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Akan stool succession under colonial rule—continuity or change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

David Henige
David Henige
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin—Madison
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Extract

This paper argues that interpretations which would view pre-colonial Akan political life as ‘normative’ and structured may be incorrect, at least in so far as stool succession is concerned. Contemporaneous evidence for this early period is at best sparse and at worst simply non-existent and seldom allows even tentative hypotheses. Rather, it is necessary to infer past practices from more recent data, whether this be observation of present behaviour or recent testimony about the past. In this case I have used the testimony presented at various stool and jurisdictional disputes during the colonial period for which records survive. These are generally, of course, ex parte statements and can be used only with caution. However, there is a surprising consensus throughout these records that both the principles and the patterns of stool succession and paramountcy in the pre-colonial period were variegated and even extemporaneous although, not surprisingly, there is much dispute about the reasons for this. On balance, this testimony suggests that a re-interpretation of early Akan political culture using a wider range of evidence is desirable.

Although this implies that the impact of colonial ‘indirect’ rule was not as profound as has often been supposed, I have not discussed this problem directly except as it bears on the quality of the data. Nor have I attempted to analyse the day-to-day dynamics of political life, either for the earlier period (which would be impossible on the evidence) or for the colonial period (which would be irrelevant for comparison). Nevertheless, within the restricted compass of stool succession and paramountcy the argument here is that colonial rule involved little fundamental change from earlier practices. If anything, it probably served to delimit a greater range of previous options by seeking to codify them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 285 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

2 Barbot, John, A description of the coasts of North and South-Guinea (London, 1732), 286Google Scholar. Barbot was referring particularly to the coastal stools whose political practices always present certain peculiar problems but it will be argued here that his statement could also be applied to other Akan areas.

3 I use the generic term ‘Akan’ to include the areas historically occupied by the Fante and Asante. When the context demands further precision a more restrictive term will be used.

4 The basic works on Akan matriliny include Manoukian, M., Akan and Ga-Adangme peoples (London 1950)Google Scholar; Christensen, J. B.Double descent among the Fanti (New Haven, 1954)Google Scholar; Hayford, J. E. Casely, Gold Coast Native Institutions (London, 1903)Google Scholar; Rattray, R. S., Ashanti law and constitution (Oxford, 1927)Google Scholar; Sarbah, J. Mensah, Fanti constitutional law (London, 1904)Google Scholar. See also Hagan, G. P., ‘An analytical study of Fanti kinship’, IAS/RR, 5 (1968), 50–90Google Scholar; Fortes, M., ‘Kinship and marriage among the Ashanti’ in Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. and Forde, C. D. (eds.), African systems of kinship and marriage (London, 1950), 252–84.Google Scholar

5 I use the term ‘stool’ in the relatively narrow sense of paramount political office unless otherwise stated.

6 Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), 78, with emphasis added.Google Scholar

7 E.g. Manoukian, , Akan and Ga-Adangme peoples, 29Google Scholar; Busia, K. A., The position of the chief in the modern political system of Ashanti (London, 1951), 2Google Scholar; Christensen, , Double descent, 2–3, 21–9, 41–8Google Scholar, and idem, ‘The role of proverbs in Fanti culture’, Africa, XXVIII (1958), 237Google Scholar, implicitly accept this supposition. For Fante clans see Christensen, , Double descent, 21–9Google Scholar; Hagan, ‘Fanti kinship’, 59–61; Brown, E. J. P., Gold Coast and Asianti reader (2 vols.: London, 1929), I, 171Google Scholar. For Asante clans see Rattray, Ashanti, 45–54.

8 Sarbah, J. Mensah, Fanti national constitution (London, 1906), 20.Google Scholar

9 Rattray, , Ashanti law, 84–5.Google Scholar

10 The concept of paramountcy is probably the result of the colonial government's desire to establish a visible hierarchy of native authorities and not the product of earlier times, but this is a point which requires elaboration not appropriate here.

11 A similar argument for the coastal stools in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been made by Arhin, K., ‘Diffuse authority among the Fanti coastal stools’, Ghana Notes and Queries, no. 9 (11, 1966), 66–70Google Scholar. Arhin attributes this structural fragmentation primarily to the effects of the European presence whereas I would argue that, while some aspects of Fante political organization (e.g. the asafo companies) have been materially affected, the indeterminate succession practices were intrinsic to the Fante political system.

