LOCAL KNOWLEDGE:

AN AKUAPEMTWI HISTORY OF ASANTE

TOM C. MCCASKIE
SOAS, LONDON
I
In 2003 Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh Is 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.
1
The same publisher is to produce a related volume containing the
four hundred and fifty pages of Asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempeh IIs
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.
2
II
The Akuapem (Akwapim) kingdom is located less than thirty miles north-
east of Ghanas capital at Accra. It has always been and remains a small
History in Africa 38 (2011), 169192
1
Albert Adu Boahen, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Nancy Lawler, Tom C. McCaskie and
Ivor G. Wilks (eds.), The History of Ashanti Kings and the whole country itself and
Other Writings by Otumfuo, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I (Fontes Historiae Africanae,
New Series, Sources of African History 6) (Oxford, 2003).
2
A different version of this paper was presented at a conference on The Production of
Knowledge, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2009). I am grateful to all who com-
mented.
170 Tom C. McCaskie
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 twenti-
eth 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 matri-
lineal Twi-speaking Akan of the nearby Akwamu kingdom. To end this sit-
uation 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.
3
The consequence was a kingdom ruled from its capital at Akuropon
(Akropong) by a king or omanhene supported by titled office holders of the
standard Akan kind. Akuropon and one other town were peopled by Akyem
Abuakwa incomers. Three other towns were populated by resident Akwa-
mu. The remaining Akuapem towns were home to the descendants of the
original Guan settlers, many of whom came to be bilingual in Twi.
Guan-speaking indigenes and remnant Akwamu formed a subordinated
majority, uneasily and often resentfully incorporated into the new political
order. Thus the seven Kyerepon Guan towns in north Akuapem were organ-
ised into the right wing or nifa in the new Akan structural dispensation.
Two of these towns, the divisional capital at Adukrom and neighbouring
Awukugua, play a part in the story set out below.
Akuapem is not like Asante, the optimally developed Akan state. It lacks
gold or any other significant natural resource. In particular good farmland is
scarce among the hill slopes and ridge scarps. Famously, Akuapem success
in the colonial cocoa economy was achieved through migration to cultivable
land in other parts of the Gold Coast. Asante was a centrally controlled and
monitored polity dedicated to the accumulation of wealth for its king, chiefs
and their chosen clients. Chiefship in Akuapem had no such power. Ruling
over an ethnically heterogeneous, quarrelsome and often violently divided
population, Akuropon never commanded the resource base needed to stamp
its authority on society. Among the Akan more generally the kingdom is
infamous for its dynastic conflicts, stool disputes and periodic outbreaks of
communal disorder.
3
See Ivor G. Wilks, Akwamu 1640-1750: A Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African
Empire (Trondheim, 2001); Michael A. Kwamena-Poh, Government and Politics in the
Akuapem State 1730-1850 (London, 1973).
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 171
The best informed commentator on Akuapem has described its weak
chiefship order as being predatory upon society and geared to exploiting
division and despair amongst its own people to sustain itself. The legacy of
this today is that Akuapem chiefship is depleted not only of substance but
also of resonance and relevance in the daily lives of its subjects who are
now Ghanaian citizens. Symptomatic of this state of affairs is the increasing
trend for the ritual props of Akan chiefship to fall into disuse and forgetting.
What it might mean or purport to be Akuapem today is a difficult question
and perhaps one that is increasingly otiose.
4
Chiefship however is only one lens that affords a view of past and pre-
sent. Consider the historic place of the individual in Akuapem society. A
weak and divided polity, imposed on by the Danes and then the British from
Accra, and subject to periodic ravages and overrule by the Asante, was not
in a position to offer its subjects security of the kind afforded by the more
powerfully evolved Akan state. It might be argued then that Akuapem chief-
ship was in permanent breach of contract. It compounded this failing by
preying upon its own people.
Furthermore extensive intermarriage between the patrilineal Guan and
the matrilineal Akan occluded and made the rules and bulwarks of everyday
life. Kinship relations, obligations, reciprocities, succession and inheritance
were all caught between radically different normative structures and under-
standings. This made for an uncertainty that threw individuals back on
4
I have plundered but I trust not misrepresented Michelle Gilberts excellent work on
Akuapem. See Michelle Gilbert, The Person of the King: Ritual and Power in a Ghana-
ian State, in: David Cannadine, and Simon Price (eds.), Rituals of Royalty: Power and
Ceremonial in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1987), 298-330; Michelle Gilbert, The
Sudden Death of a Millionaire: Conversion and Consensus in a Ghanaian Kingdom,
Africa 58 (1988), 281-315; Michelle Gilbert, Sources of Power in Akuropon-Akuapem:
Ambiguity in Classification, in: William Arens, and Ivan Karp (eds.), The Creativity of
Power: Cosmology and Action in African Societies (Washington DC, 1989), 59-90;
Michelle Gilbert, The Leopard Who Sleeps in a Basket: Akuapem Secrecy in Everyday
Life and Royal Metaphor, in Mary H. Nooter (ed.), Secrecy: African Art that Conceals
and Reveals (New York, 1993), 123-39; Michelle Gilbert, The Cimmerian Darkness of
Intrigue: Queen Mothers, Christianity and Truth in Akuapem History, Journal of Reli-
gion in Africa 23 (1993), 2-43; Michelle Gilbert, Aesthetic Strategies: The Politics of a
Royal Ritual, Africa 64 (1994), 99-125; Michelle Gilbert, The Christian Executioner:
Christianity and Chiefship as Rivals, Journal of Religion in Africa 25 (1995), 347-86;
Michelle Gilbert, No Condition is Permanent: Ethnic Construction and the Use of Histo-
ry in Akuapem, Africa 67 (1997), 501-33; Michelle Gilbert, and Paul Jenkins, 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.
172 Tom C. McCaskie
themselves in the absence of agreed unequivocal norms about all of lifes
fundamental guidelines. The archives are replete with court cases concern-
ing the sorts of irreconcilable family quarrels that arose from opposed struc-
tures and ways of seeing the world and the self.
