The Ghana Reader: History, Culture, Politics
528
The Ghana Reader: History, Culture, Politics
528eBook
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| ISBN-13: | 9780822374961 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/04/2016 |
| Series: | The World Readers |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 528 |
| File size: | 14 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
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The Ghana Reader
History, Culture, Politics
By Kwasi Konadu, Clifford C. Campbell
Duke University Press
Copyright © 2016 Duke University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-7496-1
CHAPTER 1
One Nation, Many Histories
An understanding of Ghana must begin with the cultural groups that came to populate the region later called the Gold Coast (renamed Ghana in 1957), and with a recognition of the historical axes of commonality and diversity that caution against unitary readings of Ghanaian identity. The concept of a Ghanaian nation is not a fairly new innovation that originated in the nationalist context of the 1950s, but a product of the country's multiple local histories and its uneven historical relations with the world within and the world beyond its forest-savanna boundaries. Indeed, the idea of "one nation, many histories" underscores the multiple histories and historic pathways through which the Ghanaian "nation" was born in the mid-twentieth century.
In part I, we have taken a chronological approach to the early peopling of Ghana. The ultimate origins of any group of people is often buried under the soil on which their ancient ancestors lived and traveled, and because our most advanced techniques can only tell us partially what people did, we have few ways to know who they were and why they did what (we think) they did. Our goal, therefore, is not to resolve these vexed questions of origins but rather to introduce you to the known peoples and places of the deep past — that is, the trailblazing women and men, sacred places and matrilineal structures, and sociopolitical developments that have all shaped our evolving understanding of early Ghanaian societies. Archaeological and oral data dominate the means by which we trace how early societies moved through their histories. Taken together, archaeological and oral sources simultaneously expose and fill in each other's gaps, especially where documents do not exist and where the key methodological and theoretical assumptions of historical linguistics remain under revision and debate.
There is much that we do not know and will never know about the lives of the ancients — called tetefo[??] in the Twi (Akan) language — who made the semideciduous forest and the grassland and coastal environs their homeland. But our current knowledge of this region and its peopling suggests the central and southern areas have been populated for at least the last two millennia, and in the process of movement and settlement its peoples created relatively large and long-lasting settlements in the forest and on its fringes. Who were they? There is no way to know with any certainty. They, however, were certainly kindred or coalesced groups of peoples who came to see themselves as farmers and hunters (and pastoralists in the northern regions) with a food-producing economy, producers of gold and iron in the interior and on the coast (by at least 600 CE [Common Era]), merchants engaged in local and regional commerce, spiritualists with a holistic understanding of spiritual and temporal realities (based on the high correlation between sacred groves and ancient settlements), and forgers of settlements and polities of varying complexities.
The above profile of the ancient designers of early societies is a composite sketch that is not without lingering questions. Accumulative research of the past five decades suggests these peoples were in fact proto-Akan culture bearers, but there is no scholarly consensus, and other candidates — such as the Guan or the peoples of ancient Kintampo settlements — are peoples about which we know relatively little to nothing. If there is a bias in this portrait, it is in the collective evidence and where or to whom it points. By the fifteenth century, there is little doubt, the various peoples who became known as Akan or Twi speakers dominated the forested and coastal regions, and these groups (organized into large family groupings or matriclans) claimed to be autochthons and thus adopted a "vertical" migration story to their place(s) of settlement — either emerging from "holes in the ground" or descending from the sky via golden chains — thereby making them ineligible as immigrants. Other groups that settled the Gold Coast / Ghana, such as the coastal Gã-Adangme and Ewe or northern Islamic societies, have documented migratory histories of a later date and therefore do not claim to be indigenous to the region. What the Akan claim to land and settlement reveals is not the veracity of their accounts but that the remembered versions of ancient migratory stories were by those who were already settled in unoccupied or conquered lands, hence a homogeneous claim across a wide geographic area and where their major polities and peoples dotting sixteenth- to early twentieth-century European maps remained consistently in place. Finally, these claims are not about origins of peoples per se, but for our purposes, they point to what might have been some of the earlier processes of social and cultural integration among groups of strangers eventually creating composite identities. This was "nation" building then; much later, the mid-twentieth century would have its own version.
Ancestral Faces
Kwesi Brew
Kwesi Brew (1928–2007) was educated at the University of Ghana and worked in Ghana's civil service, serving as a longtime diplomat and as an ambassador to Mexico and Senegal. One of West Africa's most significant twentieth-century poets, Kwesi Brew was born in 1928 in Cape Coast, Ghana. Cape Coast lies on the Atlantic Ocean and was an important site of early encounters with European merchants and later colonialists. It is therefore not surprising to find in Brew's poems the themes of encounter, recollection, ancestry, and careful attention to the rhythm of local cultural understandings and practices. In Ancestral Faces, Brew reminds readers of the intimate connection between the living and those who came before them; this thematic link remains a core understanding for many in Ghana. Brew also reminds us it is appropriate to introduce readers to a place (Ghana) and its peoples by beginning with those ancient ones who shaped what eventually became Ghana in the mid-twentieth century.
