Asante

Human Sacrifice or Capital Punishment? An Assessment of the Period 1807-1874

Bibliographic Data

ID3910928
AuthorsClifford Williams (0000-0001-5795-177X, corresponding author)
Year1988
Volume21
Issue3
Pages433
Publication date1988-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe International Journal of African Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0361-7882 • E-ISSN: 2326-3016
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/219449
OpenAlexW2280731035
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Nineteenth-century accounts of Asante society are replete with reference to human sacrifice, and numerous authors present the image of the Asante as being a barbarous and bloodthirsty people. Some accounts, such as that by Frederick Boyle in Through Fanteeland to Coomnassie (1874) are particularly sensationalist and exaggerated.1 T. B. Freeman (1844) appears to have had an almost obsessive interest in the violent and bloody, while T. E. Bowdich (1819) and J. Dupuis (1824) present Asante practices rather more dispassionately.2 Post-World War II literature on Asante has displayed a marked tendency to match the sometimes negative and derisory accounts of nineteenth-century Asante society with an opposite view, emphasizing the developed and civilized nature of traditional Asante society. Often these works contain little or no reference to human sacrifice, choosing either to ignore it,3 deny it existed,4 gloss over it, or treat it in a different context.5 Ivor Wilks, for example, refuses to recognize that human sacrifice as such existed and argues that Europeans misread what were cases of capital punishment as human sacrifice.6 A few authors have accepted that human sacrifice existed and have then gone on to place it in its cultural context without resorting to heavily value-laden judgments. Such is the nature of the work of R. S. Rattray who, as a seeker after truths, was keen to dispel the bloody savages mythology surrounding the Asante, but was not prepared to ignore matters which would not hold the Asante in good light to Europeans, such as human sacrifice.7 By examining source material for the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, I aim to assess its reliability and show how it was often written to satisfy a captive audience, sometimes thirsty to hear a particular version of events, and not to satisfy cool-headed scholars making objective assessments. By discussing the Asante traditional belief system, I will show how

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Capital punishment · Criminology · Economic growth · Economics · Human capital · Political science · Sacrifice · Sociology · African studies and sociopolitical issues · History · Philosophy