T C Mccaskie
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 97318 |
|---|---|
| NOME | T C Mccaskie |
| PRENOMES | T C |
| SOBRENOME | Mccaskie |
| ASSINATURA | MCCASKIE T C |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Birmingham |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 53 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 499 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 53 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1895 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2022 |
| ÍNDICE H | 12 |
Devising and Disclosing an Autobiographical Self
Scholarship should attend to the imperative that African identities need to be particularized and explored, and not simply generalized and proclaimed. Thus, this article interrogates the case of the autobiographical self-portrait recently authored and published by Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings (born 1948), widow of the late J. J. Rawlings (died 2020; Ghanaian Head of State, 1979 and 1981–2001). Nana Konadu strongly identified herself with the caus…
Psychoanalysis and the antinomies of an archaeologist
Freud’s fascination with the ruins of ancient Rome was an element in the formation and development of psychology. This article concerns the intersection of psychoanalysis with archaeology and history in the study of that city. Its substantive content is an analysis of the life and career of Andrea Carandini, the best-known Roman archaeologist of the past 40 years. He has said and written much about his changing views of himself and about what he …
Asante Identities
GBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup('ISBN:9780748615100);Asante Identitiesis an account of life in the Asante village of Ade beba in West Africa during a century of rapid change, told as far as possible in the words of the villagers themselves. Asante is the most intensely studied of all sub-Saharan African cultures, and this book takes Asante and African historiography to new levels of reconstruction , analysis and understanding. This is the most close…
Jennifer Hart. Ghana on the Go
Unspeakable Words, Unmasterable Feelings
The present article explores crucial aspects of the Asante understanding and construction of their own historical experience. Specifically, it historicizes the royal oaths of the first two Asante rulers Osei Tutu (d. 1717) and Opoku Ware (d. 1750). These have long been understood to be fundamental elements in the working of Asante society and culture, but here they are situated precisely as historical testaments and mnemonics. Attention is paid t…
History has many cunning passages
This article, a companion piece to that on Kwame Tua, traces the life history of his elder full brother Kwasi Apea Nuama (c.1862-1936) as he too sought purchase and place in the new colonial order in Asante. Temperamentally a very different man from his brother, Kwasi Apea Nuama set out to make himself indispensable as the interpreter of Asante history and custom to the uncomprehending British. Both brothers, then, were mediators or translators b…
You are the music while the music lasts
This article is an interpretive biography of Kwame Tua (c.1865-1950), one of millions of Africans born into an independent society that was overtaken by colonial conquest and overrule. Kwame Tua was from Asante, now in the republic of Ghana, and held the ascriptive status of a royal servant (ahenkwaa) who might have expected a specialist career as a royal hornblower. He was musically very gifted. However, after ruinous civil wars in the 1880s, th…
African mediators, the Asante and British colonial rule
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
La seconde patrie of a Basel Missionary
This paper explores the life of the Basel missionary Edmond Perregaux (1868-1905) in Switzerland and among the Akan of Ghana. It is concerned with the construction and expression of his selfhood in and between two different worlds in the later nineteenth century under the aegis of an ever advancing globalization. In brief, the paper looks at a Swiss missionary as an actor in Africa and among Africans and reflects upon the matter of reconciling an…
Ivor Wilks (1928–2014)
I first met Ivor in Ghana in July 1968, and became his Ph.D. student at Cambridge and then at Northwestern. We collaborated for six years on the Asante Collective Biography Project (1973–79), and latterly with others on bringing the Asantehene Agyeman Prempeh I’s genealogical and historical
The Enduring Puzzle of Patriliny in Asante History
In reviewing the older, often contradictory, literature on the matter of ntɔrɔ among the Akan, including the Asante, the Gha naian philosopher Kwame Gyekye came to the following conclusion: “The ntoro appears to be the basis of inherited characteristics, and may therefore be translated as ‘
The Enduring Puzzle of Patriliny in Asante History