12 For the asafo see ffoulkes, A., ‘The company system in Cape Coast Castle’, Journal of the Royal African Society, VII (1907–1908), 261–77Google Scholar; Johnson, J. C. deG., ‘The Fanti Asafu’, Africa, V (1932), 307–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Datta, A. K. and Porter, R., ‘The asafo system in historical perspective’, J. Afr. Hist, XII (1971), 279–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Datta, A. K., ‘The Fante asafo: a re-examination’, Africa, XLII (1972), 305–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the mmamma dwa stools see Wilks, I., ‘Aspects of bureaucratization in Ashanti in the nineteenth century’, J. Afr. Hist., VII (1966), 219–22Google Scholar; Hagan, G. P. ‘Ashanti bureaucracy’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, XII (1971), 58–60Google Scholar. Many of the mmamma dwa stools are patrilineal but not hereditary, being held by the sons of reigning Asantehenes.

13 For succession in Oguaa before 1850 see Henige, D. P., The chronology of oral tradition (Oxford, 1974), 152–8Google Scholar. The documentation for Winneba before c. 1850 is inadequate even to form hypotheses.

14 The perseverance of Guan practices is an important but imponderable consideration for much of southern Ghana. In some stools, such as Winneba (Effutu) and several Akua-pem sub-stools Guan influence is noticeably strong. In other stools—one thinks of Agona and Eguafu—these elements may be more important than assumed. The extent of European influence also is problematical. Long-standing and intensive European influence, whether direct or indirect (as when many African soldiers returned from service in the Dutch East Indies in the middle of the nineteenth century), unquestionably influenced many political practices but the nature, direction and extent of these changes is, frankly, not capable of being ascertained.

15 T70/1049 sub Mar 1785, Public Record Office, London. Abura is recognized, along with Anamabu, Gormoa, Mankessim and a few others, as a quintessentially Fante stool, relatively uncontaminated by Guan or Efutu overlays or, in this early period, by European influences. It may be significant that the first explicit description of matrilineal succession among the Akan occurs only in Bosman's work and that the Europeans on the coast often displayed a solicitude for the sons of African rulers, but seldom for their nephews.

16 Patrilateral cross-cousin marriage can give the impression of patrilineal descent in a matrilineal society and I have excluded all instances where this might be an explanation. For an effect of cross-cousin marriage on succession patterns see Wilks, I., ‘Akwamu and Otublohum: an eighteenth century Akan marriage arrangement’, Africa, XXIX (1959), 391–403CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such systematic application of the practice for political purposes was probably rare and it is uncertain whether the intent of the Akwamu rulers was as explicit as Wilks argues. Nonetheless this example clearly indicates the problems in distinguishing ‘pure’ matrilineal and patrilineal descent systems, whether through contemporaneous observation or subsequent analysis.

17 For Bompata see the genealogy submitted by the Bompatahene Kofi Antwi in 1922, and Ag CS to Ag CCA, 24 Aug. 1922, NAG/A-ADM11/1/1311; for Manso Nkwanta see attachment to Ag CCA to AG CS, 18 Sept. 1922, NAG/A-ADM11/1/1303 and Arhin, K., ‘Succession and gold mining in Manso-Nkwanta’, IAS/RR VI (1970), 103–4Google Scholar; for Offinsusee ‘Short history of Offinsu stool’ in NAG/A-ADM11/1/1314 and Crook, R., ‘Colonial rule and political culture in modern Ashanti’, Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies, XI (1973), 11–14.Google Scholar

18 As, for example, in the Offinsu genealogy submitted in 1918. Ibid. 11.

19 ‘History of Eguafu and its possessions’, dd 26 Aug. 1922, NAG/CC-DAO612, p. 70; Abutaikyi II to DC, Cape Coast, 17 Apr. 1922, NAG/CC-DAO59, p. 47.

20 Abutaikyi's predecessor Kofi Ntsua had been destooled in 1921 but there is no evidence that this occurred because of his lineal ‘heterodoxy’. Several other charges were preferred.

21 Affidavit of Ekuah Sarbuah in Cape Coast District Court, 28 Apr. 1936, NAG/CC— DAO59, pp. 222–3.

22 For the opposing argument see Kobina Nkruma to DC, CC, 20 Aug. 1936, NAG/CC —DAO59, p. 250. Kobina Nkruma also claimed to be ‘Head of the Eguafo Stool Family’.

