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Death and the Asantehene: A Historical Meditation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Thomas C. McCaskie
Thomas C. McCaskie
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

This paper builds upon the author's previously published work on the forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana). It deals generally with the issue of death in Asante history and culture, and more specifically with the meanings of the mortuary rituals surrounding the deaths of Asantehenes. These issues are addressed in relation to the extensive anthropological literature concerning the cross-cultural meaning of death. The paper then concentrates on an analysis of the meaning of the very fully documented events that surrounded the death and interment of the Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin in 1867. These are analysed in relation to cultural norms and historical practices, and the conclusion sets out to locate the meaning of the Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin's death within the broader framework of Asante historical experience.

Type
Death, Ritual and Power in West Africa
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 417 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 This paper was developed from thoughts that occurred in September and October 1988 while I was giving another, quite different paper at the ASAUK in Cambridge and the ASAUSA in Chicago. Robin Law and Larry Yarak invited me to speak at Cambridge and Chicago respectively, and I am grateful to them. I am also grateful to John Peel for much stimulating discussion, to Terence Ranger for comments in another context that provoked most useful reflections in this one, and to David Anderson and his fellow editors for encouraging my thoughts into print.

2 For example, Rattray, R. S., Religion and Art in Ashanti (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Fortes, M., Kinship and the Social Order: The Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan (London, 1969)Google Scholar; Gyekye, K., An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: the Akan Conceptual Scheme (Cambridge, 1987).Google Scholar

3 See, McCaskie, T. C., ‘Komfo Anokye of Asante: Meaning, History and Philosophy in an African Society’, J. Afr. Hist., xxvii, 2 (1986), 315–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 This is more fully discussed in T. C. McCaskie, ‘Knowledge and Belief as [Con]text in Asante History’, paper presented at the ASAUK and ASAUSA conferences, 1988.

5 Calendrical equivalences used here are discussed in McCaskie, T. C., ‘Time and the Calendar in nineteenth century Asante: an exploratory essay’, History in Africa, vii (1980), 179–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 There are two identified portions of de Heer's journals. These cover the periods 16 March 1866 to 1 August 1867, and 1 January to 1 July 1868. The first is accessioned in Instituut voor Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde, Leiden [MS. H-509]. The second is entitled Journal van de agent van het Nederlandsche Gouvernement bij de vorst van Ashantijn, and is in University of Amsterdam, Mss. collection, (Mss.) ES 44. I am most grateful to Larry Yarak and Rene Baesjou for providing me with their working translations of these documents. The context of de Heer's sojourn in Asante is discussed in Yarak, L., ‘Asante and the Dutch: a case study in the history of Asante administration 1744–1873’ (Ph.D. Northwestern, 1983).Google Scholar For the aftermath see Baesjou, R., An Asante Embassy on the Gold Coast: the mission of Akyempon Yaw to Elmina 1869–1872 (Leiden and Cambridge, 1979).Google Scholar

7 See ‘ Mose der Koransier’, from a letter of Br. Rottmann, Wilh. (Gold Coast), in Der Evangelische Heidenbote (Basel, 1892), 76–8.Google Scholar There is a translation into English by Maier-Weaver, D. printed in Asante Seminar, 3 (June 1975), 19–20.Google Scholar I am most grateful to Paul Jenkins, archivist at the Basel Mission, for discussions of this text.

8 Ramseyer, F. A. and Kühne, J., Vier Jahre in Asante, 2nd ed. (Basel, 1875)Google Scholar is larger and to be preferred to the English edition, Four Years in Ashantee (London and New York, 1875).Google Scholar Both editions should be checked against the 825-page Ms. copy of Ramseyer's Diary (1869–74) which is in the Basel Mission Archives, Basel. Bonnat's journal was used in the composition of Gros, J., Voyages, Aventures et Captivité de J. Bonnat Chez les Achantis (Paris, 1884).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Bonnat's original journal and Mss. are held in a private deposit, but have been consulted in the preparation of this paper. For the oheneba Owusu Ansa see, The Times, London, 29 July 1873 and The African Times, London, esp. 23 November, 1867. For the chronology of his movements in 1867 see, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Gold Coast Correspondence, Tregaskis to Owusu Ansa, dd. London, 22 August 1877.

