Spirit possession, ritual self-cutting and debt bondage

German missionaries working in West Africa during the nineteenth century produced numerous accounts about the lives of formerly enslaved Africans who had converted to Christianity. Most are third-person accounts in which the missionaries organize the content to support their evangelical work. This article examines a rare life history, a first-person account recorded in 1863, in which a man from what is now southeastern Ghana, Tenu Kwami, discusses his experiences in debt bondage. Equally unusual is the vivid description he offers of his involvement with spirit possession and ritual self-cutting. What can we learn about debt bondage from someone who experienced it? Was there a connection between that experience and Tenu Kwami’s participation in spirit possession and ritual cutting rituals? This article addresses these questions as it analyzes this unusual and perhaps unique nineteenth-century West African life history

Archaeology · Christianity · Debt · German · Political science · Possession (linguistics · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society