Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition
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Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision Making in the Age of Abolition
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Overview
In this groundbreaking book, Sandra E. Greene explores the lives of three prominent West African slave owners during the age of abolition. These first-published biographies reveal personal and political accomplishments and concerns, economic interests, religious beliefs, and responses to colonial rule in an attempt to understand why the subjects reacted to the demise of slavery as they did. Greene emphasizes the notion that the decisions made by these individuals were deeply influenced by their personalities, desires to protect their economic and social status, and their insecurities and sympathies for wives, friends, and other associates. Knowing why these individuals and so many others in West Africa made the decisions they did, Greene contends, is critical to understanding how and why the institution of indigenous slavery continues to influence social relations in West Africa to this day.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253026026 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/22/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 138 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Sandra E. Greene is the Stephen '59 and Madeline '60 Professor of African History at Cornell University. She is author of Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter (IUP) and West African Narratives of Slavery (IUP).
Read an Excerpt
Slave Owners of West Africa
Decision Making in the Age of Abolition
By Sandra E. Greene
Indiana University Press
Copyright © 2017 Sandra E. GreeneAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-02602-6
CHAPTER 1
Amegashie Afeku of Keta
Priest, Political Advisor, Businessman, Slave Owner
[There are] certain character traits I have observed in the Amegashie family, especially on the male side! My own grandfather and an uncle were also of the belligerent breed.
— William Sohne
This statement by William Sohne, a great-grandson of Amegashie Afeku, offers a particular perspective on the character of Amegashie Afeku. It is one that focuses on his legacy as a parent. According to Sohne, Amegashie demonstrated and passed down to some of his offspring such a high degree of assertive stubbornness that it could be quite off-putting. Other perspectives about Amegashie come from documents written by German missionaries (who operated in the area in the late nineteenth century) when Amegashie was at the height of his reputation as priest, political advisor, businessman, and slave owner. They, too, found him very difficult, as did the British colonial officers who had the responsibility of overseeing the town of Keta where Amegashie lived and worked most of his life. Virtually everyone seems to agree, whether the assessment comes from the vantage point of a twenty-first-century descendant or from late nineteenth-century contemporaries. What did he do to deserve such a long-standing negative reputation?
Amegashie came of age in the mid-to-late nineteenth century when significant changes were occurring in West Africa. The establishment of Sierra Leone in 1787 and the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807 brought to the region a radically different understanding of the ethics and economics of the centuries-old institutions of slavery and the enslaved. These new understandings, championed largely by Europeans and Western-trained African missionaries, challenged the notion that the West African export trade in human beings to the Americas was an unfortunate necessity, and that the mildness of slavery in Africa distinguished it from slavery in the West. Abolitionists promoted their ideas through word and deed, and forced others to at least listen to them because of their association with the British colonial government. West Africa's political and economic leaders (whose power rested in part on their large holdings of enslaved women, men, and children) were not receptive to these new ideas. Most, in fact, were quite hostile. Slave masters voiced strong objections to the abolition of slavery. They protested to colonial officials, arguing that it would lead to their impoverishment. They worked with colonial administrators (many of whom had their own motives) to minimize the impact of the abolition on local communities. In time, most opted to adapt to the changed political circumstances. Many simply incorporated their slaves into their extended families. Others encouraged their slaves to redeem themselves so they could at least obtain minimal compensation for their losses. Still others actively resisted abolition. Amegashie Afeku was among this last group. He, and others, moved their slaves into areas where European colonial authorities had not yet asserted their authority. They then demanded more labor while providing slaves with minimal food and time to work in their own fields. They even resorted to violence to prevent their slaves from leaving. Amegashie did all this. It is these actions that explain, in part, his reputation for being difficult.
