Art and Architecture of Anomabo, Ghana: a Case Study in Cultural Flow
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Art and Architecture of Anomabo, Ghana: A Case Study in Cultural Flow Courtnay Micots In 1750, William Ansah Sesarakoo, a young Fante prince of Many pre-colonial African cities, such as the Edo city of Anomabo, Ghana, stepped off the British warship H.M.S. Benin in Nigeria, experienced similar urbanization, attracting Surprise triumphantly returning to his father’s city “magnifi- and combining cultures. The absorption of ideas and their cently equipped in a full-dress scarlet suit, with gold lace à translation into visual forms however, is not always evident la Bourgoyne, point d’Espagne hat, handsome white feather, in the historical documents or visible in the contemporary diamond solitaire buttons, etc.”1 This visual spectacle sparked setting. The art and architecture visible today in Anomabo the imagination of a people familiar over the past century can be analyzed through numerous surviving historical docu- with European traders and goods in their city. It also serves ments and an active contemporary art scene. It brings to the as a signpost marking the history and politics of the time fore the enduring influence of cultural and artistic practices period when French and English factions were attempting that developed during the pre-colonial period. Anomabo’s to dominate trade at Anomabo, considered the “best and historic cosmopolitanism continues to influence current art strongest place” along the Gold Coast in West Africa.2 forms evidencing the openness of artists to new influences, Today, Anomabo is a small coastal town without a port, motifs, experimentations, and cultural blending. The deliber- although Fort William remains open for tourists who rarely ate choices made by the artist and client become visible and visit. The town is now entirely populated by the Fante. Ru- are examples of what Tonye Victor Erekosima and Joanne ined buildings abound, some reused as schools or hostels, Bubolz Eicher have termed “cultural authentification.” This others waiting to fall down. The town is replete with global term is applicable to many Fante art forms and involves the images stemming from twenty-first century mass media. four stages described by the authors: selection, characteriza- Unlike the metropolis of Accra, Ghana’s capital, there are tion, incorporation and transformation. Selection refers to only two makeshift cinemas and just a few black-and-white the appropriation of a motif (or object) without alteration. television sets complete with rabbit-ear antennas. One must Characterization is the naming of the motif to make it better travel to another town to dial into the internet. understood within the culture. Incorporation involves the The historically-significant town of Anomabo, provides ownership of a motif by a specific group within the com- an example of long-term cultural contact, the flow of visual munity. Lastly, transformation is the creation of something forms and cultural ideas, and the resulting choices that new from this original motif. This is the stage where such a cultures, communities and artists make in appropriating, motif, or object, is most valued.4 transforming and recontextualizing visual forms in art and Scholars have studied visual forms in post-colonial Afri- architecture. It is worth stressing that these choices are can urban centers within large, contemporary environments consciously made for specific purposes, and not merely such as Dakar and Kinshasa and claim that current art forms evidence of influence. The coastal city of Anomabo, the are the result of colonial occupation and dominance. For primary commercial hub along the Gold Coast during the example, art historians Allen Roberts and Polly Roberts have late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, serves as an explored Sufi imagery of the saint Cheikh Amadou Bamba example of the impact of globalization, or the interconnec- in A Saint in the City5 and anthropologist Filip de Boeck has tions between countries and cultures as defined by James investigated apocalyptic imagery in his study Kinshasa: Tales Ferguson in Global Shadows.3 of the Invisible City.6 These artistic forms are ascribed to the 1 E.J.P. Brown, Gold Coast and Asianti Reader, bk. 2 (London: A. Brown 4 Tonye Victor Erekosima and Joanne Bubolz Eicher, “Kalabari Cut- & Sons, 1929), 112-115. Thread and Pulled-Thread Cloth,” African Arts 14 (2 February 1981): 50-51. 2 Willem Bosman, New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London: Printed for James Knapton. .and Dan, 1705), 56; and Wil- 5 Allen F. Roberts and Mary Nooter Roberts, A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts liam Ansah Sesarakoo, The Royal African: or, Memoirs of the Young of Urban Senegal (Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, Prince of Annamaboe, 2nd ed. (London: W. Reeve, 1750), 16. 2003). 