Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
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DISSERTATION
Submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the
Master in International Affairs (MIA)
by
Vsevolod Kritskiy
(Russia)
Geneva
2012
1
Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………....3
Maps………………………………………………………………………………….4
Chapter 1
Pre-Colonial sub-Saharan African State Formation Explained............................7
1.1 Aims and Motivations…………………………………………………………....7
1.2 European and African theories of the State…………………………………......11
1.3 An Epistemological Escape from Eurocentrism………………………………..19
1.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………....21
Chapter 2
Case Study: Buganda……………………………………………………………...23
2.1 The Spread of Informal Networks………………………………………………24
2.2 The Connection between the Material and the Mental: Banana and the
Mwoyo……………………………………………………………………………...25
2.3 A State Formed?………………………………………………………………..33
2.4 The Connection between Center and Periphery: Kabaka, Bataka and
Taxes………………………………………………………………………………..36
2.5 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………...44
Chapter 3
Case Study: Asante……………………………………………………………......46
3.1 The Emergence of the Akan: Long-term State Formation Processes……..........47
3.2 Short-term State Formation: The Rise of Kumase……………………………...55
3.3 The Intricacies of the Center-Periphery relationship in Greater Asante………..57
3.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...............66
Chapter 4
Comparisons, Alternative Explanations and Conclusions……………………...68
4.1 Buganda and Asante Compared…………………………………………….......68
4.2 Looking Back to the Past…………………………………………………….....76
4.3 Alternative Theories……………………………………………………..……...84
4.4 Conclusion……………………………………………………………................94
Bibliography……………………………………………………………….............96
2
Abstract
3
Maps
1
Richard Reid, Political Power in Pre-Colonial Buganda: Economy, Society & Warfare in
the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 2002), p. xiii.
4
Butaka Lands in Buganda2
2
Ibid., p. 34.
5
Asante and Eighteenth Century Expansion3
3
Ivor Wilks, Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante (Athens USA
1993)
6
Chapter 1.
The overall aim of this paper is to contribute to the growing discussion about the
way we study the African past and present. I do not intend to provide concrete
solutions in a Master’s thesis, but instead provide possible avenues for research. This
paper will argue that detailed analysis of pre-colonial Africa on its own terms can
illuminate our understanding of the way the continent functions. In order to prove
this assertion I will explore state formation in two case studies, Asante and Buganda,
now parts of Ghana and Uganda, respectively. After analyzing the two in detail I will
attempt to infer a general description of state formation in sub-Saharan Africa for the
benefit of future exploration of the way states came to exist in the region. My main
formation and that this formation resulted in outright states that existed before the
Scramble at the end of the 19th century. This is in direct opposition to scholars such
as Robert H. Jackson who argue that these states were merely ‘loosely defined
political systems’ and ‘societies rather than states’.4 Jackson argues that ‘vague …
4
Robert H. Jackson, Quasi States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third
World (Cambridge 1990), p. 67.
7
structures’ meant that it is impossible to define these societies as states.5 My aim is
to prove exactly the opposite: defined territorial boundaries were not needed for
illuminate the current problems that African states face. By problems I do not mean
the widely discussed obstacles such as corrupt leaders, shortage of financial muscle
and social situation in sub-Saharan Africa. A healthy state can become an instrument
that will strive to create better conditions for its citizens to live in. As Jeffrey Herbst
points out the study of ‘state consolidation in Africa is not merely an academic issue
but is, instead, critical to the future of tens of millions of people who are at risk from
the insecurity that is the inevitable by-product of state decline and failure’.6
realities that cause Africa’s problems. In my opinion, a lot of them have their roots
in the pre-colonial period, because the state in Africa itself has its roots there.
Therefore, understanding the way states formed in the sub-Saharan region is key to
behaviour and strategies that pre-colonial African leaders used successfully to tackle
the obstacles they faced during state formation and state maintenance. By leaders, I
mean heads of states, but also African entrepreneurs, farmers and others whose
5
Ibid., p. 68.
6
Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control
(Princeton 2000), pp. 3-4.
8
actions resulted in the advancement of their villages, societies and states in
there are mechanisms that bear striking resemblance to each other then surely it is
they successfully maintained the state. I will pay particular attention to informal
strategies that are often looked down upon such as the informal nature of
relationships within the state. For instance, tax collectors in Buganda would often
keep a portion of what they collected for themselves. At first glance this may be
branded as inefficiency, but as I will explore this in more detail in the case study, it
between the center and the periphery and how it affected state building and
maintenance, both positively and negatively. In both case study countries the central
authority had complicated and nuanced relationships with their regional chiefs. The
fluidity of the connections between the center and periphery played a key role in
maintaining both states. I will also explore the way center and periphery have been
communicating in the post colonial era to show how identifying positive aspects of
state maintenance today, thus forming part of my second aim to explore the past for
The last two points that I intend to examine have to do with the relationship
between Africa and Europe. First, I will argue that using European concepts to
9
substantiate this I will move on to the second point that will showcase how the
European and African state building processes differed historically. African states
based on European ideas of how it should work and what it should represent.
the epistemological basis for this paper. I have decided to postpone this until the end
of the first chapter because understanding the differences between European and
African state formation is critical to the way I approach the rest of the paper.
The last chapter will provide a synthesis of how Buganda and Asante’s states
alternative explanations that go against the arguments propagated in the paper and
describe the way that, in my opinion, they are unable to provide a sufficient account
of the formation of Asante and Buganda states. Moreover, with regards to my second
overall aim, I will provide evidence that African countries have recently started to
This paper will not deal directly with the way states operate in terms of
formation, therefore on the processes and conditions that led to the formation of
states in pre-colonial Africa. I will, however, now discuss the differences between
European and African states, as well as the way they are formed, in order to provide
enough proof that the latter should be analyzed on their own terms.
10
1.2 European and African theories of the State
There are many definitions of states, a plethora of explanations of how they work
and a lot of different viewpoints on what they represent. From Marxism to neo-
relations, politics, economics and more, have created their own visions of what the
state is and how it works. I will not align myself with any specific ideology and
instead I will attempt to create a definition of a state that will be based on the
view the state is heavily influenced by Herbst and the ideas that he expressed in his
book, States and Power in Africa. In my opinion, on the most fundamental level, it is
possible to divide the current debate about African states (be it pre-colonial, colonial
or post-colonial) into two categories: authors who identify the arrival of the
Europeans as a cataclysmic event that transformed the way states are formed and the
way they are maintained, and authors who see the arrival of the Europeans as
In Herbst, I identified an author whose ideas are similar to my own. He posits that
history, does not define it. In my opinion, looking at African history through the
11
explanation of why modern Africa is unable to cope with its problems: the
Europeans came and disrupted the flow of African history, making it impossible for
which the African people would be able to live without fear of starvation, rebellions
African history, however, changes the perspective; it then becomes sensible to look
present problems. If a pre-colonial leader was able to solve a problem that has
plagued the entire continent for centuries, surely we can learn something from his
achievement. This is not saying that brutally suppressing revolts in order to keep a
state together (such as how the Asante maintained their state, among other methods
is, however, saying that specific methods or modes of behaviour could be fused with
current state maintenance techniques to improve not only the condition of the state,
but also the relationship between the state and the people.
spirit to defining and evaluating African state using Western and Eurocentric
more valuable than a general definition that could potentially apply to every state.
There is no doubt that there are certain benefits to defining a state in general terms
that would apply to every government and country, however the disadvantages of
such an approach outweigh the advantages. On the one hand a broad definition can
a state, and this is helpful in the modern world when one state collapses and another
tries to build itself up quickly. An example would be the current struggle in Libya,
12
where the death of Gaddafi means not only a change of regime, but most probably a
dismantling of the whole state with a view to rebuild it in a different fashion. On the
other hand, using Eurocentric concepts and metrics to define non-European states
and evaluate their performance will not lead to a meaningful result. A plethora of
region will be either lost or dismissed for being different to a Eurocentric ideal.
Therefore studying pre-colonial Africa on its own terms is important if one intends
to create a clearer picture of the African state. I will now go into more detail about
because there is no agreed definition. On one hand, I can list all the environmental
factors that made African states what they are and simply leave the issue there.
However, instead I would rather focus on why these states were dismissed as being
‘too exotic to be relevant’ and find the characteristics that were used as an excuse to
reject them. According to Herbst, what it comes down to is the issue of power, and
where power lies. In Europe, a state’s power was based on the amount of territory it
possessed and how far was the state able to control the population, in other words the
efficiency of tax collection.7 Here is where the disconnect between African and
opening sentence of one of his articles about state building in Western Europe: ‘Tell
a man today to go and build a state; and he will try to establish a definite and
7
Ibid. p. 36.
13
defensible territorial boundary and compel those who live inside it to obey him’.8 It
is difficult to understate the high influence of the fact that land in Europe was scarce
importance, and once a ruler was able to acquire a certain amount, he would
Population density was much lower in Africa than in Europe and as a result plenty of
land was free and available to anyone to settle and cultivate. The level of European
population density of 1500 was reached by Africa only by 1975.9 Igor Kopytoff
provided the theoretical basis for this argument by describing the development of an
inner frontier in sub-Saharan Africa, during and after the migration of people from
the Saharan-Sahelian region that started around B.C. 2500. Due to the low
population density, the frontier became “a stage for the emergence of numerous new,
small-scale, and independent political formations, most which eventually faltered but
some of which grew into larger polities that provided the nucleus for the emergence
of new societies”.10 Therefore control of the population was the ultimate goal of
African rulers.
Herbst takes this argument a bit further: when a group of people were
treatment, political differences or simple personal dislike, they could easily move
8
Samuel E. Finer, ‘State-building, state boundaries and border control: An essay on certain
aspects of the first phase of state-building in Western Europe considered in the light of
Rokkan-Hirschman model’ in Social Science Information (August 1974 13:4-5), p. 79.
9
Herbst, States and Power, p. 15.
10
Igor Kopytoff (ed), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African
Societies (Bloomington 1987), pp. 10-11 in the Review by Leonard Thompson in The
American Historical Review (95:3, June 1990), p. 879.
14
into another sphere of influence or a territory that was free of any political power.11
For instance, migration as a means of escape from social and political problems was
‘common among the Yoruba, the Edo, the Fon, and many others’. The mid-fifteenth
century reign of Oba Ewuare of Benin was so unpopular that it resulted in protest
migrations that created a plethora of new communities outside his dominion with ties
to each other.12 Interestingly, this phenomenon is not only confined to the annals of
history; in Ghana, one of the case study countries, the mismanagement of the state in
1970s and 1980s and the resulting political and economic crises caused a ‘massive
almost completely on rain-fed agriculture’, which meant that there was little
investment into land. As a result, single farmers, families and even villages could
uproot at any point and move to a different location.14 In comparison, most Asian
societies, villages and states invested intensely into land due to irrigation works and
‘particular pieces of land had great value’, with one notable exception of mainland
11
Herbst, States and Power, p. 38.
12
Ibid., p. 39.
13
Eboe Hutchful, ‘The Fall and Rise of the State in Ghana’ in Abdi Ismail Samatar and
Ahmed I. Samatar, The African State: Reconsiderations (Portsmouth USA 2002), p. 102.
14
This assertion, although a longstanding accepted “truth” of African history, is now being
examined more carefully. Gareth Austin has provided several examples in Ethiopia, Lake
Victoria region and the western African coast that show that capital investment did exist in
pre-colonial Africa, and it was not always the case that entire villages could uproot at will.
However, he does point to the fact that the assertion that the lack of capital investment into
land in sub-Saharan Africa was in general based on labour inputs. The overall point that
Austin is making is that more attention to this phenomenon is needed, because a widely
accepted truth results in lack of critical research. Additionally, I would point out that
Herbst’s point is not only about the immediate pre-colonial period of 17-19 centuries, but
about a longer term condition of the African environment and its impact on the culture of
state building for two thousand years. Therefore, in my opinion, in general, the point that
Herbst makes stands, although Austin’s work does indeed show that it needs to be refreshed.
Source: Gareth Austin, ‘Resources, techniques, and strategies south of the Sahara: revising
the factor endowments perspective on African economic development, 1500-2000’ in
Economic History Review (61:3 2008), pp. 594-597.
15
South-East Asia. It took generations to develop rice paddies for instance, and as a
because of the high amount of taxes that could be collected off this land. This also
applies to Europe, not only due to agricultural investment but also the rise of urban
areas that signified not only financial but also emotional investment.15
A loss of an important city is always a huge blow to any state fighting a war
therefore it requires protection, which in turn requires money, which means taxation
systems had to be developed quickly and efficiently. Urban development was very
slow and even by the time of the Scramble there was not a lot of cities to behold that
were not initiated by the Europeans. Colson goes as far as to state that ‘permanent
towns existed only on the East African coast, though ancient towns had existed in
Ethiopia and probably in Rhodesia’, therefore the relationship between the state and
the hinterland was different to its European counterpart.16 While this is an over
exaggeration on her part in light of more recent research into African towns, the fact
remains that urbanization was a much more important factor in European state
that had to be wrapped around with buffer zones, remote areas that were fortified in
order to protect the secure areas. This was both a cause and a consequence of the
intense competition for territory between close-lying European states. Frederick the
Great called these buffer zones the “mighty nails which hold a ruler’s province
15
Herbst, States and Power, pp. 38-39.
