Abstract
This paper is about agency and identity in the life of Kwame Boakye (1848-1915), British-appointed chief of Agona in the West African forest kingdom of Asante (now in the Republic of Ghana). It addresses issues of selfhood as revealed in the richly documented life of its subject, and relates these to cultural context and personal formation. The life of Kwame Boakye is discussed in relation to the transit from precolonial to colonial Asante and in terms of the conditions of continuity and change thrown up by that period. Particular attention is paid to constructions placed on manhood, chiefship, accumulation, wealth and consumption and the ideologies and passions surrounding them as these were manifested in the life of Kwame Boakye. The argument is empirical and close-grained, for it builds on much detailed Asante historiography. But it has wider resonances - concerning matters of collaboration, resistance, biography and personhood - and is offered to Terence Ranger who has done so much to foreground such concerns in his quest for a truly African history.
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