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² Meredith, Henry, An Account of the Gold Coast of Africa (London, 1812), 157–58Google Scholar; Dupuis, Joseph, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824), xxxviii.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³ Smith, Robert, Warfare and Diplomacy in Pre-colonial West Africa (London, 1989), 22.Google Scholar

⁴ For a London-based account of and reaction to MacCarthy's, Charles defeat and death, see the Christian Observer 24/5(1824), 334.Google Scholar Major Richetts, a British officer who took part in the battle at Asamankow, offers another account. See Richetts, H. I., Narrative of the Ashantee War (London, 1831).Google Scholar

⁵ Daaku, Kwame Y., Unesco Research Project on Oral Traditions: Dsnkyira, no. 2 (Legon, 1970), 202, 224.Google Scholar Kwadwom songs were also sung by women at the funerals of deceased men to recall their prowess in war.

⁶ Akinjogbin, I. A., Dahomey and its Neighbors, 1708-1818 (Cambridge, 1968), 110–11.Google Scholar

⁷ Christaller, J. G., Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language Called Tshi (Basel, 1933), 8.Google Scholar Christaller defined (a)barimà as (1) a man entrusted with an office by one superior to him; and (2) a adherent, client, subaltern, follower, helpmate, companion, and servant.

⁸ Dumett, Raymond E., “Traditional Slavery in the Akan Region in the Nineteenth Century: Sources, Issues, and Interpretations” in West African Economic and Social History: Studies in Memory of Marion Johnson, ed. Henige, David and McCaskie, T.C. (Madison, 1990), 8, 12.Google Scholar The parliamentary reports of 1842 and 1865 about the British-controlled coastal districts generally suggest that the coastal Akan states were “loosely constructed network of patron-client relationships.” Governor Benjamin Pine of the Gold Coast Colony believed “domestic slavery” was universally pervasive. See The National Archives (NA): Colonial Office (CO), 96/41, no. 10218, “Benjamin Pine to H. Labouchere,” 13 August 1857.

⁹ Maier, D.J.E., “Military Acquisition of Slaves in Asante” in West African Economic and Social History, 126.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Dumett, , “Traditional Slavery,” 11.Google Scholar

¹¹ Daaku, Kwame Y., Oral traditions of Sefwi (2 vols.: Legon, 1974), 1: 98, 108, 102–03, 115, 272Google Scholar; 2: 99; idem, Dεnkyira, 142, 249.

¹² Daaku, Kwame Y., UNESCO Research Project on Oral Traditions: Oral Traditions of Gonja, no. 1 (Legon, 1969), 12–14, 51.Google Scholar Some interviewees (ibid., 68, 137, 158) described slave raiding and trading as Gonja's main work while some informants noted failed raids put raiding armies in jeopardy of being enslaved themselves.

¹³ Daaku, , Dεnkyira, 66, 102, 118, 181, 223, 251, 272Google Scholar; idem. Oral Traditions of Assin-Twifo (Legon, 1969). This text is un-paginated, and each set of interviews has their own pagination. Here I am citing the oral accounts of Assin Ekrofuom, 9, and Assin-Manso, 2-3.

¹⁴ Ibid., Assin Nyankumasi interview, 17.

¹⁵ Austen, Ralph A., “The Abolition of the Overseas Slave Trade: a Distorted Theme in West African History,” Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 5/2(1970), 264Google Scholar; Dumett, , “Traditional Slavery,” 9.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Since the sixteenth century, salt industries had existed on the eastern bank of the Volta River and in the nineteenth century Asante and peoples further north consumed much salt form Accra, Ningo, and Songhor. Much of this salt moved up the Volta by canoe.

