The Akans are an ethnic group in West Africa, predominantly Ghana and Togo, of roughly 25 million people. From the twelfth century on, Akans created numerous states based largely on gold mining and trading of cash crops. This brought wealth to numerous Akan states, such as Akwamu, which stretched all the way to modern Benin, and ultimately led to the rise of the best known Akan empire, the Empire of Ashanti. Throughout history, Akans were a highly educated group; notable Akan people in modern times include Kwame Nkrumah and Kofi Annan. This volume features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives. This collection is the first of its kind.

This book presents rare evidence about the lives of three African women in the sixteenth century--the very period from which we can trace the origins of global empires, slavery, capitalism, modern religious dogma and anti-Black violence. These features of today's world took shape as Portugal built a global empire on African gold and bodies. Forced labour was essential to the world economy of the Atlantic basin, and afflicted many African women and girls who were enslaved and manumitted, baptised and unconvinced. While some women liaised with European and mixed-race men along the West African coast, others, ordinary yet bold, pushed back against new forms of captivity, racial capitalism, religious orthodoxy and sexual violence, as if they were already self-governing. Many Black Women of this Fortress lays bare the insurgent ideas and actions of Graca, Monica and Adwoa, charting how they advocated for themselves and exercised spiritual and female power. Theirs is a collective story, written from obscurity; from the forgotten and overlooked colonial records. By drawing attention to their lives, we dare to grasp the complexities of modernity's gestation.

This is a collection of key essays about the Akan Peoples, their history and culture. The Akans are an ethnic group in West Africa, predominately Ghana and Togo, of roughly 25 million people. From the twelfth century on, Akans created numerous states based largely on gold mining and trading of cash crops. This brought wealth to numerous Akan states, such as Akwamu, which stretched all the way to modern Benin, and ultimately led to the rise of the best known Akan empire, the Empire of Ashanti. Throughout history, Akans were a highly educated group; notable Akan people in modern times include Kwame Nkrumah and Kofi Annan. This volume features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives. This collection is the first of its kind.

A tapestry of innovation, ideas, and commerce, Africa and its entrepreneurial hubs are deeply connected to those of the past. Moses E. Ochonu and an international group of contributors explores the lived experiences of African innovators who have created value for themselves and their communities. Profiles of vendors, farmers, craftspeople, healers, spiritual consultants, warriors, musicians, technological innovators, political mobilizers, and laborers featured in this volume show African models of entrepreneurship in action. As a whole, the essays consider the history of entrepreneurship in Africa, illustrating its multiple origins and showing how it differs from the Western capitalist experience. As they establish historical patterns of business creativity, these explorations open new avenues for understanding indigenous enterprise and homegrown commerce and their relationship to social, economic, and political debates in Africa today.

The 25-million-strong Akan, a cultural-linguistic group found predominantly in present-day Ghana and to a lesser extent Togo and Ivory Coast, has established a legacy as widely known as its bright kente cloth. From the fourth century on, the Akan created numerous states based largely on gold production, commerce linked to Sudanic Africa and the Mediterranean world, and an agrarian culture. Attracted by its gold, Europeans established their West African bases in the region they called the Gold Coast and built commercial relations with indigenous states like Denkyira and Akwamu. As these states gained wealth from regional and European commerce, gold was surpassed by the trafficking in African captives to be used in the overseas European colonies. Europeans established over 40 trading forts along 341 miles of the Akan coastline, underscoring the importance of the region. The lessons learned from the rise and fall of numerous Akan states ultimately led to the rise of the best-known Akan empire, the Asante Empire. Throughout its history, the Akan have been innovators of sophisticated socio-political organisations and in material culture, producing notables such as the pan-Africanist and Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Sub-Saharan Africa's first U. N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan. This first-of-its-kind collection features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives on the histories of the Akan peoples. This is and abridged version of the academic hardcover edition for the general readers and students. This first-of-its-kind collection features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives and histories of the Akan peoples.

Covering 500 years of Ghana's history, The Ghana Reader provides a multitude of historical, political, and cultural perspectives on this iconic African nation. Whether discussing the Asante kingdom and the Gold Coast's importance to European commerce and transatlantic slaving, Ghana's brief period under British colonial rule, or the emergence of its modern democracy, the volume's eighty selections emphasize Ghana's enormous symbolic and pragmatic value to global relations. They also demonstrate that the path to fully understanding Ghana requires acknowledging its ethnic and cultural diversity and listening to its population's varied voices. Readers will encounter selections written by everyone from farmers, traders, and the clergy to intellectuals, politicians, musicians, and foreign travelers. With sources including historical documents, poems, treaties, articles, and fiction, The Ghana Reader conveys the multiple and intersecting histories of Ghana's development as a nation, its key contribution to the formation of the African diaspora, and its increasingly important role in the economy and politics of the twenty-first century.

Kofi DOnkO was a blacksmith and farmer, as well as an important healer, intellectual, spiritual leader, settler of disputes, and custodian of shared values for his Ghanaian community. In Our Own Way in This Part of the World Kwasi Konadu centers DOnkO's life story and experiences in a communography of DOnkO's community and nation from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth, which were shaped by historical forces from colonial Ghana's cocoa boom to decolonization and political and religious parochialism. Although DOnkO touched the lives of thousands of citizens and patients, neither he nor they appear in national or international archives covering the region. Yet his memory persists in his intellectual and healing legacy, and the story of his community offers a non-national, decolonized example of social organization structured around spiritual forces that serves as a powerful reminder of the importance for scholars to take their cues from the lived experiences and ideas of the people they study.

