Area of study: Ghana-Togo border
SOURCE: DRAWN BY ETTORE MORELLI ON ARCGIS ONLINE
1 Introduction
I propose to observe the effects of colonial border demarcation on local communities in Ghana and Togo, with the aim to reflect on the dynamic relationship between the border and the people, by drawing particular attention to the relationships between centre and periphery in the African colonial space.1 The analysis revolves around two points: I consider the construction of the border and its movements in history, and then I analyse how the colonial border represented an element of disruption, destabilisation of social and economic local life, but also a tool for resistance to the colonial violence. In our area of research, in fact, border communities could take advantage of the colonial border to escape taxation and detention, and try to avoid the loss or destruction of properties by the colonial authorities.
The contemporary border between the northern sections of Ghana and Togo lies on the Oti River and incorporates all the features of a natural threshold: on the one hand, it can be difficult and dangerous to cross, and on the other hand it is a connector of social and political life. In the local narratives and practices, the river represents more of a hinge than a barrier for Konkomba communities living on both sides: the river attracts people to fetch water, wash clothes, talk and meet to cross it together to reach markets on the opposite side. At the same time, the river fertilises the area when flooding during rainy season, thus constituting a precious, vital element for border communities. Nevertheless, the overflows cause insecurity, damages and threat: during rainy season, indeed, the river becomes too dangerous to be crossed, the floods often isolate riverside villages that can suffer lack of food, drinkable water and basic medical assistance.
They [Konkomba belonging to Kpalba clan], or rather their grandfathers, fled to the river, which was in flood. They could not cross and begged a crocodile to help them. He did so and all crossed safely on his back. The Dagomba came up and, seeing that the fugitives had crossed, considered the river fordable; it was not. So many were drowned. Hence the crocodile to the Palba [sic] is not to be slain or eaten.3
The Oti River was and still is a natural threshold before becoming a colonial border, and the concept of threshold is ritualised by the relationship, in this case, with the totemic animal, the crocodile. This river incorporates the features of limes and limen described by Raimondo Strassoldo when discussing the ambiguous and ambivalent concept of the border.4 Indeed, for Strassoldo the border is âopening and closure, barrier and conduit, exclusion and contact, limes and limen, dissociation and association, separation and articulationâ.5 These polar opposites indicate from one side how the threshold is a necessary element for the production and reproduction of the social order, from the other side how the threshold itself is functional to the relationship between the social system and the environment. The case of Konkomba communities, if understood in the longue durée, is particularly revealing of this continuous double function of the border, that in the course of history changes and constructs the dialogical and conflictual practice of social, economic and political relations.
It is clear that the border has played a crucial role in shaping groupsâ relations, power structures and strategies of resistance in the borderland. Beyond its empiric nature, the borderland brings along characteristics of change and fluidity.6 It can become an analytical instrument that permits us to understand some political dynamics that interest the path that leads to the construction of the modern African state. I propose to use the concept of border and borderlands as suggested by Dereje Feyissa and Markus Hoehne: borders are the institutions of inter-state divisions according to international law, while borderlands are the physical spaces along the borders: âBorders and borderlands mutually define one another â the existence of the border constitutes the borderland. We specifically engage with borders as institutions that can be made use of, and borderlands as fields of opportunities for the people inhabiting themâ.7 As suggested by Arthur Ijaola Asiwaju, it is relevant to shed light on the practices of African borderlands to enhance our knowledge on the potential of cross-border exchanges, understood also in their historical dimension, and on
Borderlands are often marginal areas, in which the politics conceived and performed in the centre cannot easily be perceived and understood; these peripheral regions often struggle to feel included in complex and sometimes controversial national identity construction processes. The interaction between different political subjectivities â local groups, traditional chiefs, colonial administrators â and the connection between diverse politics of control and the flux of everyday life that constantly pass through it, make the border a place of paradox and, I would say, a place in which political entities and identity processes are constantly discussed.9
For these reasons, and probably many more, borders represent privileged observation points to critically read political transformations, and they must be carefully analysed in order not to fall into the wrong commonplace that Africans have little to do with the practical creation of the contemporary national borders, perceived as a sole legacy of the European colonial action. Many scholars have already moved in this direction; for what concern the construction of borders in West Africa, Pierluigi Valsecchi has, for example, proposed a reading of the process of definition of the southern section of the Ghana-Côte dâIvoire border as a practice consciously and strategically determined by local African powers.10 As I elaborated elsewhere, even in the area I am working on there are hints of local interaction and negotiation with colonial powers for the delimitation of the border.11 As highlighted by Paul Nugent, even if this specific border was the product of European colonial interests, it must be recognised that the delineation of the border gave rise to a dynamic in which local communities became central actors of the new change and were able to define and redefine belonging, alliances, political relationships.12
In addition, I would propose a reading of the language used by colonial administrators, both on the French and on the British side, in defining Konkomba communities and producing a de-individualised and de-humanised stereotype that had, and still have, a profound echo on their representation in the media and their ability to speak for themselves. As underlined by Frantz Fanon, colonial language has a fundamental importance to understanding the dimension of being-for-others.13 The border perspective allows us to highlight how, despite of the profound differences between British and French colonial systems, the representation of the colonised was very similar, and produced a shared negative label that contributed to the oppression and marginalisation of this peripheral group of people.