16
Elizabeth Colson, ‘African Society at the Time of the Scramble’ in L.H. Gann and Peter
Duignan (ed), Colonialism in Africa 1870-1960: Volume 1: The History and Politics of
Colonialism 1870-1914 (Cambridge 1977), p. 42.
16
together” because not only did they protect the state from foreign powers, but the
that using Western definitions to dismiss African states is a valueless exercise. The
two case studies that will follow this chapter will provide more evidence that pre-
colonial sub-Saharan African state formation should be examined on its own terms.
Before I turn to specific cases, however, I want to explain what I mean by state
State formation will be the actual process I will be exploring, because it illustrates
the obstacles that African states and leaders face, and because its study will show
defined political systems’ and ‘societies’.18 The actual phrase means the long-term
knowingly or not, to form a state over time. However, I intend also to analyze other
First, it is important not only to explore how the state was formed, but also
how it performed after the initial stages of its formation. In my opinion any state is
considered over in the event of state collapse. However, that is not to say that no
states are formed. It is difficult to identify a point in the development of any state
17
Herbst, States and Power, p. 14.
18
Jackson, Quasi States, p. 67.
17
suitable model that would apply to the “typical” state, but that is not the aim of this
paper. I will, however, attempt to identify a seminal event that heralded the
“creation” of the state in both Buganda and Asante, even though my focus will
remain on how the two entities became states, and how have they performed before
they were colonized. State formation is not a specific process in this essay, more of a
collection of various processes and this phrase will be used to identify either a
context.
simply mean how was it financed or how was it protected from collapse, although
both these matters will be discussed, and form part of the definition of state
maintenance. By this phrase I also mean the overall maintenance of the state – how
did leaders of both Buganda and Asante kept hold of their citizenry, especially given
the freedom of movement that most Africans inhabiting the sub-Saharan region
enjoyed (with the major exception being slave labour, of course). It is also important
to consider more subtle narratives such as how the image of the state was
disseminated through the citizenry and, more significantly, how was it presented to
regional chiefs.
This dialogue between the center and periphery is the third part of the
will explore how the core-periphery relationship in Asante and Buganda functioned,
and, in keeping with the overall aims of the paper, I will investigate potential ways
to improve this relationship in Africa today. State maintenance therefore will be used
when describing processes initiated by leaders who look to improve or maintain the
18
1.3 An Epistemological Escape from Eurocentrism.
academic circles, and is, as a result, also used by international policy makers in their
attempts to solve various problems and crises in Africa. For example, as recently as
2007, Gareth Austin published an article aiming to illustrate the tools that academics
‘of various disciplines’ should be using in the study of Africa instead of relying on
Western concepts.19 He focuses on economic history and points to the fact that
explanatory and/or interpretive theories [as well as] specific tools of analysis’,
thereby making it all the more difficult to refrain oneself from using these concepts
employed? In my opinion, a historical narrative at this point is perhaps the best way
to examine the African state. Bayart proposed that ‘the modern state in Africa …
needs to be analyzed in light of what Fernand Braudel has called “longue durée”’. In
analysis.21
Therefore, the case studies in this paper will examine the way states formed
over time, taking into account longue durée processes (as well as immediate
analysis and attempt to intertwine them in order to achieve broad explanations; for
19
Gareth Austin, ‘Reciprocal Comparison and African History: Tackling Conceptual
Eurocentrism in the Study of Africa’s Economic Past’ in African Studies Review (50:3,
December 2007), p. 1.
20
Ibid., p. 2.
21
Jean-François Bayart, ‘Finishing with the Idea of the Third World: The Concept of the
Political Trajectory’ in J. Manor (ed), Rethinking Third World Politics (London 1991), p. 53.
19
instance, I will pay close attention to regional differences in the core-periphery
relationships in Asante, but at the same time I will analyze the “Greater Asante” as a
whole.
data. There is not enough “data” that could be grouped together and used to deduce
possess for pre-1800 Asante and Buganda consists of oral histories compiled by
as a result of human action, and analyses of changes in languages, and religious and
burial practices. All of these types of data are often used for inference of general
trends and patterns. In terms of an epistemological tradition, this paper is, at its core,
represent, for instance, African attitudes to events, such as ascension to the throne, or
inherently African relationships between for example chiefs and kings or village-
heads and individuals or family units. The point of analyzing African states on their
own terms presupposes that I cannot use my own experience to draw conclusions;
therefore I will attempt to steer clear of using the operation of Verstehen as defined
22
Intersubjective meanings pose a problem for researchers, because accepting their existence
means that every individual has his or her own perception of reality. Common meanings then
are simply webs of meanings that a lot of individuals share, while using intersubjective
meanings will result in a description of reality by combining various meanings and
perceptions together. However, it is impossible to account for every meaning of an action,
event or trend to every individual aware of it, therefore scientific research in social science is
fundamentally flawed.
Source: Charles Taylor, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man’ in Review of Metaphysics
(25:1, September 1971), pp. 3-51.
20
by Theodore Abel.23 I confess that I will probably fail at completely removing my
researchers. Still, due to the nature of the evidence, a fair few assumptions will have
to be made but I will attempt to provide enough support for them to at least place
The analysis of the case studies that follows in the next three chapters, then,
will be grounded in this epistemological basis, and I will attempt not to mix other
types of reasoning or use methods that are incompatible with the “understanding”
tradition of thought.
1.4 Conclusion
The arguments that I propagate in this paper do not assume that pre-colonial African
dispute the fact that European colonization did have a disruptive effect on the
foundations for today’s African states.24 Instead, the point that I am making in this
paper is that perhaps a look back to pre-colonial experiences may prove fruitful in
the search for answers to problems that today’s states are unable to solve because of
their inherently European foundations. Thus the first general aim of the paper,
23
Abel identified Verstehen as interpretation of data and causal relationships based on
personal experience. As determined by the nature of intersubjective meanings, however, such
interpretation seems to be fundamentally inescapable.
Source: Theodore Abel, ‘The Operation Called Verstehen’ in The American Journal of
Sociology (Volume 54, 1948), pp. 211-218.
24
David J. Francis, Uniting Africa: Building Regional Peace and Security Systems
(Aldershot 2006), pp. 40-42.
21
because accepting the existence of states in the pre-colonial period puts both pre-
and post-colonial states on the same level of analysis. It follows then, that
today’s Africa. On this note, the focus of the paper will now turn to the examination
22
Chapter 2.
My aim in this case study is to show that Buganda was a strong state that had been
forming for the last thousand years and that learning about its past and the Ganda
way of life is important. Not only will this help understand what the kingdom had
become by the 19th century, but it will also highlight various state formation methods
and techniques that the Buganda people used, as one of the main objectives of this
paper is to show possible avenues for improvement of African state building. One of
the most fascinating works on Buganda is one by Holly Hansen; her study of
thought: the idea that people ought to be tied by bonds of affection, and that
relationships between people became visible in gifts in land, goods, and service’.25
The informal nature of African politics has been often sighted as one of the root
causes of the inefficiency of African governments, and while I do not suggest that
African state, it is one of the aims of this paper to identify unconventional state
25
Holly Hanson, Landed Obligation: The Practice of Power in Buganda (Portsmouth USA
2003), p. 4.
23
2.1 The Spread of Informal Networks
Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that informal networks exist all around
the globe, not only in the so-called third world. Europe, North America and many
other regions use various notions, one of them, for example, being the notion of
“connections”. This also exists in Africa, to be sure, but this notion is part of a wider
set of informal tools that individuals use for their benefit, and in my opinion using
employment or benefits from another clan member who has more material wealth or
a higher social status, and would prefer to surround him or herself with members of
the same clan. It is general knowledge that in the Western societies gaining
employment, acquiring state contracts or receiving subsidies is, while not being
hinged upon, made considerably easier when there is a personal relationship between
decision makers, i.e. when they are connected to each other in some meaningful
way. To take one example, the top decision maker in the government contracts
sector may prefer to give a contract to a private company that has not submitted the
best project of all, but that has a CEO with whom the decision maker had previous
dealing with in another business sector, or that has a CEO with whom the decision
maker has a personal relationship with, for instance spending time together in the
same societies in the same university. Unless there is a lottery or the proposed
project is clearly inferior to others, this need not be an illegal scenario, since the
analysis of these plans is, at the end of the day, subjective, no matter how many
The reason why I want to show that these scenarios are widespread
24
networks. It is clear that in Africa these are, in general, more widespread than in
other regions of the world and that many aspects of these systems can be seen as
subversive of the power or reach of the state. However, that does not mean that
every aspect should be looked down upon, and instead a debate must start on how to
2.2 The Connection between the Material and the Mental: Banana
and the Mwoyo
Hansen’s work at times echoes Richard Reid’s vision of the importance of the
development of the cultivation of the banana during some time between A.D. 1000–
1500 as central to Ganda identity could be re-interpreted and slotted straight into
Reid’s book, since his aim is to ‘examine the material basis of Ganda political
are different. She uses the cultivation of the banana to show how this crop had
transformed not only the political power, but also gender relations and the Ganda
society itself. According to her research, women were probably much more attentive
to banana cultivation in the period preceding the settling down of the tribes in the
lake Victoria region, and as a result, once it became one of the most important
agricultural activities among the Ganda population, women were to some extent
elevated to a higher social standing. While Hansen does explicitly say as much, it
26
Richard Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda.
27
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 2.
25
can be drawn out from the various examples that she provides. For instance,
of the Baganda that it defined marriage’. Before 500 AD the linguistics of marriage
were represented by conventional phrasing: “to be married (by a man)” and “to
marry a woman”. However, after the cultivation of the banana became more
important the linguistics changed to, respectively “to become a cook (for someone)”
and “to cause (someone) to peel bananas”.28 Hansen used the work of Lucy Mair29
in the 1930’s.30 At the time, she was able to compare the ‘grandparent language’ that
some individuals were still seemingly in command of, and the Luganda language
that the people in the area speak now. Moreover, marriage rituals also heavily
featured the banana, whether it was part of a bridal dowry, the marriage feast or the
bride’s act of tending to the banana garden of her new parents-in-law before the
wedding.31
marriage practice’.32 At this point, the elevation of women in society can be seen
clearer: before marriage, they were able to go on “a tour of exploration” to look for a
suitable husband who was not only suitable for her, but also could provide enough
from marriage if she felt she was being mistreated’ and, if she had been forced into
marriage with a man who did not provide a proper bridewealth, she could return to
28
Ibid., p. 29.
29
Lucy Mair, Native Marriage in Buganda (London, 1940), p. 13 in Ibid., pp. 29, 53.
30
Elizabeth Colson, ‘Obituary: Lucy Mair’ in Anthropology Today (2:4 August 1986), pp.
22-24.
31
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 29.
32
Ibid.
26
relatives-in-law with disrespect”. Here, Hansen is most assertive, and she writes that
women ‘exchanged hard work for social esteem’ when they married, and such a
statement does seem to be supported by the evidence she provides, and that I have
presented above.33
This connection between gender and the banana is important, because of the
impact that more intensive cultivation of the banana by women had on moving and
settlement patterns. Before the emergence of the banana as a central crop, ‘the
ancestors of the people who came to live around the East African lakes broke new
fields every three years and moved their homes about every decade’.34
Consequently, the tribes that ‘devoted more and more attention to banana groves
around A.D. 1000 must have gradually altered their deeply ingrained habit of
moving homes to stay close to worked fields’.35 Moreover, the Ganda tribes ‘might
have decided they could tolerate the lower yields that would come with reduced
fallows for their other crops, and the period between moves might have grown
[even] longer’.36 This was possible, in terms of the usage of the soil, because banana
plants ‘can be returned to productivity quickly once they are weeded’ and they
different way ‘as they gradually replaced mixed farming with intensive banana
altogether.39
African state building that I have described in the first chapter: the low population
33
Ibid., p. 30.
34
Ibid., p. 31.
35
Ibid., p. 30.
36
Ibid., p. 31.
37
Ibid., p. 29.
38
Ibid., p. 35.
39
Ibid., p. 31.
27
density and low levels of investment into land allowed the Africans in the sub-
Saharan region move without much cost, as opposed to Europeans who invested
relatively heavily into land that was in short supply. This is also consistent with the
Akan tribes who formed the center of the Asante kingdom, as I will explain in the
next chapter.
