Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T12:36:04.669Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Local Historians and Strangers with Big Eyes: The Politics of Ewe History in Ghana and Its Global Diaspora

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Kate Skinner
Kate Skinner*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 2001 I attended a meeting at the London headquarters of the Movement for a Resurgent Togoland (MORETO). Seven people—mainly middle-aged and elderly men from the inland Ewe-speaking areas of Ghana—had gathered together to share their findings about the modern political history of the area where they were born. They vocalised their dissatisfaction with the incorporation of this area within the borders of Ghana at independence in 1957, and they discussed how this situation came about, and whether it could be rectified. In the course of this meeting, I began to realize that contests over Ewe history had gone global. Controversial issues, which scholars had previously addressed through detailed diachronic local studies, were now being played out across a global diaspora, capturing the attention not only of Ewe-speakers originating from a specific town or district, or having a direct stake in a particular version of its history, but also of anonymous commentators, scattered thousands of miles across the globe. In this paper, I describe some of my encounters with Ewe-speaking people who study their recent political history, and I analyze some of their writings. I suggest that, despite recent attention to history-writing by Africans during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, further reflection is required on two key issues: firstly, the circulation of historical knowledge and forms of historical debate among Africans living in the global diaspora; secondly, the implications of this for historians researching the post-colonial period.

Type
Critical Source Analysis
Information
History in Africa , Volume 37 , 2010 , pp. 125 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agbodeka, Francis (ed.), A Handbook of Eweland: vol. 1 — The Ewes of Southeastern Ghana (Accra, 1997).Google Scholar
Agbodeka, Francis, and Gavua, Kodzo (ed.), A Handbook of Eweland: vol. 2—The Northern Ewes in Ghana (Accra, 2000).Google Scholar
Akyeampong, Emanuel, Between the Sea and the Lagoon: an Eco-Social History of the Anlo of South-Eastern Ghana c.1850 to Recent Times (Athens OH, 2001).Google Scholar
Allman, Jean, and Kyei, T.E. (ed.), Our Days Dwindle: Memories of my Childhood Days in Asante (Portsmouth NH, 2001).Google Scholar
Amenumey, D.E.K., “The pre-1947 Background to the Ewe Unification Question,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 10 (1960), 65–85.Google Scholar
Amenumey, D.E.K., “The Extension of British Rule to Anlo (South-East Ghana), 1850-1890,” Journal of African History 9 (1968), 99–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amenumey, D.E.K., “The General Elections in the ‘Autonomous Republic of Togo,’ April 1958: Background and Interpretation,” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 16 (1975), 47–65.Google Scholar
Amenumey, D.E.K., The Ewe Unification Movement: a Political History (Accra, 1989).Google Scholar
Amenyo, Kofi, “Trans Volta Togoland and the Refuseniks of the Union with Ghana,” (8 May 2008) http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=143373&comment=3728992#com (accessed 6 August 2010).Google Scholar
Austin, Dennis, Politics in Ghana 1946-1960 (London, 1964).Google Scholar
Brown, David, “Politics in the Kpandu Area of Ghana, 1925 to 1969: a Study of the Influence of Central Government and National Politics upon Local Factional Competition,” PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham (1977).Google Scholar
Brown, David, “Borderline Politics in Ghana: the National Liberation Movement of Western Togoland,” Journal of Modern African Studies 18 (1980) 575–609.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, David, “Who are the Tribalists? Social Pluralism and Political Ideology in Ghana,” African Affairs 81 (1982), 37–69.Google Scholar
Brown, David, “Sieges and Scapegoats: the Politics of Pluralism in Ghana and Togo,” Journal of Modern African Studies 21 (1983), 431–60.Google Scholar
Callahan, Michael, Mandates and Empire: the League of Nations and Africa, 1914-1931 (Brighton, 1999).Google Scholar
Coleman, James, “Togoland,” International Conciliation 509 (1956).Google Scholar
Datsa, E.K., Doing My Duty: Memoirs of a Ghanaian Educationist (Accra, 2006), 109–24.Google Scholar