In the construction of the research that brough to the writing of this contribution, I focused on archival and ethnographic research, through which I broadly investigated the complex and multilayered relationship of the Konkomba with the border, in a long durée perspective. While my broader research considers the Konkomba, the border and their neighbours until contemporary times, by confronting with the role of the border and the colonial territorial partition in the postcolony, here I focus on a specific timeframe, that saw the birth and the consolidation of specific colonial dynamics of control and violence. In 1994, Konkomba communities were at the centre of a civil conflict erupted in Ghana due to their exclusion to land control and political representation, and the border played a crucial role in the escape of displaced people, in the hide of individuals involved in the clashes, but also as a catalyst of political processes and identity construction mechanisms of a borderland group that was, and somehow still is, excluded from the national political dynamics.14
2 Konkomba Communities and Their Neighbours
My fieldwork was carried out in villages inhabited by the Konkomba, a group that lives today in some districts of the North-Eastern part of Ghana and the Nort-Western area of Togo. Following the definition coined by British social anthropology during colonial times, which lasted quite long in anthropological studies and especially in the common local language used by media and often politicians, Konkomba would be an âacephalousâ, âstatelessâ, âsegmentaryâ group, that is to say that they didnât have centralised political organisations higher than kinship groups.15 I wouldnât use here this definition, that has a negative, privative connotation (âacephalousâ as without head, âstatelessâ in this context as without state structures, âsegmentaryâ as just a part of a whole something); I would rather prefer to define their political system as a diffuse power, by following the suggestion of Jean-Loup Amselle to avoid any crystallisation of typological definitions and move forward to a political anthropology that focus on the forms of power, instead to concentrate on the classification of political systems.16 A convincing analysis of the relevance of the forms of diffuse, or âsoft powerâ, in their capacity to intersect with neighbouring models and thus welcoming the multicultural, has been recently provided by Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber.17 This means to highlight first of all the existence of a political system among these societies, and secondly to drive the attention towards their scattered, decentralised, fluid system that allow different centres, defined by the presence of a land shrine and a land priest, to spread power until the encounter with other similar centres.18
However, the historical reality was probably very different. As demonstrated by many relevant studies,26 before European colonization diffuse power groups occupied the interstices of kingdoms of the Voltaic region, while maintaining during time a strong autonomy. They were often raided and occasionally forced to the payment of a tribute in some periods of the year, but they were never totally incorporated in other political realities, nor their tributary condition was systematic. Akosua Perbi reported in her work on slavery in Ghana that Mamprusi, Dagomba and Gonja occupied a strategic position in the regional slave trade and became important slave suppliers in the Northern markets.27 Most probably, the Konkomba were among the communities that were frequently raided. The relationship between different groups inhabiting the area, in particular between the seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth century, was mainly characterized by ongoing political and economic negotiation, often conflictual, and by a great mobility.28 As underlined also by Fabio Viti, precolonial state structures were characterised by a perception
By constructing fixed boundaries between different political kingdoms of the Northern regions and including forcibly diffuse power groups, colonial powers actively contributed to the progressive loss of autonomy of the latter. During colonial times, for example, centralised groups continued to carry out raids to search for slave and semi-slave labour force among political entities on their margins, but in the eyes of colonial administrators these practices were understood as forms of tax exaction, and indeed legally recognised. From the beginning of the twentieth century, Konkomba suffered increasingly from these incursions, legitimised by the colonial power. In addition, the imposition of the new colonial border between the French and the British divided in two halves their territory and brought about disruption in their everyday lives.
3 The Movement of the Border
The construction of the contemporary border between Ghana and Togo lasted a long time, from the ratification of the first agreement between Germany and Great Britain on 14 July 1886,33 to the nomination of a Border Demarcation Commission in 1972, when it was necessary to go back again to that process due to the reunification struggle of the Ewe, located in the coastal area.34
From 1886 to 1914 what is now the eastern part of Ghana together with modern day Togo constituted a single colonial possession under German control, Deutsch Togoland, that was subsequently divided in two Mandates of the Society of Nations after the German defeat in the First World War. The Mandates were entrusted respectively to Great Britain (west) and France (east), that had occupied the German colonial possession during the war.35 The border between the new colonial powers was defined in the Anglo-French agreements of 1919, while the Mandatary condition was ratified from the Society of Nations on 20 July 1922: the western part was called British Togoland and was annexed to the British colony of the Gold Coast, and the eastern part, which was wider, constituted the French Togoland. From 1946 the two Mandates were administered as Trust Territories under United Nations auspices.
German Togo, 1886â1914
Legend: dashed circle = Konkomba territory
SOURCE: PAUL SPRIGADE, M. MOISEL, âTOGOâ, IN DEUTSCHE KOLONIALLEXIKON, LEIPZIG, VERLAG VON QUELLE & MEYER, 1920
Konkomba territory in German Togo, 1902
SOURCE: PAUL SPRIGADE, âKARTE VON TOGOâ, BERLIN, E. VOHSEN, 1902, BIBLIOTHÃQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE, DÃPARTEMENT CARTES ET PLANS, GE C-3168 [DETAIL], AVAILABLE ONLINE AT HTTPS://GALLICA.BNF.FR/ARK:/12148/BTV1B53060536W/F3.ITEM.R=TOGO.ZOOM# (LAST ACCESSED ON 14 OCTOBER 2024)
French Togo, 1922â1960.
Legend: dashed circle = Konkomba territory
SOURCE: âTERRITOIRE DU TOGO PLACÃ SOUS LE MANDAT DE LA FRANCEâ, NO AUTHOR, PARIS, 1925, BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE, DÃPARTEMENT CARTES ET PLANS, GE D-8257, AVAILABLE ONLINE AT HTTPS://GALLICA.BNF.FR/ARK:/12148/BTV1B84586497.R=TOGO?RK=64378;0 (LAST ACCESSED ON 14 OCTOBER 2024)
4 The Konkomba and the Colonial Administrations
The administrative strategies put in place by colonial powers, British and French, were different under many aspects, and profoundly influenced the shaping and reshaping of relationships between groups and the territorial administration.
The British government ruled more indirectly than the French administration, which followed a centralised administrative project that came with a transformative republican ideology and had more administrative resources.38 British colonies, instead, employed less administrative effort and devolved more power to local authorities when centralised institutions existed.39 In this sense, the partition of German Togoland after World War I provides an interesting case to analyse the impact of British and French colonisations on a territory that was previously under the same, German colonial rule.40
Initially, from 1914 until the 1930s, the administration of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, including the northern section of British Togoland, followed the system of the direct rule, conceived in opposition to the indirect rule, already applied successfully in the centre and southern regions of the Gold Coast. In the opinion of the British administrators, in the northern part of the colony it wasnât possible to rely on the management of structured and politically organised kingdoms comparable to the Asante. Local kingdoms seemed to lack centralisation, the authority of local chiefs was perceived as fragmented and ineffective, to the extent that British indirect rule appeared to be not functional for the area.41 For this reason, the initial strategy of colonial
Indeed, it was only in the 1930s that the British decided to exploit the administrative structures of local kingdoms in the Northern Territories, too. In this phase, a new kind of specific colonial violence took place, that is to say the territorial partition for administrative purposes and for the exploitation of natural and human resources through the mandate of local powers. Colonial governamentality expressed here a series of contradictions: the passage to a system that was perceived to be/conceived to be closer to local cultural and political specificities did not allow for a less coercive control but produces a simple reconfiguration of powers that actually reinforced local conflicts. It was a power device that increased existing imbalances and created new ones, affecting mainly those populations that did not respond to the standardised vision of the colonial powers: populations that are not organised according to the centralised model, like the Konkomba.
French administrators, instead, by following the model of the direct colonial administration, opted for a different kind of territorial partition and management. They chose a system based on the centralisation of power and aiming at a division of the land that followed more the administrative needs than alleged âethnicâ needs.47 This means that, contrary to the British system that focused on the recognition of local kingdoms and the mandate to them of some administrative aspects, the French colonial project highlighted the direct intervention on local political administration, often ignoring and overcoming local authorities. As affirmed by Delafosse, talking about the direct administration, âwe have to intervene discretely, apart from economic questions in which we
Obviously, both Great Britain and France had the same goal, namely the maximum administrative efficiency, but they reached it by following two different paths and putting in place two different mechanisms of control and understanding of local relationships.
While Great Britain incorporated British Togoland in the Gold Coast colony and administered it following the system already in place in the rest of the territory, France, that was managing a new separate colony, had to submit more rigidly to the rules of political management of Mandates, that were different from those in place for ordinary colonies. Indeed, French Togo had a kind of administrative autonomy that, even if just relative, brought to a different management compared to the other colonies of the Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF).
