Power and State Formation in West Africa

This study looks at the political and social history of the Gold Coast in West Africa from the early sixteenth century to the second half of the eighteenth. It mainly focuses on the western extreme of the Gold Coast, the region known as Nzema, which today has been divided between Ghana and the Ivory Coast. In linguistic, cultural, historical, and political terms, Nzema is part of the Akan world, a larger formation of societies sharing many common elements. The book examines the logic behind the manner in which political entities in Nzema were structured territorially, as well as the formation of ruling groups and aspects of their political, economic, and military actions, while placing all these in the wider regional context. The object is to give historical substance to the shift from a politically fragmented situation to the territorially and institutionally unified Kingdom of Appolonia, marked by a considerable concentration of power in the hands of a select few, who controlled the institutions and trade with Europe.