3 James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order 6 Filip de Boeck and Marie-Francoise Plissart, Kinshasa: Tales of the (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 29. Invisible City (Ghent, Belgium: Ludion, 2004). ATHANOR XXVII COURTNAY MICOTS direct result of colonial dominance, whereas research in the interior—namely the Asante (a related Akan group) and Anomabo distinguishes between the urban center greatly Islamic Mande traders from the north as well as Fon traders influenced by pre-colonial commerce, as in Anomabo, and from the east. Merchants of the Royal African Company in the the urban center that rises from European political domina- eighteenth century came to the coast to make their fortunes. tion. Anomabo is a case study demonstrating that global They came from all over Great Britain, including Ireland. cultural flow and urban, international African cultures are Repatriated Brazilian slaves were brought to the Gold Coast not always the result of colonialism. at the end of the eighteenth century. Indian soldiers were In 1471 the region received its first European visitors, brought to the forts to serve. Some migrants built homes, the Portuguese, at Elmina, a small village located a mere shops and storage facilities in the port cities.10 17 miles west of Anomabo. According to informants, the These interactions, goods and buildings provided excit- palace of the local ruler, or omanhene, was constructed ing visual stimuli. Historical documents offer examples of the in Anomabo in 1641 by Fante builders (Figure 1). Scholar- clothing, goods and architecture that became part of the ship on coastal forts states that a Dutch lodge was built in Anomabo culture. By the eighteenth century, Anomabo was Anomabo in the early 1640s under the direction of Polish the largest trading center on the coast, yet today its small, mercenary Heindrick Caerlof.7 After the Dutch-Anglo war rural atmosphere and building ruins hardly convey its once ended in 1667, the British gained a foothold in Anomabo important stature. and began building Fort Charles in 1672. It seems likely that Post-colonial theory is currently used as a means to the omanhene took the Dutch lodge as his palace during this analyze African urban cities. Although many of the theories period. The structure itself was appropriated, or selected, put forth by Arjun Appadurai in Modernity at Large describe renamed the Omanhene’s Palace, incorporated via its royal post-colonial African cities, they can also be applied to the ownership, and transformed for Fante purposes into a site urban historical Anomabo and to a lesser degree to Anomabo of royal habitation and practices. today. Appadurai’s theories regarding “culturalism,” defined By 1730 Fort Charles was abandoned by the British, as a construct that cultural differences tend to take in the and the French moved into the fort for about two decades. era of mass mediation, migration, and globalization, can The British returned in 1753 to reestablish their station and be utilized to deconstruct historical urban Anomabo. This rebuilt the small Fort Charles into the fort known today as Fort “engagement with modernity”11 takes place prior to colonial William (Figure 2). The fort is almost square, with bastions at rule and illustrates the impact of cultural contact upon this each corner. Even though the original design did not include early commercial metropolis. It continues in Anomabo’s a prison,8 Anomabo quickly became the Gold Coast’s most on-going receptivity to cultural flows, as evidenced in the active slave-trading port. town’s vibrant visual culture today. By the late seventeenth century, alternating European According to Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch in The His- contact built the village of Anomabo into a prosperous mer- tory of African Cities, “the urban lifestyle transforms the habits chant town. It continued to thrive well into the eighteenth and mentalities” of city dwellers and those who are subject century, becoming the largest city on the coast with a popula- to the power of urban institutions and culture.12 Theories tion of some 15,000 by 1806.9 Europeans were not the only regarding urbanity are debated by scholars of differing fields influence upon the Anomabos. Traders from Europe, America and can be tested with the historical study of Anomabo. For and the Caribbean as well as the African interior brought example, in “Urban Design and Architecture in Precolonial goods and slaves to the coastal hub to exchange with gold, Africa,” Richard Hull defines the city as a center, a place guns, brandy, New England rum, Nigerian and Indian textiles, where both population and civilization are concentrated, European linens, Brazilian tobacco, Iberian ceramics, and a attracting and blending cultures and memories. A city variety of other goods. In addition, Anomabo came in contact becomes a site for cultural sharing and dissemination.13 on a daily basis with a wide variety of other peoples from Coquery-Vidrovitch adds that the city absorbs, integrates, 7 Kwesi J. Anquandah, Castles & Forts of Ghana (Paris: Atalante, 1999), August 1976): 389; and Rebecca Shumway, “Between the Castle and 10, 42.