Dados Bibliográficos

Resumo

By the early twentieth century the ruler of the historic Akan kingdom of Akyem Abuakwa in what is now the Republic of Ghana and his subjects confronted one another over issues of identity and allegiance. The evidence suggests that not only was this debate unprecedented but also that its language was novel. Such divisive issues were forced upon them by a tranche of new factors. These included the ownership of, or rights to, land as farms acquired increasing cash value in the wake of the success of cocoa cultivation. No less important in a jural setting dominated by the institutions of indirect rule was the issue of which chiefly jurisdiction applied to individual communities and even families in a kingdom with a historically varied ethnic population. The article shows how the king gradually elaborated both an ideology and a corpus of regulation which attempted to define citizenship and stranger status. The king and his council's organising principle idealised an ethnically homogeneous state. Many sections of the kingdom's population strongly contested the idea. They did so in part because this agenda potentially disempowered long-settled communities while granting new privileges to those close to the centre of 'traditional' power.

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