City-State Culture on the Gold Coast: the Fante City-State Federation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

City-State Culture on the Gold Coast: The Fante City-State Federation in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries Ray A. Ke a “Of several towns one must dominate the others.” (19th century Akan proverb) Introduction federation. In 1698 the brafo of Abora replaced the The present study offers a brief discussion of the brafo of Mankessim as the political-military leader of Fante city-state system of the seventeenth and eigh Fante. It was under this leadership, in the first half of teenth centuries. At the time, it was the richest and the 18th century, that Fante armies embarked on a most powerful polity (called mfantseman in the Fante policy of territorial expansion and conquest.3 Territo language) on the Gold Coast (modem southern rial conquests coincided with the expansion of Fante Ghana).1 Organizationally, the polity was a federation commercial exchange. The early and later history of of allied and rival city-states under the actual and Fante was very much tied up with the history of long ostensible leadership of the supreme Brafo (“general”; distance trading networks. “principal military commander”) of Mankessim. Viewed from the perspective of an Atlantic trading Established probably in the 15th century as an auto system two major stages in Fante history can be nomous urban settlement by migrants from the proposed: interior, Mankessim served as the political capital of the migrants who were (later) known collectively as 1. The period of the Atlantic gold trade (late 15th - late the Borbor Fante. According to mid-18th century oral 17th centuries) and the “cult” of the abirempon traditions, the Borbor Fante were migrants from (Akan, sing, obirempon, a wealthy, powerful per “Arcania”, a territory located in the Pra-Ofin basin. son; a “big man”): territorially competitive city- The southward movement from “Arcania” most likely states (abiremponàoxn) dominated by abirempon', occurred over a period of time during the 14th and 15th 2. The period of Atlantic slaving (late 17th-18th cen centuries.2 The migrants probably consisted of mer turies) and the “cult” of the awurafram (“masters of chants, mercenaries, priests, and their armed retainers, firepower”; sing., owurafram, “a military leader”; servants, and slaves. Twentieth century Borbor Fante “a military hero”) gives way to a political system in traditions indicate that the migrants were divided into which the Brafo has become the presiding priest of five autonomous divisions, each of which occupied a the “national” oracular shrine, Nananom Mpow.4 section or quarter (brori) of the town. The leaders (or abrafo) of the three largest divisions, feeling too In the earlier period Fante city-state society was a crowded, left Mankessim and spread out to take up major exporter of gold; in another it was a major land and to found towns and form states in other parts exporter of enslaved labor. The Atlantic trade effected of the coastal area. The leaders of other divisions fol many and continuous changes inside the society, lowed. The newly founded states were organized changes that reveal complex relationships between around a dominant town {ornan, plural aman). The political economy, ideology, social structure, and city-states included Kwamankese, Abora (Abura), political organization. The various Fante towns were Ekumfi, Anomabo, Anyan, Nkusukum, and Esiam the locus of an articulation between two forms of among others. The movement out of Mankessim social wealth accumulation and distribution: (1) rev seems to have begun in the 1660s or 1670s and to enues (“political wealth”), based on systems of sur have continued into the early decades of the 18th cen plus extraction and mechanisms of appropriation, and tury. The abrafo conquered neighboring polities to the (2) trading and money-lending capital (“mercantile north and west and incorporated them into the Fante wealth”), based on marketing networks and the opera- 520 Ray A. Kea tions of brokers and merchants.5 The characteristic and the greater Gold Coast regional city-state system features of the 17th and 18th century Fante urban as a trans-local phenomenon. However, it usefully system were embedded in fundamental relations of postulates that there were different kinds of “rurality” production and in the historical development of a geo in West Africa and that these were generated in “fields graphical and social division of labor in the greater of power” produced by dominant urban marketing Gold Coast region. These features included the fol centers. The town is defined explicitly as a center of lowing: (1) a spatially concentrated population of trading and money-lending capital, as a place of some size settled in permanent dwellings; (2) multi exchange and credit, and as a dominant center in rela functionality and organizational specialization - eco tion to a structurally dependent agrarian hinterland of nomic, religious, political-administrative, social, and indebted peasants and unfree laborers. What is military; (3) local and long-distance trade in necessi implicit here is that