Seniority and Succession in the Krobo Stools

Abstract

1. Much of the research on which this paper is based was conducted with the support of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, for which I wish to express my gratitude together with the usual disclaimer. I also wish to thank Marion Johnson and M. A. Kwamena-Poh for reading and commenting on an earlier draft and for help with the German and Danish sources. following abbreviations are used in this paper: C. O., Colonial Office, Public Record Office, London; C.S., Colonial Secretary (of the Gold Coast); D. C., District Commissioner; N.A.G., National Archives of Ghana, Accra; S.N.A., Secretary for Native Affairs; S.S.C., Secretary of State for the Colonies. 2. Die Krobo-Neger, Der Evangelische Heidenbote (1867), 23. 3. D. Waldron, D. C., Akuse, to S.N.A., 13 Feb. 1903, N.A.G., ADM 11/1/1115/2. 4. For Benin, see R. E. Bradbury, Chronological Problems in the Study of Benin History, Journal of the History Society of Nigeria, I, 4 (1959), 284-285; for R. Cohen, The Dynamics of Feudalism in Bornu, inJ. Butler, ed., Boston University Papers on Africa. Volume II: African History (Boston, 1966), 98-100; for Kongo, J. Vansina, Kingdoms of the Savanna (Madison, 1966), 42. Some examples of the tendency to extrapolate from recent data are S. R. Karugire, A History of the Kingdom of Nkore in Western Uganda to 1896 (London, 1971), 2730, and Monica Wilson, The Nguni People, in M. Wilson and L. M. Thompson, eds., Oxford History of South Africa, I: to 1870 (New York, 1969), 89, 95. 5. These are too numerous to catalogue here, but prominent examples are the Gomoa stools, Agona, and Akyem Abuakwa.