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Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I, Asante History, and the Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Joseph K. Adjaye
Joseph K. Adjaye*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

For long Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I (1888-1931) has had a curious, almost unenviable reputation that is in many respects undeserving. His memory in both oral and written records is one that is inexorably linked to the British occupation and colonization of Asante and the concomitant exile which he suffered. In other words, Agyeman Prempe is remembered more for his failures—his inability to retain Asante sovereignty—than for his accomplishments. However, new evidence coming to light since the 1970s is increasingly enabling the historian of Asante to offer a more accurate assessment of Prempe I's career and accomplishments. It has now been demonstrated, for instance, that the Asantehene's arrest and exile in 1896 were a function of British duplicitous conduct and the failure of the Asantehene's supreme faith in diplomacy rather than his indifference and ineptitude; that the Asantehene did not remain indifferent to his long exile in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Seychelles (1896-1924) but fought repeatedly for his repatriation; that in the Seychelles he saw to the perpetuation of the Asante community under his care as well as the preservation of Asante values and practices; and that he accomplished significant achievements during his exile, including maintaining extensive records of both his personal correspondence and his compilation of a history of Asante.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 17 , January 1990 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1990

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References

Notes

1. For written records, see, for example, Tordoff, W., Ashanti under the Prempehs 1888-1935 (London, 1965)Google Scholar and Kimble, D., A Political History of Ghana: The Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850-1928 (Oxford, 1963).Google Scholar The following apo song, such as Rattray, R.S. heard and recorded in Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), 156Google Scholar, typifies the popular traditional view:

They know nothing about guns,

The Ashanti know nothing about guns.

Had they known about guns

Would they have let the white man seize

King Prempeh and Yaa Akyaa without firing a gun?

2. See Boahen, A., “Prempeh I in Exile,” Research Review (University of Ghana Institute of African Studies), 8/3 (1972), 3–20Google Scholar; idem, “A Nation in Exile: The Asante on Seychelles Islands, 1900-24,” Schildkrout, E., ed., The Golden Stool: Studies of the Asante Center and Periphery, (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, 65) 1 (New York, 1987), 146–60Google Scholar; Adjaye, J. K., Diplomacy an Diplomats in Nineteenth Century Asante (Lanham, 1984)Google Scholar; idem, “Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I and British Colonization of Asante: A Reassessment,” IJAHS, 22 (1989).

3. Copies of these unpublished documents are now available at the Library of African Affairs, formerly George Padmore Library, Accra and the Asantehene's Manhyia Record Office, Kumase. I am grateful to A. Boahen for bringing these documents to light.

4. The exact date of Prempe's birth has not yet been established. By most accounts he was born between 1871 and 1873. Most secondary sources estimate that he was about sixteen years old at the time of his election in 1888, that is, that he was born in 1872. Wilks' estimated date of birth of 1873, Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order (Cambridge 1975), 759Google Scholar, would make Prempe a year younger. In the 1915 census of the Asante Camp at Mahé, Seychelles, however, Prempe gave his own age as 44—that is, that he was born in 1871.

5. For examples of the various views expressed in the growing literature on historiographical problems associated with the reconstruction of the past and the revival of narrative history, see Henige, D., “‘In the Possession of the Author:’ the Problem of Source Monopoly in Oral Historiography,” International Journal of Oral History, 1 (1980), 181–94Google Scholar; The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T.O. (Cambridge 1983)Google Scholar; McCaskie, T., “Komfo Anokye of Asante: Meaning, History and Philosophy,” JAH, 27, (1986), 315–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peel, J., “Kings, Titles and Quarters: a Conjectural History of Ilesha.” HA, 6 (1979), 109–53Google Scholar; 7 (1980), 225-57; Temu, A and Swai, B., Historians and Africanist History: A Critique (London, 1981)Google Scholar; and Wilks, , “Land, Labour, Capital and the Forest Kingdom of Asante: A Model of Early Change,” in The Evolution of Social Systems, ed. Friedman, J. and Rowlands, M. (London, 1977), 487–534.Google Scholar

6. Bosman, W., A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705).Google Scholar

7. For van Nyendael's visit to Kumase see Van Dantzig, A., The Dutch and the Guinea Coast 1674-1742: A Collection of Documents from the General State Archive at the Hague, (Accra 1978)Google Scholar; Fynn, J., Ashanti and its Neighbours, 156–9Google Scholar; and McCaskie, T., “Komfo Anokye of Asante,” 319.Google Scholar

8. Wilks, , “Land, Labour, Capital,” 487–88.Google Scholar

9. Prempe, A., “The History of Ashanti and the Whole Country Itself,” (Seychelles, 1907).Google Scholar

10. See, for example, Agyeman-Duah, J., “Manpong, Ashanti: A Traditional History of the Reign of Nana Safo Kantanka,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 4/2 (Legon, 1960)Google Scholar, and Daaku, K., “Pre-Ashanti States,” Ghana Notes and Queries, 9 (Legon, 1966).Google Scholar

11. Interview with Nseniehene Kwasi Addai III, Kumase, 31 July 1976.

12. Prempe, , “History,” 3, 28.Google Scholar Also see ibid., 26, 27.

13. Ibid., 3. Compare list compiled in 1942 by the Asante Confederacy Council under the chairmanship of Asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempe II, which revised the number of clans from Prempe I's eight to seven by omitting Atena.

