Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T05:03:04.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perspectives on Fifty Years of Ghanaian Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Joseph K. Adjaye
Joseph K. Adjaye*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate on African methodology—sources, issues, methods, challenges—by presenting a Ghanaian case study, for, whereas there are a number of broad overviews of African methodology, some of which include surveys of regions such as eastern or southern Africa, as well as countries like Nigeria and Senegal, a study specifically devoted to examining historical production in Ghana is yet to be essayed. This paper, however, shares common concerns with African historiography in general in terms of the quest for distinctly African constructions of history as well as the manifold ways in which African historical production might be made to relate more effectively to local contexts.

In a recent contribution to a volume dedicated to honoring Bethwell Ogot, David William Cohen (2001:53) echoed a call which was by no means new but which still has relevance for African historical production today as it did in the 1960s. Emphasizing the need for African voices, he asserted that “…there are realms of knowledge and programs of knowledge production outside the academy, and outside the field situation, that might be understood and drawn upon to work at the reconstruction of the African past.” It is in this light that this piece was originally prepared in connection with Ghana's fiftieth independence anniversary in 2007.

Ghana has had a long span of historical writing dating back several centuries, but a tradition of Ghanaian historiography is only about 50 years old, as is the case with the development of national historiographies throughout much of Africa.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 35 , January 2008 , pp. 1 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2008

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

Addo-Fening, Robert. 1997. Akyem Abuakwa, 1700-1943, from Ofori Panin to Sir Ofori Atta. Trondheim.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K. 1976. “Asabi Antwi and Oral Retrieval Mechanisms in Asante Diplomatic Practice,” Asantesem, 3, 24–28.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K. 1989. “Asantehene Agyeman Prempe I and British Colonization of Asante: a Reassessment.” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22:223–49.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K. 1996 [1984]. Diplomacy and Diplomats in Nineteenth Century Asante. Trenton.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K. 2004. Boundaries of Self and Other in Ghanaian Popular Culture. Westport.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K., ed. 1994. Time in the Black Experience. Westport.Google Scholar
Adjaye, Joseph K. and Andrews, Adrianne, eds. 1997. Language, Rhythm, and Sound Black: Popular Cultures into the 21st Century. Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Afigbo, A. E. 1993. “Colonial Historiography.” In Falola, , ed., African Historiography, 39–51.Google Scholar
Agbodeka, Francis. 1971. African Politics and British Policy in the Gold Coast 1868-1900: a Study in the Forms and Force of Protest. London.Google Scholar
Agbodeka, Francis. 1992. An Economic History of Ghana from the Earliest Times. Accra.Google Scholar
Akyeampong, Emmanuel. 1996. Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Recent Times. Portsmouth.Google Scholar
Akyeampong, Emmanuel. 2001. Between the Sea and the Lagoon: an Eco-social History of the Anlo of Southeastern Ghana. Athens.Google Scholar
Alagoa, E. J. 2006. The Practice of History in Africa: a History of African Historiography. Port Harcourt.Google Scholar
Allman, Jean. 1993. The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana. Madison.Google Scholar
Allman, Jean and Tashjian, Victoria. 2000. “I Will Not Eat Stone”: A Women's History of Colonial Asante. Portsmouth.Google Scholar
Amenumey, D. E. K. 1989. The Ewe Unification Movement: a Political History. Accra.Google Scholar
Arhin, Kwame Brimpong. 1979. West African Traders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London.Google Scholar
Austen, Ralph. 1993. “Africanist' Historiography and its Critics: Can there be an Autonomous African History?” In Falola, , Africanist Historiography, 203–17.Google Scholar
Austin, Gareth. 1984. “The Growth of Cocoa Farming in South Ashanti, 1896-1914.” PhD., University of Birmingham.Google Scholar
Barbot, Jean. 1732. A Description of the Coasts of North and South Guinea. London.Google Scholar
Berry, Sara. 2001. Chiefs Know Their Boundaries: Essays on Property, Power, and the Past in Asante, 1896-1996. Portsmouth.Google Scholar
