Subj: Our Culture of Adhocery - Historical Note of Correction Part 2
Date: 14/01/97
To: E.K. Adu@massey.ac.nz
, Okyeame@mit.edu
CC: okyeame@serengeti.AfricaOnline.com





Adu Boahen- the High priest of Asante Supremacy




Will you please stand up Professor Albert Adu Boahen?

This apparently charming gentleman has done more than most to continually remind Ghanaian children of the deeds of the Asante. Indeed he has gone as far as to create the term "Asante empire" and by merely superimposing his own whimsical map on the map of Ghana, done more than his ancestors ever did on the field of battle to "conquer" the people of Southern Ghana for the "Asante empire". He has created the myth that all Southern Ghanaians were Asante subjects.

Any wonder that the Asante are today emboldened into making exclusive claims for leadership in Ghana. The reality is the diametrical opposite.

The idea of empire has never been native to Ghana. Suggestions of empire indicate a detailed administrative and control system as existed in, for instance, Judea under the Romans or as obtained in the Gold Coast under the British when various governors and subordinate officials kept subject peoples in check. It involved a standing army and corp of administrators that run the various localities.

Forget Boahen !

Did the Asante ever devise the administrative and military know-how to operate such a system? Does the writ of even the government of Ghana run effectively in all parts of the country?

Although Prof Boahen writes as an intellectual complete with the weight of authority that a PhD attaches to one's name his books, and therefore his claims, are hardly ever footnooted .

NB: (See for example, AA Boahen, Topics in West African History, London 1966;
JB Webster & AA Boahen, The Revolutionary Years - West Africa Since 1800, London 1967, p. 123 - a map showing an Asante empire larger than the territorial extent of modern Ghana).

This affords him the freedom of extensively embroidering on Ghana history, and indulging in creative historiography of the lowest order. He claimed at p. 77 of Topics in West African History that the Asante conquered the Ga.

When did this happen and at what battle or in what circumstances? What lasting effects did Asante conquest leave on the Ga?

In the same vein Boahen and his like have curiously avoided discussion of the Asante defeat by the Ga at the Battle of Katamanso, another Asante war of aggression for which they paid dearly.

Ever heard of the Dodowa forest? Yes, it has become a Ghanaian version of Waterloo. I understand that in Twi "Kata-manso" means that which is to be covered up. Alternately, when Boahen has been compelled to briefly touch on the Battle of Katamanso or Dodowa, he casts it as a battle between the Asante and the white man. In my estimation this standpoint only demonstrates Boahen's contempt for the ability of non-Asante peoples in Ghana.

Yes, the Ga fought with the British during the Sagrenti War (not Nsamankow as stated by EK Adu), but their role here is also is obscured by Boahen who dismissed the Eastern campaign under Captain John Glover, and emphasises the Eastern campaign through Fantiland as unwarranted breach of Asante territorial integrity.

The accounts show that for the Ga the Eastern campaign was another Katamanso; the records are replete with Ga rejection of Captain John Glover's leadership. In fact, they refused to proceed to Kumasi, restricting their campaign to a storming of Duffo island and the expulsion of the resident Asante and Akwamu garrison. There was no suggestion that the Ga fought as British lackeys.

The Defeat of Asante at Katamanso

Let us examine the facts about the Katamanso routing of the Asante for ourselves. It was stated by none other than John Mensah Sarbah ( Fanti National Constitution (1968 reprint, page 81):
"Some writers say that by this treaty the local rulers acknowledged British protection, but the same writers forget that the defeat suffered by the Asanti sovereign and his forces five years previously, at the battle of Dodowa, in 1826, was inflicted by the natives; for although the use of rockets and grapes turned the scale at the critical moment, there were not more than sixty white soldiers present in a force of 11,380 men."

Europeans may over-state their exploits in Africa as they wish, but it is far more likely that their arms had little effect on the Asante combatants who were already mixed with the Ga and were engaged in bitter hand to hand fighting.

It should be emphasised, since EK Adu seems to suggest that the Ga were mere footsoldiers in a white army that the Gold Coast was colonised in the 1870s and that at the time (1826) the Ga were mainly living territory designated a Dutch sphere of influence. The Ga monarch at Katamanso was therefore not under British command no matter what British writers may say to the contrary. 

To be Continued


Onukpa Kwei


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