23 ‘Brief history of Sefwi-Bekwai,’ by J. Oba-Amuah, Clerk to the Omanhene of Sefwi-Bekwai, written c. 1908. NAG/A-ADM 11/1/644.

24 Daaku, K. Y., ‘A history of Sefwi: a survey of oral evidence,’ IAS/RR, VII (1971), 34–5Google Scholar. Daaku thinks this claim is true and sees the struggles as the result of ‘the unsuccessful merger’ of the Akan and Awowin-Bono clan systems. Ibid. 41.

25 Resolution of Asebu State Council dd 25 Mar. 1930, NAG/CC—DAO1034, p. 99.

26 Ibid. See also Tufuhene of Asebu to DC, CC, 29 Apr. 1930, NAG/A—ADM11/1/413.

27 In a sense it is ironic that R. J. Ghartey, who served as President of the Fanti Confederacy, subsequently succeeded to the Winneba paramount stool patrilineally.

28 For Winneba stool disputes, copiously documented, see NAG/A—ADM11/1/1136, boxes 1 and 2.

29 Petition of Kobina Edu of the Eburadzi family to SNA, 11 Sept. 1923, NAG/A—ADM11/1/819.

30 Cape Coast District Record Book for quarter ending 31 Apr. 1939, NAG/CC—DAO463.

31 Letter dd 30 Sept. 1924, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1336.

32 SNA to CS, Minute 46 dd 12 Dec. 1929, SNA Case 12/20, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1314. Crook, ‘Colonial rule’, 13, calls this Beretuo omanhene ‘an unorthodox candidate’ but notes that he was supported by all the Electors and the Queen Mother.

33 Annual Report, Eastern Province, Ashanti, 1930/31, p. 10.

34 Winneba District Record Book, 1898–1955, 163–4. NAG/A—ADM28/5/2.

35 See, for example, the account of the Ahanta stool dispute of 1919 to 1924 in Welman, C. W., The native states of the Gold Coast: Ahanta (London, 1929), 63–6Google Scholar, and the discussion of Gomoa below.

36 If some of the testimony in the Anamabu stool dispute Enquiry of 1932 is accepted, a change in ruling line occurred there some time in the nineteenth century. NAG/A— CS01121/31. For more on Anamabu stoolholders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries see Priestley, M., West African trade and coast society: a family study (London, 1969), 13–5Google Scholar, and Henige, , Chronology of oral tradition, 149–52.Google Scholar

37 Dr McCaskie advises me that Ivor Wilks has discovered that before 1834 succession rotated between members of the Osei Tutu and Opoku Ware ‘branches’ of the Asante royal family. In 1834 a new branch intruded and until 1931 dominated the succession. See now Wilks, , Asante in the nineteenth century (Cambridge 1975), 327–73.Google Scholar

38 Horton, R., ‘African traditional thought and Western science’, Africa, XXXVII (1967), 173.Google Scholar

39 Two lines in Sefwi-Bekwai, Bamiankor, Akwapim, and Manso Nkwanta; three lines in Pomponi, Mankessim, Ayan Abasa, Abura, and Wassa-Amenfi; five lines in Kwaman (Ayeldu); seven lines in Ekumfi; ten lines in Gomoa-Assin; and twelve lines in Assin-Fosu.

40 1922 Questionnaire in NAG/A—ADM11/1/288.

41 1927 Questionnaire in ibid.

42 Redwar, Hayes, DC, Saltpond, to Ag Governor, 15 Aug. 1889Google Scholar, ibid, and Ag SNA to Ag CCP, 29 Jan. 1924, ibid.

43 The most important of these were the creation of Ahanta, Shama, Axim, Dixcove, and several other paramount stools in 1912; Komenda from Nkusukum in 1917; Kwaman and Dominase from Abura, 1917; Winneba from Gomoa in 1927. Several other attempts to secure paramountcy, notably that of Abrem from Oguaa, failed.

44 The distinction is a tenuous one and cannot be pushed too far. Whether a dispute was intra-stool or inter-stool depended as much on its outcome as on any particular aspects of the dispute itself.

45 For the 1931 Agona dispute see NAG/A—ADM11/1/1405 and NAG/A—BFO379/6. See also Owusu, M., Uses and abuses of political power: a study of continuity and change in the politics of Ghana (Chicago, 1970), 130–5Google Scholar. From the 1840s business with the British authorities was conducted under the aegis of the Nsaba rulers.

