Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T13:17:36.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local Knowledge: An Akuapem Twi History of Asante

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Tom C. McCaskie
Tom C. McCaskie*
Affiliation:
SOAS, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 2003 Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I's eighty-nine page manuscript ‘The History of Ashanti Kings and the whole country itself’ of 1907 was published in an annotated scholarly edition alongside a selection of allied texts. The same publisher is to produce a related volume containing the four hundred and fifty pages of Asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempeh II's ‘History of Ashanti’ written in the 1940s (and edited by myself). Both of these texts are written in English. However, the huge range of sources on the Asante past recorded in Akan Twi have yet to receive equal attention and treatment. This short paper introduces and contextualises one source of this kind that was researched in Asante between 1902-1910 and finished in written form in Akan Twi in 1915.

The Akuapem (Akwapim) kingdom is located less than thirty miles northeast of Ghana's capital at Accra. It has always been and remains a small polity. It comprises only seventeen historic towns scattered among hills on two parallel ridges about fifteen hundred feet above sea level. There are more towns today, many created by the cocoa economy of the early twentieth century, but Akuapem remains a compact entity. It is a Twi-speaking Akan kingdom, but an unusual one in that it is ethnically diverse.

Patrilineal Guan-speaking farmers settled on the Akuapem ridges in the early decades of the seventeenth century. They were oppressed by the matrilineal Twi-speaking Akan of the nearby Akwamu kingdom. To end this situation the Guan recruited other Akan Twi speakers as allies. These were military adventurers from the Akyem Abuakwa polity to the west. The Akyem incomers succeeded against the Akwamu but stayed on to establish their own conquest dynasty in 1733.