Disadvantages can also be opportunities. Akuapem people, unable to
reside with comfort and assurance in either polity or society, led the way
amongst the Akan in pioneering individual resource and enterprise. A body
of now venerable scholarship has analysed and described some of the out-
comes of this in the colonial period.
5
However, this persuasion towards
individual self-reliance and self-reflection was already present in the pre-
colonial era. Akuapem people traded often on their own behalf with Euro-
peans at Accra throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
6
Most significantly, the coming of a particular kind of mission Christiani-
ty to Akuapem in the 1830s drew forth personal responses from and I use
the terms advisedly those ambitious, aspirational or alienated Akuapem
individuals who were in search of a more responsive and rewarding model
for their lives.
III
The Deutsche Christentumsgesellschaft, derived from and influenced by
Wrttemberg pietism, was founded in Basel, Switzerland in 1779-1780. It
gave rise to the Swiss Basel Mission Society (henceforth BM).
7
The BM privileged contemplation and self-examination (Innerlichkeit)
as the path to a personal belief in Christ. Allied to this, in both spiritual and
5
For example, the classic Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern Ghana: A
Study in Rural Capitalism (Cambridge, 1963); an incisive update is provided by Gareth
Austin, New Introduction, in: Polly Hill, The Migrant Cocoa-Farmers of Southern
Ghana: A Study in Rural Capitalism (1997 [second edition]), ix-xxviii; Marion Johnson,
Migrants Progress, Bulletin of the Ghana Geographers Association 9-2 (1964), 4-27
and 10-1 (1965), 13-20; David Brokensha, Social Change at Larteh, Ghana (Oxford,
1966); David Brokensha (ed.), Akwapim Handbook (Accra/Tema, 1972).
6
See Peter Haenger, Slaves and Slave Holders on the Gold Coast: Towards an Under-
standing of Social Bondage in West Africa (Basel, 2000); Ole Justesen (ed.), Danish
Sources for the History of Ghana 1657-1754 (Fontes Historiae Africanae Series Varia
VIII) (Copenhagen, 2005).
7
See Mary Fulbrook, Piety and Politics: Religion and the Rise of Absolutism in England,
Wrttemberg and Prussia (Cambridge, 1983); Lionel Gossman, Basel in the Age of
Burckhardt: A Study in Unseasonable Ideas (Chicago, 2000); Jon Miller, Missionary Zeal
and Institutional Control: Organizational Contradictions in the Basel Mission on the
Gold Coast 1828-1917 (Grand Rapids MI, 2003).
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 173
material realms, was an injunction to a ceaseless Christian self-awareness in
the struggle for improvement and betterment in every aspect of life. BM
converts were launched into a journey through life that was laid down and
signposted for them by Christian reinforcement and other forms of civilisa-
tional and material achievement.
8
BM mission personnel were mostly drawn from southern Germany and
western Switzerland, areas that experienced rapid and discomfiting social
and industrial change in the nineteenth century. Missionary files list agricul-
turalists, artisans and handworkers as the majority among BM recruits.
These were culturally conservative and in truth rather nostalgic folk.
Once established in the mission field they sought to redeem and recreate
the vanishing pre-industrial sociabilities of the European agricultural and
artisanal world of their own or their immediate ancestral past. They turned
their faces away from the headlong changes wrought by the forces of capi-
talist modernisation, and they encouraged their converts to explore and
record their own cultures, orally and in writing. They were Christian devo-
tees of an imaginary of the small scale, the face-to-face, and a retrieved
socio-cultural authenticity and continuity.
9
The BM arrived in Accra in the Gold Coast in the 1820s. Missionary
Andreas Riis, sent to the Danes in Accra because of his own unusual Danish
ancestry and background, went to Akuropon in 1835. Chiefship received
him in a friendly manner but was diffident about the work of conversion.
Riis became discouraged. In 1839-1840 he travelled to Asante. There he
learned that whatever its difficulties Akuapem was a more open and encour-
aging place than Asante with its tightly controlled and monitored society.
10
Riis and his companion Widmann now decided to seed the conversion of
Akuapem by settling Christian families of emancipated West Indian slaves
in Akuropon. These exemplars arrived in 1843.
A great deal might be said about the BM in Akuapem, but comment here
is restricted to one vital strand of its project. While Riis busied himself in
building up the mission infrastructure, Widmann launched himself into the
8
Compare here Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The
Pilgrims Progress (Princeton NJ, 2004); and see Kristoni Akwantu, Pilgrims
Progress, translated into the Tshee or Asante Language (Basel, 1885).
9
See Tom C. McCaskie, Perregaux Among the Akan, paper presented at a conference
on Imperial Cultures in Countries Without Colonies (Basel, 2003).
10
Andreas R. Riis, Reise des Missionars in Akropong nach dem Aschantee-Lande im
Winter 1839 bis 1840, Magazin fr die Neueste Geschichte der Evangelischen Mis-
sions- und Bibel-Gesellschaften III (1840), 92-112 and 216-35.
174 Tom C. McCaskie
study of Twi. The BM thought that mastering and communicating in the
local language was indispensable to preaching and conversion.
This was also the entryway to reducing a local language to a written form
and so to literacy and indigenous production of texts by local people in a
local tongue. Widmann sketched out a scheme for a Twi dictionary and
began teaching boys a Twi alphabet. By 1844 he was able to preach without
an interpreter. In 1845 the first Twi primers were produced and many others
followed. By the end of the 1840s these were in daily use in the BMs
Akuropon school and Teacher Training Institute.
By 1847 only four people had been baptised but the BM school had
sixty-nine pupils. Education was attractive for two reasons. First, in the
1840s Akuapem politics fell into a chaotically divided and violent condition
even by its own historic standards. Second, the BM began to cultivate cof-
fee and groundnut plantations, and to encourage the parents of their
Akuapem students to follow this profitable example. Educational and com-
mercial improvement called forth a response in individuals and families
dispirited by their past and present life chances in a turbulent and fractured
polity.