46 For a brief account of this episode see Reindorf, C. C., A history of the Gold Coast and Asante (Basel, 1895), 64–5Google Scholar. The Nyakrom version was little more than a convenient elaboration of Reindorf or of the version of ‘the Sasabor war’ in Brown, , Gold Coast and Asianti reader I: 143–8.Google Scholar

47 NAG/A—BFO379, II, 3.

48 NAG/A—BFO379, II, 26–8; BFO379/6/80–1; Owusu, , Uses and abuses of political power, 135.Google Scholar

49 See especially Beuns, Beraku, to Director-General, Elmina, 31 Aug. 1724, in the Furley Collection, Balme Library, University of Ghana, Box 1715–30, notebook 1724–26, p. 127, and Boahen, A. A., ‘Fanti diplomacy in the eighteenth century’, a paper presented at the Conference on the Foreign Relations of African States,University of Bristol,4–6 Apr. 1973Google Scholar. The account of early Agona in Owusu, Uses and abuses of political power, 16–30, is unreliable and needs to be replaced by an analysis which uses the Dutch and British records of this period.

50 Report of Crowther, dd 18 Dec. 1913, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1135. In 1865 there had been complaints that the Gomoa-Assin ruler had ‘unlawfully and irregularly assumed the throne’ but Governor Richard Pine decided that he was ‘in reality the true King’. Pine to Cardwell, 11 Mar. 1865, CO96/61, 242V–243, Public Record Office. It is not clear whether the objections were to this ruler as a ruler or to the line he represented. If the latter, then the complainant may well have been the Buduatta ruler of the time.

51 Reindorf, , Gold Coast and Asante, 64–5.Google Scholar

52 Crowther Report, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1135.

53 Notes of Evidence of 1922 Gomoa Enquiry, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1688. One of the charges against Kojo Nkum, the Assin ruler, was that he had allowed both Winneba and Agona to escape from their ‘longstanding’ subordination to Gomoa. For this he could in part blame the British.

54 Minute of T. R. O. Mangin, CCP, dd 26 Sept. 1940, NAG/A—M.P. 1215/31.

55 The Gomoa dispute, like that in Agona, probably had its roots in the Fante expansion early in the eighteenth century. Kusae Adu (‘Ahadeo alias Quishadoe, King of Accroan’) is known to have been ruling as early as 1720 and was probably the first Fante ruler of Gomoa. T70/386 sub 1 Jan. 1720, PRO. But, unlike Agona, there is no explicit recollection in Gomoa traditions of any outside intervention and Kusae Adu is remembered simply as Ahun Aku's war captain. The latest Gomoa stool list carries the amnemonic process a step further by showing both Ahun Aku's and Kusae Adu's lines as ruling in Assin— one holding civil and the other military authority. In this combined list Ahun Aku is followed by Kusae Adu and then by five rulers of Ahun Aku's line, followed by seven chiefs from Kusae Adu's line, the last of whom was Kojo Nkum. ‘Traditions of the Gomua area’ collected by K. Ameyaw, IAS/KAG6, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. It is possible, though by no means certain, that the Buduatta claim was a manifestation of non-Fante sentiment in Gomoa state.

56 Paramountcy in Nkusukum is alleged to have been transferred in 1873 from the Saltpond stool to that of Yamoransa. Aikins, L. G., ‘The Nkusukum state’, Ghana Teachers Journal, no. XXVII 27 (1960), 12Google Scholar. See NAG/CC—DAO239 for the claim of Gomoa-Ajumaku to paramount status.

57 For the dangers in using data for the coastal stools to extrapolate for other Akan area see notes 2 and 14.

58 K. Y. Daaku, ‘Adanse’, mimeographed at Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. See ibid. 3–7, 26–9, 42–3, 49, 78–80, 315, 361. Also see testimony of Akwesi Addai of Fomena in 1946 in IAS/CR141, pp. 4–5.

59 Daaku, ‘Adanse’, iii.

60 In addition to the examples discussed this was the basic argument in the Bamiankor stool dispute of 1920. Petition of Kobina Intiri II dd 14 Apr. 1920 and later correspondence, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1240, and in the Wassa-Fiase dispute of 1933, ‘The origin of Wassaw’ by E. J. Enimil in Kobina Sekyi papers, NAG/CC—Acc 554/64. See also NAG/CC—Acc 65/129.

