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R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History: An Appraisal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

T.C. McCaskie
T.C. McCaskie*
Affiliation:
Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham
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Extract

“It must be remembered that in Ashanti really valuable anthropological information is possessed by comparatively few of its inhabitants. Those who have accurate knowledge are the older men and women who have few dealings with the foreigner, live secluded lives in remote villages, and are ignorant of or indifferent to the social and religious changes brought about by the European.

“When Prempeh returned, to what had once been known as ‘the city of blood’, he was a cultured, elderly gentleman, who took his place at the head of the Kumasi town council, and his old capital had become almost a city, with many fine and imposing buildings. I met Prempeh twice; once when he and sixty thousand Ashantis assembled to welcome my little Moth aeroplane, as it swooped down on Kumasi, which, from a great height, looked like a small brown patch in a sea of green. I met him again on my way home, after my last ‘tour’.”

“Listen! Rattray knew no secrets, nothing…You will never know secrets…”

To the historian, no less than to any other student of Asantesεm (Asante matters), the collected works of Rattray (1881–1938) are unavoidable, an ineluctable presence. There they sit on the library shelf--a monument of colonial ethnography and manifestly a major source--to be chewed over and ransacked, to be digested and distilled, to be scissored and parcelled out in the footnotes that support or refute an argument, and ultimately--and always--to be returned to again and again. All historians of Asante use Rattray and are grateful to him. It is important at the outset to record that fact of simple gratitude, for, to the historian of Asante, there is much to criticise in Rattray's work. What follows, then, is a critical assessment of that work.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 10 , 1983 , pp. 187 - 206
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1983

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References

Notes

1. Rattray, R.S., Ashanti, (Oxford, 1923), 7.Google Scholar

2. Rattray, R.S., “The Golden Stool of Ashanti,” The Illustrated London News, (2 March 1935), 334.Google Scholar

3. Akyempemhene ɔheneba Boakye Dankwa in conversation with the author, Kumase, December 1975.

4. In writing this paper I have paid particular attention to the following among R.S. Rattray's published works:

a) Ashanti Proverbs: The Primitive Ethias of a Savage People (Oxford, 1916).Google Scholar

b) Ashanti (Oxford, 1923).Google Scholar

c) “The Drum Language of West Africa,” Journal of the Royal African Society, 22 (1923), 226–36Google Scholar; 302-16.

d) A Short Manual of the Gold Coast (Accra, 1924).Google Scholar

e) “Arts and Crafts of Ashanti,” Journal of the Royal African Society, 23 (1924), 265–70.Google Scholar

f) “Cross-Cousin Marriages” with Buxton, L.H.D., Journal of the Royal African Society, 24 (1925), 83–91.Google Scholar

g) “A Wembley Idol,” Blackwoods Magazine, no. 1325 (1926), 395–402.Google Scholar

h) Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927).Google Scholar

i) “Some Aspects of West African Folklore,” Journal of the Royal African Society, 28 (1928), 1–11.Google Scholar

j) Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford, 1929).Google Scholar

k) Akan-Ashanti Folk Tales (Oxford, 1930).Google Scholar

l) “The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland,” Journal of the Royal African Society, 30 (1931), 40–57.Google Scholar

m) Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, (Oxford, 1932).Google Scholar

n) “The African Child in Proverb, Folklore and Fact,” Africa, 6 (1933), 456–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

o) The Leopard Priestess, (Oxford, 1934).Google Scholar

p) “The Golden Stool of Ashanti,” The Illustrated London News, 2 March 1935, 333–35.Google Scholar

q) “Totemism and Blood Groups in West Africa,” in Buxton, L.H.D., ed., Custom is King: Essays presented to R.R. Marett on his Seventieth Birthday, June 13th 1936 (London, 1936).Google Scholar

r) “The Mausoleum of Ampong Agyei,” Blackwoods Magazine, no. 223 n.s., n.d., 842-53.

