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Arhin StructureGreaterAshanti 1967
Arhin StructureGreaterAshanti 1967
Arhin StructureGreaterAshanti 1967
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to The Journal of African History
(1700-1824)
BY KWAME ARHIN
One might be inclined to believe that the formation as well as the expansion of
Great Power Structures is always and primarily determined economically. The
assumption that trade, especially if it is intensive, and if it already exists in an area,
is the normal pre-requisite and the reason for its political unification might
readily be generalized. In individual cases this assumption does actually hold...
Closer attention, however, may often reveal that this coincidence is not a necessary
one, and that this causal nexus by no means always points in a single direction.7
Ashanti wars in the north-west, and it also provided some of the incentive
for future warfare. No soldier fights on an empty stomach, and even during
wars that are supposed to be idealistic, soldiers who accept these ideals have
still to be paid and fed.
The Ashantis were not operating in an isolated social and political
environment. Indeed the barbaric theory of Ashanti warfare has so much
vogue simply because the supposed pattern of the wars on the coast and in
the immediate hinterland has been imposed on those of Ashanti. Since
slaves were acquired for sale in insignificant feuding encounters, genuine
political activities have been seen as raiding ventures, and every political
organization as a slave-trading joint enterprise or partnership. Such has
been the normal interpretation of the Denkyera and the Akwamu22 military
exertions which culminated in impressive political organizations. To see
the Ashanti wars in true perspective we must see the social, economic and
political milieux within the confines of present-day Ghana in which they
were acting about the year I700.
To the north-west of Ashanti lived the Brong, united in a political
organization embracing the Dormaas, the people of Suma (Nweneme), and
other Gyaman territories under the king of Gyaman. Close by was Takyi-
man, remnant of the sizeable Bono kingdom. With the Brongs, the Ashantis
had been in conflict since the time of Obiri Yeboah.23 In Bontuku was also
situated that important trade centre where Ashantis exchanged gold and
kola for slaves and an assortment of goods coming in from the countries of
the Niger Bend and the Maghrib. Takyiman was important in that, as the
home of the first of the centralized Akan kingdoms, it had the most
specialized skills in craft production and was therefore the source of
Ashanti gold-weights and balances.24 This view of Takyiman is further
supported by the tradition of the Bonwire kente weavers that kente weaving
originated in Takyiman.25 Takyiman was also undoubtedly rich in gold, and
lay on the route to Nsawkaw within the Begho/Bontuku trade area.
In the north and north-east lay the Gonja and Dagomba states; Salaga
in Gonja was purely a traders' town, to which came merchandise from the
north-east and where Ashantis exchanged for it kola and slaves. Yendi,
the capital of Dagomba, was a market and the source of cloths and thread
that were much better made than those of Ashanti, and also of iron.
Dagomba also controlled the trade-route to the Hausa states of the north-
east and therefore the movement of Hausa traders to and from Salaga.
Ashanti trade at Salaga, therefore, depended to some extent on Dagomba.
The Gonjas and the Dagombas were spatially distant and culturally
different from Ashantis. The Brongs were nearer and, like the Ashantis,
22 For a stimulating study of the Akwamu empire, see Ivor Wilks's 'The rise of the
Akwamu empire, I650-7IO0' Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, III, pt. 3 (1958).
23 Nweneme (Suma) oral traditions; field-notes: these are corroborated by Sunyani and
Nkoranza traditions, see Goody and Arhin, op. cit.
24 Eva Meyerovitz, Akan Traditions of Origin (London, 1950), 35; also Reindorf,
op. cit. 72. 25 Personal field-notes.
were Akans. This point is made because it will be argued that the evidence
points to a difference in the political treatment of the two categories of
peoples, Akans and non-Akans, who were subdued by the Ashantis.
It will be suggested that spatial contiguity and cultural homogeneity were
factors in the construction of Greater Ashanti.