In 1876, just two years after Britain abolished slavery on the Gold Coast, Amegashie was tried and convicted of ordering the capture and execution of two slaves (not even his own) who he thought were attempting to leave their masters to return to their original homes. Twice thereafter, in 1886 and 1889, he was again tried and convicted by the British colonial government, this time for slave dealing. Although he offered no explanation for his actions at these trials, his testimony indicates that he remained a firm believer in the institution of slavery and had no intention of accepting the moral arguments against the involuntary holding of human labor. What led to his taking such a strong stance? Yes, his political, social and economic status was threatened by abolition. And, yes, he was clearly willing to use violence in support of his views. But what drove him to do so? Was it only a certain personality trait, as suggested by Sohne? Or was there something else? To what extent did he oppose British policies simply because they were part of the imposition of a larger imperial agenda? Or did his life experiences also contribute to his decision to strongly resist both abolition and colonial rule when so many others simply adjusted in ways that allowed them to maintain their political, economic, and social status? This chapter seeks to answer these questions. It does so by exploring the life of one individual, Amegashie Afeku, whose biography reveals a great deal about the motivations and emotions of others who took the same stance for their own reasons, but about whom we know so little.
Amegashie Afeku's Rise
Oral traditions and family histories indicate that Amegashie Afeku was born sometime in the early nineteenth century. Some say he was born and raised in Keta. But others say, more plausibly, he was from Dzelukofe where his father and mother lived.
At the time of his birth, Keta was a fairly sleepy community. This was the case even though in previous decades it once hosted a diverse group of West Africans, Europeans, and Euro-African traders whose economic activities had long connected the area to the Atlantic world. In the late seventeenth century Keta was described as a thriving multi-cultural community where both Ewe, the local language, and Adangbe — spoken in the areas immediately west of the Volta River — was regularly heard. In subsequent years, others from Akan-speaking communities and from towns and villages in the Anexo area east of Keta also settled in the district to govern or for purposes of trade and marriage. By the early eighteenth century Denmark claimed Keta and the surrounding coastline as its exclusive trading territory and in 1784, built a fort in the town, manned with both Danish and Danish African servants to defend its business interests. By the late eighteenth century, Keta was Denmark's third largest exporter of slaves on the Gold Coast and the upper Slave Coast. This trade, in turn, had encouraged greater economic activity within the Anlo polity as a whole (of which Keta was a part) and in Keta, in particular. Trade relations expanded to include significant economic relations between the Anlo villages and other towns on the Atlantic littoral as well as with distant villages in the interior. Opportunities for wealth accumulation within Keta grew accordingly. In 1803, however, Denmark officially abolished the slave trade. The result? Much of the economic activity in the town by the time of Amegashie Afeku's birth had shifted to Anlo towns west of Keta where slave traders could operate more freely out of the purview of the Danes. Trade in Keta did not cease totally, however. It simply declined. A lethal blow to the town's fortunes came in 1847. In that year, a dispute erupted between the Danish officers in the fort and some local residents over payment for the supplies the latter had sold to the Danes for the repair of their fort. Arguments led to a local boycott of the fort; negotiations broke down and violence erupted. Denmark then bombarded the town and destroyed it. Its residents fled. Three years after the bombardment, in 1850, Denmark sold all its claimed possessions in West Africa — including the Keta fort — to Great Britain. The town's fortunes continued to languish, however, through 1852. At that time, there were still very few who had returned to Keta. In fact, those who lived in the town occupied just "four or five huts [that] stood beside the fort." No one else was there. Even those occupants were not locals. Rather, they consisted of "a single British trader doing slow business in palm oil ... and a few mulattoes," who had affiliated themselves with either the departed Danish or the current British occupants of the fort.
In 1853, in an effort to reinvigorate the town economically, the British commandant of the fort, Thomas Evans, devised "a grand plan for the [largely empty locality]." He gave a group of Bremen-based German missionaries (the Norddeutschen Missionsgesellschaft, NDMG) two blocks of the town for their own use. In time, the town began to thrive again. In about 1855 the NDMG took control of a warehouse constructed by Commandant Evans to house stocks of European commodities and local produce. In 1857 J. C. Vietor, a merchant in Bremen affiliated with the mission, found the business opportunities created by the British presence in Keta to be so great that a ship he had sent to Brazil to engage in trade was able to load a cargo of goods at its stop in Keta sufficient in quantity that the ship dropped the Brazil leg of the trip and immediately returned to Bremen to sell their purchases. This, in turn, led Vietor to begin sending ships to Keta alone three times a year. Local merchants who had previously been selling their goods, whether slaves, palm oil, or cotton to buyers at other ports in the area, now began to send their agricultural produce — largely palm oil and some cotton — for sale to Keta. It was because of this increasing economic activity that Keta, slowly but surely, increased in population and became again a thriving trade town.