Evidence
Pinpointing a time when banana cultivation became the prime agricultural endeavor
sometime between A.D. 1000-1500. Again, she cites the linguistic changes as central
to the time frame; the Luganda language appears to have developed gradually from
A.D. 500, and since then ‘almost one hundred terms for banana varieties and
processing’ have emerged. The grandparent language, spoken before A.D. 500, did
not use these terms. Another piece of evidence is produced by David L. Schoenbrun,
who argues that ‘severe rainfall fluctuations between 950 and 1100, combined with
deforestation, made productive agricultural land less available that it had been at any
time before or has been since’ in the region, acting as a trigger for the turn to the
manner and comes to the conclusion that intensive banana cultivation had developed
no earlier than 1400 and no later than 1700, as a result of the changes in the Luganda
language, as well as changes in the language of the tribes who occupied the land
40
Quote is Hanson summarizing Schoenbrun’s argument on p. 28. For his part, he outlines
his arguments in A Green Place, a Good Place: Agrarian Change, Gender, and Social
Identity in the Great Lakes Region to the Fifteenth Century (Portsmouth USA 1998) and
‘Cattle Herds and Banana Gardens: The Historical Geography of the Western Great Lakes
Region, ca AD 800-1500’ in The African Archaeological Review (Vol. 11, 1993), pp. 39-72.
28
south of Buganda’s ancestors, the Rutarans. Around A.D. 1200 new terms for
banana and banana processing entered their language as well. In addition, he cites
the new word for a banana garden that translates approximately into ‘chief’s banana
garden’ as the most important development at that time, because it means that ‘a
highly developed banana economy’ had to have existed for the word to be used.
Using this data he manages to narrow down the start of intensive banana cultivation
After the ancestors of Buganda had settled down, another long-term process
started that paved the way for Buganda state formation. This process came to be as a
result of the relationship between banana cultivation and Ganda beliefs about the
dead. It involved change on many levels of the Ganda society, and in my opinion it
is very important to properly explain and understand it. At first, however, I should
present a brief summary of the Bantu-speaking people beliefs about death and
Around Lake Victoria, the Bantu-speaking peoples believed that the life force of a
person, or the mwoyo, does not disappear after death. Instead, after the person’s
demise, the life force becomes a muzimu, or an ancestor spirit. These spirits can
interact with the living world and help those still alive. However, they are only
strong enough to do so if they are remembered. One thousand years ago, the people
that would become part of the Buganda kingdom, ‘needed the active assistance of
41
Schoenbrun, ‘Cattle Herds and Banana Gardens’, pp. 50-53, quotes on p. 51.
29
their ancestors’.42 For example, an ancestor soul of Mwanga-Kisole took on a
medium after the person’s death and “looked after the well-being of the clan,
multiplied their cattle, and made their women fruitful”.43 For Hansen, this was one of
the typical examples of what the living expected their ancestors to do for them if the
These beliefs did not stay static in that particular form for long, and as
Hansen admits herself, ‘religious practices changed radically around five hundred
years ago and again in the colonial period’.44 However, they became so engrained in
the behaviour of the Bantu-speaking peoples, that they helped form the power
structure of what was to become the Buganda kingdom. The relationship with the
ancestors evolved as tribes and clans began to settle in the same place for much
longer periods of time because of the growing importance of banana cultivation. The
common practice was to bury the dead in the banana groves, and for the individuals
who would take care of these groves the work became a way to mourn, remember
and maintain a relationship with those local muzimu. Moreover, as this relationship
developed further, it became the basis of power for heads of clans and chiefs. In
other words the combination of the growing importance of banana cultivation and
evolving burial procedures and beliefs presented the key to stable state building for a
What it actually represented was the idea that the banana groves within
which there existed burial grounds of most influential individuals, or those that
contained the graves of many important ancestors, were the most desired pieces of
land. As tribes started to settle in, their oral histories would stretch longer than usual
42
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 31.
43
John Roscoe, The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs (1911;
reprint, New York 1966), p. 447 in Ibid.
44
Ibid.
45
Ibid., p. 32.
30
and would contain the names of the buried in the nearby groves and whether they
were high-regarded individuals who committed great deeds. These lands became
butaka, ‘the lands associated with clans that people consider to be the origin of
Buganda.’46 Those clans who possessed banana groves with graves of the most
famous and greatest ancestors would as a result be blessed with more success than
other clans. This perception was probably a self-fulfilling prophecy as people would
be attracted to live and work next to the holiest banana groves, and as a result the
clans that controlled them would benefit. This is a reasonable assumption, since
Hansen mentions that ‘people chose to live in the vicinity of the grave of an
important or powerful person’47 and that ‘people of any clan could live on land
associated with the graves of a particular clan’48 as the clan head ‘had the
responsibility or ruling all the people on the land, of whatever clan, as well as
Once again the freedom of movement and freedom from being tied down to a
almost always a sizeable obstacle for African leaders, as it was generally easy for
their subjects to leave their sphere of influence. In the case of early Buganda,
however, butaka represented, to a certain extent, the product and the solution of the
same problem. The creation of a local political and social order is a facilitator for the
creation of a centralized state. Before the emergence of the butaka, and during the
early years of its formation until around 1600, there were many types of authority
figures who could claim the right to present land to their followers. ‘Some people
followed chiefs who controlled land as leaders of branches of clans, other people
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., p. 33.
48
Ibid., p. 36.
49
Ibid., p. 37.
31
followed chiefs who controlled land as gatherers of people, and still others followed
leaders who controlled land because they connected people to spiritual forces’.50
The endurance of these forms of authority meant that the people saw them as
legitimate, and competition between alternative authorities did occur. However, the
nature of the competition was one of reciprocal obligation and ‘using the language of
allegiances’.51 Around 1600 the butaka lands have become consolidated and at the
same time, it appears that one of the chiefs was able to win over others, not through
kingship … drew these various forms of connection more toward one center, the
Kabaka’s capital’.52 Reid has even stated that the ‘gradual shift of political and
territorial power from the bataka [heads of butaka] to the Kabaka’ was ‘the single
most important theme of Ganda political history over the 300 years before the
banana cultivation and new settlement patterns due to changing religious beliefs
resulted in the development of chiefship lands; and the authority that these lands
provided to the chiefs who ruled them, facilitated the emergence of the kingship.
In terms of the aims of this paper, two points can be quickly identified. First,
impossible, even though so far I have only discussed the long-term processes that led
of the Buganda state and the way it operated in the nineteenth century should
50
Ibid., p. 39.
51
Ibid., p. 52.
52
Ibid., p. 53.
53
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 3.
32
strengthen his point of view even more. Second, though this process took place over
such a long period of time, lessons can be drawn from it for the modern African
leaders. It is a general rule that states are comprised of regions without the need for
use to a leader in Africa today. The amelioration of the relationship between regional
governors and the central authority is ultimately the responsibility of the individuals
involved in the relationship. When this relationship works well, it is beneficial not
only to those involved but also the whole of the state and the people that it
represents. Later in the chapter I will show how this center-periphery relationship
works in modern Africa and why it is difficult to improve it. At first, however, the
examined.
As I have previously affirmed, pin-pointing the exact time when a state is formed is
Buganda’s pre-1900 political history can only be gleamed from oral sources that
Apolo Kagwa had gathered during his lifetime (1864-1927). He was a historian and
Buganda’s past, but he was primarily a politician who played a major role in the
country’s history as Katikiro (chief minister) during the second reign of Mwanga II
33
from 1889 to 1897 and subsequently as one of the three regents of Buganda during
The picture that is revealed from the oral histories is that a specific event did
indeed take place that saw Buganda emerge as a strong state. At some point between
1500 and 1700 the state emerged as the leading power in the region, and Richard
Reid sees the sixteenth century as the most likely in which Buganda’s power
crystallized into the formation of its state. The single most important event at this
time was a war with Bunyoro, a rival power to the north. The period starting from
1500 that lasted around a hundred years was ‘crucial in the formation of [Buganda]
identity’, because Bunyoro was a stronger entity at the time, and in fact it dominated
Buganda for at least a century prior to the reversal of roles.55 A close presence of
such a powerful rival meant ‘if Buganda was to expand, even survive, military
confrontation was inevitable’ and ‘an army was required if the society was to
lost a war against the Bunyoro, and that loss set into motion ‘economic and military
The actual existence of this particular Kabaka has been thrown into question
by Christopher Wrigley, who points out the many similarities between the story of
Nakibinge and the stories of other Kabakas, both before and after him. For instance,
Nakibinge and another Kabaka faced competition for the throne from a man by the
name of Juma. In both stories, Juma’s servant kills a prince by the name of Luyenje
and in both stories his servant is then killed in return. Juma and Luyenje do not
54
M. Louise Pirouet, Historical Dictionary of Uganda (Metuchen 1995), entry: Kagwa, Sir
Apolo, pp. 180-181.
55
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 3.
56
Ibid., p. 185.
57
Ibid., p. 186.
34
feature anywhere else in Buganda’s oral histories; therefore Wrigley assumed that a
single story was imported from one king to another. This is only one of a few
However, Wrigley’s argument ‘is rather depressing for anyone who might
history’, as aptly noted by Reid. In any case it is more constructive to assume that
there is a certain amount of benefit to these oral histories, especially if we focus not
on individual episodes but on a general flow of history. Reid assumed exactly that
one thing is clear: in the period that his reign had supposedly occurred, significant
events took place that triggered the formation of the Buganda state.
Assuming that the overall story of his reign is fairly accurate, it is possible to
deduce a few points. First, he was unable to overthrow the dominance of Bunyoro,
but his struggle to do so led to an environment following his reign in which the
Buganda state ascended. Second, ‘a major factor’ in his Nakibinge’s defeat was the
limited supply of iron that the Ganda possessed at the time. As a result, ‘it seems
safe to assert, therefore, that Buganda’s subsequent gradual expansion was at least
partly inspired by the desire to secure raw materials’, especially iron ore. This gives
Overall, then, it seems that at some point in the sixteenth century, Buganda
reacted to the threat of Bunyoro and the losses it suffered by reorganizing its army,
prioritizing the search for raw materials and, later in the century, defeating the
58
Christopher Wrigley, Kingship and state: The Buganda dynasty (Cambridge 1996), pp.
210-211.
59
Richard Reid, ‘The Reign of Kabaka Nakibinge: Myth or Watershed?’ in History of Africa
(Vol. 24, 1997), p. 288.
60
Ibid., p. 294.
35
enemy and ascending to the status of regional power. It is impossible to conceive
that this could have happened without some sort of a centralized Buganda state. This
scenario coupled with the long-term processes that I have discussed above, then,
planned to achieve as the first aim of this paper. I realize that the evidence available
to us is not pristine and there are other possible scenarios that could have happened.
However, in the next chapter I will look at Asante and its ascendancy bears striking
resemblance to Buganda’s story. In the last chapter I will compare the two, which
will, in my opinion, strengthen the case for this particular scenario of the state
formation of Buganda.
century in order to find out whether my second aim is indeed a possibility; namely
whether or not analyzing pre-colonial states can provide any answers to modern state
building problems.
and Taxes
First, I will look at Buganda’s tax collecting procedures in the nineteenth century
and analyze its informal nature to see whether or not lessons can be drawn from it to
describing tax collection are available to us, although most of them have to be
36
towards the Buganda state systems. Richard Reid provides the typical example in Sir
Gerald Portal,61 the first commissioner of the Uganda Protectorate in 1893. At this
point, the English had already established themselves in the region, and he had
had visited Buganda before and during the rule of the British protectorate. He was
‘aiming to depict an impossibly top-heavy and corrupt bureaucracy which it was the
British duty to correct’.62 Predictably, his writings describe a “beaten and persecuted
[peasantry] until the very last drop is wrung out of them” and a deeply entrenched
system of what today will be called corruption, as every single middle man extracted
some of the wealth out of the taxes they collected.63 However this system may have
only been so dysfunctional in the 1890s due to the numerous environmental factors
such as epidemics and famines that intensified at the time, combined with the ill-
A quick detour must be taken now to explain the situation at the end of the
nineteenth century in Buganda and why it was different to the hundred years that
preceded it in order to prove that the Buganda tax system could have worked well
before. By all accounts, the period surrounding the reigns of Mwanga II was
difficult, and even disastrous for Buganda. He ruled from 1884 to 1888 and again
from 1889 to 1897. The 1880s and 1890s were characterized by food shortages,
Mwanga ‘was entirely incapable of asserting kabaka’s authority over land that might
have resolved disputes’ that have become more frequent due to the arrival of
61
Gerald Portal, The British Mission to Uganda in 1893, (London 1894) in Reid, Pre-
Colonial Buganda, pp. 99-102.
62
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, pp. 99-100.
63
Portal, British Mission, in Ibid., p. 100.
37
Christian missionaries. The symbolic power of kabaka was at a low point; at one
dispute settlement a chief had openly criticized Mwanga and shouted at him in
public, to which the king replied by simply leaving the room. As Hanson points out,
‘less than a generation earlier, people had been executed for sneezing in the presence
of the kabaka’, while the chief who shouted at Mwanga was not even punished.64
In terms of tax collecting, Mwanga’s reign was regarded as ‘an abuse of the
of the peaceful and legitimate collection of tribute’. This ‘royal arrogance’ was also
shown in his ‘ego-laden’ project to build a royal lake, for which he recruited a
massive amount of labour and financial resources from every chief.65 Ultimately, his
excessive behaviour was the reason for the revolt that was undertaken against him in
1888 by Christian and Muslim groups who unified to oust Mwanga because of his
perceived attack on the Christians.66 The only reason he was reinstated as Kabaka
was because the Christian and Muslim groupings fought against each other after his
deposition, and as the former were winning they needed ‘to legitimize their seizure
of power’.67
It is therefore more useful to focus on the period that preceded the reign of
Mwanga II in order to obtain a clearer picture of how the Buganda taxation system
worked. Reid contrasts Portal’s view with a report written by Apolo Kagwa, who
was the Katikiro (a kind of prime minister) of Buganda from 1889 to 1926, basing
his writings on oral history and his personal knowledge of the kingdom. He wrote
the report in tandem with John Roscoe, an Anglican missionary who spent 25 years
in the region. Their report provides a kinder view towards the taxation system as
64
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 115.
