On Mentally Mapping Greater Asante

A Study of Time and Motion

Bibliographic Data

ID8976204
AuthorsIvor Wilks (Northwestern University, corresponding author)
Year1992
Volume33
Issue2
Pages175-190
Publication date1992-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of African History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8537 • E-ISSN: 1469-5138
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0021853700032199
OpenAlexW1996323760
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited24

This paper examines the way in which Greater Asante was ‘mentally mapped’, thereby enabling government to regulate the movement of couriers, and others, along the great-roads. Lacking clocks, speed was reckoned anthropometrically, by reference to dɔn : rhythmic walking at a normal pace. Computing this against the determinate parts of the day, from dawn to dusk, on which travel (as opposed to eating and resting) was customary, it became possible to estimate the location of a courier at a given point in time. Greater Asante was ‘mapped’ as a circle, the diameter of which was the Asante month of forty-two days (of travel). The circle embraced the most distant of the territories over which the Asantehene claimed authority; these were in fact more or less twenty days from the capital. That it also embraced, in the south, lands under the sea, was of no practical relevance. Superimposing the reckoning of travel times on the matrix of the forty-two days ‘imperium’, the Asante government was able to establish a (‘Monday’) timetable for the conduct of business. The record shows that it worked remarkably well. An understanding of ‘traditional’ practices and procedures has much importance for the understanding of ‘modern’ ones: the past is encapsulated in the present

Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Dusk · Genealogy · Geodesy · Geography · Government (linguistics · Pace · Point (geometry · Political science · Relevance (law · African cultural and philosophical studies · African history and culture analysis · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub