‘Somebody Must Necessarily Go to Bring this Drink’

The rise of smuggling in eastern Ghana is directly related to the establishment of the colonial state. Elderly Ghanaians discuss gin smuggling in the context of a colonial state which tried to curb it, but also emphasize the authority of chiefs and elders who encouraged it. Based on a combination of interviews and archival research, this article first examines the uses of imported gin and suggests why it became one of the most important smuggled goods. There follows an in-depth look at the organization of the smuggling enterprises, and an exploration of how smugglers managed their dealings with the colonial state as well as local society. The complex and changing relations between African smugglers, traditional chiefs, local communities and the colonial state illustrate the irrelevance of the colonial state in the moral picture, and also how the gin smugglers' engagement with the wider world was shaped by an utterly local perspective.