65
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 111.
66
Ibid., pp. 111-112.
67
Pirouet, Historical Dictionary of Uganda, entries: Mwanga, Danieri, pp. 276-278 and
quotation in Wars of Religion, p. 361.
38
they describe fairly independent chiefs, who would collect the taxes within their
Bataka by themselves, with the aid of their own men, after the Kabaka had chosen
which clan was next in line to produce taxes. These men would have gone to villages
and individual huts to collect tax in kind after the chief had designated the amount
needed from a particular village or region. They would then be able to “make
taxes”. The general picture we get from this report is that the exploitation of this
system was regular but moderate, and probably predicted by the clan heads.68 The
truth most probably lies somewhere in-between the two sources, as it usually does,
In any case, in the context of this paper, this situation shows off the working
bear only negative impact: the nature of the middle man and the strength of the
periphery. I cannot promote a lax attitude towards corruption among tax collectors,
not only because there is no excuse for it, but also because of my personal
experience with corruption as a Russian citizen. However, there are a few points that
have to be made in favour of the way tax collecting was done in Buganda with
68
Reid does not have a full name of the report in his bibliography, but he gives the year
1906 as the date of its publication. Given the fact that Roscoe and Kagwa co-authored this
report, its title is most probably Enquiry into Native Land Tenure in the Uganda
Protectorate as this is the only work co-authored by the two in 1906 that I could identify.
Given the limited amount of information I can only provide the following footnote:
Apolo Kagwa and John Roscoe, Enquiry into Native Land Tenure in the Uganda
Protectorate (1906), p. 5 in Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 102.
39
2.4.2 The Chiefs and the Kabaka: A fluid relationship
Portal himself showed that a chief was faced with real pressure from both directions
along the vertical hierarchy of power in Buganda – from the Kabaka to deliver
enough tax to satisfy his needs, but also from his subjects. The chief ‘would not last
fair on his clients and retain their loyalty and support, without which his position
would become just as untenable’.69 Not only is it possible for us to speculate that a
chief being too strict on his subjects would compromise his power base, but we can
also confidently agree with Reid, that subjects could move away from a chief’s
influence to another region under a different leader. Notwithstanding the fact that it
would have been harder and less realistic to do so for those with extensive economic
power that was rooted in the community, capital or land that was difficult or
impossible to move, even a ‘the steady loss of [less well off] human resources would
supported by Reid’s claims elsewhere in his book that ‘much of the success of the
[Buganda] political state was founded on its ability to marshal human and material
resources’71 and a significant drain on one or both of these would almost certainly
Buganda tax collection system was, for some time before the end of the
nineteenth century, balanced and highly attuned to changes. This system worked,
with all these layers of middlemen being able to write off some tribute for
themselves, without jeopardizing it, because if they did then not enough tax would
69
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 102.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid., p. 251.
40
be collected and the Kabaka would replace the chief, which would also have
consequences for the middlemen. Therefore, if the Ganda were able to strike that
achievable, but with differing methods and tactics. It would be hard to get away with
what would now be deemed fraud and bribery in today’s world where the goal is to
be able to register and save every transaction and every bit of data. Perhaps one way
to regain this balance is to change the thinking about the relationship between the
centre and the periphery, which brings me to the second point that I want to make
about how understanding the Buganda tax collection system can be used to
elements that built the foundation of the Buganda political and material system.72
Accepting this assertion implies that the success of Buganda owes, at least in part, to
the core-periphery relationship, which in turn means that modern African leaders
would be wise to look at this connection more closely. This does not necessarily
certain of its’ features or norms may be useful for modern states. Taxation is only
one part of the center-periphery relationship of pre-colonial Buganda, and its relative
success should mean that other parts should also undergo careful analysis in order to
see whether any useful tools can be extracted to aid modern state maintenance.
This relationship evolved throughout time, and became more defined but also
more fluid. For instance, the chiefs knew that the Kabaka was the ultimate power
holder in the kingdom, but their power could not only stem from the office he held
72
Hanson, Landed Obligation, pp. 28-36.
41
but directly from the material and military wealth and reputation of their Bataka.
Therefore, there were cases when a chief was more powerful, at least in economic
terms, than the Kabaka to an extent when there was even open revolt and attempts to
secede. For instance, the case of Mwanga II comes to mind because he was actually
obey Mawanda’s [the Kabaka at the time] command for public labour’.73
lands has resulted in the initial consolidation of political authority that created
conditions in Buganda for the kingship of Kabaka to arise. Consequently, kings have
been actively seeking to centralize their power even further, and Mawanda was able
to create specific regional offices that played a similar role of butaka lands i.e.
power and linked that power to the Kabaka through a vocabulary of reciprocal
“ssaza”, basically regions ruled by political governors in the guise of chiefs.75 By the
73
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 112.
74
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 81. By reciprocal obligation Hanson basically means the
nature of the relationship between, in this case, Kabaka and chiefs, was that of mutual gain.
Obligation meant that not only the chief but also the Kabaka had to work in order to keep the
relationship going, by recognizing the stature of the opposite office holder as well as by
participating in a complex conversation of gift giving.
75
Ibid.
76
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 4.
42
2.4.3 The Mistakes of the New Leaders
In order to show how the understanding of this traditional relationship between the
centre and the periphery can be of use for modern Africa, I should explain how the
current African system failed to employ these traditional lessons after independence
as the leaders decided to stick with a European system left over from the colonial
period. One of the most penetrating and interesting pieces of analysis that Herbst has
provided was to show the consequences of the African leaders choice of the nation-
state system as the template for independent Africa in the 1960s, at a time when
most of Africa was becoming independent. The Organization of African Unity’s key
first acts are extremely important in this context. The 1963 OAU Charter called for
“respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each State and for its
be commended for its peaceful message, but it laid the roots for the 1964 resolution
that confirmed the European borders by calling for “respect [of] the frontiers existing
of the borders that the Europeans had drawn during the Scramble for Africa in the
late nineteenth century, the boundaries that had since then been almost universally
Whether it was the choice of the African elite, as Herbst claims quite emphatically,
or whether they were forced into this choice by the circumstances that the Europeans
created is irrelevant at this point, more important is the fact that it happened.
77
Organization of African Unity, ‘Charter of the O.A.U.’ in Ian Brownlie (ed), Basic
Documents on African Affairs (Oxford 1971), p. 3, in Herbst, States and Power, p. 104.
78
Organization of African Unity, ‘O.A.U. Resolution on Border Disputes, 1964’ in
Brownlie, Basic Documents, p. 361 in Ibid., p. 104.
43
Coinciding with this decision was the implementation of the idea that the
control of the capital amounted to the control of the entire territory, as made clear
after the first coup in West Africa and the assassination of Olympio, the then-
president of Togo, in 1963. After the rebels killed the president and took over the
capital Lomé, the OAU ‘established a decision-making rule that preserved African
borders and prevented any kind of external competition while requiring only
the capital. This was a popular decision within the OAU and in the international
community, basically because it made ruling easier for the heads of African states
and it made recognizing those rulers easier for the international community.79
2.5 Conclusion
Both the capital rule and the boundary decision shaped African history to come and,
economic and social dimensions. Buganda’s taxation system shows a way forward
by looking backwards. To create a system along the lines of the Ganda way is almost
an impossible achievement now due to the two decisions made by the OAU,
because, by implication, they defined the relationship between the center and
periphery as unimportant. Therefore, little attention has been paid by African leaders
to improving the ties of the capitals to the outer regions of their respective countries.
The key to the Buganda system was the fluidity in the relationship between the
periphery and the center; the amount of independence chiefs were able to enjoy
while at the same time understanding the supreme power of the Kabaka. This power
79
Ibid., p. 110.
44
was not only created through the usual economic, military and religious means.
Hansen’s mission in her book was to show that ‘when people in Buganda thought
about power, they spoke about love’. In other words, ‘in the Ganda practice of
obligation between people with authority and those they ruled’.80 They were able to
possible in modern Africa. However, this will require a rethinking of the current
attitude towards informal networks, but also towards the relationship between the
80
Hanson, Landed Obligation, p. 1.
45
Chapter 3.
The kingdom of Asante was a great regional power that was not only able to conquer
and hold a plethora of societies and states in the region but also hold back the British
colonialists, even winning some battles against the Europeans. In the end, however,
they were conquered and the Asante are now part of Ghana, although they do
represent the heartland of the country. The evolution of the Asante kingdom started
with the Akan people centered in the forest areas close to Kumase, the capital. After
Asante went on to annex states and entities in every direction through both military
and diplomatic means, with the accent on the former. The arrival of the Europeans
and the trade that they have brought with them certainly had an impact on the
evolution of the Asante state, but did in no means define it. However, before getting
into how the state operated, we need to examine the long-term processes and
46
3.1 The Emergence of the Akan: Long-Term State Formation
Processes
In the first part of the story of how the Asante state formed, I will explain the
dynamic was occurring around the time when the Akan started to expand their
settlements and create new ones, in and around the fifteenth century. Because the
amount of work that was required to clear a forest to build new estates was very
high, shortage of labour was the single most important obstacle that the Akan settlers
had to overcome. Ivor Wilks states that the availability of labour was a ‘necessary
order.’ As I will explain later in the chapter, this new agrarian order was the
centerpiece of a new Akan society that rose to claim the power in the region. For
now, however, it is enough to say that closing the shortage of labour was essential
and that the availability of gold consequently made this closing possible.81
In this complex story with many interesting dynamics and relationships, the
bottom line is that the Akan people occupied an area rich with gold, and this sole
factor facilitated all the processes that lead to the formation of the Asante state. This
available elsewhere in the region to other societies. For instance, Denkyira, a state to
the south of Kumase, that was considered to be the prime regional power before the
81
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 77.
47
rise of Asante, was rich in ‘gold resources that supported it’.82 What was more
important than the availability of gold was the way that the Akan used it. By the
sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, ‘many of the major reefs in the central
forests had been prospected and were being exploited to the lowest levels possible
without the use of mechanical pumps.’ According the Wilks’ interpretation of the
rivers for gold happened in the fifteenth century. 83 In my opinion, this should prove
to be true when further research into the phenomenon will be made, and if it is
indeed possible to correctly ascertain a time period when mining developed. I say
this because it fits with the other processes that were happening at the time, namely
the clearing of forests and the increased Akan demand for slaves.
This leads us to how the Akan solved their shortage of labour problems: the
documented rise in slave purchases. While we do not possess any solid numerical
data, we still can make this statement based on evidence from late fifteenth century
Portuguese trading missions along the Gold Coast. The flow of slaves from Africa to
the Americas is the most studied and well-known early activity of Europeans in
Africa, but the coastwise trade in slaves actually preceded Columbus’ discovery. In
fact, the Portuguese built the first fortress of Sao Jorge da Mina in Elmina on the
shores of the Akan country after a little more than ten years of trading in 1482. The
exchange of gold for slaves was ‘among the commodities that the Portuguese found
most readily acceptable’ and as a result of the popularity of the trade a trading post
was established at Gwato in 1486. It is documented that in some instances the local
82
T.C. McCaskie, ‘Denkyira in the making of Asante c. 1660-1720’ in Journal of African
History (Vol. 48, 2007), p. 1.
83
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 77.
48
traders would buy the slaves for twice the price of what the Portuguese paid for them
in Benin, the main location where the Europeans bought slaves destined for Elmina
at the time.84 This trade expanded in the early sixteenth century and continued even
after the Portuguese were banned from trading slaves in the area by their king in mid
sixteenth century.85
While we can not be absolutely sure that this trade blossomed due to the
Akan forest clearances, for Wilks it is nevertheless ‘obvious that many were taken
northward by the various merchants from the interior who plied their trade at
Elmina’, or in other words that they were taken to the expanding Akan settlements in
desperate need of slave labour.86 This trade may give rise to a Western-centered
argument that the Europeans were an essential agent for Asante state formation.
Indeed, certain academics did argue that the Portuguese “captured” interior Akan
trade.87
However, while this trade was clearly important, ‘there can be little doubt
that there was a much higher flow southward into the forest from the savannah
hinterlands’.88 This trade was conducted by the Muslim Wangara, who set up a
string of trading posts along the northern borders of the Akan country. Even before
the Portuguese began to take part in the gold trade with the Akan, the latter ‘already
had strong consumer preferences formed in the context of their prior involvement
with the Wangara’.89 Again, there is no real data on how many slaves were traded
there, but an indication can be given by looking at the reaction of the Portuguese to
84
Ibid., pp. 74-75 and Ivor Wilks, ‘Wangara, Akan and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Centuries II: The Struggle for Trade’ in The Journal of African History (23:4
1982), pp. 464-465.