Two recent evaluations of Rattray, though not from the specific perspective of Asante historiography, are Von Laue, T.H., “Transubstantiation in the Study of African Reality,” African Affairs, 74 (1975), 401–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Anthropology and Power: R.S. Rattray among the Ashanti,” African Affairs, 75 (1976), 33-54. Rattray's surviving unpublished notebooks are to be found in Royal Anthropological Institute, London, Mss. of Robert Sutherland Rattray. I have also located one or two unpublished letters but, excluding the formal, Rattray seems to have left few personal memorials behind. Since Rattray has played a significant part in my academic life over (at least) the last decade, I should like to thank, for general conversations, reflections and insights, R.R. Atkinson, J. Agyeman-Duah, M. Fortes, A.A.Y. Kyerematen, M.D. McLeod, and I. Wilks. I am particularly grateful to Otumfuo the Asantehene Opoku Ware II.

5. Bowdich, Thomas E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819)Google Scholar, and Dupuis, Joseph, Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See Christaller, J.G., A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language (Basel, 1875)Google Scholar; A Collection of Three Thousand and Six Hundred Tshi Proverbs (Basel, 1879)Google Scholar; A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language called Tschi (Basel, 1881).Google Scholar See too Ellis, A.B., West African Sketches (London, 1881)Google Scholar; idem, The Land of Fetish (London, 1883); idem, The Tshispeaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa (London, 1887); idem, A History of the Gold Coast of West Africa (London, 1895).

7. On Asamankow see Wilks, Ivor, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: the Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge, 1975), 313–14, 487.Google Scholar On the chronology of the Gyaman war, ACBP/54: Akosua, Adoma, Asantesεm: the Asante Collective Biography Project Bulletin, XI, July 1979, 14–17.Google Scholar On Panin, Kwaku Dua, McCaskie, T.C., “The Paramountcy of the Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin (1834-1867): a Study in Asante Political Culture,” (Ph.D., Cambridge, 1974).Google Scholar

8. This is especially true of oral traditions concerning the fiscal policies and personal habits of the “usurpatory” Asantehenes (and brothers) Kofi Kakari (1867-1874) and Mensa Bonsu (1874-1883). In terms of his published work, note for example that in Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), 129n2Google Scholar, Rattray names the custodians of the Golden Stool, but he never explores the socio-political position occupied by them; in fact, this can be done, and particularly in the case of Yaw Dabanka Tia.

9. See Astanti (Oxford, 1923), esp. 8.Google Scholar

10. The master design is set out in the prefaces and introductions to the central trilogy; Ashanti, Religion and Art in Ashanti, and Ashanti Law and Constitution.

11. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (various editions). I am grateful to N. Machin for this point.

12. See conveniently Harris, Marvin, The Rise of Anthropological Theory: a History of Theories of Culture (New York, 1968).Google Scholar Some leading remarks are to be found in Freedman, M., Main Trends in Social and Cultural Anthropology (New York, 1979), 31–33 and 76–79.Google Scholar

13. See Religion and Art in Ashanti, 88ff.

14. The biographies of Agyei Kese and Kwabena Asamoa Toto are being actively prepared for publication by the Asante Collective Biography Project. See Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, unnumbered file on “Sacrifices.” I should also like to record my thanks to the abrafoɔ Asamoa Agyei and Kwame Sisiriwa, grandsons of Asamoa Kwame.

15. Rattray's “romance” with Amma Sewaa Akoto is somewhat embarrassingly recorded in Ashanti.

16. Ibid.

17. See conveniently the footnotes attached to the divisional history of Mampon in Ashanti Law and Constitution.

18. See Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, File 18/46 and associated documentation of the affairs of Mampon. The evidence is summed up in McCaskie, , “The Dynastic Politics of the ɔman of Mampon: an Exploratory Essay in the Regional History of Asante,” Asantesεm, no. 12 (1980).Google Scholar

19. Religion and Art in Ashanti, esp. ix.

20. There is too much material on Kwasi Apea Nuama to allow of useful summary. Some inkling of the issues can be gleaned from West Africa [London], 26 August 1974, 1062.Google Scholar I am grateful to Akyeamehene Nana Nsuase Poku II for elucidation of the matter.