Kofi DOnkO was a blacksmith and farmer, as well as an important healer, intellectual, spiritual leader, settler of disputes, and custodian of shared values for his Ghanaian community. In Our Own Way in This Part of the World Kwasi Konadu centers DOnkO's life story and experiences in a communography of DOnkO's community and nation from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth, which were shaped by historical forces from colonial Ghana's cocoa boom to decolonization and political and religious parochialism. Although DOnkO touched the lives of thousands of citizens and patients, neither he nor they appear in national or international archives covering the region. Yet his memory persists in his intellectual and healing legacy, and the story of his community offers a non-national, decolonized example of social organization structured around spiritual forces that serves as a powerful reminder of the importance for scholars to take their cues from the lived experiences and ideas of the people they study.

This is a collection of key essays about the Akan people, their history, and their culture. The Akans are an ethnic group from West Africa, predominately Ghana and Togo, of roughly 25 million people. From the twelfth century on, Akans created numerous states based largely on gold mining and the trading of cash crops. This brought wealth to many states such as Akwamu, which stretched all the way to modern Benin, and ultimately led to the rise of the best known Akan empire, the Empire of Ashanti. Throughout history, Akans were a highly educated group; notable Akan people in modern times include Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. This volume features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives. This collection is the first of its kind.

A tapestry of innovation, ideas, and commerce, Africa and its entrepreneurial hubs are deeply connected to those of the past. Moses E. Ochonu and an international group of contributors explores the lived experiences of African innovators who have created value for themselves and their communities. Profiles of vendors, farmers, craftspeople, healers, spiritual consultants, warriors, musicians, technological innovators, political mobilizers, and laborers featured in this volume show African models of entrepreneurship in action. As a whole, the essays consider the history of entrepreneurship in Africa, illustrating its multiple origins and showing how it differs from the Western capitalist experience. As they establish historical patterns of business creativity, these explorations open new avenues for understanding indigenous enterprise and homegrown commerce and their relationship to social, economic, and political debates in Africa today.

25-million-strong Akan, a cultural-linguistic group found predominantly in present-day Ghana and to a lesser extent Togo and Ivory Coast, has established a legacy as widely known as its bright kente cloth. From the fourth century on, the Akan created numerous states based largely on gold production, commerce linked to Sudanic Africa and the Mediterranean world, and an agrarian culture. Attracted by its gold, Europeans established their West African bases in the region they called the Gold Coast and built commercial relations with indigenous states like Denkyira and Akwamu. As these states gained wealth from regional and European commerce, gold was surpassed by the trafficking in African captives to be used in the overseas European colonies. Europeans established over 40 trading forts along 341 miles of the Akan coastline, underscoring the importance of the region. The lessons learned from the rise and fall of numerous Akan states ultimately led to the rise of the best-known Akan empire, the Asante Empire. Throughout its history, the Akan have been innovators of sophisticated socio-political organizations and in material culture, producing notables such as the pan-Africanist and Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and sub-Saharan Africa's first U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan. This first-of-its-kind collection features a new array of primary sources that provide fresh and nuanced perspectives on the histories of the Akan peoples. The second volume in the series on the Akan people is The Akan People in Africa and the Diaspora: A Historical Reader.

The Portuguese produced the earliest records for regions in West Africa, none more important than the Gold Coast. This edited volume provides a unique collection of sources written in Portuguese, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish for Africa's Gold Coast, from the late 15th to 17th century. Students, scholars, and professionals with an avid interest in early modern African, Atlantic, and world history will benefit from the English translations, many appearing for the first time. These sources add to the handful of existing translations, but especially illuminate the late 15th to 17th century relations between the Portuguese empire and the Gold Coast and offer comparative materials for other European interlocutors-Spanish, French, English, and Dutch-garrisoned on the coast or offshore in their vessels. Over that concentrated period, and especially where no other European-supplied records exist, these uncomprehending Portuguese outsiders archived important local ideas, personalities, polities, and cultural forms animating Gold Coast-Portuguese relations.

Covering 500 years of Ghana's history, The Ghana Reader provides a multitude of historical, political, and cultural perspectives on this iconic African nation. Whether discussing the Asante kingdom and the Gold Coast's importance to European commerce and transatlantic slaving, Ghana's brief period under British colonial rule, or the emergence of its modern democracy, the volume's eighty selections emphasize Ghana's enormous symbolic and pragmatic value to global relations. They also demonstrate that the path to fully understanding Ghana requires acknowledging its ethnic and cultural diversity and listening to its population's varied voices. Readers will encounter selections written by everyone from farmers, traders, and the clergy to intellectuals, politicians, musicians, and foreign travelers. With sources including historical documents, poems, treaties, articles, and fiction, The Ghana Reader conveys the multiple and intersecting histories of Ghana's development as a nation, its key contribution to the formation of the African diaspora, and its increasingly important role in the economy and politics of the twenty-first century.