The Enduring Puzzle of Patriliny in Asante HistoryA Note and a Document on Ntɔrɔ Tom McCaskie* (bio) Note In reviewing the older, often contradictory, literature on the matter of ntɔrɔ among the Akan, including the Asante, the Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye came to the following conclusion: "The ntoro appears to be the basis of inherited characteristics, and may therefore be translated as 'sperm-transmitted characteristic,' even though spiritu…
Telling the Tale of Osei Bonsu
This paper is about the Asante perception and understanding of Asante history as expressed in theapaeor 'praise songs' of Asantehene (King of the Asante) Osei Tutu Kwame, known as Osei Bonsu (1804-23). As such, it offers an indigenous portrait of kingship and the expectations and behaviours attaching to it in Asante thought. The core of the paper is centred on the role of Osei Tutu Kwame as a leader in war, against the Fante of the southern Gold …
As on a Darkling Plain
I am a professor of the history of Africa. I have spent four decades researching and writing about the historic West African forest kingdom of Asante (or Ashanti, now in Ghana), the most richly documented and most complex state and society in all of sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years I have become intrigued by the ways in which African histories authored by academic practitioners have been subjected to an ever-rising tide of readings, and misrea…
The United States, Ghana and Oil
The context of this article is United States military and energy security policies as regards the offshore oil potential of what Washington terms Africa's ‘New Gulf’, the Atlantic littoral from Morocco to Angola. The focus is the operation of deepwater oil exploration companies offshore of western Ghana, and their discovery in 2007 of potentially valuable oil deposits. This article considers local Ghanaian and wider global reactions. Ghana's gove…
Gun Culture in Kumasi
This article is about gun culture in Kumasi today. Gun use in Asante, and elsewhere in Ghana, has increased significantly in the last decade. In practice and in the public imagination this is associated with the rise of youth gangs and the criminalization of urban space. Much has been written about youths and violence elsewhere in Africa, but this article focuses on the neglected topic of guns themselves - their manufacture, sale, distribution, u…
Asante History
> Imagination is not, as is sometimes thought, the ability to invent: it is the ability to disclose that which exists. > > —John BergerThe editors of Ghana Studies have invited me to write a short memoir of my forty years of involvement with Asante history, and to record my impressions of where
Denkyira in the Making of Asante C . 1660–1720
This article examines the complex and fluid relationship between Denkyira and Asante in the period c . 1660–1720 that saw the former supplanted by the latter as the leading power among the Twi-speaking Akan peoples of the central southern Gold Coast (Ghana). Dense oral traditions supplemented by a range of other materials are used to identify the site of the ancient Denkyira capital of Abankeseso, and to give an account of the settlements that se…
The Life and Afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa
This article is about Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa (c. 1830s-1921) ofEdweso (Ejisu) in Asante, locally famous in tradition for her supposed leadership role in the last Anglo-Asante conflict (1900-1), and now internationally celebrated as an epitome of African womanhood and resistance to European colonialism. The article is in three parts. The first part examines the historical record concerning Yaa Asantewaa and sets this within the conflicted cont…
Sakrobundi Ne Aberewa
Cet article retrace l’histoire d’un mouvement anti-sorcellerie, Aberewa, apparu vers 1874, et qui s’est greffé sur un mouvement préexistant Sakrobundi, répandu chez les Abron de Côte d’Ivoire. Aberewa se développe dans les années 1880s-1890s et s’étend au pays asante, en proposant une autre forme d’autorité prévalant sur celle, institutionnalisée, des détenteurs d’office asante. L’auteur donne une description détaillée de ce culte anti-sorcelleri…
Asen Praso in History and Memory
In 1994, UNESCO launched its Slave Route Programme. The aim was to encourage awareness of the implications of the transatlantic slave trade. There have been conferences, publications, exhibitions, plans for the conservation of sites associated with the “Slave Route”[1][1] and for the development
"The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself" and Other Writings
History of Ashanti and the Whole Country and Other Writings. Edited by A. Adu Boahen, Emmanuel Akyeampong, Nancy Lawler, T. C. McCaskie, and Ivor Wilks. Fontes Historiae Africanae, New Series: Sources of African History, 6. New York: Oxford University Press/British Academy, 2003. Pp. x, 234. $39.95. The History ofAshanti and the Whole Country Itself and Other Writings is billed as a documentary history, yet it is also both biography and autobiogr…
Our Days Dwindle
Asante Identities