61 In the Gomoa paramountcy dispute of 1922 the adherents of Assin agreed that at one time the Buduatta chiefs had rules ‘all’ Gomoa. See the testimony of Kwa Nkruma, Odikro of Assin and of Ansah Fuah of Gomoa-Ajumako, NAG/A—ADM11/1/1688. The testimony of the latter may be suspect since it was shortly after this that Gomoa-Ajumaku advanced its own claims to paramountcy.

62 Crook, ‘Colonial rule’, 12.

63 Ag CCP to SNA, 13 Dec. 1932, NAG/A—CSO 1121/31. The strain of quixotism that pervades this statement is probably attributable to the unsuccessful devolution of adjudicatory duties on to the Provincial Council of Chiefs discussed in note 66. For an earlier expression of similar sentiments, even before the deluge of stool disputes began, see Minute 8 dd 10 Mar. 1910, SNA Case 211/09, NAG/A—ADM11/1/167.

64 Minute 2 dd 8 Sept. 1913, SNA Case 2923/13, NGA/A—ADM11/1/1308, referring to Ejisu stool. For the Yaa Asantewa war and its effects see Tordoff, W., Ashanti under the Prempehs, 1888–1935 (London, 1965), 107–9, 148–50Google Scholar. In his Ashanti: a vanished dynasty (London, 1921)Google Scholar, C. F. Fuller ignores the matter entirely even though (or perhaps because) he served as CCA from 1905 to 1920. In this context ‘traditionally acceptable’ includes, but only among other things, the idea of lineal legitimacy.

65 This is not to argue that the very presence of the colonial representative did not sometimes stimulate controversy in the hope of benefiting from this official's lack of familiarity with norms and precedents but this must remain no more than an imponderable.

66 In the 1930s a series of protracted stool disputes in Anamabu, Elmina, Winneba, Shama, and elsewhere forced the government to intervene and share the load with the members of the Provincial Councils. Eventually the situation deteriorated to the point that A. C. Duncan-Johnstone was appointed a Travelling Commissioner whose main, almost sole, duties were to adjudicate disputes.

67 It is impossible to assess meaningfully the impact of these questionnaires for lack of information on the pre-colonial period. In addition to the Ajumako instance, Ekumfi, which claimed seven Houses in the 1920s and again in 1946, claimed only one in 1891. Cf. M.P. 699/91 dd 1 Nov. 1895, NAG/A—ADM11/1/95 and Petition of Kwesi Krofi dd 9 May 1946, NAG/CC—DAO142, p. 302.

68 Busia Position of chief 210.

69 Ibid.

70 E.g. Manoukian, Akan and Ga-Adangme, 29Google Scholar; Dumett, R., ‘The rubber trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the nineteenth century: African innovation and responsiveness’, J. Afr. Hist., XII (1971), 95–6.Google Scholar

71 As argued by Busia, Position of chief, passim. In fact there were many instances where the most obvious candidates refused to campaign for or accept election.

72 For this argument see Henige, , Chronology of oral tradition, 169–73.Google Scholar

73 The use of the term ‘constitution’ is both unwarranted and misleading given the imprecision of Akan political institutions. However, the term was widely used in colonial archival literature both by the British, who should have known better, and by the traditional authorities emulating British usage. During this period several stools drew up elaborate and lengthy ‘constitutions’ in response to British importunities but inevitably these served not as bases of comparison for future political behaviour but as new sources of friction and dispute.

74 Note that the later transfer of paramountcy in Agona and Gomoa was not based on the precedents advanced but on political realities, that is, on the desire of the colonial administration to end the tension and dissatisfaction in these stools.

75 In several ways the bases of argumentation and of adjudication in stool disputes differed markedly between the periods before and after the implementation of the Native Administration Ordinance in 1927. A study of this phenomenon should result in rewarding insights.

76 See, e.g. Robertson, A. F., ‘Histories and political opposition in Ahafo, Ghana’, Africa, XLIII (1973), 41–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

77 This paragraph is based on a longer unpublished paper concerning the concept of ‘native customary law’, particularly in Ghana, where it seems to have been primarily a transplantation of British legal concepts and attitudes through Sarbah, Hayford, and other British-trained lawyers.

““78 In a personal communication McCaskie has told me that he believes that the role of male descent (that is, the ntoro principle) is more important than generally recognized. He sees the prescribed matrilineal descent as loosely describing the totality of eligible candidates while ntoro criteria play an important role in the final choice. For ntoro see Rattray, , Ashanti law, 10–4Google Scholar, and idem, Religion and art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1929), 51–2, 318–9.Google Scholar