The south of Ashanti, like the north-west, was dominated by Akan
groups with small islands of Guangs and Gas. In the south-west were
various Akan peoples and political groupings: Assin, Denkyera, Fanti,
Sehwi, Wassaw, Twifu, Aowins and Nzima; in the south-east, Kwahu,
Akim, Akwamu, Akwapim, Ga and Ada and, beyond, Eweland. By the
time Bosman wrote in I701, Denkyera, which before the end of the seven-
teenth century had subjected Assin, Sehwi, Wassaw and Twifu, had herself
become subject to Ashanti. Akwamu had destroyed the Accra kingdom, but
was herself poised for a decisive battle with the Akims which led to the
dispersal of the Akwamus from the Accra hinterland to their present habita-
tion on the hills beyond the Volta.26 The Fantis were not politically
united, but they controlled a system of alliances which stretched from
Gomoa, about twenty miles west of Accra, to the Cape Coast-Elmina
boundary of the Sweet River. The Elminas maintained a special relationship
with the Ashantis which dated probably from the defeat of Denkyera to
1872, the eve of colonial rule. The Aowins and the Nzimas were indepen-
dent, but engaged with the Dutch in unceasing struggles to maintain
their economic and political freedom of action.
The southern coast was important for reasons generally known and
already here hinted at: the coastline was dotted with European trade posts
where guns, powder and shot could be obtained in exchange for slaves, gold
dust and ivory. Access to the eastern trade posts, Accra and Ada, was
controlled by the Akwamus who, in addition to their imposts on, and armed
plundering of, inland traders, told frightful stories of the Europeans to
scare away prospective inland traders.27 Fantis controlled access to the
western posts after the Ashantis had eliminated the Denkyeras and the
Assins. Upon the defeat of the Denkyeras, Wassaws and Sehwis in the
south-western hinterland, the Ashantis formed some sort of an alliance
(expressed in a joking relationship which has lasted to today) with the
Nzimas for the purpose of securing easy passage to Kankyiabo (Half-
Assini), where the Ashantis first started trading.28
Political domination in the south was fraught with potential dangers
of contamination by foreign influences and conflicts with the Europeans,
whose divisive activities account for the hardening of the segmentary
principle among the coastal Fantis in a period when centralization was
proceeding apace among the forest people, the Akims, Akwamus and
26 F. R. Romer, The Coast of Guinea (Copenhagen, I760), extracts from ch. iv, translated
and mimeographed by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
a7 Ibid.
28 Information from the chief of Kukuom situated on the old trade route to Half Assini.
59 A. W. Cardinall, Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (London, 1930),
9.
60 Dupuis, Journal, xxxix.
61 Ibid. 244.
62 Aowin was probably conquered (Cruickshank, op. cit. passim), but the connexions
created had been loose. Bowdich writes of Aowin envoys in Kumasi in I817: ' The Aowins,
to anticipate the ambitious views of the Ashantee government, lately sent an embassy with
offers of service and tribute but the amount of the latter has not yet been decided' (op. cit.
244).
63 See Rupert S. T. Lonsdale, on his report on a visit to Gyaman, in Affairs of the Gold
Coast, C. 3386 (London, I882).
economic situation. So it was that the Dutch supported Ashanti and the
British threw their weight behind the Fantis.
Yet Ashanti relations with the protectorates were not all that clear-cut.
There were Ashanti resident-chiefs in Accra and Elmina, who had judicial
and therefore political, functions; Ashanti roving ambassadors settled
disputes in Accra and Elmina; and there was an attempt to introduce and
enforce the oath of the king of Accra, who also rendered services (such as
preparing lime and sending it to Kumasi) characteristic of the provinces.
In Banda, it appears that there were attempts to 'Akanize', as Dr Goody
puts it; that is, to introduce the material symbolisms of kingship as a pre-
lude to what will below be asserted in relation to the provinces, namely
assimilation into Greater Ashanti.
