The Asante World

The Asante World provides fresh perspectives on the Asante, the largest Akan group in Southern Ghana, and what new scholars are thinking and writing about the ＂world the Asante made.＂

By employing a thematic approach, the volume interrogates several dimensions of Asante history including state formation, Asante-Ahafo and Bassari-Dagomba relations in the context of Asante northward expansion, and the expansion to the south. It examines the role of Islam which, although extremely intense for just a short time, had important ramifications. Together the essays excavate key aspects of Asante political economy and culture, exemplified in kola nut production, the kente/adinkra cloth types and their associated symbols, proverbs, and drum language. The Asante World explores the Asante origins of Jamaican maroons, Asante secular government, contemporary politics of progress, governance through the institution of Ahemaa or Queenmothers, epidemiology and disease, and education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Featuring innovative and insightful contributions from leading historians of the Asante world, this volume is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars concerned with African Studies, African diaspora history, the history of Ghana and the Gold Coast, the history of Islam in Africa, and Asante history.

Edmund Abaka is Associate Professor of History and International Studies, University of Miami. His publications include Kola is God’s Gift: Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives & the Kola Industry of Asante & the Gold Coast (2005); House of Slaves and Door of No Return: Gold Coast/Ghana Slave Forts, Castles and Dungeons and the Atlantic Slave Trade (2012).

Kwame Osei Kwarteng is a Professor of History, former Head of the Department of History, and currently Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Cape Coast, Ghana. He is the author of A History of Ahafo 1719-1958: Ahafo from dependence to independence (2011) and A History of the Elephant in Ghana in the Twentieth Century (2011).