85
Wilks, Forests of Gold, pp. 74-75.
86
Ibid., p. 75.
87
See for instance: Fernand Braudel, ‘Monnaies et civilization: de l’or du Soudan a l’argent
d’Amérique’ in Annales, Économies, Societés, Civilisations (January-March 1946).
88
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 76.
89
Wilks, ‘Wangara, Akan and Portuguese’, p. 464.
49
the expansion of this traffic in early 16th century: the Governor of Elmina in 1513
was complaining that the Wangara traders were outperforming their European
counterparts for Akan gold due to shortages of slaves and other goods on the
Portuguese side. In addition, later, in the middle of the sixteenth century, the Muslim
traders and Malian cavalry groups seemed to have banded together to create the
Gonja state. Wilks argues that ‘it seems the kingdom was organized primarily for
trade, that trade consisted largely in the supply of labor to the forest in return for
gold’. In order to organize this trade, the two groups have joined forces and created a
framework within which the raiders would raid the densely populated Votaic region
While there were undoubtedly other causes of these events, it seems, at the
least, that Akan demand for labour drove the regional economy precisely around the
time that the forest clearings are said to have happened, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. The magnitude of the trade between the Akan, the Wangara and the
Europeans was certainly quite immense, to the point where ‘the Akan [became]
major producers of gold for the world market in the period’.91 This, in turn, shows
how the availability of gold created the availability of labour needed to create this
new agrarian order. Therefore, it is time to show how, through the creation of arable
land in the forests, Akan society became a layered structure that was an instrumental
part of their rise to dominance, and what lessons can their path provide for modern
African states.
90
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 76.
91
Wilks, ‘Wangara, Akan and Portuguese’, p. 463.
50
3.1.2 The Aberempכn and the stratification of Akan society
Asante was primarily a forest-based entity, and its agricultural advances did not start
until around the fifteenth century. This is an extremely important period that needs to
be understood, because it was the impetus for Asante state formation. This link
between the search for material comfort and wealth, and politico-social development
echoes Buganda’s path. In the case of the Ganda people, their willingness to settle
down due to the advantages offered by increased focus on banana cultivation was a
key factor in the formation of the Buganda state. Both these evolutions in agrarian
behaviour have underpinned changes in the structure of societies of the two polities,
and ultimately led to the rise of their regional military, economic and political
power. These are clear examples of the long-term processes that I have identified as
One of the interesting differences between the two processes, however, is the
question of agency. In the Buganda case, as I have discussed in the previous chapter,
that was essential for the state formation process to formulate itself over the
centuries. However, the Asante path was different: there was a clear group of
individuals who facilitated the formation of the Akan state, the aberempכn. Ivor
Wilks calls them entrepreneurs, and I will now explain the role that they played.
These individuals were mostly hunters who had a unique entrepreneurial spirit: their
business was searching for new territory to develop. Once they would find a suitable
piece of land, the hard work of clearing the forest would begin. It is frustrating,
however, that while there are plenty of stories and village histories that talk about the
51
aberemכn, nothing is known about how they cleared the forest and developed the
many of these estates were created and began to grow into genuine villages and
towns. As a result of this, the Asante were able to conquer many other settlements
around them and become the great power that they were, therefore it is important to
When the forests were cleared and the estates were ready to attract settlers, as
a result of the Akan management of their gold resources to attract labour, the
successful ones began to grow. The prosperity of the estates were directly linked to
the abilities of the aberempכn, unlike in Buganda, where prosperity of early villages
would be firmly connected to the importance of the ancestors buried in the banana
groves. In the Asante forests, the developers had to be able to obtain enough slaves
to expand the territory and employ them to better the estate. In addition they had to
be able to attract free settlers to the territory. The developers had certain powers and
rights that saw them benefit from the settlers that came to their estates, and in time
This is where the interesting Akan perception of land ownership comes in.
The subtle understanding of who the land belonged to, and what ‘belonging’ meant
in itself is a crucial feature of not only Akan, but also of African state formation
processes in general. In this case, the local saying, “the farm is my property, the land
is the king’s” provides a window into this perception. Even though the developers
would give the land on their estate to free settlers, they were able to retain certain
rights. For instance, the individuals that would become noblemen could ask not only
92
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 97.
93
Ibid., p. 100.
52
for the fruits of agricultural labour but also for anything else found on the land where
the settlers lived, that being game, fish, kola etc. In addition, an early form of
taxation existed; various levies could be extracted from the settlers, such as peato for
military expenses, ayieto for funerals and כmanto for infrastructural developments.
Furthermore, able bodies for military service and road building could also be
required by the aberempכn, which makes this arrangement look more and more like
feudal Europe.94
However, making this parallel would be a mistake. Wilks points out that free
settlers ‘acquired almost unassailable titles to the land they farmed’ and that ‘the
various taxes and services provided to the landholder were ad hoc and sporadic and
Therefore, we can only compare the European and the Akan ways of state formation,
Going back to the point I made earlier about how the aberempכn became
adehyeε, it is imperative to state how important this gradual change was. It was not
only the developers who grew into a class inside the social stratum of the Asante, the
slave labour and the settlers were also part of this process. The latter became
כmanmufo or citizenry. Some of those settlers who came to the estates to farm, hunt,
trade, or partake in the economic life of the estate in some other capacity, settled
depending on the success of their economic activity their stature in the community
would differ, but they were the ones who became the citizenry as, in time, the estates
grew into villages and villages grew into towns, with some even becoming capitals
of powerful polities.
94
Ibid., p. 99.
95
Ibid.
53
As this was happening, the slave labour that was recruited (always from
outside of Asante) for forest clearings and general work on the estates fused into the
servant class, the gyaasefo. These individuals became the servants of the adehyeε,
‘they farmed for them, assumed responsibility for their debts, and provided them
more. Additionally, ‘their masters (or mistresses) were heirs to their property’.96
Although it is difficult to definitively prove that the slave labour brought in the
fifteenth century formed the gyaasefo, it does make a certain amount of sense. When
the clearing of forests, road building and other hard work requiring a lot of
manpower was over, surely some of the slaves were transformed into servants for the
developers.
What is more important, however, is the fact that this explicit segregation of
society was conducive to the formation of the Asante state, because the distinction of
responsibilities in a society makes for easier rule. The nobility was able to
concentrate on political wrangling and annexation of more land and estates, because
the citizenry went about their daily lives and supported the economy while the
servants took care of any needs that the nobles had not only in terms of personal
assistance but also in terms of looking out for their property and economic well-
being.
The level of ability of the proprietors of the land was the key to the progress
of the estate. With time, these estates would grow into villages and towns. The larger
and wealthier they were, the more settlers would join the estate. While the estate
grew, it would annex surrounding territories, estates and villages through military or
diplomatic means. The most successful and famous of these estates blossomed into
96
Ibid.
54
Kumase, the capital of the Akan kingdom.97 The story of the eventual formation of
the state, the kingdom and, subsequently, what some call the empire, overshadows
the story of the creation of the Kumase estate. Therefore, in the next section I will
focus on the short-term and immediate causes of the formation of the Asante state.
The issue of center and periphery again comes up when discussing state formation in
Asante. In the previous chapter, I showed that Buganda’s evolution into a regional
power was in part aided by the flexibility of this relationship, and I proposed that
incorporating this flexibility into modern African states may be an interesting way of
managing current problems in Africa as a whole. In Asante, it is clear that the king
and Kumase were the geographical, political, economic and military center of the
state, and because most of the expansion was carried through military means, the
One of the most famous events in Ashanti military history was the conquest
of Denkyera in late 17th century, the first in a wave of expansion that continued into
the 18th century. This event is not only important because it preceded the other
campaigns, but because it was one of the short-term factors that caused a
consolidation within the early Asante state. The long-term processes that I have
outlined in the previous section are undoubtedly important, and in my opinion even
more so than the short-term factors, however it is clear that this event has a large
97
Ibid., p. 100.
55
significance in Asante history and therefore it warrants attention. To summarize, the
inner Akan polities, being Kumase, Dwaben, Bekwai, Kokofu and Nsuta ‘converted
from Denkyera.98 This was facilitated by the closeness of the Akan polities
geographically and socially; they were all part of the Oyoko clan that had migrated
north into the forests in the previous centuries. The migration was ‘probably …
connected with the activities of the Denkyera state … which … threatened the
calls them, experienced an early expansion into Offinso, north of Kumase, and
Sehwi in the western part of the Gold Coast. This pre-1700 expansion was conducted
by the clan brothers together under the leadership of Osei Tutu, the legendary
Kumase leader. Arhin claims that ‘it is not surprising’ that the clans decided to
further integrate their union and push on against Denkyera as one unit, because even
the ‘limited co-operation that had existed’ between these clan brothers ‘had proved a
source of strength’.101 From now on, the clan brother states will be called “Asante”
when referring to the centralized core of the kingdom, and “Greater Asante” will be
used to refer to the kingdom and all the regional polities under the king’s control.
While there was undoubtedly a degree of internal strife within the new
Kotoko Council which comprised of the chief of Kumase (as the new king of Greater
Asante) and the chiefs of the other polities, ‘had an undisputed voice in the conduct
98
Kwame Arhin, ‘The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)’ in The Journal of African
History (8:1 1967), p. 69.
99
Ibid., pp. 67-68.
100
Ibid., p. 67.
101
Ibid., p. 68.
56
of external relations.’102 The internal strife was not a simple center-periphery
problem, however, because Kumase and the other polities were ‘on different
trajectories of change’ during the 18th century. For instance, around 1770 Dwaben
and Mampon, two Akan polities under Kumase’s rule, disputed territories in their
northern hinterlands between themselves, and even ‘came into armed conflict’ as a
result of these disputes.103 This illustrates not only the independence that these
polities were able to enjoy, but also the way they perceived their role within the
Greater Asante; not simple regions within a state, but actual autonomous polities that
Asante
The Asante had control over many types of polities, and a classification of their
types is a useful exercise that will provide further understanding of how the Asante
state actually operated. The first type was also the one that gives us the most insight
into the centralized state. Arhin forms a scathing attack on writers who question the
intricacy of this relationship. For him, the foundations of the Asante state were laid
during the Denkyera conquest mentioned earlier in the chapter. These foundations
were based on kinship and their earliest development was spurred on by the external
threat of the Denkyera that had a uniting effect on the Akan peoples under Kumase’s
leadership. However, as Asante grew in power and territory, the Asante kings
102
Ibid., p. 69.
103
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 118.
57
realized that while the foundations could be based on kinship, the maintenance of the
state had to be performed in a more centralized and efficient manner. Therefore, the
second period of the relationship ‘saw a tightening of the controls over the various
states’. Apart from Bowdich and Dupuis, all other nineteenth century English writers
could not comprehend the intricacies of this second stage. For them, it was a simple
case of economic extraction out of the provinces that was supplemented by the threat
of force.104 However, looking deeper at such methods as tribute and fines for
breaches of oaths, king’s commands for financing of military victories and others, a
The Asante kings indirectly affirmed their authority over the provinces by
showcasing their achievements, making it expensive to break rules that came directly
from them and generally by using economic means for political purposes.
Admittedly, it may have been difficult to understand this at the time: there was no
need for cultural alignment because the Akan people were culturally similar and the
Asantes did not leave garrisons in outlying provinces at times of peace because they
did not have a standing army of professional soldiers. Therefore to the naked eye it
may have seemed that all the kings were doing was glorifying themselves and
profiting financially from their position at the center of the state. Since the kings did
not have a lot of available methods, however, they had to rely on more subtle ways
I will go through these ways promptly, but first I must point out one
important dimension that influenced the behaviour of the Asante kings. Following
‘every new accession to the Asante stool’ since the death of Osei Tutu in 1717,
104
Arhin, Greater Asante, p. 80.
105
Ibid., pp. 79-81.
58
rebellions and attempted cessations were rife in the provinces.106 During the
eighteenth century, Asante expanded greatly and wars and rebellions were a
common feature of the life of the state. Therefore, it is only logical that the Asante
kings sought to increase their power over the provinces through economic means in
order to minimize the amount of military campaigns, especially ones that did not
involve the conquest of new territory, but the re-conquest of territory that, in the
assume that conquest of new territories would bring more booty, and the fallen polity
would tolerate more tribute since they were just defeated in battle, as opposed to re-
The ways through which the relationship between the center and the
provinces was being reaffirmed and strengthened involved both the proverbial carrot
and stick. The eighteenth century saw Kumase attempt to not only cement the
conquered provincial chiefs on the same level with the central chiefs, in terms of
their personal relationship with the king. Arhin interprets this to be an action that
However, in my opinion, this could have been a strategy used to show all the chiefs
that they had the same status, especially to the chiefs of central provinces, the first
ones led by Kumase against the Denkyera. This would fit better with the idea of how
the relationship between center and periphery developed: away from kinship towards
Therefore, for instance, strategies like calling all the chiefs to annual Odwira festival
106
Ibid., p. 72.