Type
Literacy, Feedback, and the Imagination of History
Information
History in Africa , Volume 38 , 2011 , pp. 169 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abun-Nasr, Sonia, Afrikaner und Missionar: Die Lebensgeschichte von David Asante (Basel, 2003).Google Scholar
Adu Boahen, Albert, Akyeampong, Emmanuel, Lawler, Nancy, McCaskie, Tom C., and Wilks, Ivor G. (eds.), “The History of Ashanti Kings and the whole country itself” and Other Writings by Otumfuo, Nana Agye-man Prempeh I (Fontes Historiae Africanae, New Series, Sources of African History 6) (Oxford, 2003).Google Scholar
Akwantu, Kristoni, “Pilgrim's Progress,” translated into the Tshee or Asante Language (Basel, 1885).Google Scholar
Austin, Gareth, “New Introduction,” in: Hill, Polly, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (1997 [second edition]), ix–xxviii.Google Scholar
Brokensha, David, Social Change at Larteh, Ghana (Oxford, 1966).Google Scholar
Brokensha, David (ed.), Akwapim Handbook (Accra/Tema, 1972).Google Scholar
Christaller, Johann G., A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Basel, 1875).Google Scholar
Christaller, Johann G., A Collection of 3600 Tshi Proverbs (Basel, 1879).Google Scholar
Christaller, Johann G., A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi (Chwee, Twi) (Basel, 1881).Google Scholar
Donkoh, Wilhelmina J., “Rev. N.V. Asare's A History of Asante in Tshi,” M.Soc.Sc. dissertation, Centre of West African Studies, Birmingham University (1990).Google Scholar
Fulbrook, Mary, Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England, Württemberg and Prussia (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “The Person of the King: Ritual and Power in a Ghanaian State,” in: Cannadine, David, and Price, Simon (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), 298–330.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “The Sudden Death of a Millionaire: Conversion and Consensus in a Ghanaian Kingdom,” Africa 58 (1988), 281–315.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “Sources of Power in Akuropon-Akuapem: Ambiguity in Classification,” in: Arens, William, and Karp, Ivan (eds.), The Creativity of Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies (Washington DC, 1989), 59–90.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “The Leopard Who Sleeps in a Basket: Akuapem Secrecy in Everyday Life and Royal Metaphor,” in Nooter, Mary H. (ed.), Secrecy: African Art that Conceals and Reveals (New York, 1993), 123–39.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “The Cimmerian Darkness of Intrigue: Queen Mothers, Christianity and Truth in Akuapem History,” Journal of Religion in Africa 23 (1993), 243.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “Aesthetic Strategies: The Politics of a Royal Ritual,” Africa 64 (1994), 99–125.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle “The Christian Executioner: Christianity and Chiefship as Rivals,” Journal of Religion in Africa 25 (1995), 347–86.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, “No Condition is Permanent: Ethnic Construction and the Use of History in Akuapem,” Africa 67 (1997), 501–33.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Michelle, and Jenkins, Paul, “The King, His Soul and the Pastor: Three Views of a Conflict in Akropong 1906-7,” Journal of Religion in Africa 38 (2008), 359–415.Google Scholar
Gossman, Lionel, Basel in the Age of Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago, 2000).Google Scholar
Haenger, Peter, Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Understanding of Social Bondage in West Africa (Basel, 2000).Google Scholar
Hauser-Renner, Heinz, “Examining Text Sediments – Commenting on a Pioneer Historian as an ‘African Herodotus:’ On the Making of the New Annotated Edition of C.C. Reindorf's History of the Gold Coast and Asante,” History in Africa 35 (2008), 231–99.Google Scholar
Hill, Polly, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, Isabel, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of “The Pilgrim's Progress” (Princeton NJ, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Paul (ed.), The Recovery of the West African Past: African Pastors and African History in the Nineteenth Century: C.C. Reindorf and Samuel Johnson (Basel, 1998).Google Scholar
Johnson, Marion, “Migrants' Progress,” Bulletin of the Ghana Geographers' Association 9–2 (1964), 4-27 and 10-1 (1965), 13–20.Google Scholar
Justesen, Ole (ed.), Danish Sources for the History of Ghana 1657-1754 (Fontes Historiae Africanae Series Varia VIII) (Copenhagen, 2005).Google Scholar
Rev.Keteku, Hermann J., Biography of Rev. Nathanael Victor Asare (Accra, 1965).Google Scholar
Kwamena-Poh, Michael A., Government and Politics in the Akuapem State 1730-1850 (London, 1973).Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History: An Appraisal,” History in Africa 10 (1983), 187–206.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Komfo Anokye of Asante: Meaning, History and Philosophy in an African Society,” Journal of African History 27 (1986), 315–39.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante (Cambridge, 1995).Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Konnurokusem: Kinship and Family in the History of the Oyoko Kokoo Dynasty of Kumase,” Journal of African History 36 (1995), 357–89.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “The Golden Stool at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Setting the Record Straight,” Ghana Studies 3 (2000), 61–96.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “The Consuming Passions of Kwame Boakye: an Essay on Agency and Identity in Asante History,” Journal of African Cultural Studies 13 (2000), 43–62.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Perregaux Among the Akan,” paper presented at a conference on “Imperial Cultures in Countries Without Colonies” (Basel, 2003).Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Sakrobundi ne Aberewa: Sie Kwaku the Witch-Finder in the Akan World,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (New Series) 8 (2004), 82–135.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., “Asante Origins, Egypt, and the Near East: An Idea and Its History,” in: Peterson, Derek R., and Macola, Giacomo (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, 2009), 125–48.Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom C., and Wiafe, J.E., “A Contemporary Account in Twi of the Akompi Sa of 1863: a Document with Commentary,” Asantesem: The Asante Collective Biography Bulletin 11 (1979), 72–8.Google Scholar
Miller, Jon, Missionary Zeal and Institutional Control: Organizational Contradictions in the Basel Mission on the Gold Coast 1828-1917 (Grand Rapids MI, 2003).Google Scholar
Pescheux, Gérard, Le royaume asante (Ghana): Parenté, pouvoir, histoire: XVII-XX siècles (Paris, 2003).Google Scholar
Riis, Andreas R., “Reise des Missionars in Akropong nach dem Aschantee-Lande im Winter 1839 bis 1840,” Magazin für die Neueste Geschichte der Evangelischen Missions- und Bibel-Gesellschaften III, (1840), 92–112 and 216–35.Google Scholar
Terray, Emmanuel, Une histoire du royaume abron du Gyaman: Des origines à la conquête coloniale (Paris, 1995).Google Scholar
Wilks, Ivor G., Akwamu 1640-1750: A Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African Empire (Trondheim, 2001).Google Scholar