Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Kabir, Ananya Jahanara
2020.
Elmina as Postcolonial Space.
Interventions,
Vol. 22,
Issue. 8,
p.
994.
Article contents
“Watch the Waves of the Sea”: Literacy, Feedback, and the European Encounter in Elmina
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
Extract
On 19 January 1482, a Portuguese fleet of ships under the command of Captain Don Diego d'Azambuja landed at Elmina (a small town on the Gold Coast, what is now Ghana). D'Azambuja immediately set up a meeting with the king of Elmina. King Kwamena Ansa, dressed in all of his finery, met with the Portuguese captain, and during this meeting d'Azambuja asked for permission to build a permanent settlement. At first, Ansa denied his request, stating that he should watch the waves of the sea. Just as they come to the shore, reach the shore, and go back, so too should he continue to come to Elmina, trade, and go back to Portugal. After persistent requests however, Ansa finally agreed and allowed the Portuguese to build a fort known today as Elmina Castle.
I first heard this story from men and women in Elmina during field research there in 2001. When I asked people to tell me about the history of the town and gave them free rein to discuss any topic of their choosing, this was often the story that they chose to tell. Kwamena Ansa, it seems, is a local legend. His fame has extended beyond Elmina however, and into Western scholarship. In particular, David Henige has tracked the emergence of Ansa within Elmina's oral tradition. Henige argues that, while this historical figure can be traced through written sources reaching all the way back to the early sixteenth century, his recognition as a past king by local residents in Elmina has a much shorter history. Indeed, Ansa first emerged in kinglists dating back only to the 1920s and 1930s. During this time, Henige argues, local residents began reading European texts about Elmina's history in order to negotiate colonial courts. The inclusion of Ansa on kinglists represents, therefore, an example of feedback, which is the process of the integration of information from the written record into the oral tradition.
- Type
- Literacy, Feedback, and the Imagination of History
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © African Studies Association 2011
References
Anderson, Benedict R.O., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 2006).Google Scholar
Barber, Karin, I Could Speak Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town (Edinburgh/London, 1993).Google Scholar
Brown, Stewart, The Pressures of the Text: Orality, Texts and the Telling of Tales (Birmingham, 1995).Google Scholar
Claridge, William W., A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti: From the Earliest Times to the Commencement of the Twentieth Century (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Clarke, James S., The Progress of Maritime Discovery: From the Earliest Period to the Close of the Eighteenth Century, Forming an Extensive System of Hydrography (Cambridge, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Cati, Dilemmas of Culture in African Schools: Youth, Nationalism, and the Transformation of Knowledge (Chicago, 2005).Google Scholar
Cole, Jennifer, “The Work of Memory in Madagascar,” American Ethnologist 25 (1998), 610–33.Google Scholar
Ewald, Janet, “Speaking, Writing, and Authority: Explorations in and from the Kingdom of Taqali,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30 (1988), 199–224.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin, and Aderinto, Saheed, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester NY, 2010).Google Scholar
Feinberg, Harvey M., “Africans and Europeans in West Africa: Elminans and Dutchmen on the Gold Coast during the Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79–7 (1989), i–186.Google Scholar
Gocking, Roger, “Creole Society and Revival of Tradition in Cape Coast During the Colonial Period,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 17 (1984), 601–22.Google Scholar
Gocking, Roger, Facing Two Ways: Ghana's Coastal Communities under Colonial Rule (Lanham MD, 1999).Google Scholar
Hair, Paul E.H., The Founding of the Castelo de São Jorge da Mina: An Analysis of Sources (Madison, 1994).Google Scholar
Hamilton, Carolyn A., “Ideology and Oral Traditions: Listening to the Voices ‘From Below,’” History in Africa 14 (1987), 67–86.Google Scholar
Henige, David, “The Problem of Feedback in Oral Tradition: Four Examples from the Fante Coastlands,” The Journal of African History 14 (1973), 223–35.Google Scholar
Henige, David, “Kingship in Elmina before 1869: A Study in ‘Feedback’ and the Traditional Idealization of the Past,” Cahiers d'Études Africaines 55 (1974), 499–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henige, David, “Truths Yet Unborn? Oral Tradition as a Casualty of Culture Contact,” The Journal of African History 23 (1982), 395–412.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Ranger, Terence O., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983).Google Scholar
Holsey, Bayo, Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana (Chicago, 2008).Google Scholar
Holsey, Bayo,“Rituel et Mémoire au Ghana: Les Usages Politiques de la Diaspora,” Critique Internationale 47 (2010), 19–36.Google Scholar
Irwin, Paul B., Liptako Speaks: History from Oral Tradition in Africa (Princeton NJ, 1996).Google Scholar
Jenkins, Ray, “William Ofori Atta, Nnambi Azikiwe, J.B. Danquah and the ‘Grilling’ of W.E.F. Ward of Achimota in 1935,” History in Africa 21 (1994), 171–89.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Raymond G., Gold Coast Historians and their Pursuit of the Gold Coast Pasts, 1882-1917, PhD, University of Birmingham (1985).Google Scholar
Kelly, Gail P., “Interwar Schools and the Development of African History in French West Africa,” History in Africa 10 (1983), 163–85.Google Scholar
Kimble, David, A Political History of Ghana: The Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850-1928 (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar
Korang, Kwaku L., Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa: Nation and African Modernity (Rochester NY, 2003).Google Scholar
Moraes Farias, Paulo F. de, Self-Assertion and Brokerage: Early Cultural Nationalism in West Africa (Birmingham, 1990).Google Scholar
Neale, Caroline, Writing “Independent” History: African Historiography, 1960-1980 (Westport CT, 1985).Google Scholar
Newbury, David, “Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon: Jan Vansina and the Debate over Oral Historiography in Africa, 1960-1985,” History in Africa 34 (2007), 213–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paracka, Daniel J., The Athens of West Africa: A History of International Education at Fourah Bay College, Freetown, Sierra Leone (New York, 2003).Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, and Macola, Giacomo (eds.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, 2009).Google Scholar
Reindorf, Carl Christian, History of the Gold Coast and Asante: Based on Traditions and Historical Facts, Comprising a Period of more than Three Centuries from about 1500 to 1860 (Accra, 1895).Google Scholar
Sarbah, John M., Fanti National Constitution: A Short Treatise on the Constitution and Government of the Fanti, Asanti, and other Akan Tribes of West Africa (London, 1968).Google Scholar
Shaw, Rosalind, Memories of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical Imagination in Sierra Leone (Chicago, 2002).Google Scholar
Thornton, John K., Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1998).Google Scholar
Wartemberg, J. Sylvanus, São Jorge d'El Mina: Premier West African European Settlement: Its Tradition and Customs (Ilfracombe/Devon, 1950).Google Scholar
White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan, and Cohen, David W. (eds.), African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, 2001).Google Scholar
Wrigley, Christopher C., “Historicism in Africa: Slavery and State Formation,” African Affairs 279 (1971), 113–24.Google Scholar
Zachernuk, Philip S., “African History and Imperial Culture in Colonial Nigerian Schools,” Africa 68 (1998), 484–505.Google Scholar
- 1
- Cited by