¹ See Kopytoff, I. and Miers, S., ‘African “slavery” as an institution of marginality’, in Miers, S. and Kopytoff, I. (eds.), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison, 1977), 17Google Scholar. Quoted in Rossi, B., ‘Dependence, unfreedom and slavery in Africa: towards an integrated analysis’, Africa, 86:3 (2016), 580CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Rossi, ‘Dependence’, 586.

³ Public Records and Administrative Archives Department, Kumasi, Ghana (PRAAD) AB1C, Asantehene's Divisional Court Record Book, vol. 54, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951.

⁴ Tordoff, W., Ashanti under the Prempehs, 1888–1935 (London, 1965), 322–3Google Scholar.

⁵ See note 13 below.

⁶ Hailey, W., Native Administration in the British African Territories, Part III: West Africa; Nigeria, Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Gambia (London, 1951)Google Scholar.

⁷ Although the date of Kofi Wuo's death is not mentioned in the court transcript, the records suggest that several issues of chiefly succession in Amoaful had to be resolved before his estate was settled. It seems likely therefore that he had died some time before Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh was heard in court.

⁸ PRAAD A1BC, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 15–17 Apr. 1951. There is no evidence in the lengthy transcript of the case that any of the litigants was represented by counsel. Both they and their witnesses were cross-examined ‘by the court’.

⁹ Berry, S., Chiefs Know Their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power and the Past in Asante, 1896–1996 (Portsmouth, NH, 2001), 113–14Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Council on Law Reporting, Accra, Court of Appeal, 22/2003.

¹¹ Berry, Chiefs Know Their Boundaries, 112–14.

¹² Ibid. 112–13.

¹³ Dumett, R. and Johnson, M., ‘Britain and the suppression of the slave trade in the Gold Coast Colony, Asante and the Northern Territories’, in Miers, S. and Roberts, R. (eds.), The End of Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1988)Google Scholar; Austin, G., Land, Labour and Capital in Ghana: From Slavery to Free Labour in Asante, 1807–1956 (Rochester, NY, 2005), ch. 11Google Scholar.

¹⁴ As the case between Akwasi Kumah and Abena Bimpeh illustrates, Asante custom was anything but stable. Intended as a definitive compendium of customary law, Rattray's, R. S. Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford, 1929)Google Scholar was rejected by colonial administrators almost as soon as it was written. The book continued, however, to influence both popular and judicial understandings of customary law long after the end of colonial rule. Berry, S., ‘Unsettled accounts: stool debts, chieftaincy disputes and the question of Asante constitutionalism’, The Journal of African History, 39:1 (1998), 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Berry, Chiefs Know Their Boundaries, 110–14.

¹⁵ Amoaful may be an alternative spelling for Amoafo, a small town near Bekwai. To avoid confusion, I have used the name as it is spelled in the original record of the trial. For the location of Amoafo, see Austin, G., ‘The emergence of capitalist relations in south Asante cocoa-farming, c. 1916–1930’, The Journal of African History, 28:2 (1987), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Akyeame (sing. ⊃kyeame) serve as public spokesmen for a chief, announcing and explaining the chief's decisions in public. Yankah, K., Speaking for the Chief: Okyeame and the Politics of Akan Oratory (Bloomington, IN, 1995)Google Scholar; Wilks, I., Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante (Athens, OH, 1993)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ In court, Akwasi Kumah added that he refused to give Kojo Tano the farms because Kojo Tano and his associates in Akyem had rebuffed an earlier appeal to help Kofi Wuo manage a large debt.

¹⁷ Based on the colonial policy of indirect rule, the judicial system in Asante was organized on two parallel tracks: one following British and colonial statutes, the other customary law. The courts were reorganized several times during the colonial era as indirect rule took hold in Asante. Following Britain's annexation of Asante in 1902, most judicial cases were heard and decided by the District Commissioners, with appellate jurisdiction held by the chief commissioner of Asante. Native Tribunals had jurisdiction over civil cases under £100. After the exiled asantehene was repatriated in 1923 and given the title of kumasihene a few years later, the Native Courts were reorganized as the kumasihene's Native Tribunal and Kumasi Divisional (‘Clan’) Courts, and their jurisdiction was expanded. Following the ‘restoration’ of the Asante monarchy in 1935, the asantehene and senior chiefs of the kingdom presided over four tiers of Native Courts, A through D. Elevated to paramount status, chiefs of the various Asante divisions had their own courts as well — a structure that remained in place until 1960, when Nkrumah's government modernized the judiciary by stripping traditional leaders of their judicial authority. Hailey, Native Administration III, 243–7; Busia, K. A., The Position of the Chief in the Modern Political System of Ashanti (London, 1968), 141–4Google Scholar.

Barima Owusu Agyeman III was first appointed to the Kenyase stool in the late 1940s. After being forced to abdicate in 1952, he studied public administration in both Ghana and Britain, then worked in Ghana until he was reenstooled in 1979. He was still on the stool when I interviewed him in 1993. Berry, Chiefs Know Their Boundaries, 130.

¹⁸ Wilks, I., Asante in the 19th Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (New York, 1975), 81Google Scholar. See also McCaskie, T. C., State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante (Cambridge, 2002)Google Scholar; Austin, Land, Labour and Capital.

¹⁹ Plaintiff and defendant each called four witnesses. The plaintiff's witnesses included Kofi Adudwabo, a subchief to the Amoafulhene (PW1); Osei Kwamu, the recently installed amoafulhene (PW2); Efua Bombo, a daughter of Attah Kojo (PW3); and William Kojo Appiah, who described himself as a registrar from Kumasi (PW4). Testifying on behalf of the defendant were Ama Safuwa, a farmer (DW1); Kwaku Bekui, the odikro of Adumasu (DW2); Kwabena Nkansa, a linguist to the amoafulhene, who denied that his stool had ever pledged the defendant's ancestors (i.e., Ama Dapaa or Yaa Bonsu) to Kofi Wuo's ancestors (DW3); and Kwabena Ampontua, a son of Kofi Wuo who lived at Kumasi where he worked as a fitter (mechanic) (DW4).

²⁰ PRAAD AB1C, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951, 130.

²¹ Ibid. 135–6.

²² The court record of the trial was written in English, but it is likely that the litigants and most of the witnesses gave testimony in Twi, which was then translated by a court interpreter and written down in English to be accessible to colonial officials. Courtroom translations were still in use forty years after independence. In the mid-1990s and early 2000s, I was present at a number of hearings in the High Court of Kumasi in which Twi-speaking litigants and witnesses represented by Twi-speaking lawyers testified in Twi before Twi-speaking judges; then waited while their words were translated into English by a court interpreter and written down long-hand in English by the judge. The judge then asked questions in English that were translated into Twi for the benefit of the litigants and their witnesses.

By coincidence, I was present during initial testimony in the trial of a Chinese merchant accused of using forged invoices to inflate the cost of imported goods. To ensure that the accused understood the charges and had a chance to defend himself, the court provided a Ghanaian interpreter who translated nimbly between English, Twi, and Chinese. I am grateful to High Court Justices Sekyere Owusu and Rose Owusu (no relation) for permitting me to observe proceedings in their courtrooms.

²³ Membership in one or another of the dispersed Akan matriclans (ato η, sing. nto η) was itself a subject of debate. In his opening testimony, Akwasi Kumah stated that ‘the Akyeame stool is from the Agona family.’ But the defendant's first witness (DW1) testified that Kojo Tano and the people from Akyem were Ekuona, and that ‘they are the real royals of the Akyeame stool of Amoaful’. DW1 also stated that the defendant and her aunt, Abena Kwabena, ‘are only from the same “nto η,” but not from the maternal side’. PRAAD AB1C, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951, 96, 126, 125. See also Wilks, Forests of Gold, 67–71,78–82.

²⁴ As everyone present at the trial would have known, a pledge (or pawn) was a form of collateral — an asset turned over from a borrower to a creditor, to use until the borrower repaid the loan and redeemed the pledge. A human pledge was expected to work for the creditor until the loan was repaid. The pledge's labor served as interest on the loan and sometimes counted toward repayment of the principal as well. If a female pawn bore a child while in the creditor's household, the child joined its mother as a servant there. If the mother was redeemed, the child accompanied the mother back to her own family. If the debt was not repaid, the pawn and her descendants remained indefinitely, becoming lifetime subordinates in the creditor's household. The British administration outlawed human pledging in Asante in 1908, but the practice ‘continued in secret’ for many years. Kyerematen, A. Y., Inter-state Boundary Litigation in Ashanti (Cambridge, 1972), 110Google Scholar; Rattray, Ashanti Law, 52. For a general discussion of pawning in Asante, see Austin, G., ‘Human pawning in Asante, 1820–1950: markets and coercion, gender and cocoa’, in Falola, T. and Lovejoy, P. (eds.) Pawnship, Slavery, and Colonialism in Africa (Trenton, NJ, 2003), 187–224Google Scholar.