Wittingly or not, the BM played upon aspirations for an absent security,
opportunity and betterment. It was made plain that Christian conversion
should be the goal for those Akuapem people who wanted to participate
fully in the emerging order. Chiefship had little to offer as counterweight
and the balance of forces began to shift towards the BM in parallel with the
larger expansion of European influence in the Gold Coast. So much so that
by 1895, sixty years after the BMs arrival, Kwasi Akuffo, a pupil at the
Akuropon Theological Seminary who was baptised as Frederick William,
succeeded to the royal stool of Akuropon as Akuapemhene.
IV
The BM taught their Akuapem students but they nurtured their Christian
converts, and especially the earliest ones. In 1847 the first four baptised
Akuapem individuals were David Asante, Isaac Addo, Paul Keteku, and
David Martin Bekoe. All four were Twi speakers. Asante was of mixed
Akuapem royal and Asante paternal descent, and the others have Akan or
Akanised - names, reflecting intermarriage, mixed descent and the fact that
many subordinated Guan also spoke Twi. David Asante, who might be clas-
sified as an elite but anomalous and so marginal figure, had a rich and well
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 175
documented BM career and clearly found purpose and fulfilment within the
Christian dispensation.
11
Johann Christaller, the doyen of BM Gold Coast language scholars, and
the compiler of a still unsuperseded Twi grammar and dictionary, took these
young men in hand.
12
He instilled in them the need for fluency between the
local language (Twi), the mission language (German) and the colonial lan-
guage (English). In turn they aided Christaller in collecting Akan Twi
proverbs and in recording Akuapem oral traditions about history, custom
and belief. Christaller strongly encouraged them to talk with old people and
write down their reminiscences so that these might not be lost to Akan cul-
ture.
13
It is known that Paul Keteku recorded detailed information on eighteenth
and early nineteenth century Akuapem wars from one Sonko, an old resi-
dent of Akuropon. Similarly, in 1863 Isaac Addo recorded rich material on
conflict in the 1820s-1830s from one Aduobe of Obosomase. David Asante
was also involved in these researches which occupied the decade between
1853-1863.
14
The end result was Papers in Tshi which was printed by the BM in 1863
for circulation in Akuapem. In 1913 this pamphlet was revised, enlarged
and published by the BM as Twi Kasa mu Akuapem ne eho Aman Nsem
anase Abasem (History of Gold Coast or Native Reports in Tshi). It is
evident that the Ga-speaking BM pastor C.C. Reindorf read the original ver-
sion of this work when he was researching his own History of the Gold
Coast and Asante (1895).
15
11
See the insightful Sonia Abun-Nasr, Afrikaner und Missionar: Die Lebensgeschichte
von David Asante (Basel, 2003).
12
Johan G. Christaller, A Grammar of the Asante and Fante Language called Tshi
(Basel, 1875); Johan G. Christaller, A Dictionary of the Asante and Fante Language
called Tshi (Chwee, Twi) (Basel, 1881).
13
Johan G. Christaller, A Collection of 3600 Tshi Proverbs (Basel, 1879). Over the past
forty years BM archivists Paul Jenkins and Guy Thomas have assiduously catalogued the
incredibly rich resource in their care. However, most of the BM archive still awaits schol-
arly attention. To give some instances: BM, D-10 contains inter alia the following sub-
stantial manuscripts; D-10, 2, 6, Gottesnamen der Tschi-Neger der Goldkste (n.d.: cata-
logue notation probably from the 1920s); D-10, 4, 5, Die Verkehrung der gttlichen
Offenbarung durch die Otschineger (n.d.: catalogue notation by A. Mader, no date, but
probably ca. 1850); D-10, 4, 13, Etwas ber die Geschichte der Goldkste; ber David
Asante (n.d.: catalogue notation from the Martin family papers); D-10, 4, 3, Kultus-
beschreibung der Bewohner der Goldkueste Westafrikas (n.d.: catalogue notation n.d.
but probably ca. 1850, by J.G. Widmann?).
14
Consult Kwamena-Poh, Government and Politics, Appendix 1.
15
On Reindorf see Paul Jenkins (ed.), The Recovery of the West African Past: African
Pastors and African History in the Nineteenth Century: C.C. Reindorf and Samuel John-
176 Tom C. McCaskie
All this was a start to the long tradition of Akuapem and then other Akan
Twi converts recording and writing up local historico-cultural materials. In
time there was enough of this work to support BM periodicals in Twi devot-
ed to Gold Coast matters. Both The Christian Messenger and Sika-Mpoano
Kristofo a Wokasa Twi no Senkekafo (The Christian Reporter for Gold
Coast Natives Speaking the Tshi or Asante Language) printed numerous
pieces by local Christians on historical as well as contemporary topics.
In 1907, for example, the BM catechist B. Ntow published from his field
station in Asante Tweneboa Kodia a ote gyee Osante man ho asem, a long
oral account from Kumawu of the Asante-Denkyira war that ended with the
epochal battle of Feyiase (1701). Again, in 1893 J.P.B. of Akuropon pub-
lished a detailed oral account of the akompi sa, the military standoff
between the Asante and the Akyem (and British) in 1863. And again, on
matters of current concern then, but of inestimable value to historian now,
the BM personnel C. Apeatu and H. Keteku of Akuapem published in 1907-
1908 oral accounts of the aberewa (old woman) anti-witchcraft cult then
widespread in the Gold Coast. It needs to be underlined that the three
instances given here have been translated and severally used by myself. In
truth, there is much, much more that is unconsidered in these and other
unjustly neglected periodical journals.
16
This programme of research and writing outlasted the BM presence in
the Gold Coast, which ended during the first world war. In 1926 the
prince or oheneba Samson Sakyi Djang, son of the Akuapem adon-
tenhene from Aburi, wrote to British officials in Accra and Kumase on his
own headed notepaper. This read The Sunlight Publishers (Publishers of
all kinds of Historical Pamphlets, Periodicals, Almanacs, etc.) Djang, edu-
cated by the BM in Akuapem, enclosed for the information of officialdom a
copy of the latest issue of the Sunlight Magazine.
