AFRICAN DUAL IDENTITY (03)
A BRIEF ANALYTICAL HISTORY OF THE KROBO
AN EXCERPT FROM VEIT ARLT’S CHRISTIANITY, IMPERIALISM AND CULTURE
Krobo Mountain heap in the background to the right – The Klo Ancestral Home
It is striking to see what an important role culture and ‘tradition’ play in contemporary Ghana in negotiating change and initiating development.1 [1 Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD) 2001]. While the republic has been in existence for near half a century and has recently re-elected its president according to democratic practice, the ‘hereditary’ office of the chief, queenmother, or ritual performer has survived well into the twenty-first century.2 [2 Berry 2001; Boafo-Arthur 2003; Fayorsey and Amalo 2003; Ray 2001; Ray and LaBranche 2001; Ray and Eizlini 2004; Stoeltje 2003.] Many an outsider is tempted to see these ‘traditional leaders’, who are omnipresent with their abundance of colourful regalia, as archaic remnants of a timeless past.
The continuity of tradition and custom in a democratic environment appears to be an anachronism and might be expected to hinder radical change. Yet, the chieftaincy institution and the culture displayed during festivals and on other occasions are far from static. As this case study on the Krobo Region of South-eastern Ghana shows, this culture is at instances itself the product of radical change and modernising strategies. Tradition then serves as a resource for development, together with the very force that is generally believed to have destroyed it, namely missionary Christianity. The latter has thus itself become part of tradition.3 [3 Jenkins has observed that the assumed deep gulf between Christianity and tradition in contemporary southern Ghana does not stand scrutiny, although it results from an often all too real insistence on “a dichotomous view of Christianity and heathenism” by the erstwhile missionaries (2003: 214-216).]
The dissertation is concerned with a polity that experienced a dramatic expansion from the late eighteenth century on, when it embarked on the production of palm oil for the European market. The expansion and the orientation to the world outside represented a break with previous state building policies, which were marked by introversion. The political and cultural system had been geared to defence and to the integration of the heterogeneous groups that made up the community. The area of settlement was restricted to an isolated mountain and the farming too was spatially limited to the immediate surroundings. When leading entrepreneurs embarked on large scale cash-crop production and triggered a general thrust towards oil palm farming, the size of the territory increased within a few decades by a factor of a hundred or more. This growth demanded a new form and new structures of leadership, as well as the transformation of a strong culture that had resulted from the previous integrative policy.
It called for a more extroverted and dynamic form of leadership. This radical change was negotiated by those entrepreneurs who were most successful in the economic expansion. They tapped into various resources in order to improve their own position and to transform the political and spatial structures. Notably they called on missions, on colonial agents, and on neighbouring states.
On the one hand the study thus deals with culture and its transformation. On the other hand it looks at the spatial change that was both the driving force for the cultural transformation and the condition under which the latter took place. The time span under consideration covers the period when the Evangelical Basel Mission Society was active in Krobo (the 1830s up to 1918). This is also the period during which the most dramatic spatial processes occurred. New settlements emerged that developed into the new centres of society. They were to accommodate the needs of the expanding polity and hosted a new political culture. The mission was part of the latter. Yet, as will be detailed, it only had a temporary assignment and the entrepreneurs shifted their alliances from mission to colonial state and empire.
While the mission conceived of itself as of an agent of radical transformation, it struggled to keep pace with the developments taking place in Krobo. The causes are, amongst others, to be found in a reactionary attitude towards modernising processes and an idealization of a rural, self-reliant community.4 [4 Miller 1994; Jenkins 1980.] The emphasis on the agency of the Krobo entrepreneurs makes both mission and colonial state appear, at times, as being at the mercy of an African polity rather than being the dominant players in its history. Both were resources in negotiating the spatial expansion, as well as social and political transformation of the Krobo.