107
Ibid., p. 81.
59
obedience, to punish disaffection and sometimes to remove an obnoxious
remind the chiefs of the might of the state and their allegiance to the king who is at
experienced these regularly. The Akim, for example, were ‘pushed out … to remote
areas where Ashanti could deal with them when they felt ready to do so’.110 This was
most probably caused by the hostile relationship between the Akim and Asante, as
between 1700-1750 there were at least three wars involving the two on opposite
sides.111 Takyiman, another polity that experienced more than one war against
Asante, was divided and ‘some of her people … settled in central Ashanti’.112
Forced re-settlements are one of the more radical ways to make an opponent submit
to the king. On the other hand, central authorities did not only settle for the use of
the stick; the carrot was used widely too. For instance, a subordinate state that helps
to quash a rebellion will be rewarded with “privileges at the expense of the offending
power”.113 Arhin speculates that these privileges could have been land rights, but
transfers of other resources such as gold or manpower could also have been used.
Gyaman, Wassaw and Asikuma kings organized the tribute collection in the region
and were thus able to claim twenty percent of the total amount collected. Any
province sending manpower for military use would also be rewarded with a portion
of loot in case of victory. Lastly, according to Bowdich, the king was the highest
108
Quoting Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast (London 1853), p. 61 in
Ibid., p. 82.
109
Ibid.
110
Ibid.
111
Ibid., pp. 73-74.
112
Ibid., p. 82.
113
Quoting T.E. Bowdich, A Mission from Cape Coast to Ashantee (London 1819), p. 255 in
Ibid.
60
court in Greater Asante and if subjects of a chief were not satisfied with the ruling
Later, in the nineteenth century, when the Asante state could be considered
formed, there was a realization that ‘more intense personal contact was needed’ for
that Asante ‘political presence was … given a physical emphasis’. Moreover, a new
type of role was created that Arhin describes as a roving commissioner: these
individuals would move around from province to province and mostly dealt with
judiciary issues, specifically related to breaking the king’s oath and Asante rules
because these breaches were not under jurisdiction of local courts. They also called
periodic meetings of chiefs in a region where they would be asked to renew their
3.3.2 Protectorates
Protectorates were, in the most fundamental sense, provinces that were not required
to supply manpower for war. However, the relationship between protectorates and
the center must have been more intricate, because less military cooperation
presupposed more distant ties with these polities. While it is difficult to categorize
them with certainty, protectorates are considered to be polities that were not
involved directly into Asante military campaigns, but that were not left to their own
devices like the tributary states. Accra, Ada, Aowin, Elmina, Nzima and Banda can
be thought of as protectorates (Accra were involved in one military campaign but its
114
Ibid.
115
Ibid., p. 83.
61
causes were of mutual interests to Accra and Asante). These polities were not
directly conquered, but were won after conquests of other entities or, as in the case
with Banda for instance, were considered allies from early times. Once again, the
relationship with these polities was one of mutual benefit. Kumase would profit
militarily from possessing more strategic territory, among other benefits. The
polities, on the other hand, would benefit from the ‘fear of Ashanti [that] cleared
paths [which was] conducive to the economic interests of the coastal middlemen’ in
the case of Elmina for instance, which was in direct competition with the long-term
Asante foe, the Fantis, on the Gold coast. The fact that Asante was the state that
protected these polities gave them more security and it undoubtedly increased their
confidence in situations involving political and economic battles with their enemies
and competitors.116
The main difference between tributaries and protectorates was the degree of
Asante political intervention that was allowed based on mutual understanding. Accra
and Elmina, for instance, had to house Asante resident-chiefs who had judicial and
the case of Banda, the Asante appeared to have tried to fuse their culture with that of
the local population, for instance introducing material symbols of kingship, in order
to, according to Arhin, assimilate the province into Greater Asante to an even further
degree.117 In this particular case these efforts might have been initiated due to the
fact that Banda is located on the frontier, and it was ‘capable of shifting allegiance’
as a result, like they did in the 1880’s.118 Therefore, it seems that the Asante state
116
Ibid., p. 77.
117
Ibid., p. 78.
118
Ibid., p. 77.
62
was intentionally using cultural and political tools to establish its political influence
over Banda, and not simply threatening them with the use of force. This is one of the
interesting points that can be made in relation to Asante state formation: not only
was it not simple warfare-driven conquests, it also featured intelligent and effective
power of the Asante state. In terms of modern African state building, similar
techniques can be used to tie the state and the nation together on the subconscious
level in order to not only increase the power of the state, but also to increase the
amount of trust the people put into the state. This can lead to a better functioning
3.3.3 Tributaries
Not only was the inner-Asante system a complex interrelated web of allegiances and
responsibilities, but the outer polities that Asante have conquered were also not
territory further in every direction, most notably, north and south. Most of this
expansion was of a military nature, however it did not mean that the state system that
contrary, many of the relationships that Kumase have developed were economic in
nature. While it is correct to assume that ‘the ties were created by force and
ties were mutually beneficial economic and commercial relationships.119 The polities
119
Ibid., p. 76.
63
that had such a relationship with Asante can be classified as tributary states. For
tribute. Dagomba and Gonja were also part of an agreement that guaranteed
commercial relations with Asante. Moreover, political intervention was not part of
these agreements, with Asante interference only tolerated when the rulers actually
invited it in the first place, such as during a Daboya succession dispute. In addition,
tributary states were not expected to supply manpower for military campaigns;
Asante only expected financial tribute intended to bolster the military effort.120
Lastly, it is useful to look at how regional administration evolved before the Asante
kingdom was taken over during the Scramble. In the first chapter I have made clear
that I will not focus on administration as part of state formation, but I do believe that
Wilks formed a view that during the nineteenth century Asante developed a
of social control and of organizing the man-power and other resources of the areas
under the king’s authority’.121 One of the ways he came across this important
eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries: the kings at the time, Osei Kwadwo (1764-
1777), Osei Kwame (1777-circa 1801) and Osei Bonsu (circa 1801-1824) “have
120
Ibid., pp. 76-77.
121
Ivor Wilks, ‘Ashanti Government’ in Daryll Forde and P.M. Kaberry (ed), West African
Kingdoms in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford 1967), p. 207.
64
artfully enlarged the royal prerogatives, at the expense of original constitution [by
raising their] favourite captains to vacant stools [i.e. important positions]”. This was
development meant that skill and favour were beginning to displace right of birth as
bureaucratic system.
undergone changes during the nineteenth century as well, and now that the
contextualize these changes. The new system encouraged the kings to use
central authority’s efficiency at dealing with those that could not be prevented.
new structure of provincial administration’.123 This new structure saw the kings
appoint men that they could trust, therefore not necessarily high aristocrats, but men
who proved their worth to the king, to deal with problems in the provincial areas and
statehood of Asante and that they again make clear that an intricate core-periphery
relationship was important for Asante’s kings to uphold. As it was established in the
Buganda chapter, modern African leaders are not encouraged to pay enough
122
T.E. Bowdich, An Essay on the Superstitions, Customs, and Arts common to the Ancient
Egyptians, Abyssiniansm and Ashantees (1821), pp. 21, 54 in Ibid., p. 212.
123
Ibid., p. 221.
124
Cruickshank, Gold Coast, p. 341 in Ibid., p. 222.
65
attention to this relationship, and a rethinking of this attitude is important in order to
3.4 Conclusion
Overall, Greater Asante can be described as an empire that had a turbulent political
life and a state that required “unremitting attention” in order for it to survive. In light
of the history of empires, it is possible to say that its collapse was inevitable.
However, since its life was cut short by British colonial rule in the late nineteenth
century we can not be sure of how the Asante state would have developed. The one
thing that is certain, in my opinion, is the complex story of the formation of this state
and its intricate design. Like Herbst posited, ‘precolonial African states developed as
throughout Asante history, as the availability of gold and opportunities for buying
slaves dictated the way the Akan polities developed the new agrarian order in the
15th and 16th centuries. Furthermore, the way clan brother polities’ reaction to
the environment, not physical but political, driving history. However, it is important
not to take away from the ‘genius of the people of the forest’, as Ivor Wilks puts it.
He praises the abermpכn vision of their present situation, and their ability to act and
‘bring that vision into reality’. Effectively, their actions created all the necessary
conditions for the future Asante state as they ‘lay the foundations [that] so utterly
nature of state formation processes in pre-colonial Africa. Once again we are forced
125
Herbst, States and Power, p. 51.
126
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 120.
66
to do away with any simplistic notions of how the reasons behind the barbaric
Asante warfare in the post-Denkyera conquest period was because of their hunger
for gold and slaves, as some claim127, or how the European arrival forced African
societies into early submission through the slave trade, or even Marxist
interpretations of these societies through rigid class relationships. I will deal with
these specific counter arguments in the next chapter, but the subtle nature of the
beginnings of the Asante state has to already cast a shadow of a doubt on these
arguments.
127
This claim made by authors such as Cruickshank, Gold Coast, Sir A.B. Ellis, A History of
the Gold Coast of West Africa (London 1893) and J.D. Fage, Introduction to the History of
West Africa (Cambridge 1962) all in Arhin, Greater Asante, p. 65.
67
Chapter 4.
At this point in the paper, I will compare various features of the analysis of both case
Buganda and Asante. There will be three focal points that will feature in this
description, namely long-term processes, short-term conditions and the nature of the
core-periphery relationship.
After analyzing both Asante and Buganda, it emerges that both of these states owe
their existence to long-term processes that took place between A.D. 1000-1700. In
the case of Buganda, consumption patterns slowly changed and became focused on
the banana plant. At the same time burial practices and the evolution of the beliefs
surrounding their ancestors led the Bantu-speaking tribes to settle among the banana
gardens that housed the graves of their influential forebears. As a few of these cites
grew, the diffusion of power between religions, social or political leaders faded away
agency. While the lake Victoria tribes in question formed butaka over time without
68
any known catalysts, the Akan aberempכn began to actively search for forest land
that was destined to be developed into arable land around 1500. They started the
long-term clearances of forests and invigorated the trade with Europeans and the
Wangara who provided slaves in exchange for the gold that was in ample supply in
the forest lands. Similar to Buganda, the developers created estates to which settlers
would flock. In time, some of these grew to become capitals of polities or simple
villages, much like in Buganda where settlements around the most valuable banana
gardens grew into centers of butaka while others evolved into villages. The
difference in agency is evident here again as the fate of Akan estates was closely
linked to the abilities of the aberempכn to attract settlers and buy slaves.
formation that could be of use today. However, appreciating the time it took for them
to come to fruition, and the intricacy and complexity that characterized them, helps
us to historicize the two states. This, in turn, expands our understanding of Buganda
and Asante and can provide clues as to how other pre-colonial states developed.
Ultimately, these processes show the complex nature of sub-Saharan states in Africa
before the colonial period and provide more ammunition to dismiss Eurocentric
As I have established in both case studies, a surprising similarity can be seen in the
immediate events surrounding the formation of Asante and Buganda as states. The
Denkyera in case of the former and the Bunyoro in case of the latter presented
similar threats to the case study states. First, both rivals were located close them and
69
represented a military threat. Second, both rivals held the position of prime regional
power before the rise of Buganda and Asante. Third, both states had been forced into
war. Analysis of Buganda showed that the state had to fight in order to survive while
the Denkyera, similarly, ‘threatened, and carried the fight home to Ashanti, and not
vice versa’.128 Fourth, Bunyoro’s primacy meant a lack of opportunities to find iron
ore for Buganda, and the latter therefore had to expand elsewhere to increase its iron
Asante’s rivalry with Denkyera because the latter was the ‘most important inland
supplier of gold and slaves to the Dutch at Elmina and the English at Cape Coast,
and the wealthiest importer of European guns and ammunitions’.129 Osei Tutu surely
recognized that overtaking this trade would benefit the Asante state both financially
in terms of gold and militarily in terms of greater access to European weapons. This
last point is where a parallel can be drawn with Buganda’s search for iron ore that
was needed to improve its military capacity. Fifth, the struggle against these rivals
ensured that Buganda and Asante had to centralize politically and expand
An interesting argument can be made, taking into account both Asante and
Buganda’s stories. From available evidence, it seems that both these states had to
become aggressive in order to defend themselves against their rivals. Reid argues
that the birth of Buganda’s army was due to ‘aggressive defensiveness’. He showed
that Buganda had to react to the threat of Bunyoro by creating an army to defend
itself, and ‘at some point [after the defeat of Bunyoro] this defensiveness became
aggression’ as Buganda waged more wars to conquer other polities around it.130
128
Arhin, Greater Asante, p. 72.
129
McCaskie, ‘Denkyira in the Making of Asante’, p. 1.
130
Reid, Pre-Colonial Buganda, p. 185.