The first Commissioner of the French Republic, Paul Auguste François Bonnecarrère, opposed firmly to the annexation of Togo to Dahomey, understanding that the new territory was bringing peculiar issues that needed to be managed separately, as for example its recent history of territorial formation, its geopolitical characteristics and, last but not least, the mandatary condition. In 1934, after the resignation of Bonnecarrère, Togo was inserted in a unitary colonial project with Dahomey, in which the Governor of Dahomey was in charge of covering all the duties that were in the hands of the Commissioner of the French Republic in Togo. The joint rule proved to be a failure and was finally dismantled in 1936. At that point, Togo was put under the general governor of the AOF and brought back to its previous autonomous administrative condition.50
The way in which colonial powers managed and perceived local realities is fundamental to understand territorial changes and how border drawing and imposition had an influx on the lives of people inhabiting the area. British and French administrations were not only the product of different colonial models, but also of a diverse conception of the role that local groups could have in the economic development of the colony. A rich archival documentation allows us to reconstruct the specific contingent goals of the diverse colonial administrations in our area of interest, that was lacking natural and agricultural resources if compared to the most southern parts.
British colonial policy was essentially aimed at political and territorial control, due to the difficulties already experienced in managing the different groups of the area, especially the north, while the French system seemed to be oriented towards a valorisation of the limited agricultural potentiality intended to maximise taxation. British administration dedicated a lot of energies in the management of Konkomba communities in the attempt at containing what they believed to be a conflictual and destabilising force, that could disrupt the administrative efforts already implied in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast. The brief incursions in the villages happened only in the case of litigations, murders, disorders. The District Commissioner was always accompanied by a chief, normally from the neighbouring centralised Dagomba, who helped with translation (the Konkomba, at the time, rarely spoke English, and even more rarely British administrators learnt Likpakpaaln, their language), who positioned himself as an âintermediaryâ between colonial power and the peripheral Konkomba communities, acquiring a higher status. As observed by Franz Fanon in relation to the use of language in the colony, the ânativeâ officers were mainly interpreters; they served to convey to their fellows the masterâs order, and they themselves enjoyed a certain status.52 The marginal geographical position of Konkomba villages, enhanced by their exclusion from the communication routes built by following a project that put first the productive Southern and Central regions, reduced to a minimum the colonial interest for
The rapports annuels of the French administrators in Northern Togo, instead, took place with regularity and followed a precise and constant structure: description of the path followed, population census, mapping of the rural production, updates on eventual issues (conflicts, epidemics, famine, etc). Particular attention was dedicated to the agricultural production of Konkomba communities, and consequently political quarrels in the villages were defined as âseriousâ because they often implied the stealing of crops and the decreasing of the production. In a small colony like Togo, it seemed necessary to economically exploit every possibility, also in remote and destitute areas like the North of the country. The Konkomba appeared as a community difficult to manage, but their great dedication to yam cultivation contributed to produce a shared perception in French colonial administrators, who defined them âgreat workers, more savages than rebelsâ.54 Taxation in French controlled area was very high, and it became one of the first reasons why many people left their villages in French Togo to join their families and move into British controlled areas.
Following my father stories, the things that they did [in French controlled area] were not good. They taxed people too much, you had to pay for everything: if someone died, if your son had to get married. And they pretended communal work, that means that you had to work for free, to plant trees and things like that. Here in Ghana [sic], it wasnât like this, there was freedom. [â¦] In Togo, if you couldnât pay, they beat you.55
According to Benjamin Talton, migration towards British controlled territory was more frequent than the one towards French colonial possessions, due to the French policy of recruitment of semi-slave labour force, compulsory
5 The Colonial Perception and the Invention of the âKonkomba Attitudeâ
Notwithstanding the different strategies adopted by colonial powers, the Konkomba suffered historically from the same stigma in front both French and British administrations: their reputation as a violent, savage, backward, uncontrollable group, already reported by the German colonial power, continued during the Mandate period and remains, somehow, vivid also in contemporary times. Colonial administratorsâ reports offer various elements to understand their relationship and their prejudice towards Konkomba communities, describing an attitude characterized by lack of collaboration with the colonial authorities, sometimes with the use of violence, in which we can recognise a resistance to the colonial presence and to the imposition of colonial apparatus of control such as taxation, semi-slave labour recruitment, limitation to the mobility, and the intrusion in local conflicts and feuds.
It is exactly the presence of the border that allows us to consider the condition and the action of Konkomba from two points of views, the British and the French one. This double instrument of observation is analytically inspiring because it permits from one side to evaluate the consequences of two different colonial managements on the same peripheral group, and from the other side to analyse the strategies used by Konkomba communities to hinder the colonial project, often using the opportunity represented by the border.
The Konkomba are a singularly interesting tribe [â¦] They can be aptly described as âthe Irishâ of Togoland: pure love of fighting for fightingâs sake is at the bottom of most of the disturbances that occur, and the young Konkomba has recourse to his bow and poisoned arrows as joyously and light-heartedly as the Irish man to his âshillelaghâ58. He sets little value on human life and a remark made by a Konkomba with regard to a farm dispute is typical of his attitude towards it â better a few dead men than an empty stomach.59
The Konkomba truly reverted to a state of savagery. For twenty-five years they have been a festering sore on an otherwise healthy administrative body. At times there were reasons to hope that the sore would yield to normal treatment; [â¦]. I am now convinced that only by drastic treatment will it permanently be cured. To change the metaphor, we must cease to treat the Konkomba as naughty, but amusing, children. Leniency they do not understand; they consider it to be a sign of fear.61
British colonial control had not loosened in all those years; it rather assumed an even more intrusive form especially for what concern the local political dynamics, with the consequence of exacerbating relationship between groups and different figures of authority. Fanon profoundly elaborated on the semiology constructed by colonial power (in his case, French in Algeria) that defined the mental backwardness of the colonised and justified strong decisions and actions brought by the administration. In this construction, the reference to a âchildlike mentalityâ is paramount.62
M. le Capitaine Lucien, Commandant de cercle de Sansanne-Mango [â¦] mâa fait connaître lâincident récemment survenu dans le voisinage er causé par des fauteurs de troubles du petit groupement Konkomba de Nantolé (Njatul). Vous voudrez bien trouver sous le présent pli copie des rapports officiels sure cette affaire dont lâorigine sans aucun portée politique est un crime de droit commun qui dégénéra en rébellion ouverte [â¦]. Les Konkombas de notre zone [â¦] on depuis trop longtemps abusé de leur réputation dâenfants terribles er déclaré quâils nâadmettaient pas lâimmixtion de notre administration dans leurs querelles sanguinaires vidées par vendettas, successives et préméditées après libation de bière de mil.63
Nous sommes en présence dâune population pour qui la vie humaine est très peu de chose et dont la coutume exige impérieusement que le sang soit vengé dans le sang.64
The first interesting aspect regards the similarity drawn by both French and British colonial powers between the Konkomba and children. This expression clearly explains the paternalistic attitude that does not refer to the Konkomba as a group with its own political subjectivity, its own system of relationships, and ultimately its own strategy to resist the colonial control. To assimilate them to children means to deprive them of their agency, their legitimacy of thought and action, and their political decision, that is recognised, by contrast, to adults. Europeans are the only ones to consider themselves âadultsâ, which in practical terms means that they invest themselves of the authority and power to intervene in local dynamics through âsevereâ measures. By refusing to recognise the agency of Konkomba communities, however, they failed at understanding the equilibrium of powers that underlie these episodes described as âwithout political significanceâ. The reference to the lack of political intention in the episodes of violence carried out by the colonised is identified also by Fanon as a crucial element of the colonial machine, aimed at eliminating any possible element of reflection on individuality and social freedom conceived in the local sense.65
The constant reference to âfutile reasonsâ that would push the Konkomba to a constant and open fight, due to their temper ânaturallyâ directed towards the pleasure in bloodshed, is another sign of the incapacity and unwillingness to understand local political dynamics, which is a direct consequence of the paternalistic attitude already considered above.
