Abstract
In one of many interviews that A.W. Cardinall conducted among Dagomba during his tenure as Yendi district commissioner, a Dagomba na told him a story to convey the extent of precolonial Dagomba political influence over neighboring Konkomba clans. The story depicted Konkomba from the village of Kpalba running toward the Oti River to escape from Dagomba slave raiders. When the Konkomba reached the river, as the na describes, “there was no means of crossing until a crocodile came out of the water and asked what all their cries were about. Once informed, he at once offered his back as a raft, and thus the Konkomba were saved.” When the Dagomba arrived at the water’s edge and saw their would-be slaves safely on the opposite bank, they rushed into the river to continue the chase, but the Oti’s current was too strong and the water too deep, and many of them drowned.1 Across Africa during the period of European colonial domination popular historical memory and historical narrative acquired heightened political significance. They became central to the ways in which the state and neighboring communities defined a group’s tradition and, therefore, political status and access to resources. Together with notions of custom and tradition, popular historical memory became the bedrock of local political power, particularly with regard to chieftaincy and relations between centralized and noncentralized societies. Nationalist movements and political independence did little to change this.
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Notes
A.W. Cardinall, The Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast ( London: Francis Edwards, 1921 ), 232.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics ( Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001 ), 9.
J.D. Fage, “Early History of the Mossi-Dagomba Group of States,” The Historian in Tropical Africa, J. Vansina, R. Mauny, L.V. Thomas (eds.) ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964 ), 177.
A.A. Iliasu, “The Origins of the Mossi-Dagomba States,” Research Review, 7, 1 (1970), 107.
J.D. Fage, “Reflections on the Early History of the Mossi-Dagomba Groups of States,” The Historian in Tropical Africa, J. Vansina, R. Mauny, and L. Thomas (eds.) ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964 ), 179; Iliasu, 1970, 107. On the history of Dagbon, see
A.W. Cardinall, “Customs at the Death of the King of Dagomba,” Man, 11, 52 (1921);
A.C. Duncan-Johnstone and H.A. Blair, Enquiry into the Constitution and Organization of the Dagbon Kingdom ( Accra: Government Printer ), 1932;
E.F. Tamakloe, A Brief History of the Dagbamba People ( Accra: Government Printing Office ), 1931;
Paul A. Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana ( London: Longman, 1979 ).
M.D. Iddi states that most writers have erroneously stated that the capital was called “Ya Ni Dabari,” “When the Dagbamba moved to the new site, or to be more precise, were driven under Gonja pressure, they referred to the old site in retrospect as Ya Ni Dabari ‘Ya Ni which is in ruins’ [the deserted Ya Ni].” See M.D. Iddi, “The Musketeers of the Dagbong Army: Dagban-Kombonse,” Masters Thesis, University of Ghana, Legon, 1973, 12.
Martin Staniland, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975 ), 4.
Nehemiah Levtzion, West Africa Chiefs Under Islam ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968 ), 6.
Jon Kirby, “Peace Building in Northern Ghana: Cultural Themes in Ethnic Conflict,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition. Franz Kröger and Kröger, Barbara Meier (eds.) ( Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003 ), 175.
Interview with Moses Mabengba, Tema, January 20, 2001; Hippolyt A.S. Pul, “Exclusion, Association and Violence: Trends and Triggers in Northern Ghana’s Konkomba-Dagomba Wars,” The African Anthropologist, 10, 1 (March 2003), 16.
R.S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Volumes I and II ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932 ), 546.
See Lentz, “Dagara Rebellion Against Dagomba Rule? Contested Stories of Origin in North-West Ghana,” Journal of African History, 35 (1994), 457–492.
Martin Klein, “The Slave Trade and Decentralized Societies,” Journal of African History, 42 (2001), 53–55.
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007 ).
Charles Piot, Remotely Global (The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 31.
See Patrick Manning, Slavery and African Life ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 ), chapters three and four.
See for example, Benedict Der, The Slave Trade in Northern Ghana ( Accra: Woeli Publishers, 1998 ), 11.
Pito is a beer made from fermented guinea corn and is popular among many people in the northern parts of Ghana. The corn is threshed, and the grain is soaked in a large pot. After four days it begins to germinate and it set out to dry. Next, the grain is ground into a flour and brewed twice over two consecutive days. The liquid is poured into a pot that has yeast sediment. A thick cloth is also placed in the pot to expedite fermentation. The resulting fermented beer is pito. See Zimon Henryk, “Guinea Corn Harvest Rituals among the Konkomba of Northern Ghana”, Anthropos, 84 (1989), 449.
Jean-Francois Bayart, The State in Africa: The Politics of the Belly ( New York: Longman, 1993 ), 23.
R.S. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Volumes I and II ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932 ), 549.
Donald Rothchild, Managing Ethnic Conflict in Africa ( Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, 1997 ), 7.
Frantz Kröger, “Introduction,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, Franz Kröger and Barbara Meier (eds.) ( Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003 ), 4.
J.C. Myers, Indirect Rule in South Africa: Tradition, Modernity, and the Costuming of Political Power ( Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008 ), 2.
Kwame Arhin, The Papers of George Ekem Ferguson ( Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1974 ), 116.
Peter Sebald, “Togo 1884–1900,” German Imperialism in Africa: From the Beginnings until the Second World War, Helmut Stoecker (ed.) ( London: C. Hurst and Company, 1986 ), 92.
Henrika Kuklick, The Imperial Bureaucrat: The Colonial Administrative Service in the Gold Coast, 1920–1939 ( Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979 ), 45.
Jack Goody, “Political Systems of the Tallensi and their Neighbors, 1888–1915,” Cambridge Anthropology, 14, 2 (1990), 6.
Martin Klein, “African Participation in Colonial Rule,” Intermediaries, Interpreters, and Clerks: African Employees in the Making of Colonial Africa, Lawrence, Benjamin, Emily Lynn Osborn, and Richard L. Roberts (eds.) ( Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006 ), 275.
Franz, Kroger. “Introduction,” Ghana’s North: Research on Culture, Religion, and Politics of Societies in Transition, Franz Kröger and Kröger, Barbara Meier (eds.) ( Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2003 ), 5.
Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” American Historical Review, 99 (1994), 152.
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© 2010 Benjamin Talton
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Talton, B. (2010). “Their Power Will Be Uniformly Supported”—Power and Memory. In: Politics of Social Change in Ghana. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230102330_2
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