They sneaked into the limbo of time
But could not muffle the gay jingling
Brass bells on the frothy necks
Of the sacrificial sheep that limped and nodded after them;
They could not hide the moss on the bald pate
Of their reverent heads;
And the gnarled backs of the wawa tree;
Nor the rust on the ancient state-swords;
Nor the skulls studded with grinning cowries;
They could not silence the drums,
The fiber of their souls and ours — The drums that whisper to us behind black sinewy hands.
They gazed
And sweeping like white locusts through the forests
Saw the same men, slightly wizened,
Shuffle their sandaled feet to the same rhythms,
They heard the same words of wisdom uttered
Between puffs of pale blue smoke:
They saw us,
And said: They have not changed!
The Holocene Archaeology of Ghana
Ann Brower Stahl
We know comparatively very little about the earliest peoples of the region that became Ghana. Matters concerning the ancients appearing in Brew's poem remain obscured by our inadequate techniques and the deep gaps in our knowledge. Archaeology, however, has helped to fill some of these important gaps in Ghanaian prehistory by interpreting material culture to tell us something about the advent of sedentism, agriculture, iron technology, urbanism, and long-distance commerce. In The Holocene Archaeology of Ghana, anthropological archaeologist Ann Brower Stahl, professor and chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of Victoria (Canada), focuses on the Holocene epoch (i.e., the past ten thousand years) in the archaeology of Ghana. As a scholar who has studied daily life in the rural Banda area of west central Ghana since the mid-1980s, Stahl offers important insights into the relationship between material culture and identity against a series of dramatic changes. In those changes, mobile hunting-gathering gave way to increased sedentism and agricultural production; iron metallurgy was added to the technological repertoire; and societies became enmeshed in interregional exchange networks, resulting in changes in social complexity and foreshadowing the European presence in West Africa.
We have a better understanding of variability in the Later Iron Age (LIA). Long-distance trade linkages were forged and complex polities emerged, first in the wooded savanna and subsequently in the forest. ... Northward-looking exchange relations dominated the first half of the first millennium BP [Before the Present]. A gradual but crucial shift in the gravity of exchange accompanied the arrival of Europeans on the West African coast beginning in the fifteenth century. Trade that formerly moved northward across the Sahara was increasingly funneled southward to European middlemen. As a result, the importance of forest polities grew. Our understanding of how LIA societies were affected by these external connections was initially based on Arab and European documents; however, archaeological evidence has come to play an increasingly important role in our efforts to reconstruct LIA Ghanaian societies. Drawing on both historical and archaeological sources, [Merrick] Posnansky suggested that the growth of trade was accompanied by movements of people into uninhabited areas. He identified several factors that may have contributed to the southward shift in the focus of settlement and exchange: an increased demand for gold in Europe; two centuries of drought that followed a period of increased humidity from the eleventh to the sixth centuries BP; and the Black Death, which may have spread across the Sahara in the sixth century BP. The growth of towns may also relate to the increased importance of slaves in the Gold Coast economy as previously dispersed peoples aggregated as a means of protection. I begin by considering the forging of trade relations with the middle Niger and its impact on savanna woodland societies, then consider sites that postdate European maritime contacts with the Gold Coast....
The trans-Saharan caravan trade that linked Arab North Africa with the Sudanic zone was well established by the eighth century BP. Islamic scholars left written accounts of Sudanic kingdoms, and historians relied heavily on these documents to reconstruct the complex history of successive Sudanic kingdoms [ancient Wagadu (Ghana), Mali, Songhai]. Documents provided an Arab-centric view of these societies and suggested that they developed as a result of Arab contact. Recent archaeological research along the middle Niger demonstrated that interregional trade in raw materials and food predated Arab contact, suggesting that contact with Arab North Africa stimulated, but did not necessarily initiate, the growth of complex societies in the Sudan.
Early historians were intrigued by documentary references to a place variably identified as Bighu, Bi'u, or Biku, reputed to be a source of Sudanic gold. Most scholars agreed that Bew was located somewhere in Ghana, and historians linked the name with the site of Begho on the northern margins of the Ghana forest. Both Goody and Wilks argued that Begho was an entrepot where Akan gold from the southern forest was exchanged for northern commodities — salt, cloth, and copper alloys. Historical sources suggested that Mande-speaking traders (Wangara, Dyula) led caravans laden with Saharan goods south to Begho, beyond which they could not penetrate due to dense forest and the ubiquity of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), which affected their pack animals. Here they exchanged their wares for gold transported by human portage from the forest goldfields. Documents suggest that Begho was sacked by Asante armies early in the eighteenth century, and scholars believe that the town was abandoned as a result.
Oral histories describe the organization of the former town into distinct residential quarters. The Brong quarter was home to Akan-speaking Brong peoples, presumed to be the ancestors of Brong [Bono] who live in the area today; the Kramo was home to Mande-speaking merchants whose origins lay in the Niger bend area; and a third quarter, Dwinfuor, was occupied by artisans. Archaeological evidence suggests that a fourth quarter, the Nyarko, predates the occupation of other residential districts. Oral sources suggest that it was home to a group of mixed origins. The archaeological site consists of approximately 1,500 low mounds, many presumed to be the remains of collapsed compounds. These mounds are clustered into four areas, each separated from the others by a distance of a kilometer or two, thought to represent the discrete quarters described by oral-historical accounts. The term Begho may refer to an area larger than the site near Hani, and neighboring towns may have shared in the Sudanic trade.