21. Religion and Art in Ashanti, vii.

22. Ashanti Proverbs: the Primitive Ethics of a Savage People, esp. 9-10.

23. Ashanti Law and Constitution, 73-74.

24. Ibid., 2n4.

25. Ibid., 80.

26. I cannot even review this historiography here. Interested readers might consult--for convenience--the bibliographies in Wilks, Asante, and in Lewin, Thomas, Asante before the British: the Prempean Years 1875-1900 (Lawrence, Kansas, 1978).Google Scholar Some of the most recent references are to be found in the footnotes to McCaskie, T.C., “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), 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27. Ibid.

28. See Maine, Henry, Ancient Law (London, 1861)Google Scholar; idem, Lectures on the Early History of Institutions (London, 1875); idem, Dissertations on Early Law and Custom (London, 1883). I have no direct knowledge of Rattray's specifically historical reading matter. However, I think I can detect echoes in his work of a reading of the hugely influential Green, J.R., A Short History of the English People (London, 1877 and numerous subsequent editions).Google Scholar

29. Ashanti Law and Constitution, 75-77.

30. The crucial article is perhaps Wilks, , “Land, Labour, Capital and the Forest Kingdom of Asante: a Model of Early Change,” in Friedman, J. and Rowlands, M., eds., The Evolution of Social Systems (London, 1978), 487–534.Google Scholar Important developments of the theme are forthcoming from Wilks himself in Africa and from Raymond Kea.

31. I have developed this theme in “State and Society, Marriage and Adultery: Some Considerations Towards a Social History of Precolonial Asante,” JAH, 22 (1981), 477–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. Copies of the memorandum are to be found in Ashanti, 287-93, and in Colonial Records Project, Rhodes House, Oxford, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 344, Papers of Sir Charles Henry Harper. I am grateful to the late Lady Harper for permission to use her husband's papers.

33. “The Golden Stool of Ashanti,” 333-35.

34. Descriptions and analyses of these events may be found in the appropriate biographies published in successive issues of Asantesεm.

35. “The Golden Stool of Ashanti, 333-35.

36. Colonial Records Project, Rhodes House, Oxford, Mss. Brit. Emp. s. 593, Papers of Lieutenant-Colonel A.C. Duncan-Johnstone.

37. I know of two recensions of these depositions. The fuller is contained in the Harper Mss. in Oxford. A lesser collection, but with some unique material and additions, is in Manhyia Record Office, Kumase. I have used my notes on both collections here.

38. Manhyia Record Office, Kumase, “The History of the Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself,” by Asantehene Agyeman Prempe, commenced 6 August 1907; Research Centre for African Affairs, Accra, (ex-Padmore Library), “Reign of Kofi Karikari et al,” ms. dd. 7 August 1922. I am grateful to A.A. Boahen for some discussion of this matter. For some account of the context see McCaskie, , “Asantehene Agyeman Prempe's Account to the Asanteman of his Exile from Kumase (1896-1924),” Asantesεm, no. 7 (1977), 32–42.Google Scholar

39. See ACBP/15: Boakye, Asafo, Asantesεm, no. 9 (1978), 15–27.Google Scholar

40. Ashanti, 156n2. See also ACBP/19: Mensa, Opoku, Asantesεm, no. 8 (1978), 5–11.Google Scholar

41. The Asante Kotoko Union Society is discussed in Tordoff, W., Ashanti under the Prempehs 1888-1935 (Oxford, 1965).Google Scholar I am grateful to I.K. Agyeman for showing me some of the papers of the society, and to W. Boaten for clarifying one or two points in conversation.

42. See the extensive holdings of the Manhyia Record Office, Kumase.

43. Ashanti, 189.

44. I am grateful for this point to Ronald Atkinson.