9 The ancestry of this approach is traceable back through Sir James Frazer to the work of Bachofen in the 1850s. For general discussion see Huntington, R. and Metcalf, P., Celebrations of Death: the anthropology of mortuary rituals (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Bloch, M. and Parry, J. (eds.), Death and the Regeneration of Life (Cambridge, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Humphreys, S. C., Anthropology and the Greeks (London, 1978)Google Scholar; eadem., The Family, Women and Death (London, 1983); Ariès, P., L'Homme devant la mort (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar Sophisticated treatments from specific perspectives are Bloch, M., Placing the Dead (London, 1971)Google Scholar; Detienne, M., Dionysos mis à mort (Paris, 1977)Google Scholar; Vidal-Naquet, P., he Chasseur Noir (Paris, 1981)Google Scholar; and Dumézil, G., Les dieux souverains des Indo-Européens (Paris, 1977).Google Scholar

10 And not only in literature. Francis Ford Coppola's film Apocalypse Now (1979) is set in Vietnam, derives its narrative from Conrad's Heart of Darkness, makes explicit reference to Sir James Frazer, and ends with the highly ritualized ‘sacrifice’ of an omniscient ‘King’.

11 White, H., Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore, 1978).Google Scholar See McCaskie, ‘Knowledge’. Here I must record my gratitude to Michelle Gilbert for supplying me with copies of her work on the Akan of Akuapem. Her insightful writings have given me much comparative food for thought.

12 See Wilks, I., ‘Land, labour, capital and the forest kingdom of Asante: a model of early change’, in Friedman, J. and Rowlands, M. J. (eds), The Evolution of Social Systems (London, 1977), 487–534.Google Scholar The implications are discussed in McCaskie, T. C., ‘Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history. I. To the close of the nineteenth century’ and ‘II. The twentieth century’, Africa, liii, 1 (1983), 23–43 and lvi, 1 (1986), 3–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and in Ibid. ‘Komfo Anokye’ and ‘Knowledge’.

13 Wilks, ‘ Land’, is excellent on the arduous mechanics of the process. Folk memories and practices are recorded in some of the fieldnotes in Fortes Mss., Cambridge. I am grateful to the late Meyer Fortes for providing me with a number of his notes on agriculture from the 1940s.

14 For discussion see McCaskie, ‘Komfo Anokye’ and ‘Knowledge’. There is suggestive material, all too briefly explored, in McLeod, M. D., The Asante (London, 1981).Google Scholar See too Platvoet, J. G., Comparing Religions: a Limitative Approach (The Hague, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 I have written elsewhere about the complex working-out in historical time of the imperatives, norms and goals that underpinned social order, and through which the defence of cultural space was articulated. McCaskie: ‘Accumulation’; ‘Komfo Anokye’; ‘Knowledge’. Discussion here is restricted to the role of the Asantehene in this programme.

16 For some discussion see Rattray, , Religion, 107–8.Google Scholar

17 See McLeod, The Asante.

18 Wilks, , ‘Land’, esp. 487–508.Google Scholar

19 Rattray, , Religion, 182–6.Google Scholar

20 See Freeman, R. A., Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman (London, 1898), esp. 35–169CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Gold Coast, W. Terry-Coppin, ‘Journal of a Visit to Ashanti in 1885’.

21 See conveniently, Prussin, L., ‘Traditional Asante architecture’, African Arts, xiii, 2 (1980), 57–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Swithenbank, M., Ashanti Fetish Houses (Accra, 1969).Google Scholar

22 See McCaskie, T. C., ‘Ahyiamu –A place of meeting: process and event in the history of the Asante state’, J. Afr. Hist., xxv, 2 (1984), 169–88, and esp. 185.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 McLeod, The Asante, and Prussin, ‘Architecture’. See Bourdieu, P., Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique, précedé de trois études d'ethnologie kabyle (Paris, 1972).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Compare Douglas, M., Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

24 For examples of such naming see Fortes Mss., Cambridge, and many of the 215 Asante stool histories recorded and accessioned by the Institute of African Studies, Legon, Ghana. For Kumase, Ramseyer and Kühne, Four Years, 136.