Excavations by West African Trade Project personnel between 1970 and 1979 tested all residential quarters, as well as several neighboring industrial sites. The resultant sequence, based on radiocarbon dates and datable imports, suggests an occupation from the eighth through the second century BP. Full publication of excavation results is awaited; however, the sequence has been outlined in several publications. They emphasize several themes: (1) The site is older than was expected based on historical sources; (2) there is considerable evidence for artisanal activity, which appears to be influenced by connections with the middle Niger; (3) the decline of Begho is related to the rise of Asante in the southern forest; and (4) there is continuity in ceramic style from the main period of occupation at Begho to the present.
Documents suggested that Begho developed in response to Mande traders moving south from centers on the middle Niger (i.e., Jenne) in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries; however, radiocarbon dates suggest that part of the site predates the trans-Saharan trade by two to three centuries. Ceramics from the Nyarko quarter were distinctive and included a high proportion of red, design-painted pottery. Two radiocarbon dates from this area of the site point to an initial occupation in the eighth century BP. Thus it appears that Mande traders probably came into contact with people already resident in the area who were exploiting locally available gold resources. Posnansky has stressed that Begho was a merchant center, not a state. Excavations at the Brong, Kramo, and Dwinfuor quarters document the period of peak occupation from the fifth to the second centuries BP, a period of intensified contact with societies of the middle Niger. These contacts are evidenced in exotic goods including beads, copper, a piece of glass, and several pieces of sixteenth-century Chinese porcelain.
At its height, a variety of artisanal specialties was practiced at Begho, several of which probably derive from Sudanic societies. Textile production is attested by numerous spindle whorls, many of which were painted and resemble spindle whorls from the important merchant town of Jenne Jeno on the Niger River. Today much of the cloth woven in Ghana is produced on narrow strip looms. Strips are sewn together to create large cloths. Historians of textile production suggest that strip weaving is Sudanic in origin and was introduced to Volta basin societies through mercantile connections. A brass foundry located in the Dwinfuor quarter yielded hundreds of crucibles and probably signals northern influence. Finished brass vessels, often adorned with Arabic script, were imported into the savanna woodland area and may have provided the inspiration for several innovations in ceramic forms including the sharp angles or carinations between rims and necks, neck and body, or body and base that appear as new elements on medieval pottery at Begho. The medieval Islamic brassware that was its inspiration is included in the state paraphernalia of modern Volta basin chieftaincies.
There is also evidence for ivory working at Begho, and two examples of ivory side-blown trumpets were found in third- and fourth-century BP contexts. Side-blown trumpets are important regalia among contemporary and historic Akan peoples (e.g., Asante). Again, Posnansky traces these instruments to the north. Ceramic weights are another indicator of northern influence. Chipped, shaped potsherds from Begho conform quite closely to the Islamic system of weights used to measure gold and silver [mitkal and uqiya]. A final innovation that probably reflects northern influence are flat-roofed houses evidenced by ceramic drain tiles at Begho. Thus Begho is viewed as the conduit through which artisanal skills later elaborated by the historic Akan states (e.g., Asante) were introduced to Ghana. Posnansky posits "a steady, albeit gradual stream of influence from the Mali area, probably accelerating from the late fourteenth century as world trade expanded."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Ghana Reader by Kwasi Konadu, Clifford C. Campbell. Copyright © 2016 Duke University Press. Excerpted by permission of Duke University Press.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiiiIntroduction 1
I. One Nation, Many Histories 17
II. Between the Sea and the Savanna, 1500–1700 81
III. Commerce and the Scrambles for Africa, 1700–1900 125
IV. Colonial Rule and Political Independence, 1900–1957 207
V. Independece, Coups, and the Republic, 1957–Present 299
VI. The Exigencies of a Postcolony 361
Suggestions for Further Reading 457
Acknowledgments of Copyrights and Sources 461
Index 469
What People are Saying About This
"An important and timely book, The Ghana Reader fills the crucial need to better understand a nation that occupies a privileged place in pan-African-oriented life and is increasingly central to economic, political, and cultural cosmopolitanism. Insightfully framing the complexity of Ghanaian history and life and opening up paths for future study, The Ghana Reader will appeal to students and general readers alike."
"Ghana captures all that is West Africa today—its hope and promise, its turbulent politics, its proud but vexed history, its vibrant popular culture, its long engagement with pan-Africanist thought and aspiration. The Ghana Reader does full and eloquent justice to Ghana’s rowdy and cacophonous history and to its luminous promise. The book’s judicious and broad-ranging set of selections will serve as a brilliant primer for non-Ghana scholars and students—and travelers and tourists—and as a stimulating reminder for the already-initiated."