At the centre-stage of my study is the abolition of the historic centre of Krobo society by colonial government in 1892. Elsewhere this event has been taken (at least nominally) as an endpoint for a descriptive history of the Krobo.5 [5 Wilson 1991.] and in oral tradition it is considered to have set an end to the ‘good old times’. 1892 was indeed a remarkable year in the history of the Krobo. In January 1892 the prominent Manya Krobo paramount chief Konô Sakite died. In August of the same year, colonial government interfered for the first time substantially in Krobo affairs. It imposed the election of an educated chief and made its support of the latter conditional on the abolition of the settlements on Krobo Mountain and of the major rituals informing the yearly calendar. Thereby it criminalised the priestly elite that had formerly been in control of Krobo society, and which still retained substantial authority. Yet, the abolition was not a turning point.
As will be detailed in chapter two, it accelerated processes that were already going on. In the local historiography, the events following the expulsion are presented as mayhem, as a traumatic experience. At the same time the date is also considered to mark the beginning of the modern era of Krobo history. In contemporary cultural festivals the abolition is remembered as a forced removal imposed by the colonial government with the support of the mission, and is considered to have been the precondition for the advancement of ‘civilisation’ in Krobo society. This commemoration, however, obscures the agency of the Krobo, who initiated themselves the abandonment of the mountain settlements. Whereas most Christians today tend to construct a rift between their religion (or modernity) and Krobo culture thereby replicating missionary ideas, 6 [6 Steegstra 2004: 2-4; Jenkins 2003: 215-216.] chiefs stress the role the mission played in the history of the state.
Their own chieftaincy culture is largely the result of modernisation and missionary Christianity is part of it. Furthermore, while it is obvious that with the abolition the era when the mountain settlements had a central function for the coherence of the society came to a final end, the latter had been approaching for some time. The study thus starts with the contemporary commemoration of the abolition and then goes back in time explaining how Krobo Mountain and Krobo culture came to be regarded as obnoxious and obsolete. Ample room is given to the encounter of missionaries and colonial agents with the Krobo and their imagination of Krobo culture, leading to its ‘paganization’ and criminalization. While this perception centred on Krobo Mountain, the Krobo had for some time begun new settlements in the plains. These had emerged as sites of economic production, but they also hosted a new kind of leadership. Here it was that the mission was invited to open its station thereby backing the political ambitions of the new leaders.
While the missionaries conceived of these settlements as sites of a new Christian culture, they were also the sites where the chiefs enacted and shaped their new office and where new forms of popular culture were performed. Furthermore, the expansion of the farmlands continued and the greatest part of the population stayed away from the settlements in the plains for most of the year. The missionaries were trapped in their own regulations and tried in vain to force their converts to attend church service at Odumase. Only with a considerable delay did the mission change its policies and start to move with the Krobo farmers to ever more distant places. In order to gather their people at their respective seats of power and assert their hold over them, the chiefs invented new festivals based on the court culture of the Akan states. With time they also reintroduced the banned festivals.
The settlements in the plains became the site of encounter with delegates from neighbouring states and with colonial agents. This encounter and the corresponding ritual and procession was an important source of legitimacy for the Krobo chiefs and is reflected in their dress and insignia of office. As will be shown, especially the Manya Krobo state drew heavily on the colonial power in order to secure its political agenda.
As the Comaroffs and others have highlighted, the colonized influenced the manner in which colonizers acted upon them. Their reactions and resistances effectively limited the measure in which their worlds might be invaded. Yet they also experimented “enthusiastic[ally] … with things foreign”. And in the same way as European cultural forms took root on African ground, “African cultural forms insinuated themselves into the everyday routines, the aesthetics, and the material lives of the Europeans”.7[7 Comaroff and Comaroff (1997: 320-321); Hofmeyer 2004b: 120.]