It is frequently reported that the Konkomba are used to resort to violence, both during colonial times and in contemporary episodes like the 1994
Colonial occupation changed profoundly also the political relationships between local groups, introducing a hierarchy of values that sets aside the last place for those who were not useful to the colonial administration, who became considered as âchildrenâ, deprived of agency and political authority. However, as we have seen, Konkombaâs use of violence was placed in an already conflictual framework, that was highly exasperated by the colonial experience.
6 Practices of Colonial Control and Violence
I scored my most effective point when I asked the young men themselves if they wanted the Germans back again. Following on the invariable out-burst of dissent, I told them that if such were the case, they must help us to win the war. I then paused, while the young men looked anxiously at each other: evidently fearing that a demand for recruits was about to be made. In the midst of a tense silence, I then informed them that there was only one way in which they could help us, and that was by refraining in future from killing their own brothers and from indulging in blood feuds: by generally keeping the peace and by giving the District Political Officer no trouble. The look of relief that passed like a wave over their faces [â¦] and they promised that in the future everyone would be on his best behaviour to help to win the war. I then told the Elders that if any of their young menâs blood became so heated that they must need cool it by fighting, they should send them to the DPO, who would hand them over to me at Tamale when I would make real soldiers and men of them. [â¦] I concluded by pointing out their cowardice and folly in fighting with and killing their own brothers, when thousands of white men were laying down their lives in order to secure freedom and peace in the world.69
The rhetoric used by the CCNT is clear: he tried to manipulate reality to his advantage, making Konkomba communities to believe that the defeat of the Germans in the war in Europe would have brought the liberation of Konkomba territories under German control, by exploiting a persuasive and paternalistic dialectic that was typical of the colonial system in that historical period.70 This colonial dialectic had no shame in openly revealing its own exploitative and racialised project: Armitageâs words disclose precisely how the colonial administration perceived local groups. Local authority is completely overpassed,
Where within any village or district a person is unlawfully killed, or dangerously wounded by unlawful attack, or the body is found of a person believed to have been unlawfully killed, the Governor may impose a fine on all or any of the inhabitants of such village or district of the member of any tribe or community resident in therein unless they can show that they did not take part in the commission of the offence and either.72
In composing this regulation, the certainty of assuming that there is unlawful, and consequently lawful killing is evident, where by âlawful killingâ they define only the act perpetrated by the colonial power.
This ordinance would be systematically employed in Konkomba areas, where the colonial administration imposed extremely harsh punishments that penalised groups and not (allegedly guilty) individuals. Communities were punished as a collective body, and everyone became responsible for any crime â in the British conception of crime â that was perpetrated in their territory. With these measures, Konkomba subjectivity was denied, once again: there was no attempt to understand and interpret the reasons behind diffuse rebellions, there were no individuals responsible for committing a crime but entire communities to be quelled with violence and the destruction of properties and livestock. Here is empirically evident what Frantz Fanon said about the fight of the colonised: âColonialism has not simply depersonalised the colonised.
In January 1915 the District Commissioner W.E. Gilbert went to the Konkomba village of Sambul to suppress a dispute, which had arisen âwithout any apparent reasonâ, between two sections of the village, causing the death of three people and the injuring of other 18. The DC was accompanied by the Dagomba chief of Demon74 and 15 officers of the police force, and the day after also the Commandant Arthur Massey, from the Northern Territories Constabulary, joined the patrol. The conflict was a great cause of concern; Gilber managed to collect 4,000 poisoned arrows that were burnt by colonial authorities.75
Jâestime que nous ne devons ni ne pouvons tolérer quâune bande de 200 forcenés ivres de fureur et dâalcool puissent impunément assassiner deux hommes même par représailles immédiates. [â¦] Les deux victimes nâont participé ni de près ni de loin au meurtre de Sanja ; seul leur tort aux yeux des gens de Takpamba était dâêtre originaires du village où le crime a été perpétré. Il serait évidemment con-forme aux règlements de se saisir se ces deux cents individus er de les traduire devant la juridiction compétente. Mais est-ce possible ? Je ne le crois pas. [â¦] A mon avis le seul coupable réellement responsable sans cette affaire, câest la bande entière considérée sans son ensemble et non tour ou partie de ses éléments con-stitutif pris individuellement. [â¦] Une sanction préjudicielle a déjà été prise par lâAdministrateur, Commandant de Cercle de Mango : une
punition de prison a été infligée à chacun des Chiefs des Soukhalas76 du Village et à chacun des Chefs des autres agglomérations. [â¦] Je vous demanderais, en conséquence, Monsieur le Commissaire de la République de vouloir bien, conformément aux dispositions des articles 21, 22 et 23 du décret du 24 mars 1923 déterminant au Togo, lâexercice des pouvoirs disciplinaires, infliger au Canton de Takpamba (Cercle de Mango) une contribution collective de 3.000 francs [â¦]. Il est certain enfin que si nous, le Blancs, nâétions pas là , cette affaire serait loin dâêtre terminée.77
It is difficult to imagine which could have been the perception of Konkomba communities in front of the operation of colonial control and violence. The contemporary narratives, that are based on the memories of the forefathers who were present during colonial times, are still resentful and reveal, at the same time, a kind of resignation towards a system of control that, through the joint venture between colonial administrations and local chiefs,78 who were mainly Dagomba in our case, considerably reduced the space of action and political claim of Konkomba communities.