17
son (Basel, 1998); Heinz Hauser-Renner, Examining Text Sediments Commenting on
a Pioneer Historian as an African Herodotus: On the Making of the New Annotated
Edition of C.C. Reindorfs History of the Gold Coast and Asante, History in Africa 35
(2008), 231-99.
16
Tom C. McCaskie, and J.E. Wiafe, A Contemporary Account in Twi of the Akompi Sa
of 1863: a Document with Commentary, Asantesem: The Asante Collective Biography
Bulletin 11 (1979), 72-78; Tom C. McCaskie, 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 (reprinted in Journal des Africanistes 75 [2005], 163-207).
17
PRAAD (Public Records and Archives Administration Department), Accra, ADM
11/1/953, The Sunlight Magazine.
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 177
Djangs publication was entitled The Sunlight Magazine of History and
Progress. It was issued quarterly and announced that it was about the
Gold Coast and Ashantee in general. It was in English, priced at 1/- per
copy, compiled in Aburi and printed in Accra. In his communication with
colonial officialdom Djang promised to publish a local almanac in 1927. In
the event this did not appear until 1936 when it was published as The Sun-
light Reference Almanac. This too was in English and ran to one hundred
and forty pages.
As I write I have before me two issues of Djangs quarterly magazine,
the second (dated March-June 1925) and the third (undated). These are the
only issues of this periodical I have located. I also have a copy of the less
rare 1936 almanac. On the title page of the third issue there is a motto that
reads as follows: Be in direct contact with the history and customs of the
Gold Coast and Ashanti by reading the Sunlight Magazine regularly.
Djang, writing in the now sovereign colonial language of English, but fol-
lowing in the footsteps of his Akuapem Christian predecessors, was as good
as his word.
Let us simply note here that the second issue of Djangs quarterly printed
accounts of Okomfo Anotchi, The waning of Denkyira and the coming
of Ashanti, and a piece on Little Popo. In the third issue (continued from
the first) was the second instalment of an article entitled Discussing the
Akantamosu Problem. This was in the form of a dramatised conversation
by participants about the Asante defeat by the British and their allies at the
battle of Katamanso in 1826. This odd presentation contains unique, con-
vincing but unsourced oral historical details. The almanac was full of cultur-
al retrievals of everything from stool lists and genealogies to items on drum
languages and state oaths. Akuapem achievement took pride of place, and
the editorial comment included the following assertion about the origins of
the dynasty that came to power there in 1733: Akyims who migrated to
Akwapem were using the Mesee that is original Akan.
V
In the late 1960s I bought a series of pamphlet biographies of Gold Coast
Christian notables in the Methodist bookshop in Cape Coast. These were
produced by Waterville House, the Presbyterian Press in Accra, and were
inspiring homiletic lives of a standard Christian kind. I glanced through
them and filed them away, for my interest was exclusively in precolonial
178 Tom C. McCaskie
history. Indeed, back then colonial Africans were seen as being somehow
inauthentic, a foolish but surprisingly enduring prejudice.
In 1977 I paid my first visit to the mission archive in Basel. It was not
the well organised collection it has since become. Serendipity played a part
in the materials I located and copied. Among these were two files. The first
contained lengthy annual reports for the years 1902-1910 from the Kumase
mission station to the BMs Home Committee. These were in English and
signed by Rev. N.V. Asare. The second contained a hand written foolscap
manuscript of one hundred and thirty pages in Twi by this same man. The
title page read: Asante Abasem. Twi Kasamu, and beneath this History of
Ashanti in Tshi. On the same page was a notation: Dedicated to the Basel
Missionary Society on the occasion of their centenary 1915 by Rev. N.V.
Asare, Gold Coast. It also said: Printed for the Basel Evang. Missionary
Society. Sold at the Basel Mission Book Depot Accra, Gold Coast.
18
The BM was founded in 1815, so the reference to its centenary in 1915
was correct. The text suggested that the manuscript history of Asante had
been printed and sold in Accra. However, there was no published version of
it. This puzzle was resolved by fugitive notes of unknown authorship filed
along with the text. Publication was the intention but the BM was in a diffi-
cult position in the wartime Gold Coast, and it was finally expelled in 1917
in a wave of anti-German sentiment. So in the event Asares text was not
printed.
In the 1980s I translated parts of Asante Abasem (henceforth AA) with
the aid of native Twi speakers and dictionaries. Then I gave my photocopy
of the whole text to Wilhelmina Donkoh from Kumase who translated it
into English in partial fulfilment of an M.Soc.Sc. degree that she was work-
ing for under my supervision. A problem encountered by both supervisor
and student was that Asares BM personnel file could not be located in
either Switzerland or Ghana. So, our knowledge of the author was fugitive
and thin.
It turned out that this deficit was entirely my fault. Nearly a decade after
Donkohs degree was submitted I discovered quite by chance that Asare
was the subject of one of the pamphlet biographies I had bought in Cape
18
For Asares annual reports: BM, D-1, 77 (1902), pp. 12, dd. 14 February 1903; D-1, 79
(1903), pp. 20, dd. 20 February 1904; D-1, 82 (1904), pp. 22, dd. 14 February 1905; D-1,
84 (1905), pp. 20, dd. 12 February 1906; D-1, 86 (1906), pp. 23, dd. 20 March 1907; D-1,
88 (1907), pp. 25, dd. 29 February 1908; D-1, 90 (1908), pp. 23, dd. 22 February 1909;
D-1, 93 (1909), pp. 14, dd. 18 February 1910; D-1, 95 (1910), pp. 24, dd. 24 February
1911; and D-20, 4, 5, N.V. Asare, Asante Abasem. Twi Kasamu.
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 179
Coast in the 1960s. Not only that, but its author was a grandson of Paul
Keteku who had worked for and with Christaller in the gathering of local
traditions in Akuapem. This pamphlet supplies biographical information
unavailable elsewhere and it makes sense of comments in other sources. I
proceeded on two fronts. AA was translated again as a control on the 1990
version, and I began thinking about Asares temperament and his motives
for recording and writing what he did. In the meantime, I made use of the
information furnished by Asare in some of my publications.
