BRAR BRAR 6,11 1- MISSION FROM CAPE COAST CASTLE TO ASHANTEE MISSION FROM CAPE COAST CASTLE TO ASHANTEE T. EDWARD BOWDICH THIRD EDITION Edited, with Notes W.E. and an Introduction by F WARD FRANK CASS & CO. LTD. 1966 First published by John Murray of Albemarle Street in 1819 This present edition published by Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., 10 Woburn Walk, London WCI First Edition 1824 Second Edition 1873 Third Edition 1966 /2-i> Printed in Belgium by Jos, Adam, Brussels E.C.M. PREFACE THIS book is a reprint of Bowdich's first edition of 1819, complete except for the omission of the frontispiece map and four of the plates. The map is replaced by a modern map of the path from Cape Coast to Kumasi, which should make Bowdich's journey easier to follow. All of Bowdich's plates in the 1819 edition were in colour; only the biggest of them is here reproduced in colour, the rest in black and white. '" Bowdich's narrative makes no pretence at impartiality, and I have tried to fill in the background and where necessary give the other side of the story, by quoting from papers preserved in the Public Record Office in London. I have added notes freely by way of comment on Bowdich's account of the mission, and much less freely to the end of his section on the history of Ashanti. I have not thought it necessary to 2: comment on the later sections of the book. I have to thank the staff of the Public Record Office for their help and guidance among the papers of the period. The transcripts of Crowncopyright records in the Public Record Office appear by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. W.E.F.W. 1965 CONTENTS OF THE THIRD EDITION PrefacetotheThirdEdition 5 NewIntroductionbyW.E.F.Ward 9 Notes to the Third Edition 61 Text of the First Edition i INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION by W. E. F WARD INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION THOMAS EDWARD BOWDICH was born in Bristol on 20 June 1791. He was educated in that city, and showed himself a man of a lively mind, interested in geography and natural history and all branches of science. We are told that he was also noted at school for his skill in horsemanship: an accomplishment which it seems from p. 67 he found useful in Kumasi. In 1813 he married Sarah Wallis. His uncle, John Hope Smith, was a very senior officer in the service of the African Company, and procured him a writership in the Company's service. His application was approved in October 1814, but it was nearly a year before he received his commission. He was very angry at this delay, and still angrier when he found that he would not be allowed to take his wife out with him on the ship, but his protests were unavailing, and he sailed alone. We have no record of the date of his sailing or his arrival at Cape Coast. He says himself that he stayed long enough on the coast to prove that his conduct as an officer deserved better treatment; and in May 1816 he returned on leave to England. He must have passed his wife on the high seas, for she arrived at Cape Coast on 6 September. The writer of the very laudatory article in the Dictionary of National Biography says that the Company appointed him to lead the mission to Ashanti, but that the Council at Cape Coast thought him too young for such a responsibility and appointed Frederick James to the command. It seems improbable that the Company would appoint such a very junior officer to such a difficult and responsible position as the INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION command of the very first embassy it had ever sent into the interior; even though it had just appointed his uncle to be Governor in Chief at Cape Coast. The wording of the despatch which Bowdich prints on page 5 seems to leave the choice entirely to the Governor, though he chose four men instead of the three which the Committee suggested. Bowdich left Cape Coast with the mission as scientific officer, but during its stay at Kumasi he took charge of it and secured the recall of his chief, Frederick James. His own comment is, "What the hopes of the mission were, at the moment I performed an act of duty in rescuing it, may be seen even from Mr. James's own confession in his public despatch, although the insults and outrages his imbecility had brought upon us were concealed." After the mission to Ashanti, Bowdich returned to England, and quarrelled violently with the African Committee for what he considered its parsimony. He published a pamphlet, The African Committee, which the D.N.B. says "made such an exposure of the management of their possessions that the Government was compelled to take them into its own hands." This is giving Bowdich too much credit. A parliamentary committee had already reported in 1817 that although the Company should continue to administer the Gold Coast settlements, it should do so under a Governor appointed by the Crown. A Bill to this effect was actually introduced in 1819, but was dropped, and replaced by a more radical Act, under which the Company was altogether abolished and its settlements vested in the Crown. Nor is Bowdich's pamphlet nearly as damaging as the D.N.B. suggests. The copy in the Colonial Office library is interleaved with copious annotations by Simon Cock. Simon Cock was the secretary of the African Committee in the time of Bowdich and of Dupuis. Bowdich himself gives him a good character: he says that he has always found Cock "anxiously disposed to be just, and to reform a service he knows to be degraded, as far as he may dare do so. Mr. Cock, to speak vulgarly, is placed between two fires, the Committee and their dependants; his disposition urges him to rescue the latter, but his interest commands him not to offend the former." The Public Record Office contains a good deal of Cock's routine INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION correspondence with the Colonial Office and the Treasury, and he appears always as a conscientious and efficient civil servant. Even without Cock's assistance, the modern reader will consider that Bowdich makes a very poor case. He asks that on -the strength of his service in the Ashanti mission, he should be appointed a member of the Council at Cape Coast, commander of the troops there, with the brevet rank of captain, with a salary of at least £500 a year paid in sterling in England (not in goods on the Coast, as was the usual practice), and with permission to publish accounts of the various scientific and exploring missions which he hopes to launch. The Committee naturally refused to promote him over the heads of so many officers to one of the five plums in the service; whereupon he turned to saying that a service so full of incompetence and corruption was not worth belonging to. Cock does not attempt to deny that the service is far from perfect; but, he says, " Bad as the service is, Mr. Bowdich would have gladly joined it; and the public would never have heard of his opinions and disgust of it, if the Committee had complied with his terms." As to the Committee's parsimony, Bowdich says that the least they should have given him was a gratuity of £500; whereas they gave him only £200, and he had to spend half of that on his homeward passage. Cock comments that "his coming home was his own affair "-that is, he was not nearly due for leave, but chose to come home early so as to publish his book; and moreover, he resigned the service. Nor, says Cock, does he mention another material fact: the Committee gave him "permission to remain in England to publish his book, and to use the public documents for that purpose. He got £500 for the work." Then, they offered to reinstate him in his rank and send him out again, but that was not good enough for what Cock justly calls "the arrogant temper and boundless vanity of Mr. Bowdich." In one place, Bowdich sinks very low. He prints a lengthy footnote attacking Mr. James, and quotes a passage from "the Voyage au Guinie, published in France some years ago." The gist of the passage is that there are opportunities for French commerce with the Dutch and English settlements on the Gold Coast; and the concluding sentence is, "J'ai ete t~moin d'un trait6 de vingt negrillons qui a ete fait entre le commandant du fort anglais INTRODUCTION TO THIRD EDITION James d'Akra, et le capitaine du navire l'Aimable Esther" On this, Cock makes a damaging comment: "The object of putting the word "James" in italics seems to be to convey the idea that the fort was commanded by Mr. James; and the suppression of the date of the work would lead to the conclusion that the contract for slaves was since the British slave trade was abolished. The fact is that the work alludes to an earlier period, and that the fort at Accra is called Fort James. The paragraph therefore can have no allusion to Mr. James." Indeed, if that was not what Bowdich meant to suggest, what did he mean? Bowdich in fact had not the temperament to be a member of a disciplined service, in which much of the work is necessarily routine, and in which regulations have to be observed and seniority cannot be entirely ignored.