Fiona Sheales

Fiona.M.Sheales@uea.ac.uk

Research Student

Throughout my academic career to date I have been interested in researching how cross-cultural encounters are expressed and recorded on art works and artefacts. In the past my research has focussed on the European colonial period and its impact on West African communities in Cameroon, Nigeria and latterly Ghana. As a result I make use of theoretical frameworks and approaches that draw upon theories of acculturation, appropriation, cultural borrowings and transformations.

I gained a BA Degree (Hons) in Archaeology, Anthropology and Art History at the School of World Art and Museology at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in July 2006 and completed my MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the Sainsbury Research Unit at UEA in July 2007. I am currently a 2nd year Phd student at the Sainsbury Research Unit researching trans-Saharan trade routes and European and Akan gold ornamentation and gold working technologies. My thesis has a working title of Gold Links: An Analysis of Cross-cultural Symbolism on Akan and European Jewellery and Regalia from 1450 -1950.

The Research Context

On the morning of the 22nd April 1817 approximately one hundred and thirty men, including four British officers and two native soldiers of the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, departed from Cape Coast Castle on a 150 mile journey to Kumase, the Asante capital. Frederick James, the leader of the Mission was accompanied by Thomas E. Bowdich, scientific officer (1791-1824), Dr Tedlie, assistant surgeon (d.1818) and William Hutchison, junior officer and writer. These men had been appointed by the Governor in Chief, John Hope Smith to negotiate a trade treaty with the Asante, who had, since 1792 maintained an indirect dialogue and exchange policy with the British on the coast.

The proposal to send a diplomatic mission to Asante had first been made in 1807 by Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame, also known as Osei Bonsu (d.1823). The timing of this proposal was highly significant, as it came shortly after the successful Asante invasion of the Fante coastal communities. This effectively put an end to the long-standing Fante monopoly over trade with the European factories and forts and raised, for the first time, the tantalising possibility of free unrestricted commerce between the coast and the interior. The proposal also coincided with the British Parliamentary abolition of trans-Atlantic slavery (1807) which had resulted in a considerable loss of revenue for the Asante. As a consequence, this change necessitated a rapid switch to legitimate trade in alternative commodities such as gold, ivory, palm oil and rubber.

The Company initially took no action but over the next ten years the proposal gained ground due to the increased level of competition for knowledge and for trade. Firstly, the British and Dutch merchant companies, who had a long history of commercial rivalry on the Gold Coast, were competing with each other to secure trade agreements with the Asante. Secondly, there was a growing suspicion that British trading interests were under threat from Muslims who, it was suspected, had their own ambitions with regard to monopolising commerce with the new dominant power. Finally, the cessation of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had spurred on European interest in the exploration and mapping of the interior of Africa in order to discover more about its natural resources and its inhabitants. All of these factors influenced the Company’s decision to send an Embassy to Kumase in 1817 and also shaped its written instructions to the Governor and the members of the Mission. Bowdich, for example, was requested to take regular readings, measurements and observations of astronomical, geographical and geological phenomenon as well as being charged with collecting accurate information about the extent of the population, their access to resources and report on their arts and customs.

The Mission eventually arrived at the outskirts of Kumase at two o’clock on the 19th May 1817. They were the first white men to set foot in the Asante capital and remained as guests of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame for a total of one hundred and twenty seven days during which time they successfully negotiated the first Anglo/Asante trade treaty, settled outstanding disputes (palavers) and participated in and/or witnessed several ceremonies and customs. All of these events were recorded and later published by Bowdich in a book entitled, Mission From Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee with a Statistical Account of that Kingdom and Geographical Notices of Other Parts of the Interior of Africa (1819).

This eye-witness account of the first prolonged period of intense personal interaction remains one of the most important historical sources of information on the Asante during this period. Its detailed descriptions, accurate observations and wide-ranging scale of enquiry offer the reader unique insights into many different aspects of Asante culture. The text is also supplemented by maps, diagrams and ten plates of illustrations, all of which, were drawn by Bowdich during his stay in Kumase. The majority of these images are devoted to depicting important buildings, such as the mission quarters, the palace and the head treasurer’s house and generally include a figure/s in the foreground engaged in everyday activities such as selling goods, weaving or weighing gold-dust. The largest illustration entitled, The First Day of the Yam Custom differs in its subject matter however, as it records the attendance of Thomas Bowdich and other members of the British Mission at an important annual Asante ceremony. This image includes the only known portrait of Asantehene Osei Tutu Kwame and his court at a state occasion and as such contains important evidence for the spatial organisation and structure of the court, the types of regalia displayed as well as documenting the use of appropriated European items such as flags, uniforms and muskets.