As a resident of Dzelukofe and a trader himself, Amegashie must have been aware of these developments. This is probably what prompted him, in part, to move to Keta in 1859 after Keta's economic fortunes had begun to improve. On relocating to the town, Amegashie did not take long before contacting the seemingly prosperous missionaries. He approached them and demanded they recognize his right to a portion of the land that he claimed had been appropriated by the British and given to the mission. The land in question, according to Amegashie, contained his ancestors' remains. By successfully persuading both the German missionaries and the British to recognize his claim, he was able to establish a base for himself in Keta.
During his early years in the town, Amegashie focused largely on religious matters. His grandfather, Togbi Lagbo, had been a priest associated with the Anlo war god, Nyigbla, but in his youth at Dzelukofe, Amegashie had not immediately followed in his grandfather's footsteps. Instead, he had begun trading in Ave-Dakpa, a town some fifty kilometers north of the Keta coast. It was in that town one day, while on a business trip, that he became ill. His sickness must have defied all attempts at a cure, for eventually his poor health was attributed to a god that was using the illness to call Amegashie to recognize its authority over his well-being. In such cases, an individual and/or his family would consult a diviner to determine which god was causing the illness. Once the deity was identified, that person — if healed after the diagnosis — was expected to become that god's devotee. According to family memory, Nyigbla was the deity that had caused Amegashie's illness. As the grandson of a Nyigbla priest, however, Amegashie became not just a worshipper of the god, but was inducted into the Nyigbla religious order as one of its priests.
In moving to Keta, Amegashie maintained his interests in trade, but he also found the town to be an ideal location to establish a religious base, as indicated in the following German missionary report:
In about 1859 [Amegashie] settled in the near vicinity of the mission's farm. The first thing through which he drew attention to himself was that he claimed a piece of land that belonged to the mission because, as he stated, his ancestors were buried there. As it was only a small strip that bordered on his farm, and it was difficult at that time to get justice administered through the heathen national authority, his demand was granted. ...
He then launched into his activity as priest, which consisted of serving advice to all kinds of people who came from far and near with their different concerns. He set himself up as a rainmaker among other things. In those years, there was little rain, and the lagoon was completely dry. There, he would assemble from time to time his followers, among whom were a number of elderly women. ... One heard him at such assemblies often speaking loudly and calling his god, to which the women responded in chorus. ...
One day [in 1860] it occurred to Amegashie to enact a law that no one may fire a gun during a certain time, as the shooting, in his opinion, held back the rain. His nearest neighbor, who at that time was the missionary Plessing ... considered this law not to be binding on himself, and at the next occasion he violated it. ... Plessing happened upon a thief in the mission's garden, whom he scared off with a blast from his shotgun. ... Amegashie came with great anger to the mission house and called Brother Plessing to account for his actions. A dispute arose during which the priest took a gun and hit the missionary with it, causing a wound which the latter had to plaster for a couple of weeks. ... The fetish priest, however, had not had enough. He returned to the missionary's yard in the afternoon with a gang, which tore down the freshly built walls; trampled upon the graves of departed missionaries when the loam was still wet; cut down beautiful palm and shade trees which the missionaries had painstakingly planted in the garden ... filled in the well which the missionaries had dug in the yard and stole the hoist which [one of the missionaries] had carefully installed. This was still not enough. ... The wild heathens then began to throw clumps of dirt and stones at our windows and to hammer and bang at them with their tools, making us believe that they were going to make their way in and raid our house. Thankfully, it never got that far. The windows and the doors withstood the attack and eventually the attackers slowly began to leave, letting silence fall over the missionary station. The old heathen was not a pleasant neighbor.
This account dates and describes Amegashie's move to Keta. It also recounts the rather difficult relations that first developed between Amegashie and the missionaries. In time, however, he became one of the missionaries' greatest supporters.