the town is autonomous. In this ties and luxuries; and (4) dependent settlements scenario “town” and “country” in West Africa formed within the immediate hinterland.6 interacting parts of a single set of structural processes. The social production of this difference occurred in a continuous shared space, traversed by economic and The Greater Gold Coast Regional political relations of inequality. Historical movement City-State System and change were embedded in a social-spatial division Structurally speaking, the Fante city-state formation of labor that generated a structured opposition. “Out was part of a regional city-state culture and system, side” of this formation were “deep” rural systems, the origins of which would seem to date to the second presumably dominated by a redistributive political half of the first millennium C.E. The establishment economy and by political-administrative towns inhab and historical development of the Fante federation can ited by non-mercantile elite groups. These systems only be properly understood within this wider context. had their own intersecting and rival networks, and the One useful point of departure can be found in a networks reflected and shaped the urban spaces that recent study of the historical geography of West produced them. They determined collective identities, Africa. Two geographers propose, within a general cultural idioms, various aesthetic phenomena, polit ized “pre-colonial” time frame, an analytical model ical issues, and practices of representation.8 that delineates and defines a specific kind of regional The argument of historical geography is that the system and spatial organization in much of West interaction between urban market centers and “deep Africa. In this model the distinction between “town” rural” settlements constituted the social dynamic that and “country” is re-formulated: organized West African regional space. On the one hand, there were expanding urban commercial centers “It would be more exact to speak of the distinction with dependent hinterlands. On the other hand, there between ‘market centers’, together with their were (expanding?) rural farming communities where immediate hinterlands of farms of indebted peas the circuit of trading capital was relatively limited and ants and plantations worked by servile labor, and credit and debt bondage were negligible or non ‘deep rural’ farming communities where indebted existent. ness to urban merchants and money lenders is rela In his account of urbanization in “pre-colonial” tively limited. Ghana, the archaeologist James Anquandah offers Merchants expand trading networks through the a point of entry into the conditions that made the extension of credit. Through accepting advances of formation of towns a possibility: goods or money on traders’ terms, rural producers are bound to particular merchants, and to supplying “The first half of the second millennium A.D. wit commodities at fixed prices. Windfall profits from nessed a phase of expansion in metal technology, in local shortages accrue to merchants not producers. subsistence and cash economies, and in urbaniza Such profits are not dependent on the existence of a tion and state formation .... The period A.D. 1000 to recognized currency. Debts may be contracted in 1400 seems to have witnessed the emergence of the kind and paid off in kind or labor service.”7 earliest towns and principalities .... In most parts of Akanland, the period A.D. 1500 to 1800 was the This model avoids the use of the term “city-state”, high-water mark of urbanization and state forma nevertheless it provides one way of understanding the tion.”9 Fante city-state as a locally produced phenomenon City-State Culture on the Gold Coast 521 Fig. 1. Map of the Gold Coast from a ca. 1740 navigational chart. Towns in the Fante Federation are underlined. Abra = Abora, Annemabo = Anomabo, Cormantine = Kormantse. The processes and activities described by Anquandah was the basis for long-distance trade and the emer represent different modes of resource utilization and gence of professional merchants; different strategies to control resources as well as par 3. the rapid expansion of the gold extractive industry ticular modes of surplus appropriation and capital in the central forest districts; accumulation. With some modification, a two “stage” 4. the emergence of craft, military, and merchant historical perspective (1000-1400 and 1500-1800) can associations or “guilds”; and provide a chronology of regional city-state develop 5. the large scale employment of bonded or servile ment. Recent archaeological research requires that the labor imported into the area via extensive trading dates for the appearance of the “earliest towns” be networks and employed in settlement re-organ- pushed back to the 9th and 10th centuries. (See below) ization and land clearance in the central forest Period one (9th-15th century) featured the founding districts (i.e., the Pra-Ofin basin). of towns and centralized political formation (city- states; principalities) and economic and social expan Until the end of the 17th century the “pivot” of the sion.

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