This chapter takes up the story of Banda life between c. 1725 and 1825. It opens in the waning years of Britain's “Old Empire,” fifty years before American colonists declared their independence in a movement shaped by their experience of the “baubles of Britain” (Breen 1988). It encompasses the peak of the slave trade, the Napoleonic wars, and the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Several European nations had by now established trade forts along the Gold Coast, and Asante aggressively expanded into its northern hinterlands. Asante's sacking of Begho (1722–23) marked the emergence of a new political-economic order in the Volta basin, one that reshaped the social fields of Banda villagers. Immigrants and autochthones forged a new social order in the power vacuum created by Begho's decline. I begin by considering ethnogenesis and settlement in this frontier setting. I then draw on evidence from the archaeological site of Makala Kataa to envision how trade, production, and consumption were reshaped by these changing political-economic circumstances.

The end of a “Golden Age”

Kuulo traditions suggest that their ascendancy on the land was diminished by the arrival of the Ligby and the immigrant Nafana. Kuulo history recounts how Wurache, the Kuulo ancestress, was approached by a Mande trader who wanted to trade cloth for foodstuffs (Chapter 5). Other versions suggest that Muslims traveling through the area decided to stay after Wurache settled a quarrel among them (Stahl and Anane 1989:19).