19
VI
Asare was born in 1849 at Nyeduase in Akuapem. His father belonged to
the Akan ruling elite descended from the Akyem Abuakwa incomers. His
name was Otutu Ababio Aketewa. He was Akuapem nifahene resident in
Adukrom. Asares mother Anobea was Guan and came from Awukugua.
Asare incarnated some key historical anomalies of Akuapem society. His
father was a member of a governing class that reckoned descent through the
female line. His mother belonged to the patrilineal Guan. Asare was a per-
son with some status but this was qualified by the fact that he had only
restricted jural rights within both his parents kinship systems.
This oddity may have been linked to another. Asares ascribed name was
Okrapa, a lucky soul, because in pregnancy his mother sought help and
protection from the fofie shrine in Awukugua, and in return she promised
her unborn baby to that shrine as a kra or dedicated servant. So as a child
Asare attended shrine observances wearing ritual hyire or white clay. He
never ate goat or cocoyam for these foods were akyiwadee or forbidden to
its servants by fofie.
In 1863 events happened that were crucial in Asares life. Violence
flared up in Adukrom in the form of a pitched battle between Akan and
Guan of the sort already described. In this affray Asare saw his father mur-
dered, a traumatic happening that impelled him into the orbit of the BM
19
Wilhelmina J. Donkoh, Rev. N.V. Asares A History of Asante in Tshi, M.Soc.Sc.
dissertation, Centre of West African Studies, Birmingham University (1990); Rev. Her-
mann J. Keteku, Biography of Rev. Nathanael Victor Asare (Accra, 1965); and see Tom
C. McCaskie, Konnurokusem: Kinship and Family in the History of the Oyoko Kokoo
Dynasty of Kumase, Journal of African History 36 (1995), 357-89; Tom C. McCaskie,
The Golden Stool at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Setting the Record Straight,
Ghana Studies 3 (2000), 61-96.
180 Tom C. McCaskie
teachers at Adukrom school. He was attracted by the novelty, in Ketekus
term, of making a life for himself beyond the one into which he had been
born. It is clear too that he wanted to escape from shrine service. His mother
fought tooth and nail to stop him, but Asare went to school and became lit-
erate. Instruction and contemplation led him to Christian belief. In due
course he was baptised by BM missionary Widmann as Nathanael Victor
Asare.
He was then sent to Akuropon to stay with missionary Mader and further
his studies. Upon his departure his mother made a final, violent but failed
attempt to dissuade him. Asare progressed rapidly in Akuropon Middle
School where the headmaster was missionary Bellon, a considerable Twi
linguist and scholar. Twi, German and English were taught, along with the-
ology and some basic mathematics and Greek. In 1868 Asare entered the
Akuropon Theological Seminary to be trained for service in the BM. He
graduated and became a teacher and catechist in Akuropon and then Aburi.
He married Sophia Koko who was Maders Christian housemaid. In time
the couple had four children.
In 1882 Asare was ordained. Ten years later he was recalled to Akuropon
to replace David Asante who had died. Then in 1896 he found himself yet
again caught up in an outbreak of communal violence, this time between
Awukugua and Akuropon. Asare tried to mediate, but the British stepped in,
arrested the leaders of both sides and arraigned them in court. Colonial
authority found for Akuropon, and because of this Asare became persona
non grata in his mothers town of Awukugua.
He shrugged this off, but in a way that suggested he was greatly troubled
by the endemic disorder in Akuapem that had led to the confrontations of
1863 and 1896: obarima ba nsuro tuo na otofo ba nso nnyin mmo akora, he
said, meaning the child of one who dies a violent death must himself
expect to have a short life. However, fatalism of this sort was paralleled by
Asares growing interest in the common history of the Akan states and why
Asante had proved so successful while Akuapem had not. Sent from his tur-
bulent homeland to Kyebi, capital of Akyem Abuakwa and his own fathers
ancestral home, he pondered the nature of the Akan polity.
Then in 1902 he was sent to Kumase to assist missionary Ramseyer in
the resurrection of BM work in Asante. This had started after 1896, when
the British deported asantehene Agyeman Prempe, and had been obliterated
in 1900-1901 by Asante insurgents during the yaa asantewaa uprising
against colonial rule. Asares Akuapem friends tried to stop him going to
Kumase because of its dread name and reputation. He had his own misgiv-
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 181
ings, but arrived with his family in Kumase on 22 March 1902 for what was
to be a stay of eight years. In the town the BM premises were destroyed.
Asares family began their Kumase lives in thatched huts in Bantama that
flooded regularly. An inauspicious start to be sure, but in the course of his
lengthy stay Asare acquired a subtle understanding of Asantes past and pre-
sent. He was a native Twi speaker with a serious interest in history, and he
was the first such to do recognisable fieldwork in eliciting and recording
oral traditions. His own local Akuapem knowledge clearly struck a chord
with his Asante interlocutors and encouraged them to talk.
Asare was an intelligent man with an inquiring mind. He was also adept
with languages. He was self-reflective, but it would seem unwavering in his
Christian faith and commitment. We cannot know the personal nature of the
Innerlichkeit that led to his conversion, or the conversations he had with
himself along the road to that decision. What we do know is that the BM in
Akuapems troubled society presented itself to many people there as a
means of escape, reformulation and advancement.
One thing seems certain. Asare was not a prolific writer in the estab-
lished tradition of the BMs Akuapem converts until he went to Asante. It
seems almost as if the BM tradition of oral historical and cultural research
only became available to Asare when he quit Akuapem and its disorders. In
his view perhaps, and notwithstanding the parts of the Asante past he found
repellent to his Christian sensibility, he sensed it was a model of what an
Akan polity might be in its confident ease with its own achievements. It was
certainly not Akuapem. Asare wrote that the Asante do not respect
Akuapem as an important nation, a verdict that saddened him but that he
did not wholly dissent from.