This cross-fertilization becomes most apparent in dress, rituals and processions. Africans readily seized on foreign clothing and materials as an alternative means to express status and power and circumvent established norms and privileges,8 [8 See the studies by Martin (1994, 1995, 1996) and Hendrickson (1996), as well as the Comaroffs’ section on clothing (Comaroff and Comaroff 1997: 218-273).] while Europeans invented their own tropical and ceremonial dress code, asserting their authority, superiority, and/ or identity as coloniser, missionary, adventurer, etc.9 [9 Callaway 1992: 230-246.]
The gear of those who “went native” was often inspired by local designs and so were ceremonial uniforms of the highest echelons.10 [10 Comaroff 1997: 241-245; Collingham 2001: 13-44.] Foremost, these uniforms were informed by the experience of the Raj and the same holds true for ritual, procedure, and colonial rule in general.11 [11 Callaway 1992: 241; Cannadine 2001: 64-65.] As Cannadine has shown, the hierarchical construction of the empire was not merely a replication of the metropole but an exaggeration of it, and in turn reinforced hierarchies at home.12 [12 Cannadine 2001: 128-130.] Although the British thinking about their colonial subjects was informed by a racial mindset, it was also informed by the idea of rank and status. The empire thus was not only about othering, but also about the construction of affinities and the British had an astonishing readiness to grant African royals the same respect as their own.13 [13 Cannadine 2001: 123.] As chapter five shows, it was this mechanism that was exploited masterly by Manya Krobo Konô Emanuel Mate Kole who ruled at the height of the colonial period.
The studies referred to above all testify to an increased concern with culture and identity in studies on colonialism and empire; as well as to a shift in paradigm away from the dichotomy of centre and periphery. The concern is now with the transnational, and empire is seen “as an intellectually integrated zone in which currents of influence travel in many different directions, not only from metropole and colony”. This trend has also brought about a number of fascinating works on missions (organisations of eminent transnational character) and non-European Christianity. As Hofmeyr has shown, the early post-colonial historiography with its nationalist impetus tended to identify mission too closely with colonialism and paid little attention to it. Religion was assumed to give way to a modern, secular nationalism and historians were more concerned with political economy.14 [14 Hofmeyr 2004b: 119-120.]
Paradoxically within the study of empire too, missions did for a long time not receive much attention, because they were not formally associated with the empire.15 [15 Etherington 1999: 303; Porter 2004: 3-5.] Beidelman’s piercing study of the Church Missionary Society’s colonial evangelism among the Kaguru, bore the traces of his own uneasiness with mission. Although – or precisely because – Beidelman’s study left many dissatisfied, it was influential in bringing mission into focus.16 [16 Beidelmann 1982, Peel 1983: 408-409; Westerlund 1983: 161-163.] The acknowledgement of the existence of mission archives and of the immense value of the records came late. Today these records are cherished as the richest source for the study of pre-colonial African societies.17 [17 Ranger 2001: 653.]
The recent historiography on missions and African Christianity has recognized that missions were “differentiated enterprises in which different groupings pursued different objectives”. Africans carried the main burden of proselytisation and were the real translators of the bible. Their impact has made for a great similarity between the forms of worship in African Independent Churches and those at the grassroots of the mainstream churches. The study of translation and conversion has gained prominence and has resulted in a number of influential works such as Landau on the Tswana, Meyer on the Ewe and, most recently, Peel’s magisterial work on the Yoruba.18 [18 Hofmeyer 2004b: 121-123; Landau 1995; Meyer 1999; Peel 2004.]
As I have laid out above, my concern in this study is not with mission, Christianity, conversion and translation in the first place, but with the expansion of the two Krobo states; its effects on and the role of culture; the necessary political transformation; and the mobilisation of culture, tradition, mission and colonial state as resources in these two intertwined processes. If, then, mission is all the same omnipresent in this study, it proves the point that mission studies are often central to an engagement with colonial rule.19 [19 Hofmeyer 2004b: 119.]
The Author
Veit Arlt, Christianity, Imperialism and Culture 2005 pages 1-5