It is clear, then, that whilst Ashanti considered these protectorates as
having the same political status as the provinces, special considerations
attenuated the implied political and military treatment of them. In the
case of Accra and Elmina, it was clearly their position as alternative trade
posts to Anomabo and Cape Coast, and as potential centres of subversion in
Akim and Akwapim in the east and in Fantiland in the west. Aowin and
Nzima were too far off; and Axim in Nzima had a similar market status
to Accra and Elmina. Banda, it has been noted, was a frontier town and
deserved special treatment. She, like Accra and Ada, differed in culture
from Ashanti and was therefore difficult to assimilate.
could be more offensive to the fetish than the Fantees' preventing the
peaceable intercourse of their inland neighbours with the waterside,
because they were formerly all of one family.64 Blind old Kwaku, according
to the Reverend W. T. Balmer, was more forceful and explicit at the
council of Fanti chiefs at Abura; he urged the chiefs to unite with the
Ashantis under the 'wise' leadership of Tutu Kwame against the Europeans,
who were there first to trade, and then, if allowed, to conquer.65
Though he wrote of Greece and Rome, Sir Henry Maine's theory of the
development of states fits Ashanti and her relations with the Akans:
The history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the assumption that blood is the
sole possible ground of community in political functions; nor is there any of
those subversions of feeling, which we term emphatically revolutions, so startling
and so complete as the change which is accomplished when some other principle-
such as that, for instance, of local contiguity-establishes itself for the first time
as the basis of common political action.66
Nor was their ambition content with conquest alone. The enterprise of the
warrior was nobly seconded by the policy of the statesman. Wise regulations were
adopted for the purposes of maintaining them in subjection. These measures
which were had recourse to, were not such as would be suitable to states advanced
to any high degree of civil policy, or even the social advancement of barbarous
states; but they were well adapted to control a rude and lawless people tenacious
of their own peculiar customs.
As if any conqueror could have any other aim, he writes tendentiously,
'They had for their sole object the maintenance of Ashantee superiority,
without any attempt to assimilate the conquered tribes with them.'68 It
would be interesting to know the criteria by which Cruickshank adjudged
the Ashanti regulations to be 'wise'. The 'wisdom' of the Ashantis seems
to have deserted them somewhere along the line. Of the events leading to
the Ashanti war (I823) against MacCarthy, Cruickshank writes: 'In the
meantime, the king's captains in different parts of the country were carry-
ing on a system of confiscation and spoliation, the aggressiveness of which had
no doubt much influence with the governor in inducing him to believe the
country ripe for revolt.'69
The claim that the Ashantis did not 'assimilate' with the provinces has
been echoed down the years. George Ekem Ferguson, the Fanti civil
servant in the colonial administration towards the end of the last century,
wrote in I893: 'We know that Ashanti was Master of Gonja, Dagomba,
Krepi and the Tchi-speaking tribes until recently though it did not assimi-
late with the conquered tribes.'70 And Ward has written in his revised
68 Cruickshank, 59. 69 Ibid. 69.
70 Correspondence Relating to the Mission of Mr G. E. Ferguson
Gold Coast Colony (Colonial Office, I894).
in Ashanti, lesser chiefs were given intermediaries with the king. The
political significance of this linkage has been lost in the fact that the link-
man was also a tribute-collector. Yet a chief was expected to visit the
territory for which he was adamfo, to attend important funeral celebrations
and settle succession disputes.77 There was enforced attendance of pro-
vincial chiefs at the Ashanti annual Odwira (yam) festival at Kumasi, where
opportunity was taken to 'arrange differences, to encourage obedience, to
punish disaffection and sometimes to remove an obnoxious opponent'.78
The point of these festivals in their rituals, drama and pageant was to re-
enact, reinterpret and transmit Ashanti history; to renew communion
between dead and living Ashantis; and to emphasize the unity of Greater
Ashanti. Those who took part in them were theoretically united in their
allegiance to the occupant of the Golden Stool, the centre of the festivals.79
Measures of integration, however, often took rigorous forms. Peoples like
the Akims80 were pushed from the southern border districts to remote
areas where Ashanti could deal with them when they felt ready to do so.