20
VII
When Asare arrived in Kumase in 1902 it was in a very dilapidated state
because of war, with a much reduced population. A newcomer from small
towns in Akwamu (or even Kyebi in Akyem Abuakwa), Asare reacted to
Kumase like the wide-eyed villager (akuraaseni) of Asante folklore. Even
in its reduced state he thought Kumase large, populous and bustling, with all
manner of consumer goods for sale in its booming market.
He soon struck up acquaintance with adumhene Asamoa Toto, an expert
on history and ritual because of his role as head of the royal executioners.
20
Asare, Asante Abasem.
182 Tom C. McCaskie
Other Kumase chiefs appointed by the British were welcoming to Asare (if
not to his Christian message), but he found the rulers of outlying towns like
Edweso, Mampon and especially Agona arrogantly hostile. He soon realised
that this group of non-Kumase chiefs were parvenus installed by colonial
fiat and hated for their presumption and greed, even by their own subjects.
However, Asare was forcibly impressed by the sheer power and authority of
all Asante chiefs by comparison with their equivalents in the Gold Coast
Colony and especially Akuapem. He realised that their status and power
derived from the principles and laws that they had deployed over two
hundred years to make Asante the pre-eminent Akan state.
21
Within a year of his arrival Asare had found his feet as a fieldworker. His
1903 report had very little on the halting progress of the mission. Instead, he
began with a declaration of intent: I am going to acquaint the reader with
the story of the once powerful kingdom of Asante.
22
The first eight pages
of his twenty page annual report gave a detailed account of the life and
miracles of Annokye the fetishman who lived about 1700. Asare was
especially fascinated by Komfo Anokye because Asante informants told
him the fabled priest was an Akuapem from Awukugua. Moreover, Asare
learned in Kumase that Akuapem had gone into permanent decline because
its people had refused to follow Komfo Anokyes laws, which he later
introduced into Asante.
There followed the earliest known account of the Golden Stool itself; its
form, composition and ornamentation; a list of defeated kings and chiefs
whose miniature cast gold likenesses hung from the stool; and a deal of
information concerning the history of the object itself. Asare did not give
the name of his main informant but hinted it was Asamoa Toto whose office
made him the trustworthy Chief responsible for the stool.
23
From infor-
mation supplied by this same man and others Asare went on to give an
account of the rituals connected with the royal bantama mausoleum, and a
historical explanation of the origins of ntam kese, the Asante great oath.
In 1904 Asare turned to ethnography as well as history. He gave detailed
accounts of female nubility rites and funeral arrangements in Asante. In
21
BM, D-1, 77 (1902); for context Tom C. McCaskie, The Consuming Passions of
Kwame Boakye: an Essay on Agency and Identity in Asante History, Journal of African
Cultural Studies 13 (2000), 43-62.
22
BM, D-1, 79 (1903).
23
Asamoa Toto was a key informant of Rattrays in the 1920s; see Tom C. McCaskie,
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History: An Appraisal, History in Africa
10 (1983), 187-206.
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 183
September of that year he travelled among the Akan Bron of Ahafo to the
west of Kumase. The centrepiece of his travelogue was a lengthy account of
worship and worshippers at the hugely influential Tano river shrine at
Tanoso.
24
In the next year Asare was the first person to record the legend of
Tula the fetish man, an infamously evil priest whose actions were held
up by the Asante as a historical and ethical counterpoint to those of the vir-
tuous Komfo Anokye.
25
He also gave an account of the removal of chief
Kwame Tua from office in 1905. This is a major contribution to our under-
standing of the political history of the Kumase gyaasewa, one of the most
richly documented of all Asante offices.
26
After 1905 Asare was increasingly busy with mission work as the num-
ber of (mainly non-Asante) Christian converts grew and the BM school
filled up with pupils. He had also come to realise the deadly importance of
stool politics in Kumase. He was increasingly well informed but asked
Basel to desist from publishing anything he wrote on this subject as long as
I live in Kumase. He wrote valuable eyewitness accounts of the anti-witch-
craft cult of aberewa, the old woman, which swept Asante until made ille-
gal by the British in 1908.
27
Asares last great ethnographic setpiece was his 1910 description of the
politics and ritual surrounding the funeral custom of the late King Mensa
Bonsu of Kumase who died 1900 at Praso.
28
Asantehene Mensa Bonsu
(1874-1883) was destooled for political and personal reasons. Asare gave a
telling sketch of the kings character and reputation that was culled from
many who had known him and suffered at his hands. The British deported
Mensa Bonsu from internal exile in Asante to the Gold Coast Colony. On
his way south in 1900 the ex-king died in questionable circumstances on the
Pra river where he was buried. In 1910 his sons and other supporters disin-
terred his remains and reburied them in Kumase with fitting royal pomp.
Asare understood the nostalgia for a lost independence and power that
marked this event.
The shortest of Asares annual reports is for 1909. Its brevity arose from
the sudden death of Rev. A. Bauer, Asares closest associate amongst the
BM personnel in Kumase. In an almost tangible sense this bereavement is
24
BM, D-1, 82 (1904).
25
Tom C. McCaskie, Komfo Anokye of Asante: Meaning, History and Philosophy in an
African Society, Journal of African History 27 (1986), 315-39.
26
BM, D-1, 84 (1905).
27
Ibid., D-1, 86 (1906), 88 (1907), 90 (1908).
28
Ibid., D-1, 95 (1910).
184 Tom C. McCaskie
present in Asares writing. Bauers shade stands over Asares recognition
that his time in Asante had produced less than he hoped for in the way of
Christian progress. He left Kumase declaring that The Gospel seed has
been sown, but with a prayer that the Lord would water the seed in the
dry and rocky place that was the Asante capital.
29
VIII
Asare compiled AA after he left Asante and was put in charge of the BM
station at Mampon in Akuapem. He wrote in AA about the ways in which he
went about seeking information. His research methods and principles were
grounded in his existing familiarity with Akan society and above all in his
native speakers command of Twi. Asare was curious about Asante and his
spirit of inquiry was coupled with a gregarious nature and a drive to find
things out. His biographer noted laconically that he made friends with
some Kumase chiefs and repeatedly visited them in their homes in his
spare moments.