El Dorado in West Africa
Geological structures and the location of in Ghana traditional mining in the southwestern Akan region - African states, technology, political economy and gender the Wassa gold rush of 1877-1885 - African and European promoters of mining capitalism barriers to production in the 1880s - capitalization, technology, labour recruitment and transportation the colonial government and the expanding miners frontier - pressures for mining district administ…
Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history
Opening ParagraphThe present article is intended as the first of two contributions to the economic and social- but above all to the intellectual- history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante or Ashanti (now located in the Republic of Ghana). Both papers will attempt to pull together and to situate in a 'mentalist' framework a number of recent and confessedly disparate research findings concerning a cluster of concepts, ideas and beliefs t…
State and Society, Marriage and Adultery
The present paper is one of a series of essays in the social history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (presently situated in the Republic of Ghana). It concentrates on an examination of the phenomena of marriage and adultery in the Asante past, and it seeks to locate the fundamental subject of relations between the sexes within the broader framework of the superordinate relationship between the state and the social formation. Anthropo…
An Essay on African Philosophical Thought
Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante
There is a considerable literature dealing with the phemenon of twentieth-century anti-witchcraft cults among the Akan peoples of Ghana, and notably the Asante. This literature is written from the disciplinary perspective of social anthropology and it may be divided into two interpretative views of the matter. The first espouses the theory that such cults are 'new'--creations of the twentieth century--in that they represent a reflexive response t…
Accumulation
Opening ParagraphIn Part I of this article (McCaskie, 1983a) I discussed the relationship between accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante to the close of the nineteenth century. In this concluding part I analyse these and cognate themes in the twentieth century. I remain wedded to the approach outlined in detail in Part I; an attempt to locate action and motive within a cognitive or 'intellectualist' framework. But this article is more episodic…
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History
“It must be remembered that in Ashanti really valuable anthropological information is possessed by comparatively few of its inhabitants. Those who have accurate knowledge are the older men and women who have few dealings with the foreigner, live secluded lives in remote villages, and are ignorant of or indifferent to the social and religious changes brought about by the European. “When Prempeh returned, to what had once been known as ‘the city of…
Office, land and subjects in the history of the Manwere fekuo of Kumase
The fundamental reasoning underlying this paper is that, in seeking to advance our understanding of the material basis of political power in pre-colonial African polities, particular attention must be paid to the detailed reconstruction over time of the triumviral relationship between office, land and subjects. This paper is concerned with the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – a case evincing considerable institutional continuity an…
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
People and animals
The Asante (Ashanti) are a forest-dwelling people of West Africa, now located in the Republic of Ghana. This article deals with the Asante perception of forest animals within a broad cultural and historical context. Such animals were ubiquitous in Asante life and thought, and the article offers an analysis of the readings-phenomenological and ontological-placed upon them. The article also explores the ways in which the constructions placed upon a…
Komfo Anokye of Asante
This paper - which builds upon the author's previously published work on the forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) - deals with the role of Komfo Anokye in Asante thought and history. The source materials and historiography pertaining to Komfo Anokye are critically reviewed, but the principal focus of the paper is on issues of cognition, belief and philosophy. Komfo Anokye's 'place' in Asante thought is analysed, and his meaning(s) identified with ref…
Asante Identities
Ahyiamu -‘A Place of Meeting’
The present paper is one in a series of essays on the political economy of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ashanti), now located in the Republic of Ghana. In general terms it surveys and explores aspects of the crucial issue of control over subjects and land within the Asante social formation. At the broadest level, it seeks to offer a description of fluctuations in the ability of central government in Kumase to mediate and to preside …