Takyiman was divided, and some of her people, like the inhabitants of
Sakyedumasi,81 settled in central Ashanti. Osei Kwadwo removed two
Wassaw groups to the Atebubu district and Kwahu, 'either to supply a
deficiency of the population in those parts, or to secure their future al-
legiance'.82 And most of these states took part in the Ashanti wars.
It will be objected that these measures were no more than modes of
exploitation. It may be so, but in that case it was not only the provinces
that were exploited, but also the central Ashantis themselves. Those who
are disposed to regard these measures negatively as modes of exploitation
will so regard the rules that 'the tributary state which distinguished itself
in suppressing the revolt of another is rewarded by privileges [perhaps
land rights] at the expense of the offending power', or that 'if the subjects
of any tributary do not like the decision of the ruler, according to the laws
of their own country, they may appeal to the king, and claim decision by
the law of Ashantee'.83 By this is meant that in the provinces, as in central
Ashanti itself, the Ashanti king's court was to be the highest court of appeal.
Prospects of economic gain were held out to some of the provincial states.
The kings of Gyaman, Wassaw and Asikuma who, according to Robertson,
organized the regional collections of tribute, would have their commisions
of 20 %,84 and provincial participants in Ashanti wars had their share in
the loot. Since the Ashantis were not in a position to enjoy 'welfare'
services and offer them to others, it is difficult to see which other avenues
for integration and pacification could have been explored. They lacked the
means to offer 'colonialist' bribes. In Ashanti itself the main material
consequence of union had been the creation of a larger, more stable and
more peaceful political unit in which there was greater economic exchange,
and therefore greater development in skills, for example those of the crafts-
man.85 It was not beyond the imagination of Ashanti kings to try to extend
this framework of economic development.
By I812 when William Meredith offered the first relevant evidence, the
Ashantis had realized that more intense personal contact was needed if
these integrative measures were to succeed and the Ashanti political
presence was to be given a physical emphasis. We find resident-chiefs
posted to the key and more difficult provinces: to Akim,86 later to Akwa-
pim,87 to Abura,88 to Cape Coast and Elmina,89 the chief here having
jurisdiction for Wassaw. In addition to these, there were officials who may
be referred to as roving 'commissioners', like Tando,90who were given
specific briefs in various territories. It would be plainly incorrect to regard
these officials as instruments of economic exploitation. They often had
nothing to do with tribute collection.They were concerned with 'palavers'.
They settled disputes arising from swearing or breaking the king's oath, and
which therefore fell outside the jurisdiction of the local chief's court.
They called periodic district meetings91 at which chiefs were asked to
renew allegiance to the king. The so-called 'fines and confiscations'
which so agitated British interventionists were, of course, inevitable and
universal concomitants of the enforcement of the law.
These officials have to be distinguished from the tribute-collectors in
Yendi and Salaga. To see this difference one may contrast the toll collectors
in the Kintampo and Salaga markets. In Kintampo the toll-collector had
both economic and political functions: he not only collected the tolls, he
also settled disputes by the Ashanti king's oath. In Salaga the toll collector
did nothing else but collect tolls.
One may then conclude that the provinces were conceived and treated as
part of Ashanti itself. Greater Ashanti was a political structure erected on a
cultural foundation, the first intimation of later Ghana: the Akans, after all,
are the nucleus of Ghana, and before colonial rule it was Ashanti that
provided her peoples with the greatest opportunity for that population
mobility that eased the passage to our fuller nationalism.
Conclusion
The point of this paper has not been to confront the prevalent monistic
economic theory of the Ashanti wars with an alternative one. It has been to
show and suggest that there are as many possibilities of interpretation here
86 Meredith, 169. 87 Reindorf, I69.
88 J. J. Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settlements, 175
1923) i61. 89 Dupuis, Introduction to the Journal.
90 Bowdich, The Mission.... 91 Crooks, 163.
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