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Euro-African Commerce and Social Chaos: Akan Societies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Kwasi Konadu
Kwasi Konadu*
Affiliation:
City University of New York
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Extract

Akokɔ nto nto, aduasa – the chicken should lay-lay eggs, thirty [plenty]

Akorɔma mfa mfa, aduasa – the hawk should take-take, thirty [plenty]

Akokɔ, mato mato bi awura – chicken: I have laid-laid some eggs owner

Akorɔma mmεfa me na mabrε – the hawk should come and take me, I am tired

Akan drum text

Animguase mfata okaniba – disgrace does not befit the Akan child

[i.e., Akan-born]

Akan proverb

In the drum text above, the chicken and the hawk parallel the symbiotic relationship between the “slave trade” and the period of “legitimate trade” between the Gold Coast and Britain. The former “trade” paved the way for and nourished the outcomes of the latter, and as the uneven power relations between West Africa and European nation-states become even more explicit in a globalizing economy, Europe or Britain (“the hawk”) seized on the valued resources (“eggs”) of a tiresome and ravaged Gold Coast. To halt the disgrace (animguase) of impending colonial incursion and protectionism, several Akan societies (“chickens”) became hawk-like in domestic matters—for they had less control over international forces beyond their soil—and its internal conflicts had as much to do with their inner drive to maintain “order” in juxtaposition to the exigencies of their times. The key nineteenth-century relationship between Asante of the forest interior and Elmina of the coast provides a spatial parameter and a mnemonic for examining key transformations between those two boundaries as represented by the coastal Fante polities, forest-based Asante, and the Bono, who occupied the northern forest fringe. I argue that the conflicts between and within Akan societies of varying orders were the product of multilayered factors occurring at the same time and in different places, such as power struggles and tensions born of conservatism and Christianity, that ultimately transformed all in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although the Akan share a composite culture, spiritual practice, calendrical system, socio-political structure, and ethos, the transformations in Asante society were not replicated among the Fante or Bono, although the Bono offer a comparative case that diverged from much of the nascent colonial shaping of Asante and Fante society. This essay suggests that Akan societies, beyond the almost exclusive focus on Asante, are better approached thematically than in spatial or chronological isolation, since the themes of social dissolution and conflicts were shared by all in a context of Euro-African commerce, Westernization, and Christian proselytization.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 36 , 2009 , pp. 265 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2009

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References

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24 Ibid., 81.

25 Ibid., 84.

26 Ibid., 93.

27 See Akyeampong, Emmanuel K., “Alcohol, Social Conflict and the Struggle for Power in Ghana, 1919 to Recent Times” (Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1993)Google Scholar; now published as Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: a Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Recent Times (Oxford, 1996).Google Scholar

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33 The office of Nsamankaahene in Kumase was created to enlist foreign shrines to promote the well-being and success of Asanteman. The office supervised the practice of Asante akomfo of important abosom in Kumase. The latter guarded the indigenous spiritual order and “sacrosanct prophecies” that underpinned or shaped Asante politics, for these spiritualists mediated the spiritual world in which “Asante politicians acted, deliberated, decided, and solved problems.” Performing varied functions in the daily lives of commoners and leaders: “shrines” protected farms and farmers, hunters, and crafts persons by negotiating the forested (including plant and animal) and aquatic terrains and their non-human occupants. Many sought and used their talismans and medicines, and consulted their “shrines” on matters relative to crops and harvest, disasters and disease epidemics, success in war and trade, civil law and disputes, land litigation, and national festivals. For “[e]ach town, district, village, matriclan, and office holder in Asante and its own shrine and caretakers, while the Asantehene's special priests resided within the confines of the royal palace.” See Lewin, , Asante before the British, 38–40.Google Scholar

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39 Lewin, , Asante before the British, 60–61.Google Scholar See also TNA: CO96/14, no. 3200, “[Lieutenant] Governor [William] Winniett to Earl Gray,” 15 November 1848.

40 Jacob Simons, son of an Elmina woman and a Dutch official, was fluent in Akan and he was sent on behalf of the Dutch on a special mission to Kumase in 1831/32. He must have witnessed or heard some of these discussions in the reign of Yaw Akoto. See the “Journal of Jacob Simons (1831-32),” originally archived at the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, Archive of the Ministry of Colonies 1813-1850, and translated by Larry Yarak as an unpublished manuscript in 1985.

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47 Effah-Gyamfi, Kwaku, “Bono Manso Archeological Research Project, 1973-1976,” West African Journal of Archeology 9(1979), 177Google Scholar; idem, “Some Archeological Reflections on Akan Traditions of Origin,” West African Journal of Archeology 9(1979), 199.