Amegashie's change of heart had everything to do with his ability to take advantage of the changing demographic and economic situation in Keta. By the 1860s, the Bremen Mission's economic success had encouraged other Europeans, Euro-Africans, and African entrepreneurs to pour into the town. The population swelled as did its prosperity. Amegashie and other local traders were able to purchase a wider range of goods from the many different European firms that had established themselves in the town. Still, fortunes from the sale of these commodities in the interior rose and fell. Many found themselves plunging deeply into debt when they were unable to find buyers. Amegashie, however, was able to insulate himself from the vicissitudes of the market by persuading the political authorities in the Anlo capital of Anloga to allow him to act as their agent in Keta. He collected tolls from every European trader operating in the town including those associated with the Bremen Mission, and according to oral traditions, he kept quite a few of the proceeds for himself. In this way, by 1865 he was able to amass quite a fortune. He married and supported six wives and fourteen children. Over time, he was also able to acquire an undetermined but significant number of enslaved men, women, and children. These were all important symbols of wealth and status in nineteenth-century Anlo.
To solidify and maintain this status, Amegashie did even more. He made sure to connect himself through the marriage of his children to some of the most wealthy merchant families in Anlo society. He also became a regular and active participant in the state council sessions that were held in the Anlo capital of Anloga. By 1871, in fact, some twelve years after he had moved to Keta, he had become both a confidant of the Anlo political and religious leader, the awoamefia, and a self-appointed enforcer of the hierarchical protocols that governed these sessions. When he thought certain individuals did not show enough respect for their superiors, he was not one to hold his tongue. In about May of 1871, for example, a missionary described what happened at one such state council session:
The king [Awoamefia Letsa Gbagba] ... wrapped himself in a piece of brown samite and came to the assembly, followed by Amegashi, the fetish priest and [chief] of Keta. They each had the priestly hat on their heads and a new pipe from Koeln [Cologne] in their mouths, from which they blew thick clouds of smoke. Amegashi announced the king and welcomed the assembly. Suddenly he saw John Tay, a native merchant, sit down on a chair. Amegashi now rose [and said]: "When the king of the land appears in an assembly, all must sit on the bare ground, even the elders. That is the law! Only he who is a king, all Europeans, people from Sierra Leone and those who have been baptized are excepted. They may sit on chairs. The one person [here] who has sat on a chair and who is not European, nor one of the Sierra Leone people, nor baptized, nor a king, he should have seated himself on the ground." John Tay refused. But then Amegashi began to alter his gestures, to rant and rave as though possessed, and John Tay had to leave to prevent it from escalating into a fight.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Slave Owners of West Africa by Sandra E. Greene. Copyright © 2017 Sandra E. Greene. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Amegashie Afeku of Keta: Priest and Political Advisor, Businessman and Slave Owner
2. Nyaho Tamakloe of Anlo: Of Chieftaincy and Slavery, of Politics and the Personal
3. Noah Yawo of Ho-Kpenoe: The Faith Journey of a Slave Owner
4. Concluding Thoughts
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
"The fact that Sandra E. Greene has uncovered so much verifiable information about these three West African men from the late 19th century is a miracle of archival and oral tradition research. It is truly profound and buttressed by an ethical and methodological framework that reflects the best in historical practice."
The fact that Sandra E. Greene has uncovered so much verifiable information about these three West African men from the late 19th century is a miracle of archival and oral tradition research. It is truly profound and buttressed by an ethical and methodological framework that reflects the best in historical practice.
Sandra E. Greene has provided a valuable service by painstakingly excavating the life stories of the three slaveholders featured in this book. They give flesh to key processes in the social history of West Africa: namely, the imposition of European colonialism, the formal abolition of slavery, and the influence of Christian missionaries.
The fact that Sandra E. Greene has uncovered so much verifiable information about these three West African men from the late 19th century is a miracle of archival and oral tradition research. It is truly profound and buttressed by an ethical and methodological framework that reflects the best in historical practice.
Sandra E. Greene has provided a valuable service by painstakingly excavating the life stories of the three slaveholders featured in this book. They give flesh to key processes in the social history of West Africa: namely, the imposition of European colonialism, the formal abolition of slavery, and the influence of Christian missionaries.