¹⁷ Metcalf, George, “A Microcosm of Why Africans Sold Slaves: Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s,” JAH 28(1987), 385, 387, 389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the Asante in particular see LaTorre, Joseph R., “Wealth Surpasses Everything: an Economic History of Asante, 1750-1874” (Ph.D., University of California—Berkeley, 1978).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Müller, Johann Wilhelm, Die Afrikanische auf der guineischen Gold-Cust gelegene Landschafft Fetu, as translated in Jones, Adam, German Sources for West African History, 1599-1669 (Wiesbaden, 1983), 277.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Barbot, Jean, Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea and of Ethiopia Inferior, vulgarly Angola (London, 1746), 268.Google Scholar Paul Hair notes that “… unlike Dapper and some of his other predecessors, Barbot had been to Guinea and had drawn on the spot,” and, for the most part, “he stuck to what he actually saw and did not invent tableaux or depict by deduction.” See Hair, P. E. H., “An Accomplish'd Traveller will take Draughts: Barbot's Illustrations of Guinea,” Annual Report of the Hakluyt Society (London, 1991), 14–15.Google Scholar

²⁰ Kea, Ray A., Settlements, Trade, and Politics in the Seventeenth Century Gold Coast (Baltimore, 1982), 299.Google Scholar

²¹ de Marees, Pieter, Description and Historical Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea, trans, and eds. Jones, Adam and van Dantzig, Albert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 16.Google Scholar On “Quaqua cloth” see Dapper, Olfert, Guinea, Description de l'Afrique (Paris, 1686), 276–77.Google Scholar

²² Thornton, John, “Precolonial African Industry and the Atlantic Trade,” African Economic History 19(1990/1991), 18.Google Scholar

²³ Dumett, Raymond E., “The Social Impact of the European Liquor Trade on the Akan of Ghana (Gold Coast and Asante), 1875-1910,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5(1974), 76, 100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There was much rubber in the Bono—reportedly, more than the Asante possessed. This claim has some merit, for Asante traders did travel to the Bono region from Kumase.

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

²⁸ An Akan ɔhene (pl. ahene), and other levels of indigenous leadership, occupy a stool (a beautifully-carved wooden seat) that represents the unity of the community and man. The stool enshrines the spiritual and cultural identity of the people and links the living with their ancestry, who in fact “owns “the land and the stool, and entrust the use of the land and stool to the ɔhene or odekuro at the village level. Before a ɔhene is destooled or removed from this office, charges must be first brought against him to the traditional council, who in turn investigates the merits of those charges.

²⁹ McCaskie, T. C., “Empire State: Asante and the Historians,” JAH 33(1992), 471–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁰ Hagan, George P., “Ashanti Bureaucracy: a Study of the Growth of Centralized Administration in Ashanti from the Time of Osei Tutu to the Time of Osei Tutu Kwame Esibe Bonsu,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 12(1971), 44Google Scholar; Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: the Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridg, 1989), 446.Google Scholar On the confiscation of land and subjects by Kumase, see McCaskie, T. C., “Ahyiamu – ‘A Place of Meeting:’ an Essay on Process and Event in the History of the Asante State, JAH 25(1984), 169–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar According to McCaskie, “subjects” were sociopolitical resources up until the nineteenth century, and those “subjects” (and land) became economic resources in the twentieth century, with Asante (and Ghana's) incorporation into the cash crop economy.

³¹ McCaskie, T. C., “Death and the Asantehene: a Historical Meditation,” JAH 30(1989), 438–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Lewin, Thomas J., Asante before the British: the Prempean Years, 1875-1900 (Lawrence KS, 1978), 37Google Scholar; McCaskie, , “Ahyiamu,” 170Google Scholar; idem, “Office, Land and Subjects in the History of the Manwere Fekuo of Kumase: an Essay in the Political Economy of the Asante State,” JAH 21(1980), 203.

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

³⁴ Feinberg, Harvey M., Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminas and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia, 1989), 107.Google Scholar

³⁵ Wilks, Ivor, “‘Unity and Progress:’ Asante Politics Revisited” in Akan Worlds: Identity and Power in West Africa – Mondes Akan: Identité et pouvoir en Afrique occidentale, ed. Valsecchi, Pierluigi and Viti, Fabio (Paris, 1999), 45–48.Google Scholar

³⁶ Wilks, , “Unity and Progress,” 54Google Scholar

³⁷ Lewin, , Asante before the British, 2–3.Google Scholar

³⁸ William De Graft, a Fante and son of the ɔkyeame at Cape Coast Castle, became a pioneer in securing the presence of the Wesleyan Methodists on the Gold Coast after his conversion. Much of his account is filtered through his very strong Christian beliefs. He accompanied Thomas B. Freeman to England following Freeman's visit to Asante in 1839.