48 It is said that when a woman gives birth for the first time she is called abonowo.

49 The border of Offinso was marked by a place referred to as Mfutudwaneemu, a stretch of marshy land near a stream that one crosses after passing Asuosu on the Takyiman-Kumase road.

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53 After the 1722-23 defeat by Asante, Bono-Takyiman had to provide soldiers to fight on Asante's side against the Gonja in the Bote war, and against Banda, Gyaman, Fante, and the Ewe in subsequent wars. Taa Kora of Tanoboase and Taa Mensa of Bono-Takyiman were taken to war to facilitate Asante victories.

54 Bonohene Ati Kwame is credited with introducing the stool; Bonohene Boakye Tenten is credited with introducing the titles found in indigenous Akan sociopolitical discourse (e.g., Adontenhene, Nifahene, Bsnkumhene, Akwamuhene, Kyidomhene, Ankobeahene); and Bonohene Obunumankoma is credited with introducing the gold weights system, sanaa (state treasury) and gold dust as a currency prior to the use of cowries shells. At the time when only Bono-Takyiman and Banda engaged in clothing weaving, the ancestors wore a rree-fibered cloth called “kyεnkyεn.” In the past, the indigenous political leaders wore an old indigenous cloth called gagawuga.

55 Asante's access to markets in the north, such as Dagomba (Yendi), provided them with access to savanna goods and natural products, livestock, salt, and smelted iron.

56 Contemporary Gyaman is divided into two districts: one in the Ivory Coast at Bonduku and the other in the Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana at New Drobo.

57 It is said the Takyiman “state” ɔbosom Taa Mensa advised the organization of the Apoɔ festival, sometimes referred to as atemdie (insults), through the act of public criticism, settling of disputes, and supporting the ɔoman and Taa Mensa.

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63 Despite his efforts toward reclaiming the nine villages and Bono unification, Nana Akumfi Ameyaw III was destooled, and the people of Bono-Takyiman rebelled against him seven times. His successor, Nana Kwakye Ameyaw II, also met rebellion and (unsuccessful) attempts to destool him a month after his enstoolment. He had difficulty uniting the people, as well as enemies who supported Nana Akumfi Ameyaw III. After eight years of litigation concerning attempts to destool him in the 1980s, he was finally destooled in the early 1990s. See, for example, NAG-S, BRG 2/1/10, “Humble Petition of the Elders and People of Techiman Traditional Area to the Right Honourable Dr. K. A. Busia,” 19 March 1970, 1-3.

64 For a series of relevant correspondence and petitions, see files in NAG-S, BRG 2/2/44 and BRG 9/1/19. The most notorious and offensive of all the insults from the Asantehene and Kumase ahene was the “feet on the head ritual,” wherein the Asantehene would remove his sandals and put his left foot on the crown of the Takyimanhene's head. While the Takyimanhene squatted before the Asantehene, the Asantehene rubbed his foot three times on the crown of the Takyimanhene's head while the Kumase ahene gave the epithet, Safroadu! Safroadu! See Brempong, Owusu, “Oral Tradition in Ghana: the History of Bonokyempim and Techiman Politics,” Research Review 13(1988), 10.Google Scholar For the Asantehene, this was a ritual of superiority since no Bono hene was considered equal to him. The ritual was an insult to the Bono hene and Bonoman because it not only undermined the prestige and authority of the Takyimanhene, but was also regarded as a taboo since nothing should touch the head of a Bono hene once he had been enstooled.

65 NAG-S, BRG 2/2/44, “Resolution of the Techiman State Council,” 13 February 1956, ff. 30, 31b.

66 McCaskie, T.C., “Nananom Mpow of Mankessem: an Essay in Fante History,” in West African Economic and Social History, 133Google Scholar; Römer, L. F., Tilforladelig Efterretning om Kysten Guinea (A Reliable Account of the Coast of Guinea), trans, and ed. Winsnes, Selena Axelrod (Oxford, 2000), 95Google Scholar; Fynn, , Asante and its Neighbors, 2.Google Scholar The Etsi, now distributed throughout several coastal settlements, claimed to have left Takyiman well before the Borbor Fante, and these Borbor Fante encountered the Etsi at Mankessim. See GNA/Cape Coast, Tribal Histories, K. Sekyi, “The Downfall of Tekyiman and the Subsequent Emigration of the Mfantsis,” and “The History of the Immigrants from Takyiman,” ms., n.d., Manhyia Record Office at Kumase.

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