25 Basel Mission Archives, Basel, Ramseyer's Diary contains instances of this from 1871 and 1872.

26 McCaskie, ‘Accumulation’, ‘Komfo Anokye’, ‘Knowledge’. See too Fortes, Kinship, and Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923).Google Scholar

27 McLeod, The Asante, has some discussion. See too, Hagan, G. P., ‘A Note on Akan Colour Symbolism’, IAS Research Review (Legon), vii, 1 (1970), 8–14.Google Scholar

28 I am grateful to several informants who discussed these matters with me in Ghana in 1983 and 1988. The etymologies are described in part in Christaller, J. G., A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tschi (Basel, 1881)Google Scholar; see too, idem., Twi mmebusem, mpensa-ahansia mmoaano (Basel, 1879).

29 See Patton, S. F., ‘The Asante umbrella’, African Arts, vii, 4 (1984), 64–73 and 93–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Platvoet, J. G., ‘In de koelte van de ontvangstboom: de polietike functie van een akan religieus symbool’, in Manschot, H., van Reisen, H. and Veldhuis, W. (eds.), Van Gerecht-igheid tot Liturgie (Hilversum, 1984), 61–91.Google Scholar

30 Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, File on ‘Regalia’, n.d. but 1940s; see too Kyerematen, A. A. Y., ‘Ashanti Royal Regalia: their history and functions’ (D.Phil. Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar

31 For example, Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 34.Google Scholar

32 Text and translation in Kyerematen, A. A. Y., Kingship and Ceremony in Ashanti (Kumase, n.d.), 8–9.Google Scholar

33 Yade mfata sika dwa kofi (‘Illness does not become the Golden Stool’). See Kyerematen, , Kingship…, 13.Google Scholar

34 McCaskie, T. C., ‘Asantehene Agyeman Prempe's Account to the Asanteman of His Exile from Kumase (1896–1924)’, Asantesem, vii (1977), 32–42, esp. 33.Google Scholar

35 McCaskie, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Time’.

36 Rattray, , Religion, 127.Google Scholar

37 Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, ‘History of Asante’, a Ms. produced by a Committee of Traditional Authorities under the Chairmanship of the Asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempe, n.d., but in the 1940s. Another recension is in Rattray, , Religion, 138–9.Google Scholar

38 See Hertz, R., trans. R., and Needham, C., Death and the Right Hand (London, 1960)Google Scholar and Needham, R. (ed.), Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification (Chicago, 1973).Google Scholar For context and critical discussion see Bloch and Parry (eds.), Death, 1–44 and esp. 6. For an excellent ethnographic treatment in a Ghanaian context see Goody, J., Death, Property and the Ancestors: a study of the mortuary customs of the LoDagaa of West Africa (London, 1962).Google Scholar

39 Rattray, , Religion, 112.Google Scholar See also Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, Correspondence (1932–36) on the Funeral of the Asantehene (Kumasihene) Agyeman Prempe.

40 Ibid.

41 See McCaskie, ‘ Knowledge’, for some discussion. Also, Kyerematen, , Kingship, 11.Google Scholar

42 Rattray, , Religion, 103–4.Google Scholar Compare Sarpong, P., Girls' Nubility Rites in Ashanti (Accra-Tema, 1977).Google Scholar

43 Rattray, , Religion, 182.Google Scholar

44 The fullest accounts known to me are in the Ms. Journals of the Rev. G. Chapman, who was in Kumase in the mid-1840s. I am preparing an annotated edition of these Journals for publication by Crossroads Press.

45 Sensationalism was a notable feature of the extensive literature that was produced in the aftermath of the Anglo-Asante war of 1873–4.

46 For the chronology see Yarak, L. and Wilks, I., ‘The chronology of the Asante Kings: a further revision’, Asantesɛm, viii (1978), 39–40.Google ScholarBowdich, , Mission, 240.Google Scholar

47 Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), 245.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, ‘History of Asante’.