7 Practices of Resistance
The Konkomba had little bargaining power: they had few possibilities to defend themselves from colonial intrusion and, probably even less, from the
There is a widespread tendency to use the term âresilienceâ in describing the forms of adaptation that border communities put in place during colonial times, in the transition to the postcolony and also in contemporary times. Wandji, for example, elaborating on the Cameroon-Gabon frontier, affirms that people living in the borderland deployed many strategies to tolerate or circumvent the presence of imposed borders on their territory, by maintaining their livelihoods, communal ties, and social organisation: all these practices can be described as resilient, and the border should be considered as their trigger.79 Border communities, then and today, have had to constantly reassess their geographical imagination, engaging in subtle forms of âresilienceâ because these are strategies matching the nature of the threats they perceive.80 Assuming that every border has a peculiar historical and social path, I doubt that the colonial control imposed on Konkomba communities via the colonial border was widely perceived as subtle, and I challenge the idea that their strategies to carry on their lives could be just described as resilient.
I would use, instead, the term âresistanceâ, by borrowing the distinction proposed by Cindi Katz between resilience and resistance. The feminist scholar, drawing into her fieldwork in rural Sudan, prefer to define as âresilienceâ those strategies that imply productive adaptation to a changing context: in particular, she refers to the practices of adjustment to deforestation and pasture deterioration by the community decision to radically expanding their terrain of work, by allowing, in less than two decades, young people to remain in the village and find a remunerative activity. Practices that might be understood as âresistanceâ, instead, refer to those actions consciously directed at altering a condition that people recognised as oppressive.81 This is the reason why I choose to talk about resistance, even if we are not in front of an organised, structured activity directed towards a specific project like the suppression of the border, or the defeat of the colonial powers. What I definitely recognise in the strategy implied by Konkomba is the conscious action to cross the border to alter the oppressive condition in which they found themselves in,
The strategy represented by the defensive war, used during the first phase of the German occupation, seemed to be abandoned in favour of mild and sporadic armed attacks, and a more frequent use of the escape and the refusal to collaborate. Cornerstone of this practice of resistance is the colonial border, which provided great opportunities for independence to the Konkomba communities inhabiting the frontier.
Certainly, the decision to abandon offensive tactics was greatly due to the widespread control under which the villages were placed. During the patrolling of the villages, colonial authorities destroyed systematically all the arrows, bows and weapons that they could find, jeopardising also the possibility to carry on hunting activities, which as mentioned was very important for the livelihoods of Konkomba communities. Most probably, though, there was also a question of political expedience: the clear military superiority of the colonial armies made armed resistance unproductive. Moreover, armed resistance itself could not assume organised and structured dimension due to the diffuse power political system of the Konkomba. Their division in clan scattered around the vast territory, that initially constituted a potential limit in their organised response against colonial powers, eventually became an important instrument of resistance.
Le recouvrement a été particulièrement très difficile en pays Konkomba où de nombreux indigènes abandonnent encore leur soukhala pour se réfugier en brousse lors de lâarrivée dâun fonctionnaire.82
This report is one of numerous similar documents attesting the escape of Konkomba individuals or, sometimes, entire lineages to avoid taxation, forced labour recruitment, destruction of properties, detention.
At 7 a.m. on the 3rd as no one came to me I went there and burnt their compounds (33) and some yams and corn, and also burnt the Headman of Tschegebaniâs compound. [â¦] I am convinced that if I had not burnt the compounds and food the other sections would have fought, sooner or later.83
Colonial reports of the 1920s and 1930s recounted internal fights in the Konkomba communities living the borderland, highlighting a crucial aspect of the border as a barrier but also as an opportunity. French and British colonial administrators tried to establish a system of control which limited the transborder mobility of their subjects, with the aim to grant the governability of their territories. By analysing some village litigations, we can better understand what the colonial border imposition may have meant for local communities.
Two Konkomba villages on the French side of the Oti River [which correspond to the border] have been fighting, and the Saboba people have been joining in. The French Commissioner informed Mr. Gilbert of this, and Mr. Gilbert has information that some French Konkombas are on our side of the River.84
Two villages Boman and Nalun under French administration fought over a woman on or about the 25th of last month. The Saboba people are divided into three sections: Main, Nalongni and Nâjenga. The Main and Nalongni sections are related to Nalun, and Nâjenga to Boman. The Main section hearing of the fight got their bows and arrows and went over to help their relatives, but very soon after crossing the river they met the Nalun people running to Saboba. They returned with them and did not fight. The Nâjenga people, fearing reprisal, ran away and their corn
and yams were, to a certain extent, looted by people from the Manin and Nalongni sections.85
It is evident here that, even if the border has brought disruption and profound changes in Konkomba territory, it did not prevent them to move, cultivate lineage ties, perpetuate their social and conflictual communal life. Colonial administrators could take note of this, fine them following the 1915 Ordinance for the chaos caused to the colonial order but could not really stop their mobility and their creative use of the border, which express a conscious, organised effort to escape colonial control through the practice of the mantotiib.86
Aucun exode mâa été signalé dans les divers cantons visités à lâexception de deux soukhalas du village de Namou (Canton de Takpamba(qui sont parties en Gold Coast pour rejoindre leurs parents.87
I proceeded to Nambiri and held a palaver with all the local people and warned them that they were not to join their relatives from Nanguel in the fight [â¦] The following two days I visited as many villages as possible near the frontier to see that my orders were carried out. I was informed that all French subjects had returned across the Oti River (the Anglo-French boundary). [â¦] The Nanguel people are related to most of the Konkombas living between Saboba and Nambiri, and if they are allowed to stay on this side, I am afraid that there is a possibility of the Kidjabons people coming over.88
En ce qui concerne le canton de Takpamba, la tournée effectuée dans les divers villages mâa permis de constater que les Konkombas ne sont pas pauvres et se livrent volontiers aux travaux de champs. De très vastes surfaces ont été plantées en ignames. Mais là encore, ils manifestent leur désir dâindépendance absolue et se refusent à sortir de chez eux pour aller vendre leurs produits. Tout au plus quelques-uns dâentre eux, très rares, vont jusquâà Kandé. Les autres tentent dâécouler leurs produits sur les marchés de Takpamba, fréquenté par quelques acheteurs de Mango, de Katchamba et de Tanga.89
It seems that, actually, the resistance of the Konkomba communities is inherent in their socio-economic and political structure. Their everyday practices made them âresistantâ to colonial control and management. There was no aspect of Konkomba life that could productively dialogue with colonial projects and power structures: they were too quarrelsome, not very productive, too scattered on the territory, not organised.
As Fanon wrote, âthe colonisedâs indolence is a conscious way of sabotaging the colonial machine; on the biological level it is a remarkable system of self-preservation and, if nothing else, a positive curb on the occupierâs stranglehold over the entire countryâ.90
The colonial gaze could not see beyond its structures of control and its contingent goals. By doing so, it failed in grasping fundamental aspects of the life of their subjected communities. What French administrators read as a ârefusal to collaborateâ in the economic prosperity of the colonial possession was simply a diffuse practice that has been in use until recently: Konkomba communities harvest great quantities of yam, corn, red millet that are normally sold in major markets by other individuals, mainly Anufo, Dagomba, Mossi traders. It was not a Konkomba duty to sell products in bigger, distant markets. They are
8 Conclusion
While analysing the clash/encounter between diverse management strategies and different conceptions of space, we entered in the local debate regarding the colonial territorial partition, and we could consider the consequences brought about border definition on local political equilibrium from a critical point of view.
