Department of History
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Item Akyem Abuakwa C.1874 - 1943: A Study of the Impact of Missionary Activities and Colonial Rule on a Traditional State(University of Ghana, 1980-04) Addo-Fening, R.This thesis is a study of the nature and extent of the pressures -social, economic and political - that the Basel Missionaries and British colonial Administrators brought to bear on Akyem Abuakwa society during the period 1874-1943. The study also examines the state's responses to these pressures and the extent to which they were conditioned by her pre-european historical experience, her ethos, the strengths and weaknesses of her institutional arrangements, the quality of her political leadership and her resources. The general conclusions that emerge from this study are that missionary activities and colonial policies brought a great deal of material progress to Akyem Abuakwa society: the quality of life was improved by the spread of western-style education, by the adoption of new skills, by improved medical care and by infrastructural developments; changes in the customary penal system made the administration of justice more humane; while the evolution of a modem-style bureaucracy at the courts of the chiefs and the adoption of certain administrative routines enabled the complicated and diverse functions of modem government to be effectively discharged. Those positive results were, however, off-set by negative and harmful results: the spiritual foundations of Akyem Abuakwa were seriously undermined by widespread and wilful violation of time-honoured customary taboos by missionary converts in the name of religious freedom as well as by the introduction of a dichotomy between 'church’ and ‘state’, between religion and politics; the cohesion and solidarity of Abuakwa society suffered great damage by the creation of salems whose Christian inhabitants held aloof from the life of the wider community; existing social conflicts were sharpened while new, more serious and harmful ones were introduced by the concept of territorial jurisdiction as embodied in the N.J.O., by the distortion of the character and role of chieftaincy, and by the destruction of the religious conformity of the state; the wakening of extended family ties, growing emphasis on individualism and the failure of Christianity to deal adequately with the trauma. of rapid social and. economic change created problems of security which expressed themselves in alcoholism and neurosis; above all the exploitation of Abuakwa’s immense resources -human and natural - for the greater benefit of her alien rulers resulted in the under-development of the state.Item Nawuri-Gonja Conflict, 1932-1996(University of Ghana, 2012-12) Mbowura, C.K.; Addo-Fening, R.; Awedoba, A.K.; Baku, D.E.K.This study examines the causes of the Nawuri-Gonja conflict, which broke out in 1991 over allodial land rights. In Alfai, as is the case of other Ghanaian societies, the modes of measuring allodial land rights are embedded in the historical traditions of the people. By right of autochthony and autonomy, allodial land rights in Alfai in the pre- colonial period resided in the Nawuri. However, Alfai’s encounters with the colonial enterprise led to the evolution of new constructs of allodial rights in land, which challenged established traditions and provided the opportunity for the immigrant Gonja community to appropriate land. In 1913 the Germans issued a warrant to Kanankulaiwura Mahama Karatu, the Gonja head chief in Alfai then, making him the overlord of the area for the sake of political expediency. This began Gonja rule over the Nawuri, which was made irreversible when the British colonial authorities subsumed Alfai into the Gonja kingdom in 1932 following the introduction of indirect rule in the Northern Territories. This led to series of encounters between the autochthonous Nawuri and their Gonja overlords over allodial rights in land, which expressed itself in social, political and economic debate in Alfai in the colonial and post-colonial times. By the dawn of independence, Alfai continued to remain as an integral part of the Gonja Traditional Area, thus strengthening Gonja claim that the land belonged to them. As the Nawuri and the Gonja continued to jostle each other over allodial land rights in Alfai in the post-colonial times, and as the dispute remained unresolved, war between them became a possibility. This study argues that the conflicting claims over allodial land rights in Alfai between the Nawuri and the Gonja served as the nexus that connected the multiplicity of layers of issues that underlay the conflict.