49 See Sahlins, M., Islands of History (London, 1987)Google Scholar and the critique of it in Friedman, J., ‘Review Essay’, History and Theory: Studies in the Philosophy of History, xxvi, 1 (1987), 72–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See too Cohen, David William, ‘The Undefining of Oral Tradition’, Ethnohistory, xxxvi, 1 (1989), 9–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar A general critique of the anthropological tradition – but from the perspective of moral philosophy – is Skorupski, J., Symbol and Theory: A philosophical study of theories of religion in social anthropology (Cambridge, 1976).Google Scholar

50 The reference is to Gramsci. See McCaskie, ‘Knowledge’.

51 The classic discussion is Bakhtin, M., trans. Iswolsky, H., Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, 1984).Google Scholar

52 Ibid. See also McCaskie, , ‘Knowledge’, and Bloch and Parry (eds.), Death.Google Scholar

53 For the chronology see Yarak, L. and Wilks, I., ‘A Further Note on the Death of Asantehene Osei Yaw Akoto and on the Enstoolment of Kwaku Dua Panin’, Asantesɛm, ix (1978), 56–7.Google Scholar For the reign of Kwaku Dua Panin see McCaskie, T. C., ‘The Paramountcy of the Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin, 1834–67: a Study in Asante Political Culture’, (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar

54 Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Gold Coast, West to General Secretaries, dd. Cape Coast, 9 June 1862.

55 P. de Heer, Mss., entries for 1, 19 and 25 January and 13 February 1867.

56 ‘Mose’, and McCaskie, ‘Time’.

57 P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 12 March 1867. Compare Rattray, , Religion, 107–8.Google Scholar

58 P. de Heer, Mss., entries for 2 April 1866 (for the death of Osei Bonsu) and 15, 19 and 24 March, and 26, 27 and 28 April 1867, and ‘Mose’. See too The African Times, London, 23 November 1867.

59 ‘ Mose’. Compare the account of the Kokofuhemaa's funeral in Bonnat Mss., Cahier 6.

60 P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 28 April 1867. Compare Rattray, , Religion, 112.Google Scholar For my understanding of the role of the ahenemma and ahenenana in general I am grateful to the late Akyempemhene oheneba Boakye Dankwa (1895–1982).

61 Rattray, , Religion, 112–4.Google Scholar Compare Kyerematen, , Kingship, 9.Google Scholar

62 Compare Rattray, , Religion, 112.Google Scholar

63 P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 30 April 1867.

64 The names are given in Rattray, , Religion, 108Google Scholar, fn. 2. Interestingly, The African Times, London, 23 November 1867, citing information supplied by Owusu Ansa, stated that all of Kwaku Dua Panin's wives had been executed, excepting two who voluntarily took poison.

65 ‘Mose’.

66 Bonnat Mss., Cahiers 6 and 15, and unclassified notes.

67 Ibid.

68 The African Times, London, 23 December 1867 and Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Gold Coast, West to Boyce, dd. Cape Coast, 7 October 1867.

69 The African Times, London, 23 November 1867. Owusu Ansa is reported as having estimated that some 1–2,000 were killed when he was in Kumase. He only arrived in Kumase on 14 June. See, Methodist Missionary Society Archives, London, Gold Coast, West to Boyce, dd. Cape Coast, 7 October 1867.

70 P. de Heer, Mss., entries from 28 April to 28 July 1867. These periodic customs were directly related to the Asante calendar, and marked more or less fixed points of special observance. They always began with the ‘eight day’ custom (nawotwe da) and culminated in the ‘eighty day’ custom (adaduotwe). For the periodicity of the other customs mentioned, de Heer should be compared with Rattray, , Religion, 166.Google Scholar

71 See ACBP/28: Yaadom, Kwaádu, Asantesɛm, xi (1979), 5–13.Google Scholar

72 Bowdich, , Mission, 289.Google Scholar

73 Ibid.

74 For the low level of warfare under Kwaku Dua Panin see McCaskie, ‘ Paramountcy’.

75 The African Times, London, 23 December 1867.

76 P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 9 May 1868. This entry records that on this day the ‘Great-Ensign called Ampadoe of Kowoe has been killed’. This is the Kwawu Obohene Ampadu who had been convicted of failure to take part in the 1863 expedition south of the Pra. See Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, ‘History of Asante’. Important transgressors were customarily immolated at the ‘secondary’ burial.