The construction of the border involved colonial powers and, to some extent, local powers, but only those organised and structured peoples with a recognisable chiefly hierarchy. Ultimately, those peoples were perceived by colonial powers as âlegitimateâ92 occupiers of the land. Groups organised with a diffuse power structure, like the Konkomba, were considered as peripheries of neighbouring kingdoms, deprived of any active role in the restructuring of the geographical map of the region and in the construction of a new spatial system born from the discussed and conflictual encounter between the European colonial model and the different landscapes conceived locally. Wyatt MacGaffey noted that the colonial classification had the responsibility of crystallising this juxtaposition, from the one side glorifying the centralised system of organised kingdoms, from the other side celebrating the âstatelessâ for their presumed ontological freedom from the despotic potential of organised structures.93
Notwithstanding, Konkomba communities, who found themselves in the colonial borderland after the territorial division between Great Britain and
The ambivalence of the border, limes and limen highlighted by the analysis of Strassoldo is here crucial to understand these dynamics.94 The border has a double significance in the life of the local communities and is a fundamental element of the relationship between people and the space. A border that is at the same time âbarrier and connectionâ is an instrument of the restructuring of the relationships between communities and their territory, in a process in which borderland groups think and construct their identity also in relation to the position of the border and the social, political, and economic events that revolve around it.95
This contribution aims at positioning the Konkomba experience, their actions and reactions to colonial order, at the centre of the regional picture representing the border and its perils. I argue that, far from being âa-historicalâ or backwards, crystallised in the colonial representation, the Konkomba have done more than just navigating the colonial storm. Through their activity of resistance and constant determination of the self, they have indeed contributed to the shape of the local narrative on the border, its forms and the possibilities arose around it. As testified by the seminal work of Jean Allmand and John Parker on Talensi historical and contemporary identity, a detailed and attentive study demonstrates that the so called âstatelessâ populations do not comply with the stereotype of a âpeople without historyâ,96 immobilised in space or time by the âtraditionâ that colonial officials and western scholars landed upon them. Konkomba communities have proven to be able to cope with the challenges brought by colonial occupation, to resist to some imposition and to be resilient to some other structural changes, like the historical heritage of a double colonial occupation, making them partly francophone, partly anglophone, partly Ghanian, partly Togolese, all Konkomba. These contemporary multiple identities are not discussed, not confronted. The Konkomba have actively and consciously incorporated them all and navigate the contemporary world by embodying their own multiplicity.
Konkomba communities make the border into a threshold as a space to go through, the significance of which for local communities revolves precisely around the possibility to cross it. For them, a homogeneous community divided by a border that used to be and is still quite porous, the border itself exists because it can be crossed, because it represented â often in their recent history â an instrument of resistance, escape, trade.
Igor Kopytoff, âThe Internal African Frontierâ, in Igor Kopytoff, ed., The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies, Bloomington, IN, Indiana University Press, 1987, 1â78.
Allan Wolsey Cardinall, âRandom notes on the customs of the Konkombaâ, Journal of the Royal African Society, 18, 69, 1918, 45â62; David Tait, The Konkomba of Northern Ghana, London, Oxford University Press, 1961.
Cardinall, âRandom notesâ, 46. See the Conclusion of the present volume, âPlaces of Passageâ, for the discussion of a similar southern African stories involving a little girl fleeing from a cannibal.
Raimondo Strassoldo, âLa teoria del confineâ, in Temi di sociologia delle relazioni internazionali, Quaderni dellâISIG, 5, Gorizia, 1979, 133â202.
âChiusura e apertura, barriera e cerniera, esclusione e contatto, limes e limen, dissociazione e associazione, separazione e articolazioneâ. Strassoldo, âLa teoria del confineâ, 133â202. When not otherwise stated, all translations of the chapter are by Giulia Casentini.
Ulf Hannerz, âFlows, Boundaries and Hybrids: Keywords in Transnational Anthropologyâ, Mana, 3, 1, 1997, 7â39.
Dereje Feyissa, Markus Virgil Hoehne, Resourcing State Borders and Borderlands in the Horn of Africa, Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology, Working Paper No. 107, 2008, 2.
Arthur Ijaola Asiwaju, âBorders and Borderlands as Linchpins for Regional Integration in Africa: Lessons of the European Experience, Journal of Borderland Studies, 8, 1, 1993, 1â20.
Paul Nugent, Arthur Ijaola Asiwaju, âIntroduction: The Paradox of African Boundariesâ, in Paul Nugent, Arthur Ijaola Asiwaju, eds., African Boundaries: Barriers, Conduits, and Opportunities, London, Cassell, 1996, 1â17.
Pierluigi Valsecchi, âLa frontiera come storia. Politiche dellâappartenenza sul confine Ghana-Costa dâAvorioâ, Il Politico, 75, 3, 2010, 101â117. See also his contribution to the present volume, Chapter 3 ââNo Palaver About 1 or 2 Villages with 10 or 20 Inhabitantsâ Precolonial Borders and the Ghana-Côte dâIvoire Frontier (Seventeenth-Twentieth Century)â.
Giulia Casentini, âIl confine come agente di costruzione della rappresentanza politica: il caso di Ghana e Togo settentrionaliâ, Il politico, 75, 3, 2010, 118â135; Giulia Casentini, Al di là del fiume. Storia e antropologia di un confine africano (Ghana e Togo), Roma, Viella, 2015.
Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: The Lie of the Borderlands since 1914, Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2002.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, New York, NY, Grove Press, 2008 [1952].
For an account on the diffuse conflict situation that characterises the Northern Region of Ghana, and especially the Konkomba, see N.J.K. Brukum, âConflicts in Northern Ghanaâ, unpublished, 2005; Petr Skalnik, âNanumba versus Konkomba: An Assessment of a Troubled Coexistenceâ, in Wim van Binsbergen, ed., The Dynamics of Power and the Rule of Law, Leiden, LIT Verlag, 2003, 69â78; Jon Kirby, âPeacebuilding in Northern Ghana: Cultural Themes and Ethnic Conflictsâ, in Franz Koger, Barbara Meier, eds., Ghanaâs North, Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 2003, 161â205; Arthur Bogner, âThe 1994 Civil War in Northern Ghana: The Genesis and Escalation of a âTribalâ Conflictâ, in Carola Lentz, Paul Nugent, eds., Ethnicity in Ghana: The Limits of Invention, London, Macmillan, 2000; Susan Drucker-Brown, âCommunal Violence in Northern Ghana: Unaccepted Warfareâ, in Robert Hinde, Helen Watson, eds., War: A Cruel Necessity?, London, Tauris Publishers, 1989, 37â53.
