This is a scholarly book by a leading Ghanaian historian and Methodist. It gives a full and co-ordinated story of the growth of the Methodist Church in Ghana which achieved autonomy in 1961 after 126 years of tutelage under the British Methodist Conference. The last Synod of the Ghana District of the Methodist Church was held at Winneba in 1961 and requested Mr Bartels to produce an authoritative record of its history. This book is the result of his researches. The main sources have been dispatches in the Public Records Office, the London archives of the Methodist Missionary Society, the records of the Methodist Church in Ghana and the oral history of the Ghanaian people. From this material, so largely consisting of the writings of one European to another, Bartels has wrested the story of what was essentially an African institution and one which played a leading role in the political, social and economic life of the Gold Coast and in the formation of modern Ghana.
