 1907-1932; the search for space - land reclamation, migrant fishing, shallot cultivation and illicit liquor distillation in Anlo, c.1930-1957; harbours and dams - economic development and environmental change in the Lower Volta basin, 1957 to present - political ecology, ecological unity and the politics of Ewe ethnicity in contemporary Ghana; living with the sea - society and culture in contemporary Anlo.