Meyer Fortes, Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard, eds., African Political Systems, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1940; John Middleton, David Tait, Tribes Without Rulers: Studies in African Segmentary Systems, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1958.
Jean-Loup Amselle, Logiques métisses : anthropologie de lâidentité en Afrique et ailleurs, Paris, Paillot, 1999, [1990].
David Graeber, Marshall Sahlins, On Kings, Chicago, IL, Hau Books, 2017.
Giulia Casentini, âDifferent Ideas of Border and Border Construction in Northern Ghana: Anthropological and Historical Perspectivesâ, Ghana Studies, 17, 2014, 177â202.
Ivor Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Robert Sutherland Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932.
Nehemia Levtzion, âCommerce et Islam chez les Dagomba du Nord-Ghanaâ, Annales. Ãconomies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 23, 4, 1968, 723â743.
Kwame Arhin, âAspects of the Ashanti northern trade in the Nineteenth centuryâ, Africa, 40, 4, 1970, 363â373.
Akin L. Mabogunje, Paul Richards, âLand and People: Models of Spatial and Ecological Process in West African Historyâ, in J.F. Ade Ajay, Michael Crowder, eds., History of West Africa, New York, NY, Longman, 1971; Christine Oppong, âLocal Migration in Northern Ghanaâ, Ghana Journal of Sociology, 3, 1, 1967, 1â16; Toyin Falola, Aribidesi Usman, Movements, Borders and Identities in Africa, Rochester, NY, University of Rochester Press, 2009.
Allen M. Howard, âNodes, Networks, Landscapes, and Regions: Reading the Social History of Tropical Africa 1700s-1920, in Allen M. Howard, Richard M. Shain, eds., The Spatial Factor in African History: The Relationship of the Social, Material, and Perceptual, Leiden and Boston, MA, Brill, 2005, 21â140.
Pauline E. Peters, âInequality and Social Conflicts over Land in Africaâ, Journal of Agrarian Change, 4, 3, 2004, 269â314.
Jack Goody, âThe Mande and the Akan Hinterlandâ, in Jan Vansina, Raymond Mauny, Louis-Vincent Thomas, eds., The Historian in Tropical Africa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 193â218, 1964; Carola Lentz, Richard Kuba, Land and the Politics of Belonging in West Africa, Leiden, Brill, 2006.
Akosua Adoma Perbi, A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana: From the 15th to the 19th Century, Accra, Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2004.
For a detailed reconstruction of the political relationships in the area from the seventeenth century onwards, see the collection of locally produced documents translated from Arabic and interpreted in Ivor Wilks, Nehemia Levtzion, Bruce M. Haight, Chronicles from Gonja: A Tradition of West African Muslim Historiography, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Fabio Viti, âCentro e periferia negli Stati dellâAfrica precolonialeâ, in Pierluigi Valsecchi, ed., Africa tra Stato e società . Scritti in omaggio a Gianpaolo Calchi Novati, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2009, 13â32.
Wilks, Levtzion, Haight, Chronicles from Gonja.
David Tait, The Konkomba of Northern Ghana, London, Oxford University Press, 1961; Benjamin A. Talton, Politics of Social Change in Northern Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality, New York, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Talton, Politics of Social Change in Northern Ghana.
The German colonial power declared a Protectorate on coastal Togoland in 1884, while the definition of the northern part of the border happened some years later.
The Ewe were included at the end of the Nineteenth century under the German possession, and the divided in two halves between French and British Togo. They have made claims for reunification since decolonisation. See Ulrike Schuerkens, Du Togo allemand aux Togo et Ghana indépendants, Paris, LâHarmattan, 2001; Dennis G. Austin, âThe Uncertain Frontier: Ghana-Togoâ, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, 1, 2, 1963, 139â145; Paul Nugent, Smugglers, Secessionists, and Loyal Citizens on the Ghana-Togo Frontier: The Lie of the Borderlands since 1914, Athens, OH, Ohio University Press, 2002; Chiara Brambilla, âConfini, cartografia e identità : lâesempio della frontiera coloniale tra Ghana e Togoâ, Bollettino dellâAssociazione Italiana di Cartografia (AIC), 123â124, 2005, 271â282.
Akin Olorunfemi, âThe Contest for Salaga: Anglo-German Conflict in the Gold Coast Hinterlandâ, Journal of African Studies, 11, 1, 1984, 15â24.
Leo J. de Haan, âPartition of the German Togo Colony: Economic and Political Consequencesâ, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism, 15, 1â2, 1988, 33â41; Schuerkens, Du Togo allemand aux Togo et Ghana indépendants.
Olofunfemi, âThe Contest for Salagaâ, 15â24.
Carl Müller-Crepon, âContinuity or Change? (In)direct Rule in British and French Colonial Africaâ, International Organization, 74, 2020, 707â741.
Arthur Ijaola Asiwaju, âThe Aleketu of Ketu and the Onimek of Meko: The Changing Status of two Yoruba Rulers under French and British Ruleâ, in Michael Crowder, Obaro Ikime, eds., West African Chiefs: Their Changing Status under Colonial Rule and Independence, Ife, University of Ife Press, 1970, 134â161; Michael Crowder, West Africa under Colonial Rule, London, Hutchinson, 1968.
Denis Cogneau, Alexander Moradi, âBorders that Divide: Education and Religion in Ghana since Colonial Timesâ, The Journal of Economic History, 74 3, 2014, 694â729.
Robert Sutherland Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932.
I thank one of the two anonymous reviewers for the suggestion to elaborate on the comparison between the Konkomba case and the more famous colonial creation of warrant chiefs in Igboland, Nigeria.
Femi Adegbulu, âFrom Warrant Chiefs to Ezeship: A Distortion of Traditional Institution in Igboland?â, Afro Asian Journal of Social Sciences, 2, 2.2, 2011.
See, for example, Godfrey N. Uzoigwe, âEvolution and Relevance of Autonomous Communities in Precolonial Igbolandâ, Journal of Third-World Studies, 21, 1, 139â150, 2004.
Earth priest in Likpakpaaln (Konkomba language). This very important figure of power superintends the management and the rituality over land.
Nowadays, due to the relevance of the chieftaincy institution in Ghana that is recognized and regulated by the 1992 Constitution, the Konkomba are working towards the construction and definition of their own chieftaincy, with a chief (ubor) nominated among elders of different clans and the maintenance of the figure of authority of the utindaan.
The institution of the Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) and of the Afrique Equatoriale Française (AEF) were examples of this system of territorial division and restructuring that respond uniquely to colonial administrative needs. Schuerkens, Du Togo allemand aux Togo et Ghana indépendants.
Maurice Delafosse quoted in Schuerkens, Du Togo allemand aux Togo et Ghana indépendants, 77.
Müller-Crepon, âContinuity or Change?â, 707â741.
Cathérine Coquery-Vidrovitch, LâAfrique Occidentale au temps des Français. Colonisateurs et colonisés (c.1860â1960), Paris, Ãditions La Découverte, 1992.