Peasants in 19th-Century Asante [and Comments and Reply]
As a result of the rise and growth of the Asante state and the development of a complex administration of leisured officials based in Kumasi, the urbanized capital of the Asante empire, there developed, in the 19th century, a "peasantry" in the area surrounding Kumasi with economic, political, and cultural characteristics comparable with those of peasantries elsewhere
Time and the Calendar in Nineteenth - Century Asante
Historians recognize that the perception and organization of time are fundamental to the internal ordering of all human cultures. However, the history of pre-colonial Africa has largely been written to conform to the calendrical rhythms of an imposed European chronology. Regret over this discrepancy has been tempered by recognition of the very real problems involved in rectifying it. Chief among these is the fact that linear chronology per se -- …
The United States, Ghana and Oil
The context of this article is United States military and energy security policies as regards the offshore oil potential of what Washington terms Africa's ‘New Gulf’, the Atlantic littoral from Morocco to Angola. The focus is the operation of deepwater oil exploration companies offshore of western Ghana, and their discovery in 2007 of potentially valuable oil deposits. This article considers local Ghanaian and wider global reactions. Ghana's gove…
Denkyira in the Making of Asante C . 1660–1720
This article examines the complex and fluid relationship between Denkyira and Asante in the period c . 1660–1720 that saw the former supplanted by the latter as the leading power among the Twi-speaking Akan peoples of the central southern Gold Coast (Ghana). Dense oral traditions supplemented by a range of other materials are used to identify the site of the ancient Denkyira capital of Abankeseso, and to give an account of the settlements that se…
The consuming passions of Kwame Boakye
This paper is about agency and identity in the life of Kwame Boakye (1848-1915), British-appointed chief of Agona in the West African forest kingdom of Asante (now in the Republic of Ghana). It addresses issues of selfhood as revealed in the richly documented life of its subject, and relates these to cultural context and personal formation. The life of Kwame Boakye is discussed in relation to the transit from precolonial to colonial Asante and in…
The Life and Afterlife of Yaa Asantewaa
This article is about Queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa (c. 1830s-1921) ofEdweso (Ejisu) in Asante, locally famous in tradition for her supposed leadership role in the last Anglo-Asante conflict (1900-1), and now internationally celebrated as an epitome of African womanhood and resistance to European colonialism. The article is in three parts. The first part examines the historical record concerning Yaa Asantewaa and sets this within the conflicted cont…
Empire State
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
El Dorado in West Africa
Geological structures and the location of in Ghana traditional mining in the southwestern Akan region - African states, technology, political economy and gender the Wassa gold rush of 1877-1885 - African and European promoters of mining capitalism barriers to production in the 1880s - capitalization, technology, labour recruitment and transportation the colonial government and the expanding miners frontier - pressures for mining district administ…
Asen Praso in History and Memory
In 1994, UNESCO launched its Slave Route Programme. The aim was to encourage awareness of the implications of the transatlantic slave trade. There have been conferences, publications, exhibitions, plans for the conservation of sites associated with the “Slave Route”[1][1] and for the development
Innovational Eclecticism
It is axiomatic to the expansion of Europe, informal or otherwise, that the perpetrators of that expansion—explorers, officials, missionaries et al. —brought to the societies they infiltrated the ideas, concepts, technology and prejudices of their own cultures. This was a process, which, by definition, encompassed great variations in its penetrative power, dependent as it was on frequently intermittent contact dictated by policy, opportunity, nec…
Power and Dynastic Conflict in Mampon
The analysis of the relationship between oral and written documentation and the expression or articulation of political power and interest is now extremely sophisticated for the Asante case, yet it remains obstinately one-sided, as Asante history has tended to be interpreted from the political center, Kumase. Some scholars have intermittently called for another, more broadening and less constraining, perspective, and a very few have acted upon th…
Telling the Tale of Osei Bonsu
This paper is about the Asante perception and understanding of Asante history as expressed in theapaeor 'praise songs' of Asantehene (King of the Asante) Osei Tutu Kwame, known as Osei Bonsu (1804-23). As such, it offers an indigenous portrait of kingship and the expectations and behaviours attaching to it in Asante thought. The core of the paper is centred on the role of Osei Tutu Kwame as a leader in war, against the Fante of the southern Gold …
Gun Culture in Kumasi
This article is about gun culture in Kumasi today. Gun use in Asante, and elsewhere in Ghana, has increased significantly in the last decade. In practice and in the public imagination this is associated with the rise of youth gangs and the criminalization of urban space. Much has been written about youths and violence elsewhere in Africa, but this article focuses on the neglected topic of guns themselves - their manufacture, sale, distribution, u…
Power and Dynastic Conflict in Mampon
The analysis of the relationship between oral and written documentation and the expression or articulation of political power and interest is now extremely sophisticated for the Asante case, yet it remains obstinately one-sided, as Asante history has tended to be interpreted from the political center, Kumase. Some scholars have intermittently called for another, more broadening and less constraining, perspective, and a very few have acted upon th…
Innovational Eclecticism
It is axiomatic to the expansion of Europe, informal or otherwise, that the perpetrators of that expansion—explorers, officials, missionaries et al. —brought to the societies they infiltrated the ideas, concepts, technology and prejudices of their own cultures. This was a process, which, by definition, encompassed great variations in its penetrative power, dependent as it was on frequently intermittent contact dictated by policy, opportunity, nec…
Time and the Calendar in Nineteenth - Century Asante
Historians recognize that the perception and organization of time are fundamental to the internal ordering of all human cultures. However, the history of pre-colonial Africa has largely been written to conform to the calendrical rhythms of an imposed European chronology. Regret over this discrepancy has been tempered by recognition of the very real problems involved in rectifying it. Chief among these is the fact that linear chronology per se -- …
Office, land and subjects in the history of the Manwere fekuo of Kumase
The fundamental reasoning underlying this paper is that, in seeking to advance our understanding of the material basis of political power in pre-colonial African polities, particular attention must be paid to the detailed reconstruction over time of the triumviral relationship between office, land and subjects. This paper is concerned with the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) – a case evincing considerable institutional continuity an…
Anti-Witchcraft Cults in Asante
There is a considerable literature dealing with the phemenon of twentieth-century anti-witchcraft cults among the Akan peoples of Ghana, and notably the Asante. This literature is written from the disciplinary perspective of social anthropology and it may be divided into two interpretative views of the matter. The first espouses the theory that such cults are 'new'--creations of the twentieth century--in that they represent a reflexive response t…
State and Society, Marriage and Adultery
The present paper is one of a series of essays in the social history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (presently situated in the Republic of Ghana). It concentrates on an examination of the phenomena of marriage and adultery in the Asante past, and it seeks to locate the fundamental subject of relations between the sexes within the broader framework of the superordinate relationship between the state and the social formation. Anthropo…
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History
“It must be remembered that in Ashanti really valuable anthropological information is possessed by comparatively few of its inhabitants. Those who have accurate knowledge are the older men and women who have few dealings with the foreigner, live secluded lives in remote villages, and are ignorant of or indifferent to the social and religious changes brought about by the European. “When Prempeh returned, to what had once been known as ‘the city of…
Peasants in 19th-Century Asante [and Comments and Reply]
As a result of the rise and growth of the Asante state and the development of a complex administration of leisured officials based in Kumasi, the urbanized capital of the Asante empire, there developed, in the 19th century, a "peasantry" in the area surrounding Kumasi with economic, political, and cultural characteristics comparable with those of peasantries elsewhere
Accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante history
Opening ParagraphThe present article is intended as the first of two contributions to the economic and social- but above all to the intellectual- history of the West African forest kingdom of Asante or Ashanti (now located in the Republic of Ghana). Both papers will attempt to pull together and to situate in a 'mentalist' framework a number of recent and confessedly disparate research findings concerning a cluster of concepts, ideas and beliefs t…
Drake's Fake
A wholly fraudulent source is an unusual occurrence in historical research. What is much more common and of much more intellectual interest is the discovery of a source that skilfully combines spurious invention with some regard for accuracy and convincing detail. This second kind of source is of course very familiar to historians of Africa, and the present note deals with a document of this type that, among other things, purports to offer a brie…
Ahyiamu -‘A Place of Meeting’
The present paper is one in a series of essays on the political economy of the West African forest kingdom of Asante (Ashanti), now located in the Republic of Ghana. In general terms it surveys and explores aspects of the crucial issue of control over subjects and land within the Asante social formation. At the broadest level, it seeks to offer a description of fluctuations in the ability of central government in Kumase to mediate and to preside …
General History of Africa
Komfo Anokye of Asante
This paper - which builds upon the author's previously published work on the forest kingdom of Asante (Ghana) - deals with the role of Komfo Anokye in Asante thought and history. The source materials and historiography pertaining to Komfo Anokye are critically reviewed, but the principal focus of the paper is on issues of cognition, belief and philosophy. Komfo Anokye's 'place' in Asante thought is analysed, and his meaning(s) identified with ref…
Accumulation
Opening ParagraphIn Part I of this article (McCaskie, 1983a) I discussed the relationship between accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante to the close of the nineteenth century. In this concluding part I analyse these and cognate themes in the twentieth century. I remain wedded to the approach outlined in detail in Part I; an attempt to locate action and motive within a cognitive or 'intellectualist' framework. But this article is more episodic…
An Essay on African Philosophical Thought
Empire State
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
People and animals
The Asante (Ashanti) are a forest-dwelling people of West Africa, now located in the Republic of Ghana. This article deals with the Asante perception of forest animals within a broad cultural and historical context. Such animals were ubiquitous in Asante life and thought, and the article offers an analysis of the readings-phenomenological and ontological-placed upon them. The article also explores the ways in which the constructions placed upon a…
KonnurokusΣm
This paper is concerned with a vitally significant – but hitherto largely unrecovered – feature of the pre-colonial African past. Historians of Africa commonly pay conventional lip service to the idea that the structural and affective dimensions of kinship are of great, and even shaping, importance in the past of many of the societies that they study. This paper tries to redress this situation. It goes beyond synchronic ethnographic commonplaces,…
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
Forests of Gold
Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante Get access Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante, by Ivor Wilks. Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio, 1993. xvii+388 pp. $50.00 hardback. ISBN 0 8214 1056 3. T. C. MCCASKIE T. C. MCCASKIE University of Birmingham Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume 95, Issue 378, January 1996, Pages 136–137, https://do…
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
Preface 1. Varieties of the Asante past 2. Society and state in Asante history 3. Asante odwira: experience interpreted, history constructed 4. The Asante past considered Appendices
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante
Akwankwaa
In January 1935 the Asante Confederacy was restored by the British. In August destoolment charges were preferred against the asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempeh II. This sparked a crisis that endured until September 1936, when the last of the identified conspirators was deported from Asante by British
Akwankwaa
GHANA STUDIES / Volume 1 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 1998 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 91 AKWANKWAA Owusu Sekyere Agyeman in His Life and Times T. C. MCCASKIE I In January 1935 the Asante Confederacy was restored by the British. In August destoolment charges were preferred against the asantehene Osei Agyeman Prempeh II. This sparked a crisis that endured until September 1936, when the last of the identified…
History (44 obras) · History (38 obras) · Political science (31 obras) · Sociology (28 obras) · African history and culture studies (26 obras) · Archaeology (24 obras) · Law (23 obras) · Colonialism (18 obras) · Law (18 obras) · Politics (18 obras)