Blake, J. W. 1937. European Beginnings in West Africa 1454-1578: a Survey of the First Century of White Enterprise in West Africa. London.Google Scholar
Boahen, A. Adu. 1964. Britain, the Sahara and the Western Sudan 1788-1861. Oxford.Google Scholar
Boahen, A. Adu. 1966. Topics in West African History. London.Google Scholar
Boahen, A. Aduet al., eds. 2003. “The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself” and Other Writings by Otumfuo, Nona Agyeman Prempeh I. Oxford.Google Scholar
Bosman, Willem. 1705. A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea. London.Google Scholar
Botwe-Asamoah, Kwame. 2004. Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Policies: an African-Centered Paradigm for the Second Phase of the African Revolution. New York.Google Scholar
Boubou, Hama and Ki-Zerbo, J.. 1980. “The Place of History in African Societies.,” In UNESCO General History, 1:65–76.Google Scholar
Bowdich, T. E. 1819. Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee. London.Google Scholar
Buah, F. K. 1966. A History of Ghana. London.Google Scholar
Casely Hayford, J. E. 1903. Gold Coast Native Institutions. London.Google Scholar
Claridge, W. W. 1915. A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti. 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Cole, Catherine M. 2001. Ghana's Concert Party. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Collins, John. 1992. West African Pop Roots. Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Daaku, Kwame Y. 1970. Trade and Politics on the Gold Coast, 1600-1720. Oxford.Google Scholar
Davidson, Basil. 1965. Old Africa Rediscovered. London.Google Scholar
Davidson, Basil. 1977. “Questions about Nationalism,” African Affairs, 76:39–46.Google Scholar
Davidson, Basil, with Buah, F. K. and the advice of Ajayi, J. F. Ade. 1966. A History of West Africa to the Nineteenth Century. Garden City.Google Scholar
Dike, K. O. 1956. Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta. Oxford.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1971. “The Rubber Trade of the Gold Coast and Asante in the Nineteenth Century: African Innovation and Market Responsiveness,” Journal of African History 12:79–101.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1973. “John Sarbah the Elder and African Mercantile Entrepreneurship in the Gold Coast in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 14:653–79.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1979. “Precolonial Gold Mining and the State in the Akan Region with a Critique of the Terray Hypothesis.” Research in Economic Anthropology 2:37–68.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1983. “African Merchants of the Gold Coast, 1860-1905: Dynamics of Indigenous Entrepreneurship.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25:661–93.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1987. “Precolonial Gold Mining in Wassa: Innovation, Specialization, Linkages to the Economy and to the State”. In Schildkrout, Enid ed. The Golden Stool: Studies of the Asante Center and Periphery. New York, 209–24.Google Scholar
Dumett, Raymond. 1998. El Dorado in West Africa: the Gold-Mining Frontier, African Labor, and Colonial Capitalism in the Gold Coast, 1875-1900. Athens (OH).Google Scholar
Dupuis, J. 1824. Journal of Residence in Ashantee. London.Google Scholar
Fage, J. 1961. The Dawn of African History. London.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin, ed. 1993. African Historiography: Essays in Honour of Jacob Ade Ajayi. Harlow.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin 2006. Myth, History and Society: the Collective Works of Adiele Afigbo. Trenton.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin and Jennings, Christian. 2002. Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies across the Disciplines. New Brunswick.Google Scholar
Freund, B. 1984. The Making of Contemporary Africa: the Development of African Society since 1800. London.Google Scholar
Fynn, J. K. 1971. Asante and its Neighbours 1700-1807. London.Google Scholar
Greene, Sandra. 1996. Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe. Portsmouth.Google Scholar
Greene, Sandra. 2002. Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: a History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Hagan, G. P. 1971. “Ashanti Bureaucracy: a Study of the Growth of Centralized Administration in Ashanti from the Time of Osei Tutu to the Time of Osei Tutu Kwamina Esibe Bonsu.” Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana 12:43–62.Google Scholar
Hart, K. 1985. “The Social Anthropology of West Africa,” Annual Review of Anthropology 14:243–72.Google Scholar