14. Wilks, , “Land, Labour, Capital,” 511–12.Google Scholar

15. Prempe, , “History,” 4–5.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., 5.

17. “Kokofu Stool History,” recorded by J. Agyeman-Duah, (Legon, Institute of African Studies 28 February 1963).

18. See, for example, Rattray, R.S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford, 1911), 217, 235Google Scholar, and Fynn, J. K., Ashanti and its Neighbours, 27–28.Google Scholar

19. Prempe, , “History,” 368.Google Scholar

20. Ibid., 40.

21. Wilks' Asante in the Nineteenth Century remains the most comprehensive study of the Asante bureaucracy. On the nhenkwaa, the Asantehene's household servants, see Adjaye, , Diplomacy and Diplomats, 20–30.Google Scholar

22. Prempe, , “History,” 49–51.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 67-71.

24. Ibid., 74.

25. Ibid., 61.

26. Ibid., 83-4.

27. Prempe, A., “Reign of Kofi Karkari, King of Ashanti,” (Seychelles, n.d.).Google Scholar

28. Owusu Taseamandi was a fugitive who escaped from Asante justice in 1880. The British offer of protection posed a security threat to Asante in view of the fact that Owusu Taseamandi not only was an Asante royal paternally but also had Gyaman royal connections maternally. A high-powered Asante mission dispatched to demand his extradition in 1881 precipitated a war scare because the British misconstrued the Golden Axe, which the mission's leader Asabihene Kwame Antwi carried, to signal a declaration of war rather than symbolizing the gravity of the situation. See, further, Adjaye, J., Diplomacy and Diplomats, 131–42Google Scholar, and British Parliamentary Papers, C. 3064, “Affairs of the Gold Coast and Threatened Ashanti Invasion,” (London, 1881), 12 ff.Google Scholar

29. Prempe, A., “Reign of King Prempeh,” (Seychelles, n.d., but written ca. 1922).Google Scholar

30. Ibid.

31. Prempe, , “History,” 26, 27, 28, 30.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., 64, 68, 71-73, 81.

33. The literature on charisma is quite rich. See, for example, Martin, R., The Sociology of Power (London, 1976).Google Scholar

34. Prempe, , “History,” 1.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., 2.

36. Ibid., 4.

37. Ibid.

38. Wilks, , “Land, Labour, Capital,” 514.Google Scholar

39. The most vigorous espousal of the migration theory regarding Asante's northern origins was recorded by Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee, (London, 1824), 224CrossRefGoogle Scholar, based on information he received from his Muslim informants. Following Dupuis, the theory thrived in the historiographical traditions. Ellis, A. B., The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa, (London, 1887), 331–32Google Scholar and Hayford, J. Casely, Gold Coast Native Institutions, (London, 1903), 24Google Scholar, among others, reiterated it. The migration theory must further be viewed within the wider historiographical context of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which state formation in Africa was readily attributed to people and ideas of northern origin. Fage, J., “Ancient Ghana: a Review of the Evidence,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, 3/1 (1957), 92–96.Google Scholar

40. These include Kyerematen, A.A. Y., “The Royal Stools of Ashanti,” Africa, 39, (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and J. Fynn, Ashanti and its Neighbours.

41. Prempe, , “History,” 4.Google Scholar My Italics.

42. Ibid., 31-32.

43. Ibid., 40. My Italics.

44. Ibid., 5.

45. Ibid., p. 14.

46. Prempe to Governor, n.d., but written in October 1913.

47. For a fuller discussion of the strategies by which the Asante group in the Seychelles maintained its identity as a distinct community, see J. K. Adjaye, “Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I.”

48. See, for example, excerpts from Prempe's “Reign of King Prempeh” cited above.

49. Manhyia: Minutes of Kumasi Public Health Board, 10 November 1925.

50. Prempe, , “History,” 10–11.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., 17, 18, 19.

52. Ibid., 34.

53. On indigenous Akan time perceptions and time reckoning mechanisms, see Adjaye, J. K., “Time, The Calendar, and History among the Akan of Ghana,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies, 15 (1987), 71–100Google Scholar, and McCaskie, T., “Time and the Calendar in Nineteenth Century Asante: An Exploratory Essay,” HA, 7 (1980), 170–200.Google Scholar

54. Prempe, , “History,” 15, 16.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 40.

56. Ibid., 40-41.

57. Adjaye, , Diplomacy and Diplomats, 152–218.Google Scholar

58. A possible exception, though on a considerably smaller scale, was J. Owusu Ansa's sketchy, two-and-a-half-page newspaper publication on the history, government, military organization, and traditions of Asante: “The King of Ashantee,” The Times, (London), 29 July 1873.Google Scholar

59. See, for example, Prempe, , “History,” 36–37, 61–62.Google Scholar

60. This theme is discussed at length in Adjaye, “Prempe I and British Colonization of Asante.”

The same sense of accountability may have underlay Prempe's maintenance of lists of deaths. As an illustration, see the list provided as Table 1.