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.

⁴¹ Lewin, , Asante before the British, 33.Google Scholar

⁴² McCaskie, T. C., “R. S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History: an Appraisal,” HA 10(1983), 194Google Scholar; idem, “Ahyiamu,” 170; idem, “Office, Land, and Subjects,” 203.

⁴³ Maier, D.J.E., “The Dente Oracle, the Bron Confederation, and Asante: Religion and the Politics of Secession,” JAH 22(1981), 242–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁴ Konadu, Kwasi, Indigenous Medicine and Knowledge in African Society (New York, 2007), 55–56Google Scholar; Wilks, , Asante in the Nineteenth Century, 519–21.Google Scholar See also Olsen, William C., “Healing, Personhood and Power: A History of Witch-Finding in Asante” (Ph.D., Michigan State University, 1998)Google Scholar, and Gray, Natasha A., “The Legal History of Witchcraft in Colonial Ghana: Akyem Abuakwa, 1913-1943” (Ph.D., Columbia University, 2000).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Allman, Jean M., “The Youngmen and the Porcupine: Class, Nationalism and Asante's Struggle for Self-Determination, 1954-57,” JAH 31(1990), 264, 267.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁶ Wilks, , “Unity and Progress,” 67.Google Scholar Wilks suggests that much more needs to be known about the way Akan political concepts have shifted subtly in meaning as the political landscape has changed.

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.

⁵⁰ See, e.g., Nkansa-Kyeremateng, K., Akan Heritage (Accra, 1999), 42.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Accounts of the events, and particularly the actions of Bafo Pim, who was awarded the Nkoransa settlement by the Asante for his deeds, can be found in Fynn, , Asante and its Neighbors, 37.Google Scholar

⁵² One-third of the tolls, which went to the Asante National Fund, were collected from the nine villages and paid to Asante.

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.

⁵⁸ Wilks, , Asante in the Nineteenth Century, 124.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For numerous destoolment charges and cases in Takyiman, see volumes 5-7 under “Techiman Traditional Council Affairs,” 8 January 1964-12 June 1975, BRG 2/1/10, National Archives of Ghana at Sunyani (NAG-S).

⁶⁰ Daaku, Kwame Y., Oral Traditions of Adanse (Legon, 1969), 12.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Daaku, , Adanse, 15.Google Scholar

⁶² Bonokyempem derives from the phrase, bono kyε ampem dua ne kwa (“the first created divided into a thousand and planted itself every where in the country”), which affirmed the Bono as pioneers in Akan culture development.

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.

⁶⁷ McCaskie, , “Nananom Mpow,” 138.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Ibid., 142. If the position of the five senior akɔmfoɔ for Nananom Mpow was hereditary, those akɔmfoɔ were abosomfoɔ, and this would make sense, since the latter are hereditary and matrilineal positions are senior to the akɔmfoɔ in Takyiman, and the Fante came from Takyiman.

⁶⁹ Metcalfe, G. E., ed., Great Britain and Ghana: Documents of Ghana History, 1807-1957 (London, 1964), 332–38Google Scholar; Wilks, , Asante in the Nineteenth Century, 230–32.Google Scholar Denkyira refused to be placed under Dutch protection and played a significant role in the formation of the Fante Confederation, as well as the blockade by the Confederation of Elmina. In 1945 Twifo and Heman federated with Denkyira. See Daaku, , Dεnkyira, 9.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See Feinberg, Africans and Europeans in West Africa.

⁷¹ Cruickshank, Brodie, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast of Africa (2 vols.: London, 1853), 2: 155, 157, 160.Google Scholar

⁷² McCaskie, , “Nananom Mpow,” 147.Google Scholar

⁷³ David Lindenfeld, , “Indigenous Encounters with Christian Missionaries in China and West Africa, 1800-1920: s Comparative Study,” Journal of World History 16(2005), 327-69. See also Michelle Gilbert, , “The Christian Encounter: Christianity and Chieftaincy as Rivals,” Journal of Religion in Africa 25(1995), 347-86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁴ Lindenfeld, , “Indigenous Encounters,” 349.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Morton, H.Fried, , “Reflections on Christianity in China,” American Ethnologist 14(1987), 94-106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar