Central and Eastern Wangara

” An Indigenous West African Perception of the Political and Economic Geography of the Slave Coast as Recorded by Joseph Dupuis in Kumasi, 1820

Bibliographic Data

ID11848890
AuthorsRobin Law (0000-0001-7199-3757, University of Stirling, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume22
Pages281-305
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHistory in Africa (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0361-5413 • E-ISSN: 1558-2744
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3171918
OpenAlexW2764628144
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited15

The mission of Joseph Dupuis, sent as British Consul to Kumasi, the capital of Asante, in 1820, is well known, principally through his own journal of it, published in 1824. In addition to his negotiations with the Asante authorities, Dupuis collected information on Asante history, and on the geography not only of Asante itself but also of neighboring and remoter countries in the interior—the latter presented in Part II of his Journal , entitled “On the Geography of Western Africa” [I-CXV]. His principal informants on both Asante history and West African geography were African Muslims whom he met in Kumasi, and with whom he was able to converse in Arabic. The geographical information was transmitted in part in the form of Arabic manuscripts, some (or perhaps all) of which Dupuis presented, in transcription and translation, in an appendix of “geographical documents” [cxxiv-cxxxv]; but supplementary information was obtained orally in conversations, some passages from which Dupuis purports to reproduce verbatim [XLII-XLIV]. The information which Dupuis obtained can usefully be compared with similar (but, as regards the interior, generally less extensive) material collected by Edward Bowdich on an earlier mission to Kumasi in 1817. Dupuis himself was frequently critical of alleged inaccuracies and confusions in Bowdich's account, though not always with justification. It is noteworthy that he read over at least one section of Bowdich's account to his informants in Kumasi, to obtain their comments on it [XVIII]—an interesting illustration of the potential for interaction between written texts and oral information in Africa even in precolonial times, in a manner more complex than that of “feedback” from written into oral data most commonly discussed by historians

Arabic · Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Converse · Economic geography · Epistemology · Geography · Historical geography · Human geography · Indigenous · Linguistics · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy

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