Critical Concepts and Methodology

Artefacts and objects of European manufacture played an important role in the establishment and maintenance of personal and diplomatic relationships and were routinely exchanged as gifts or traded between Europeans and the Asante. The presence of European items at Asante ceremonies suggests that they not only played some part in the socio-ritual proceedings but were in some way integral to it. Bowdich’s account and his illustrations, especially that of The First Day of the Yam Custom are therefore, unique sources of historical evidence for the functions and roles appropriated objects performed in this new cultural context. To date, however, this account and its associated imagery have not formed the subject of any sustained analysis or interrogation.

In the preceding 190 years since Bowdich’s account was first published, it has routinely been used by anthropologists, ethnographers and historians to provide quotes on discrete aspects of Asante art and culture and to furnish eye-witness descriptions of spectacular displays of gold during public ceremonies. Furthermore, Bowdich’s illustration of The First Day of the Yam Custom has also been subjected to selective editing and reproduction. I argue that the near constant use of de-contextualised quotes and the reproduction of heavily edited imagery from this source has contributed to its neglect as a subject of study, in and of itself and has resulted in it being relegated to a literal and metaphorically illustrative role.

In contrast to publications that have quoted Bowdich’s account and imagery in an abbreviated or appended form this thesis will redress the balance by taking as its primary focus his entire account of the 1817 British Mission to Kumase, including the associated ground plan, illustrations and maps. More particularly, all analysis conducted as part of this thesis, will be firmly rooted in Bowdich’s illustration of The First Day of the Yam Custom which has been selected as the leit motif because it illustrates numerous instances of Anglo/Asante appropriations and is itself the product of appropriation. In this way the image not only promotes itself as the ideal subject of analysis but also provides a departure point for the wider exploration of Anglo/Asante inter-cultural appropriations.

The Conceptual Framework

Over the last sixty years or so a vast literature on appropriation has built up, especially within the realm of anthropology. This has contributed to the development of a wide-range of theoretical and methodological approaches for studying cultural and inter-cultural appropriation. Much of this work focuses on analysing specific instances of encounter which enables the study of appropriation to be contextualised in terms of the unique economic, political and social circumstances that characterise historic time periods. Given, that I propose to analysis a discrete episode of Anglo/Asante encounter and exchange, I have also chosen to adopt a similar approach in this thesis.

The Major Research Questions and Issues

I adopt an inter-disciplinary approach to the analysis of inter-cultural appropriation and will concentrate primarily on identifying and analysing where and how alien artefacts, conventions and experiences were appropriated by the Asante and the British during 1817. This research focus has been developed in reaction to the failure of previous studies to analyse adequately how appropriated artefacts are physically incorporated, modified and used in importing cultures. Furthermore, it is designed to respond to the lack of analysis regarding the role that certain sites; whether physical structures, such as palaces, shrines, workshops and museums or virtual ones such as accounts, narratives and imagery play in the appropriation of externally-derived elements. The use of space as an analytical tool was first used by David Summers in his monumental study entitled, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (2003). In it Summer’s distinguishes between two types of space: real space, which he defines as the space we find ourselves sharing with other people and things; and virtual space, which he defines as being the space represented on a surface. I propose to adapt and extend Summer’s approach in this thesis by applying its basic premises to the analysis of inter-cultural appropriation. By doing so, I hope to demonstrate, using the evidence drawn from Bowdich’s account and imagery, that specific real and/or virtual sites and spaces were systematically used by both the Asante and British in 1817 to appropriate elements of each other’s material and immaterial culture. Furthermore, I propose to show that real and virtual sites of appropriation formed temporary and/or permanent environments where external and internal elements were confronted and conflated with one another in precisely controlled ways that enabled interactions to take place between them.

This thesis will also consider how the selection, display and manipulation of appropriated artefacts and imagery articulate and reflect existing beliefs and concepts as well as the development of new ideational and ideological evaluations in both Asante and British contexts during the early nineteenth century. This will include the analysis of British gifts to the Asantehene and a number of Asante artefacts that were commissioned, collected and donated by Thomas Bowdich to the British Museum on his return in 1818. The analysis of the relationship between sites of appropriation and appropriative processes will therefore be focussed around the following three research questions:

How were Anglo and Asante artefacts, conventions and culture physically appropriated in 1817?
Where did acts of appropriation take place?
What conclusions can be drawn about Anglo/Asante inter-cultural appropriations from this evidence?

Together, these research questions will provide a framework for the introduction and development of a new theoretical approach that will have wide-spread applicability in the analysis of other instances of cultural encounter and inter-cultural appropriation.