²⁵ PRAAD AB1C, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951, 106.

²⁶ Other testimony in the trial indicates that taking responsibility for someone's burial could be taken as evidence of blood kinship. See note 31 below.

²⁷ Some witnesses said that Abena Bimpeh's mother, Yaa Bonsu, was pledged to Attah Kojo for £6, but did not explain whether this was a separate transaction or whether she simply inherited her mother's position in the house. After the British administration ‘restored’ the Asante confederacy in 1935, Yaa Bonsu and her daughter, Abena Bimpeh, announced that they wished to return to ‘their people’ in Adadaase. Kofi Wuo reported their wish to the amoafulhene and his elders, but Yaa Bonsu died before the chiefs responded to her request. Court records do not state whether Yaa Bonsu and her daughter needed permission from the chiefs to leave Amoaful because no one had come to repay the debt for which they were pledged in the first place.

²⁸ PRAAD AB1C, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951, 96.

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ McCaskie, State and Society, 199.

³¹ Austin, Land, Labour and Capital, 117–19, 193–5, 199–200.

³² Rattray, Ashanti Law, 39–44.

³³ The literature on Asante funerals is extensive. See, e.g., van der Geest, S., ‘Yebisa wo fie: growing old and building a house in the Akan culture of Ghana’, Journal of Cross-cultural Gerontology, 13 (1998), 333–59CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; van der Geest, S., ‘Funerals for the living: conversations with elderly people in Kwahu, Ghana’, African Studies Review, 43:3 (2000), 103–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Witte, M., Long Live the Dead! Changing Funeral Celebrations in Asante, Ghana (Amsterdam, 2001)Google Scholar; Arhin, K., ‘The economic implications of transformations in Akan funeral rites’, Africa, 64:3 (1994), 307–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arhin, K., ‘Monetization and the Asante state’, in Guyer, J. (ed.), Money Matters: Instability, Values and Social Payments in the Modern History of West African Communities (Portsmouth, NH, 1995), 97–110Google Scholar. Burial may also establish a person's social identity, defined by membership in a community as well as a family. Both are issues of potentially great complexity, as Michelle Gilbert explained so well; see Gilbert, M., ‘The sudden death of a millionaire: conversion and consensus in a Ghanaian kingdom’, Africa, 58:3 (1998), 291–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ The successor or executor of a deceased person's estate is responsible for burying the deceased at his own expense (unless members of the family offer to chip in), clearing the estate of all liabilities including outstanding debts, and distributing the assets among eligible heirs. Crabbe, S. Azu, Law of Wills in Ghana (Accra, 1961)Google Scholar; Kumasi High Court CS64/2003. As this case shows, however, performing someone's funeral implies family membership, but not necessarily blood kinship. Customary office holders — in this case the odikro — may also participate, whether or not the deceased was a member of their family.

³⁵ PRAAD AB1C, Akwasi Kumah v. Abena Bimpeh, 14–19 Apr. 1951, 99.

³⁶ Presumably the amoafulhene approved Kwaku Kumah's decision to assign the ⊃kyeame stool to his own nephew, but the court transcript does not mention it.

³⁷ Their story was corroborated by their witnesses, one of whom, an elderly man named Adobrako, especially impressed the judges with his knowledge and integrity. His testimony appears to have played a significant role in the judges’ decision. On kinship as a social process as well as a biological fact, see Berry, S., No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison, 1993), 161–3Google Scholar; Guyer, J., ‘Wealth-in-people and self-realization in equatorial Africa’, Man, 28:2 (1993), 243–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁸ Austin, Land, Labour and Capital, 193–5.

³⁹ Wilks, Asante Law, 81.

⁴⁰ Shipton, P., The Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy, Exchange and the Sacred (New Haven, 2007)Google Scholar; Graeber, D., Debt: The First 5000 Years (Brooklyn, 2011)Google Scholar; Guyer, J. and Belinga, S. Eno, ‘Wealth in people as wealth in knowledge: accumulation and composition in equatorial Africa’, The Journal of African History, 36:1 (1995), 91–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹ Shipton, Nature of Entrustment, 208. Compare Diggins, J., Coastal Sierra Leone: Materiality and the Unseen in Maritime West Africa (Cambridge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² The value and contingency of social wealth produced by giving things away are also discussed in Diggins, Coastal Sierra Leone.

⁴³ Perhaps the women's families did not claim their bodies because they did not want to be asked to redeem them by paying off the outstanding debt.