77 ‘Mose’; Bonnat Mss., Cahiers 6 and 15; Ramseyer and Kühne, Vier Jahre and Four Years, app. III, all have accounts. Early twentieth-century oral tradition is reported in Fuller, F., A Vanished Dynasty: Ashanti (London, 1921), 100.Google Scholar

78 ‘Mose’.

79 Ramseyer and Kühne, Four Years, app. III and Bonnat Mss., Cahier 15.

80 Ibid. This episode is central to Armah's, Ayi Kwei novel The Healers: an historical novel (Nairobi, 1978).Google Scholar See T. C. McCaskie, ‘Armah's The Healers and Asante History’, paper presented at the University of Stirling, April 1989.

81 P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 31 July 1867.

82 Rattray, , Religion, 106Google Scholar, fn. 1 records that Kwaku Dua Panin founded a village – Akyerekuro – solely inhabited by such people.

83 The conundrum is discussed in McCaskie, T. C., ‘State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: some considerations towards a social history of pre-colonial Asante’, J. Afr. Hist., xxii, 4 (1981), 477–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 Wilks, I., Asante in the nineteenth century: The structure and evolution of a political order (Cambridge, 1975), 327–73, and esp. 371.Google Scholar

85 Ibid., 371, fn. 174.

86 Data on the individuals mentioned are filed under their names in the holdings of The Asante Collective Biography Project (1973–9), directed by I. Wilks and T. C. McCaskie. The crucial account of the transfer of Akyempem back to the ahenemma is in Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, ‘History of Asante’.

87 There is some discussion in McCaskie, ‘ Paramountry’.

88 Wilks, , Asante, 497.Google Scholar

89 Rattray, , Religion, 109.Google Scholar

90 For discussion see McCaskie, ‘Paramountcy’, esp. 216–33 and Wilks, , Asante, esp 327–73.Google Scholar There is relevant discussion in McCaskie, T. C., ‘Office, Land and Subjects in the History of the Manwere fekuo; an essay in the political economy of the Asante state’, J. Afr. Hist., xxi, 2 (1980), 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The indispensable dynastic materials are contained in Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, ‘The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself’, dictated by the Asantehene Agyeman Prempe, commenced 6 August 1907.

91 The oldest grandson was Kofi Mensa, born in or about 1857.

92 For customary explanation see Kyerematen, , Kingship, 6–7.Google Scholar

93 The heir apparent Kwabena Anin, Kofi Kakari's elder brother, was passed over in 1867.

94 For what was clearly the oath-taking ceremony of installation at bampanase see P. de Heer, Mss., entry for 28 May 1867. For the actual enstoolment on a monodwo Monday see the date given by Ansa, Owusu in The Times, London, 29 July 1873.Google Scholar

95 For discussion of some of the problems with this argument see Yarak, L., ‘State, Society and Politics in Nineteenth Century Asante’, esp 11, paper presented at ASAUSA, Chicago, 1988.Google Scholar

96 Ramseyer, and Kühne, , Vier Jahre, 173–4Google Scholar, and Ramseyer Diary, entry for 6 November 1872. The context is discussed in McCaskie, T. C., ‘A Note on the career of Akyempemhene oheneba Owusu Koko’, Asantesɛm, vi, (1976), 21.Google Scholar

97 For the events of 1884 see Wilks, , Asante, 556–64Google Scholar and Lewin, T., Asante before the British: the Prempean Years, 1875–1900 (Kansas, 1978), 69–76.Google Scholar My own account of Owusu Koko's career in ACBP/pcs/20, Asante Seminar, 4 (1976), 5–10Google Scholar, requires substantial revision in the light of materials that I gathered in Ghana in 1983 and 1988. For the concept of ‘the end of the nineteenth century’ in Asante history see McCaskie, ‘Accumulation’, I and II.