Henige, David. 2002. “Packaging Scholarship.” In Africanizing Knowledge, 405–18.Google Scholar
Hodgkin, Thomas. 1961. “What Future Africa?” In Encounter 93. 3-8.Google Scholar
Hodgkin, Thomas. 1956. Nationalism in Colonial Africa. London.Google Scholar
Khaldun, Ibn. 1967. The Muqaddimah: an Introduction to History, trans. Rosenthal, Franz, abridged and ed. by Dawood, N. J.. Princeton.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Paul. 1998. ed. The Recovery of the West African Past. Basel.Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, Bogumil and Newbury, David, eds. 1986. African Historiographies: What History for Which Africa? Beverly Hills.Google Scholar
Johnson, Marion and Hogendorn, Jan. 1986. The Shell Money of the Slave Trade. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Kea, R. A. 1982. Settlements, Trade, and Politics in the Seventeenth-Century Gold Coast. Baltimore.Google Scholar
Kimble, David. 1963. A Political History of Ghana: the Rise of Gold Coast Nationalism, 1850-1928. Oxford.Google Scholar
Ki-Zerbo, J. ed. 1981. UNESCO General History of Africa, 1: Methodology and African Prehistory. Paris.Google Scholar
Kwamena-Poh, M. A. 1973. Government and Politics in the Akuapem State 1730-1850. London.Google Scholar
Kiwanuka, M. S. M. 1977. “African Precolonial History: s Challenge to the Historian's Craft.” Afrika Zamani 6/7:23–35.Google Scholar
MacGaffey, Wyatt, 1986. “Epistemological Ethnocentrism in African Studies,” in Jewsiewicki, /Newbury, , Which Histories? 42–48.Google Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1992. “Empire State: Asante and the Historians,” Journal of African History 33:467–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCaskie, T. C. 1995. State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Meyerowitz, Eva. 1951. The Sacred State of the Akan. London.Google Scholar
Neale, Caroline. 1985. Writing “Independent” History: African Historiography, 1960-1980. Westport.Google Scholar
Nziem, Ndaywei. 1986. “African Historians and Africanist Historians,” in Jewsiewicki, /Newbury, , Which Histories?Google Scholar
Ogot, B.A. 1976. “Towards a History of Kenya,” Kenya Historical Review 4:1–16.Google Scholar
Oppong, Christine. 1983. Female and Male in West Africa. London.Google Scholar
Owusu-Ansah, David. 1991. Islamic Talismanic Tradition in Nineteenth Century Asante. Lewiston.Google Scholar
Perbi, Akosua. A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana from the 15th to the 19th Century. Accra.Google Scholar
Philips, John E. 2005. Writing African History. Rochester.Google Scholar
Rathbone, Richard. 1993. Murder and Politics in Colonial Ghana. New Haven.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1916. Ashanti Proverbs. Oxford.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1923. Ashanti. Oxford.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1927. Religion and Art in Ashanti. Oxford.Google Scholar
Rattray, R. S. 1929. Ashanti Law and Constitution. Oxford.Google Scholar
Reindorf, C. C. 1895. A History of the Gold Coast. Basel.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Edward. 1974. Trade and Economic Change on the Gold Coast, 1807-1874. London.Google Scholar
Roberts, A. D. 1978. “The Earlier Historiography of Colonial Africa.” HA 5:153–67.Google Scholar
Robertson, Claire. 1984. Sharing the Same Bowl: a Socioeconomic History of Women and Class in Accra, Ghana.Google Scholar
Sanders, E. R. 1967. “The Hamitic Hypothesis,” Journal of African History 10:521–32.Google Scholar
Sarbah, J. Mensah. 1906. Fanti National Constitution. London.Google Scholar
Temu, Arnold and Swai, Bonaventure. 1981. Historians and Africanist History: a Critique. Post-Colonial Historiography Examined. London.Google Scholar
Tordoff, William. 1965. Ashanti under the Prempehs, 1888-1935. Oxford.Google Scholar
Ward, W. E. F. 1958. A History of Ghana. London.Google Scholar
White, Luise, Miescher, Stephan, and Cohen, David William. 2001. African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Wilks, Ivor. 1975. Asante in the Nineteenth Century: the Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wilks, Ivor. 1993. Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante. Athens.Google Scholar
Wilks, Ivor, Levtzion, Nehemia, and Haight, Bruce. 1986. Chronicles from Gonja: a Tradition of West African Muslim Historiography. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Yankah, Kwesi. 1995. Speaking for the Chief. Bloomington.Google Scholar
Yankah, Kwesi. 1997. “Nana Ampadu, the Sung-Tale Metaphor, and Protest Discourse in Contemporary Ghana.” In Adjaye, Joseph ed., Language, Rhythm, and Sound, 54–73.Google Scholar
Yarak, Larry W. 1990. Asante and the Dutch, 1744-1873. Oxford.Google Scholar