A Dagara Rebellion against Dagomba Rule? Contested Stories of Origin in North-Western Ghana

Abstract

The article explores a neglected aspect of West African history, namely the historiography of ‘stateless’ peoples in north-western Ghana. At the same time, it is a contribution to the recent debate on the role of history in the construction of new ‘tribal’ identities in Africa in the colonial and post-colonial periods. After discussing local oral patrician accounts of migration and settlement, and the historical imagination of colonial officers, I analyse histories of tribal origins written recently by Dagara intellectuals, which draw upon hypotheses, evidence, tropes and narrative models from both colonial and indigenous sources. The concern is not with a conventional history of ideas, but with showing how authors with new requirements and interests can fuse disparate elements into new accounts of the past whose underlying intentions differ considerably from those of their sources. More specifically, the article discusses the claims of intellectuals' and villagers' stories with reference to different underlying political agendas, suggesting that they constitute different historiographic genres appealing to different audiences. The former are basically concerned with establishing the Dagara as a political community within a modern state, the latter with providing charters for local boundaries and rights.