70
Similarly for Asante, its military campaigns of expansion after 1700 were triggered
by the war and defeat of Denkyera. Since, as we have already established, Osei Tutu
was forced into this confrontation, Reid’s idea of aggressive defensiveness could
1884’. He was given a bow and arrow, representing the weapons that Kabaka
Nakibinge used in his ultimately fatal struggle with the regional rivals, and ‘was then
required to stab a young [Bu]Nyoro male’ to symbolize revenge against the death of
Nakibinge in battle. Overall, ‘the great struggle to which Nakibinge gave his life had
Denkyera has had arguably an even bigger impact: the Golden Stool that was the
symbol of a king’s power and authority, as well as the fact that Osei Tutu, the
conqueror of Denkyera, was the first one to take possession of this object in 1701,
‘are the best-known symbolic expressions of the new order’, by which McCaskie
meant the new Asante state.132 Arhin also points to the Golden Stool as one of the
Asante, that Osei Tutu used it to symbolically assert his power after the fall of
Denkyera.
There is also a similarity between what we can take away from the analysis
of long-term and short-term factors that led to state formation in Buganda and
Asante. The understanding of these short-term events that triggered the formation of
131
Ibid., p. 186.
132
McCaskie, ‘Denkyira in the Making of Asante’, p. 20.
133
Arhin, Greater Asante, p. 69.
71
Buganda and Asante states does not provide us with any concrete methods of state
building of use for today. However, just as with long-term processes, this
understanding illuminates the way these pre-colonial African states were formed,
which means that we can assume that other states in the region could have been
explained in the Buganda chapter, Herbst’s analysis showed that modern African
leaders have not been encouraged to utilize this relationship fully for the benefit of
both the state and the regions, because of the way power and rule has been defined at
Africa.
its fluidity, because it was present in both states in different ways. In Asante, the
central authority had different relationships with every entity that it had absorbed.
facilitate the analysis of these relationships. While they do seem to generally fall into
one of these three groups, there were still differences inside them. For instance, as I
explained in the case study, the relationship with Akim was generally hostile to the
point where they were physically relocated to more remote areas. At the same time,
Gyaman organized tribute collection and claimed twenty percent of the collected
amount. Both these polities were part of the province grouping. Furthermore, the
72
center attempted to “Akanize” the protectorate Banda, using Jack Goody’s term,134
by fusing its culture onto the polity, while Accra and Elmina only had to house an
Asante resident-chief.
These examples illuminate the fluid nature of the relationship between the
center and periphery in Asante. It could change over time, as with the move from
kinship to dominance in the provinces, and it could vary from polity to polity in the
same subgroup. Additionally, this relationship was not one-way: polities under
Asante influence acted unilaterally and their actions changed their relationship with
the center. For instance, the multiple uprisings and attempted revolts surely affected
case of victory and a strengthening of the ties between Asante and the provincial
entity through mutual sacrifices and the emotional component associated with
battles.
The Buganda kingdom did not rely on the use of force to the same extent as
Asante, but the center-periphery relationship in the lake Victoria state was also
marked by its fluid nature. In the case study, I have use the example of the taxation
system to illustrate its workings. The tax collecting middlemen, regional chiefs and
the king were all connected through the tribute accumulation system. Every actor
struck a precise balance in the system: the middlemen appropriate funds for their
benefit but knew that too much misappropriation would have effects on the overall
system, i.e. if the chief was unable to provide enough tribute the king could depose
134
As stated in Ibid., p. 77.
73
The king chose a chief that would collect tribute in his region, which in this
respect is similar to Asante, where we know that Gyaman, Wassaw and Asikuma
organized tribute collections in their regions. The overall point here is that
others seemed to have worked for both Asante and Buganda, and this may provide a
lesson to modern African leaders. The incentive for them is not to empower the
periphery because of the fact that control of the capital equates to the control of the
country. As a result, the weaker the regions are, the easier it is for the current head of
state to maintain his or hers grip on power. This does not necessarily apply only to
reign will still be motivated to attain more control and power, whether it be for
personal gain or because of a belief that only the leader knows how to best run the
After comparing both states it becomes clear that they did have much in common. It
other pre-colonial African states. To sum up, such a state must have gone through
Buganda and clearances of forests for arable land in Asante) that would allow for a
state to be quickly created as a response to external threat. The long term processes
were epitomized by the diffusion of clan members throughout the territory, allowing
for political leaders (aberempכn in Asante and bataka in Buganda) to become the
highest authorities. As a result of an external threat, the leaders band together under
74
the most wealthy, politically skillful and influential ruler that would centralize his
authority and lead the state in a war against the threat (Osei Tutu in Asante and
(Nakibinge was unsuccessful, but his rule nevertheless triggered similar eventualities
to Osei Tutu’s reign in Asante) that would be symbolically rendered in the collective
memory of the population. A state that emerges from such a sequence of events
shaped by both the central and regional authorities in that the actions of one will
inevitably result in a reaction from the other, modifying the relationship according to
framework that it provides should nevertheless be useful for further research into
other states. Previously dismissed oral histories of some pre-colonial African states,
for instance, may contain similar stories of responses to external threats or legendary
banana cultivation. Archaeological digs could reveal regions where the environment
was changed for the material benefit of local people, similarly to Asante’s creation
of arable land out of dense forests that basically created a whole new economical
dimension of agriculture for Akan people who lived in the forest land. Careful
analysis of changes in religious practices, burial rites or mental behaviour may show
conjunction with other trends may point to changes in settlement patterns or other, as
75
Additionally, I am not stating that this sequence of events is the only way a
Buganda and Asante. It is reasonable to assume that events did not unfold on the
same path in every pre-colonial state, but it is also reasonable to assume that many of
provide proof of the second aim of my paper, i.e. the usefulness of looking back at
the past. While the idea that there is value in pre-colonial past for tackling present
modern African elites to go back to the past since instead they focus on
illustrate that such a turn to tradition is possible, I will now show how this is already
4.2.1 Retraditionalization.
An interesting trend that has been noted in recent years shows the renewed
importance of the past in African state maintenance. Since the mid-nineties ‘a large
76
number’ of sub-Saharan African states have experienced what many scholars135 have
renewed cooperation between the modern political center and the traditional political
periphery. By that I mean a change of the status quo between the central government
and traditional authorities such as regional chiefs or clan-heads. The situation was
such that the political leaders saw these traditional authorities as ‘negative forces’,
and this view was held for decades since the wave of independence in the 1960s.
Now, however, this view is changing and a plethora of countries are adapting their
African countries, and there are three specific trends that, when considered together,
successfully attempting to regain some of the political power that they lost during
the last century. In the most part, these organizations are able to accomplish this task
Ghana, Zambia, Rwanda, Chad, Benin and Côte D’Ivoire have all experienced this
trend. The authors of the book on retraditionalization have singled out Ghana and
Uganda, the two case study countries, as some of the leading examples of the
national power structures by linking social, economic, and cultural capital vested in
135
‘The concept of retraditionalization is used by scholars working on contemporary Africa
to describe the increased articulation of “tradition,” “roots,” and “belonging” as part of
wider processes of modernization and reactions to these processes within the wider context
of globalization’ in Lars Buur and Helene Maria Kyed, ‘Introduction: Traditional Authority
and Democratization in Africa’ in Lars Buur and Helene Maria Kyed (ed) State Recognition
and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: A New Dawn for Traditional Authorities?
(New York 2007), p. 24.
136
Buur and Kyed, ‘Traditional Authority and Democratization in Africa’, p. 2.
77
local power bases’ and in Uganda they specify the Buganda kingdom itself, along
to carry out tasks that are usually performed by the state, such as ‘dispensing justice,
collecting rent, and policing’. In Congo, Sierra Leone, Namibia, Somalia and
showing that the relationship between the central authority and traditional periphery
can, in fact, become one of mutual gain. The traditional authorities regain
responsibilities and prestige that had been taken away from them and the central
authorities, providing they put their faith and trust in the former, can refocus their
attention on rebuilding the state and dealing with the overall consequences of the
rebellion that is either still taking place or that had been crushed.
down trend of ‘formal types of legislation, decrees, and reforms that have
Namibia, Cameroon and Niger the state is recognizing the efforts and influence of
traditional authorities and aims to expand the relationship between the two. For
instance, in Ghana and Uganda, as well as South Africa, Namibia and Zambia,
recognized them in the new revised constitutions of the 1990s and creations of
national houses of chiefs. While this trend does not mean the restoration of all the
137
Ibid., p. 2.
78
officially back them to a certain point, as part of a decentralization campaign aiming
Jude Fokwang’s book that focuses specifically on the renewed role that chiefs play
in democratic processes. He singles out two chiefs in South Africa and Cameroon in
discusses a trend in which these two individuals gain political capital among the
people by promoting their image as chiefs, although their main activity is being
politicians. He shows the willingness of the people to trust a chief even among
general mistrust of other politicians. In terms of the aims of this paper, this illustrates
become part of the ruling government and therefore the state, he can promote and
advance the relationship between the state and the people. Therefore, that individual
maintains the state by increasing its’ importance in society and building trust
between the two (as a direct result of his traditional claim to legitimacy), which will
in turn lead to a more robust and healthy state. There are limitations to such a
scenario, as Fokwang finds that not all chiefs are able to claim legitimacy, and not
all of those who do have the best interests of the state and the country in mind.
Nevertheless, there are also those who can positively contribute to the maintenance
of the state.139
138
Ibid., p. 3.
139
Jude Fokwang, Mediating Legitimacy: Chieftaincy and Democratisation in Two African
Chiefdoms (Bamenda 2009), pp. vii-viii, 101-103.
79
4.2.2 Core and Periphery: Theoretical basis for looking back
It is safe to say that modern attitude towards African regional politics is often
inefficiency. As I have previously established, there is much to take away from the
relatively more efficient and fluid core-periphery relationship in the pre-colonial era.
state structures have been imposed and implanted in the African countryside’.140
periphery requires the amelioration of the political relationship between the central
and regional authorities.141 She argues that specifically local conditions determine
success or failure of development programs. There are two main reasons for this;
first, the broad nature of most of these programs, as they had been developed to
rules’ produces ‘acute disjuncture’ between how a program is supposed to work and
140
Catherine Boone, Political Topographies of the African State: Territorial Authority and
Institutional Choice (Cambridge 2003), p. 2.
141
Ibid., p. 3.
80
‘the real politics’ of how African institutions function, reducing the chances of
Boone is adamant that ‘tensions and conflicts within the rural areas’ is often
ignored in the studies of state-society relations in Africa.143 The fact that ‘rural
‘rural localities and provinces [being] incorporated into the modern state in highly
variable ways and to varying extents’ form ‘the main point’ of the research in her
book.144
The problems that she discusses are related to the idea of looking back at the
African states on their own terms will yield benefits. Therefore, exploring the
them since before the colonial period, can illuminate the dynamics of not only the
core-periphery relationship, but also of the differences in, what Boone calls, ‘rural
the colonial era as a result of European intervention will not lead to any significant
solutions or avenues for improvement, because the roots of political and social
142
Ibid., p. 4.
143
Ibid., p. 6.
144
Ibid., p. 320.
145
Ibid.
81
4.2.3 Looking Back in other fields.
current African state building and state maintenance may also mean that other fields
identifying fields where these methods had already been used successfully
strengthens the case for using them in state building and state maintenance.
One such field is medicine, and here the study of pre-colonial Africa yielded
‘has brought to light new chemical compounds and psychological effects, enriching
the scientific repertory’.146 Second, Africans have discovered various substances and
healing methods by themselves and ‘used them effectively for medical purposes’.
Contemporary medicine then absorbs these practices and they ‘provide new insights
into different ways of dealing with illness’.147 Third, medical researchers found that
substances and methods that are in being used in modern medicine.148 Therefore this
field benefited from considering the African past, ‘whether by adding African
146
I. William Zartman, ‘Introduction: African Traditionalist Conflict “Medicine”’ in I.
William Zartman (ed), Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict
“Medicine” (Boulder 2000), p. 1. See for instance: Simone de Souza, ‘Fruits, Seeds and
Miscellaneous Ingredients Used in the Pharmaceutical Practice of Benin’ in Pauline
Hountondji (ed), Endogenous Knowledge: Research Trails (Dakar 1997).
147
Ibid., see for instance: T.S. Githens, Drug Plants of Africa (Philadelphia 1949) or J.
Kerharo and G. Adam, La pharmacopée Sénégalaise traditionelle (Paris 1974).
148
Ibid.
149
Ibid., p. 2.
82
peacemakers using the best of personal skills and recently developed knowledge
about ways of managing and resolving conflicts [as well as multiple] international
tackling conflicts in Africa. Apart from the relative successes of ‘lengthy and
conflict management’.150 However, this is not to say that the use of traditional
equivalent. In reality, it seems that conflicts in Africa are ‘modern and therefore
methods’.151
methods may point to an adaptation of modern methods in such a way that, fused
together, they will yield better results. This statement rings even more true when one
considers that ‘many of the practices associated with traditional African conflict
element with atonement. Conflicts are managed by communities, and the conflicting
parties recognize the crux of the problem and seek to harmonize the situation. Once
both parties are willing to negotiate, ‘they need to recognize their disruption and
seek forgiveness for it’. A successful outcome of these negotiations can then be
150
Ibid., p. 3.