30
The prefatory remarks in AA are startlingly sophisticated. Asare shows
he had absorbed the lessons of the BMs Akuapem oral research tradition in
full and was determined to apply and refine them. He begins by asserting
that in a centrally controlled polity like Asante the kings and royals hold
the key to the past, for the bulk of its history revolves around monarchy
and office holding. He goes on to say that it takes time and patience to get
Asante people to confide information discreditable to their historical self-
image (as true today as then). Referring to afisem, private information in
the house or affairs internal to a kin group, he observes that the Asante are
reticent and so it is very difficult for secrets to be divulged. Asante
informants, he asserts, are much concerned to pledge an interlocutor to
secrecy. Censored historical traditions are recounted to foreigners and it is
only time and trust that will break this reserve down.
31
Asare describes how he tackled these issues. He lived in Kumase for a
long time, which was necessary for research as it allowed him to make
many informed and influential friends. Once trust was established these
informants imparted more and more of what they knew to Asare. This
29
Ibid., D-1, 93 (1909); 95 (1910).
30
Keteku, Asare, 16.
31
All quotations in this section are taken from AA unless otherwise indicated.
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 185
was still not sufficient for the Akuapem historian. He understood that folk
had differing views and opinions of what they knew, so he cross-checked
what he was told. I was not informed by just one person, he declared in a
quite strikingly modern methodological way, but to ensure authenticity I
approached several well-informed and elderly people.
Who were these people? One, already identified, was Kumase adumhene
Asamoa Toto. Others Asare mentioned were Kumase bantamahene Osei
Bonsu, adontenhene Kwame Frimpon (baptised John), and the not always
reliably garrulous gyaasewahene Kwame Tua. One is left with the feeling
however that Asares key informant was a woman. In 1906 the new BM
premises at Dareboase in Kumase were officially opened. Asare attended
and there met a noble and friendly woman. A friendship developed so
that he often went to talk with her. The woman was Akua Afriyie, a royal as
daughter of asantehemaa Yaa Kyaa, and a uterine sister of asantehene
Agyeman Prempe. Following the exile of her mother and half-brother in
1896 Akua Afriyie was the senior royal woman in Kumase. As such, she
was custodian of the royal lineages history and afisem, and it was clearly
her who supplied the unique information that went into AAs Chapter 18.
32
AA is a history largely from the point of view of Kumase, its royals and
its office holders. It is episodic rather than strictly chronological although
there is general adherence to a temporal sequence. Asare fashioned the oral
traditions he listened to into a sustained piece of narrative writing. This is
well and lucidly set down, always interesting and in some places com-
pelling. At one level Asare set out not only to inform but also to tell readers
that Asante, hitherto that ferocious beast, was knowable on its own terms
and once understood was recognisable as a leading member of the comity of
Akan polities. Throughout the text Asare invited his Akan Twi readers to
compare Asante with their own experience. It is notable that Christian
moralising takes second place to explicating history and culture in Asares
text. It is true Asantes eventual and inevitable embrace of Christianity fur-
nishes the mise-en-scne of progress and enlightenment (anibue) in AA, but
this is redemption through mercy and grace and in no way is used to
devalue the past.
AAs prefatory remarks are followed by thirty-three chapters of variable
length, two appendices, and two reflections on the lives of missionaries
Bauer and Perregaux who both died in Kumase while Asare was living
there. AA freely mixes together historical tradition with ethnographic and
32
Boahen et al., History of Ashanti Kings, 137, 139, 203.
186 Tom C. McCaskie
cultural observation. Chapter 1 concerns the genesis of Akan kingdoms, a
subject that plainly fascinated Asare. It traces Twi-speaking immigrants
from across the seas, but says too that the creator Odomankama made the
world in Adanse.
33
Chapters 2-7 recount rich Asante traditions about the
formation of their kingdom, the reigns of Obiri Yeboa and Osei Tutu, and
the complex politicking that led to the defeat of denkyirahene Ntim Gyakari
at Feyiase in 1701. Parts of this, for example on Komfo Anokye, are drawn
from the account Asare gave in his annual reports, but there is new material
here too, for instance on kin relations between Obiri Yeboa and Osei Tutu,
and on the roles played by named individuals in the war against Denkyira.
Chapters 8-9 deal with Kumase as a town past and present. This includes
a testimony to Asares fieldworking tenacity, for it gives a unique listing by
name and functional differentiation of all of the seventy-seven quarters
(brono) of the historic Asante capital. Chapter 10 gives the genealogy of the
royal Oyoko dynasty of Kumase from Manu, the mother of Osei Tutu, to the
present. This must have been supplied by Akua Afriyie, custodian of this
information in Kumase, and its data agree with the genealogy then being put
together in their Seychelles Islands exile by her mother and her half-
brother.
34
Chapters 11-12 discuss the Golden Stool and Asante royal oaths,
and are derived from but add material to Asares treatment of these topics in
his annual reports.
Chapter 13 is devoted to Komfo Anokye and it expands on Asares earli-
er treatment of his life and miracles. Here Christian belief does obtrude
for Asare is clearly in two minds about his subject. On the one hand authori-
al pride is taken in such a pivotal historical actor from Akuapem Awukugua.
But he is also censured for following false gods and trafficking with the
supernatural. Overall Komfo Anokye is given the benefit of the doubt. He is
represented as a great man tempted by the Devil, somewhat like Simon
Magus (Acts, 8, 9-25 is invoked in support of this argument). Chapter 14, to
which Akua Afriyie, Asamoa Toto and others must have contributed, is an
important exegetical account of the layout of the precolonial palace or ahen-
fie, the ritual and jural rounds followed by the king, and the royal retreats at
Manhyia and Breman.
35
33
Compare Tom C. McCaskie, Asante Origins, Egypt, and the Near East: An Idea and
Its History, in: Derek R. Peterson and Giacomo Macola (eds.), Recasting the Past: His-
tory Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, 2009), 125-48.
34
Boahen et al., History of Ashanti Kings.
35
See Tom C. McCaskie, State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante (Cambridge, 1995).
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 187
Chapters 15-16 return the text to historical chronology. The first is a full
treatment of the liberation war with Denkyira and recounts this in dense
and vivid detail. The second is about the life and reign of the asantehene
Opoku Ware (c. 1720-1750). This has important oral information on matters
of division and exclusion in the royal lineage involving the still puzzling
issue of the disbarment of the asaaman kwaadane (significantly, the
enslaved Asaaman) from succession to the Golden Stool. This item of
royal afisem is still difficult to discuss in Kumase although it reappears in
one oblique form or another whenever the Golden Stool falls vacant.
36
Chapter 17 is a recounting of the numerous oral traditions that deal with
the asantehene Osei Tutu Kwames war of 1818-1819 with the gyamanhene
Kwadwo Adinkra. This conflict is well covered by European sources as
well as by Asante and Abron traditions, and the war has been the subject of
a detailed reconstruction from the Gyaman viewpoint.
37
However, AA sup-
plies unique details. These revolve around the person of the Kumase royal
servant (ahenkwaa) Sampanne, later adumhene Kwadwo Sanpanin and so a
predecessor in office of Asamoa Toto. It is to be presumed that the last
named was the source of the information describing Sampannes behaviour
and machinations to get Osei Tutu Kwame to commit to war. Apart from all
else this material is a magnificent illustration of the world and mentality of
the precolonial royal ahenkwaa.
Chapter 18 The Quarrel between the asantehene Kwaku Dua I and
His Family is revelatory. It is a uniquely detailed account of a sequence
of interpersonal events known as konnurokusem in the afisem of the
Kumase dynasty. This was a dispute in the 1850s-1860s that has repercus-
sions today. Asares information must have been provided by Akua Afriyie
who was a close relative of the protagonists and knew some of them person-
ally. This chapter filled puzzling lacunae in the record and it made possible
my own reconstruction of the dispute.
38
Chapters 19-20 discuss the troubled reigns of brother asantehenes Kofi
Kakari (1867-1874) and Mensa Bonsu (1874-1883), and the dynastic wars
of 1883-1888 that followed on the latters destoolment. There is already a
large amount of source material dealing with this period, but Asare con-
tributes excellent circumstantial and anecdotal additions. This is hardly sur-
36
Compare the argument in Grard Pescheux, Le royaume asante (Ghana): Parent,
pouvoir, histoire: XVII-XX sicles (Paris, 2003).
37
Emmanuel Terray, Une histoire du royaume abron du Gyaman: Des origines la con-
qute coloniale (Paris, 1995).
38
McCaskie, Konnurokusem.
188 Tom C. McCaskie
prising for most of his informants were partisan participants in the events
they recounted. The same eyewitness quality is apparent in chapters 21-22
on the reign of asantehene Agyeman Prempe up until his arrest and exile in
1896. There is included here a particularly detailed account of the Asante
military expedition to Nkoransa in 1894.
Chapters 23-28 cover happenings from the arrest and exile of Agyeman
Prempe in 1896 to the rationalisation of colonial administration in Asante in
1901-1902. The centrepiece is of course the 1900-1901 uprising and there is
a great deal to interest the scholar of these events. Here Asares informants
were supplemented by a mass of participants who had lived through the
conflict. Chapter 29 is a reworking of Asares detailed information on the
destoolment of gyaasewahene Kwame Tua that had appeared first in his
annual reports. Chapters 30-31 are really pendants to the main text. They
recount two mytho-historical tales. One describes Asantes overthrow of the
seventeenth-century Akyereama warlord Gyenti; the other is undated and
concerns another Gyenti from Kumawu who met with an apparition of
death. Chapter 32 lists the rulers of Kumase, Kokofu, Dwaben, Nsuta,
Mampon, Bekwai and Kumawu, together with an enumeration of Asante
chiefs appointed by the British and an Akyem king list. Chapter 33 is a list
of Important Anniversaries in Asante and Gold Coast history. This
includes a rather touching notice of Asares fathers death in 1863. The two
appendices provide excellent details on Asante drum and horn calls, and on
the practice of divination.
IX
I have little further to add for the purpose of this paper is simply to draw
attention to Asare and his writings and to contextualise both historically.
Those with considerably more knowledge of Twi locution than I have tell
me that read out loud AA reveals its mixed origins in both oral and written
genres.
This reflects Asares own intellectual formation. In spoken Twi history
is abakosem, that is nsem a abo ko, a story of past things, or it is the
reductive abasem, something that happened. More elegantly and indeed
proverbially it is tete ka asom, old things that remain in the ears. This last
is glossed as tradition survives, a tribute paid by the present to the living
legacy of the past.
An Akuapem Twi History of Asante 189
History then is an oral performance (adeye), in the exact sense of
doing things with speaking about the past. Speech of this sort is to be
delivered in a responsible way so as to enlighten the audience. It ordains
dry, that is to say fluent and unadorned, talk. No one should speak about
the past in public in bent speech, for talk of this kind (kasakoa) is inven-
tive and metaphorical and appropriate to persuasion or the making of a case.
The oral performance of history is hedged about with oaths and penalties
for free interpretation. Its intent resides in itself.
All of these features are evident in AA. So too of course are the results of
Asares mission education and literacy. The division of the narrative into
chapters and the general concern to provide a linear chronology are the most
obvious structural outcomes of this aspect of his formation. All this is
unsurprising, for Asare wrote a history on the European model, but in Twi
for an Akan readership. What is most striking about AA is that even within
the conventions imposed by the written form the chapters are very much
transcriptions or renderings of Asante oral discourse about the past. In that
sense AA is unlike the published version of Reindorfs History of the Gold
Coast and Asante. This was published in 1895, but only after a series of edi-
torial interventions and recastings by Christaller and others in Basel. It will
be interesting to see if Reindorfs Ga language manuscript text, when it is
published, has as much of the oral historical formation of its author present
in it as does Asares AA.
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