Debrunner, Hans, A Church Between Colonial Powers: a Study of the Church in Togo (London, 1965).Google Scholar
Dunn, John, and Robertson, Alexander F., Dependence and Opportunity: Political Change in Ahafo (Cambridge, 1973).Google Scholar
Greene, Greene, Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: a History of the Anlo-Ewe (Portsmouth NH, 1996).Google Scholar
Greene, Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: a History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (Bloomington/Indianapolis, 2002).Google Scholar
Harneit-Sievers, Axel (ed.), A Place in the World: New Local Historiographies for Africa and South Asia (Leiden, 2002).Google Scholar
Kedem, Kosi, British Togoland: an Orphan or the Death of a Nation (Accra, 2005).Google Scholar
Kedem, Kosi, How Britain Subverted and Betrayed British Togoland (Accra, 2007).Google Scholar
Kedem, Kosi, The Chance of a Lifetime (Accra, 2008).Google Scholar
Kedem, Kosi, 2010 Constitutional Review Commission and the Rectification of the Ghana-British Togoland Union (Accra, 2010).Google Scholar
Knoll, Arthur, Togo under Imperial Germany, 1884-1914: a Case Study in Colonial Rule (Stanford CA, 1978).Google Scholar
Kodzi, Kofi, Worse than South Africa (London, 1991).Google Scholar
Lawrance, Benjamin N., Locality, Mobility and “Nation:” Peri-Urban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland 1900-1960 (Rochester NY, 2007).Google Scholar
McCaskie, Tom, “The Life and Afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 11 (2007), 151–79.Google Scholar
Meyer, Birgit, Translating the Devil: Religion and Modernity among the Ewe in Ghana (Edinburgh, 1999).Google Scholar
Miescher, Stephan, “‘My Own Life:’ A.K. Boakye Yiadom's Autobiography—the Writing and Subjectivity of a Ghanaian Teacher-Catechist,” in: Barber, Karin (ed.), Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington/Indianapolis, 2006), 27–51.Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul, “National Integration and the Vicissitudes of State Power in Ghana: the Political Incorporation of Likpe, a Border Community, 1945-1986,” PhD dissertation, SOAS (1991).Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul, “‘A few lesser peoples:’ the Central Togo Minorities and their Ewe Neighbours,” in: Lentz, Carola, and Nugent, Paul (ed.), Ethnicity in Ghana: the Limits of Invention (London, 2000), 162–82.Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul, “Winners, Losers and Also Rans: Money, Moral Authority and Voting Patterns in the Ghana 2000 Election,” African Affairs 100 (2001), 405–28.Google Scholar
Nugent, Paul, “The Things that Money can Buy: Chieftaincy, the Media and the 1996 Elections in Hohoe-North Constituency,” Ghana Studies 4 (2001), 85–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nugent, Paul, Smugglers, Secessionists and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: the Lie of the Borderlands since 1914 (Athens OH, 2002).Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, and Macoma, Giacomo, “Homespun Historiography and the Academic Profession,” in: Peterson, Derek, and Macoma, Giacomo (ed.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, 2009), 1–28.Google Scholar
Peterson, Derek, and Macoma, Giacomo, (ed.), Recasting the Past: History Writing and Political Work in Modern Africa (Athens OH, 2009).Google Scholar
Saffu, E.O., “Nkrumah and the Togoland Question,” Economic Bulletin of Ghana 12, 2/3 (1968), 37–46.Google Scholar
Skinner, Kate, “Reading, Writing and Rallies: the Politics of ‘Freedom’ in Southern British Togoland 1953-1956,” Journal of African History 48 (2007), 123–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tete-Adjaloo, Tetevi Godwin, Histoire du Togo: le régime et l'assassinat de Sylvanus Olympio (1960-1963) (Paris, 2002).Google Scholar
Thompson, W. Scott, Ghana's Foreign Policy 1957-1966: Diplomacy, Ideology and the New State (Princeton NJ, 1969).Google Scholar
Watson, Ruth, “‘What is our Intelligence, our School Going and our Reading of Books Without Getting Money?’ Akinpȩlu Obişȩsan and his Diary,” in: Barber, Karin (ed.), Hidden Histories: Everyday Literacy and Making the Self (Bloomington/Indianapolis, 2006), 52–77.Google Scholar
Welch, Claude, Dream of Unity: Pan-Africanism and Political Unification in West Africa (Ithaca NY, 1966).Google Scholar
Yagla, Wen'Saa Ogma, L'édification de la nation togolaise: naissance d'une conscience nationale dans unpays africain (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar
Yayoh, Wilson, “Local Government in Ewedome, British Trust Territory of Togoland (Ghana), 1920s-1970s,” PhD dissertation, SOAS (2010).Google Scholar