151
Ibid., p. 4.
152
Ibid., p. 220.
83
represents the spirit of traditional African conflict management, as both crimes and
is then recognized to have restored order to the community’. Moreover this outcome
hinges upon the atonement by the aggressor and the acceptance by the victim.153 The
reincluding the offending member within the community, rather than excluding the
guilty party’ as in the West, where spending time in a penal institution is a direct
measure aimed at ejecting the guilty out of society for re-education.154 In addition,
the difficulty of reintegration back into society shows the difference in the
The point that Zartman makes, however, is not about superiority of one
practice over the other. Instead, his argument is that both have to be used in tandem,
methods is needed. Therefore his ideas are similar to the ones expressed in this
paper, albeit in a different field. The general point should nonetheless have to be
made again: considering African past is beneficial to current problems, and there is
no need to replace current practices but only to use them alongside modern methods.
This paper focused on the idea that sub-Saharan African states should be treated on
their own terms and that it is worthwhile to look through the history of a state in
order to understand its roots. This can in turn help with tackling current problems
that a state may have. Firstly, treating states, especially those of the Third World on
153
Ibid., p. 222.
154
Ibid., p. 224.
84
their own terms is not a mainstream argument, and it has a few alternatives. Writing
in 1991, Jean François Bayart posited that ‘academic analysis of the “south” has long
“dependency”’, both of which clash with arguments and ideas put forward in this
paper. As Bayart points out, both these theories have a similar fundamental belief
about the Third World: ‘that of external factors being the major influence behind
political change in Africa, Latin America and Asia since the global expansion of
4.3.1 Modernization
First, the longevity of the modernization theory should be addressed. In its current
form, i.e. addressing the need for backward countries to modernize, it has been
around since the Second World War. There are two reasons behind its success: for
the developed and the rich states ‘it justified the continuation of existing policies …
as ways of countering communist designs’ through foreign aid and domestic growth.
For the relatively underdeveloped and poor states ‘it entrusted the promise of a better
future to the new ruling classes that were accumulating tokens of Westernization as
they lined their own pockets’. Therefore, there was pressure from both sides to fund
I should briefly explain what these ideas actually consisted of. There were
two main parts of the modernization theory: evolutionary and functionalist, with
both parts providing an epistemological basis for the theory. The evolutionary part
155
Bayart, ‘Finishing with the Idea of the Third World’, p. 51.
156
Gilbert Rist, The History of Development (London 2006), p. 109.
85
assumed that ‘social change is unidirectional’ and that ‘human society invariably
moves along one direction from a primitive to an advanced state, thus the fate of
Lastly, the movement is slow and evolutionary, rather than a series of sudden
premises. The basic idea on which modernization theory is built on is the belief that
the society, and therefore the state, works like a human body. The institutions
represent the organs and they are in constant state of equilibrium and harmony: that
is the people strive for harmony, the institutions are never in conflict, society will
Limitations
assumptions when one transfers them to the real world. For instance, the idea of
“homeostatic equilibrium”, being the uniform condition of the institutions within the
state whereupon one change will lead to changes everywhere, is central to the
157
Alvin Y. So, Social Change and Development: Modernization, Dependency and World-
System Theories (London 1990), p. 19
158
Ibid., pp. 20-21.
159
Ibid., p. 19.
86
within the state are competitive, especially in cases where the budget allocation is
done centrally and institutions are evaluated by merit, percentage of planned tasks
arguments I put forth in the paper. For instance, the assumption of pre-determination
means that physical environment defines how a society will advance. Wilks himself
stated that ‘there was, perhaps, nothing exceptional’ in the long-term processes of
the creation of a new agrarian order, and a new society, that laid the groundwork for
the Asante state. For instance, he points to Denkyira having ‘earlier established their
hegemony’ over the region using ‘similar processes of conquest and alliances’.
However, it was the Asante who created the ‘intricate configuration of authority’
that went on to dominate the region and the Denkyira themselves. The environment
for both these two states, as well as numerous other clans, societies and political
systems was similar, to the point of being almost identical, and yet it was the Asante
who prevailed among all others. The courage of their leaders and the
that societies and states should aspire to. However, modernization is a thoroughly
Western idea, where United States and Western Europe are considered to be the
templates for success if a state wants to become modernized quickly and efficiently.
Not only is this fairly arrogant and even ‘ethnocentric’, but it is also misleading. As
160
Wilks, Forests of Gold, p. 118.
87
literature, because they are seen to have ‘unmatched economic prosperity and
unquestioned as the ideals of the modernization. Similarly, the attitude towards the
less developed countries as well as the labels that are used, such as “primitive” or
itself, presupposes singular and linear progression of the development of states and
societies. In my opinion, there are multiple avenues for advancing a society, and it is
not necessary that all of them involve linear economical, political or social
decided that a look back at the past could provide some answers for dealing with
actively blocking the research for alternative paths. For example, among the
preconditions for progress. However, South Korea and Taiwan, for instance,
questioned as well, and more research should consequently be allowed to delve into
161
So, Social Change and Development, p. 34.
162
Ibid., p. 54.
163
Ibid.
88
4.3.2 The Dependency School.
The dependency argument is based on the work of South and North American
scholars, with the former contributing the bulk of dependency literature.164 After
their theories gained a certain amount of ground and they began to be grouped into a
movement, scholars from other continents joined it.165 These researchers did not
spokesperson; instead they focused on their individual work. However, since many
of their ideas ‘shared a common sensibility’, we can group them together into a
school of thought for the sake of simplicity.166 In many ways the ideas of these
researchers comprised the opposition to the modernization theory. While the latter
was an encouragement for the search of a Western-centric progressive path, the work
of the dependency school has been described as “Third Worldist” because of its
‘sympathy for the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, and for Third
meddling nature of the US foreign policy and the Vietnam War in particular, as well
sovereignty of states, and their general activities that were perceived detrimental to
The basis for their ideas was a reaction to modernization. They saw
164
Brazilians Fernando Cardoso, Enzo Faletto and Celso Furtado, Colombian Orlando Fals
Borda, Mexican Rodolfo Stavenhagen as well as Paul Baran and Pail Sweezy from the
United States and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America headed by
the Chilean Raúl Prebisch represented the ‘roots’ of the dependency school. Rist, History of
Development, p. 109.
165
For instance, Samir Amin in Africa and André Gunder Frank, Pierre Jalée, Dieter
Senghass and Johan Galtung in Europe. Ibid. p. 109.
166
Ibid.
167
Ibid., p. 110.
89
structured international network where every single state had its place. Their
earliest and most important scholars who shaped the modernization school after the
Second World War, as they see colonialism being ‘synonymous with things falling
apart’.168
The Latin American dependistas had a clear vision about the relationship
between the wealthy Western states and the Third World, or in their terms the center
and the periphery. For them, the concept of free trade only benefited the rich states
while the poor ones suffered from unequal exchange169 due to the structural
have allowed the poorer states to specialize in something that they had a comparative
dependistas, however, saw that this system did not benefit these states, and as a
result the developed world dominated its developing counterpart. Therefore, these
models and construct regional economic alliances in order to break out of the cycle
of exploitation.
Limitations
There are many differences between the viewpoints of scholars in the dependency
school, therefore I will discuss the general limitations of some of the underlying
ideas that are shared by its various members. Overall, the picture that emerges from
168
Ibid.
169
The concept of unequal exchange is explained thusly: the states in the periphery ‘must
pay more and more for what [they] get in the centre, where there are regular wage increases’
because the periphery states are unable to match them. Ibid., p.117
90
these ideas is one of continual domination of the periphery by the center. However,
like with modernization theory, there are numerous problems with accepting the
certain way. Both these theories presuppose dominance and primacy of the
other states should aspire to, and it is therefore praised. In dependency theory,
however, it is also assumed that the Western world dominates the underdeveloped
one, even though this primacy is derided. Some scholars in the field do allow for the
and convert the peripheral countries into passive victims of the expanding capitalist
system’.170
Applying the dependency theory to Asante, for instance, would mean that the
Europeans had to dominate the Asante state through trade before the Scramble,
because they are judged to being “more developed” at the time. However as I have
previously mentioned, at the beginning Europeans were not even the main trading
partners, it was the Wangara who assumed that role. Additionally, it was the
Portuguese governor who complained that trade with Asante was slipping away from
them and derided the lack of goods the Portuguese had to offer, not the other way
around.
similar. Both of them assume that the “natural” way, whether it is the natural
progress towards the Western ideal for modernization scholars or natural course of
170
Ibid., p. 119.
91
development of the periphery states that is interrupted by the centre states for their
dependency counterparts, is the single and ultimate path to a better future. They both
individuals or states stop “interfering” with it. Moreover the latter theory ‘did not
challenge the basic presuppositions of that system, which come down to the idea that
where dependency theory clashes with the arguments put forward in this paper.
Using traditional methods for state building in Africa presupposes the ultimate goal
is the emergence of a different kind of state (as opposed to the Western model). The
relationships between its fundamental institutions and the relationship between the
state and the people would be ultimately different even though it may have similar
negotiating techniques on the surface, but at its core it is a system that promotes
central states draw most of their resources from the periphery, then they themselves
are dependent on the periphery. ‘In the end, we can probably say that all today’s
“developed” countries … were themselves once dependent’ which then means that
all the states in the periphery should be able, in the future, to ascend to the central
impossible to identify, because most countries, perhaps with the exception of large
and relatively self-sufficient ones such as United States or Russia, would be unable
171
Ibid., pp. 120-121.
172
Ibid., p. 120.
92
to survive without any foreign trade or technology exchanges.173 These two points
center and periphery as the key to the growth of the industrial state in the post-World
War II period. This is also a questionable assertion since it is difficult to imagine that
all of this growth can be directly linked with exploitation of the relatively
after all’ as, for instance, from 1945 to the mid-1960s ‘the economic growth of
industrial countries owed very little to international trade (which anyway took place
asserted that France “draws” only four percent of its annual growth from the Third
World.175
One of the arguments in this paper is that Europeans did not define post-
colonial Africa; instead they represented one of the forces that made Africa what it is
experiences rather than the colonial era in order to understand the continent properly
(although both should be adequately studied). On the other hand, the dependency
line of thinking points to the primacy of the center, therefore limiting the inherent
power of the periphery. They define the states in the periphery along Western lines
and using Western economic ideas such as free market, the nature of international
trade and comparative advantage. While these systems do have their benefits in
173
Ibid., p. 119.
174
Ibid.
175
Alian Lipietz, Mirages et miracles: Problèmes de l’industrialisation dans le tiers monde
(Paris 1985) in Ibid., p. 119.
93
homogenize individual states up to the point where it may seem they are stripped off
of all agency.176 In this paper, however, two African states are considered in and of
themselves and the results show that this type of analysis is worth pursuing in order
to further understand African state building and maintenance and deal with any
4.4 Conclusion
My two aims in this paper were to strengthen the case for the existence of states in
pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa and to look at state formation in the past in order to
illuminate the causes of, and find possible solutions to, modern problems. I believe
that after examining the two case studies, it is clear that both Buganda and Asante
were not loosely defined political entities but states in their own right. The complex
nature of the path that both states have followed in order to form only reaffirms this
point.
In addition, the last chapter provided ample evidence that a trend of using
tradition and the past as ways to improve state maintenance in Africa has been
observed recently. Moreover, other fields have also been using similar conceptual
The narrative in both case studies has also shown that understanding how exactly
African states formed in the pre-colonial period can provide important information
176
I am aware that my argument in itself may appear to homogenize all African states,
however this is only a result of the limited scope of the paper and is intended to show that
African states all have certain similarities as opposed to the Western model of the state. The
point is that sub-Saharan African states are different, and whether there are significant
differences between these states themselves is not in the scope of the paper.
94
about the roots of modern problems as well as unconventional (by Western
It may not have escaped the reader that I barely mentioned the colonial
period in this paper. This is a conscious attempt at moving away from the
chapter, my view is that the colonial period was simply another chapter in the
continuous history of the continent. While it is evident that this particular chapter
was one of great turbulence and is in general derided by both Africanists and the
majority of Western academics, I believe that the attention that is usually given to
Overall, the motivation for this paper represented an attempt to study African
in the West, in my opinion this way of examining African history is the only one that
yields valuable results. Africanist academics have long prescribed to this view, but it
still has not completely penetrated the wider scholarly community, hence the
continuous assertions about the benefits of this perception throughout the paper.
95
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secondary sources, as indicated in the footnotes)
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Roscoe, John, The Baganda: An Account of Their Native Customs and Beliefs (1911;
reprint, New York 1966).
Organization of African Unity, ‘Charter of the O.A.U.’ in Ian Brownlie (ed), Basic
Documents on African Affairs (Oxford 1971).
Kagwa, Apolo and Roscoe, John, Enquiry into Native Land Tenure in the Uganda
Protectorate (1906).
96
In Wilks, Ivor, ‘Ashanti Government’ in Daryll Forde and P.M. Kaberry (ed), West
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