The Togolese districts, in the first phase of the French colonial administration, were Lomé, Anécho, Atakpemé, Sokodé, Sansanne-Mango, Klouto. Contemporary Togo is divided in five Regions (Région des Savanes, de la Kara, Centrale, des Plateaux, Maritime), which are divided in 30 Prefectures, plus the Municipality of Lomé. Our area of study is located in the Région des Savanes, Prefecture of the Oti.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, New York, Grove Press, 2008 [1952].
Paul Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, London, Longman, 1979; N.J.K. Brukum, âStudied neglect or lack of resources? The socio-economic underdevelopment of Northern Ghana under British ruleâ, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, New Series, 2, 1998, 117â131; Paul Naameh, âThe State and Development in Northern Ghana, 1892â1966â, MA Thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, 1993.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 117. Doc. N°273. Mango, 2.
Giulia Casentini, conversation with P.D., Saboba, Ghana, 6 December 2009.
Talton, Politics of Social Change in Northern Ghana.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, New York, NY, Grove Press, 2021 [1963], 182.
âShillelagh: a thick, heavy wooden stick, often with lumps on the surface, traditionally used in Ireland as a weapon.â Cambridge Dictionary Online, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/shillelagh (last accessed on 6 October 2024)
Public Records and Archives Administration Department of Ghana (PRAAD), Administration (ADM), Accra, Ghana, ADM 56/1/177.
The Ya Na is the paramount chief of the Dagomba kingdom, that at the time was divided in two halves by the border between German and British colonial possessions. It was reported in colonial documents that the Ya Na worked closely to the British administrators to see his territory reunited under the same colonial power, since the partition brought instability and internal conflicts. On the specific case of the Ya Na Abdulai see Martin Staniland, The Lions of Dagbon: Political Change in Northern Ghana, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975; Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians; Casentini, âIl confine come agente di costruzione della rappresentanza politicaâ, 118â135.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 11/1/1801, Case No. C.S. 310â3485/93/28 S.F.4.
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 224.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 117. Doc. N°673. Mango, 2, âMr. Captain Lucien, the Commandant de Cerle of Sansanne-Mango [â¦] told me about the recent incident caused by some riotous youths belonging to the little Konkomba group of Njatul. You will see in the official report that this incident has no political relevance, it has been caused by a civil offense which has degenerated in an open rebellion. [â¦] The Konkomba living in our area [â¦] have taken advantage of their reputation of enfant terribles for a long time, and they declared that they wonât tolerate any interference of our administration in their bloodthirsty and premeditated feuds, accomplished after millet beer libationâ.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 117, Doc. N°266. Mango, 2, âWe are in front of a population that treats human life with little respect, for whom their customs imperiously requires that bloodshed must be revenged through bloodshedâ.
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.
David Tait, âThe Political System of Konkombaâ, Africa, 23, 3, 1953, 213â223; Tait, The Konkomba.
Fabio Viti, ed., Guerra e violenza in Africa occidentale, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2004.
Michel Izard, âParlare di guerra in antropologiaâ, in Fabio Viti, ed., Guerra e violenza in Africa occidentale, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2004, 23â37.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/177.
N.J.K. Brukum, âStudied neglect or lack of resources? The socio-economic underdevelopment of Northern Ghana under British ruleâ, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, New Series, 2, 1998, 117â131; Badjow Tcham, âLe pays Konkomba : lâimpossible pacification (1896â1946)â, in Nicoué Lodjou Gayibor, ed., Les Togolais face à la colonisation, Lomé, Presses de lâUB, 1994, 151â211; Talton, Politics of Social Change in Northern Ghana.
Joe Harris Lunn, ââLes races guerrièresâ: Racial Preconceptions in the French military about West African Soldiers during the First World Warâ, Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 4, 1999, 517â536.
Public Records and Archives Administration Department of Ghana (PRAAD), Northern Regional Archives (NRG), Tamale, Ghana, NRG 8/2/21, Ordinance No. 20 of 1915, Chapter 80.
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 219â220.
This is one of the first reported example of the British colonial strategy to put Konkomba communities under the control of more structured neighbouring groups, like Dagomba in this case.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/300, Case No. 77/67/1925.
âCompoundâ, âsectionâ.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 117, Doc. N°266. Mango, 2. âI think that we cannot tolerate that a bunch of 200 mad individuals, livid with fury and alcohol, could assassinate two people for retaliation with impunity. The two victims [â¦] didnât participate to the killing of Sandja; they are just wrong, in the eyes of the people of Takpamba, of being from the village in which the crime was perpetrated. It would comply to regulation to capture these 200 individuals and summon them in the competent jurisdictions. But is it possible? I donât think so. [â¦] In my opinion, the responsible of this case is the entire gang, considered as a whole, and not just a part of its elements considered singularly. [â¦] A preliminary sanction has already been applied by the Commander of the Cercle of Mango: to imprison all the chiefs of the soukhala of the village [Takpamba] and all the other chiefs of the neighbouring communities involved. [â¦] I would consequently ask, Mr. Commissary of the Republic, to be allowed, following the disposition contained in the articles 21, 22 and 23 of the decree of the 24 March 1923 on Togo, to impose a collective sanction of 3,000 francs on the canton of Takpamba (cercle of Mango). [â¦] It is certain, however, that if we, the Whites, werenât here, all these problems would be far from being resolvedâ
Carola Lentz, âThe Chief, the Mine Captain and the Politician: Legitimating Power in Northern Ghanaâ, Africa, 68, 1, 1998, 46â67.
Dieunedort Wandji, âRethinking the Time and Space of Resilience beyond the West: An Example of the Post-colonial Borderâ, Resilience, 7, 3, 2019, 288â303.
Wandji, âRethinking the Time and Space of Resilience beyond the Westâ.
Cindi Katz, âSocial Systems: Thinking about Society, Identity, Power and Resistanceâ, in Nicholas Clifford, Sarah Holloway, Stephen P. Rice, Gill Valentine, eds., Key concepts in Geography, London, SAGE, 2009, [2003], 236â250.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 30, Doc. N°1638. Mango, 2, âThe [tax] collection was particularly difficult in Konkomba countries, where numerous indigenous abandoned their soukhala to hide in the bush as soon as they know that an official is arrivingâ.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/399, Case No. 2/6/1926.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/300, Case No. 55/48/21.
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/300, Case No. 82/48/21.
See Section 2 for a thorough explanation of the practice.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 30, Doc. N°1638. Mango, 2. âNo exodus has been reported in the various canton that we visited, apart from two soukhalas of the village of Namou, in the canton of Takpamba, where all the inhabitants left to join their families in the Gold Coastâ
PRAAD, Accra, ADM 56/1/300, Case No. 73/13/19.
Archives nationales, Lomé, Togo, APA, 30, Doc. N°1638. Mango, 2. âFor what concern the canton of Takpamba, during the patrolling I realised that Konkomba are not poor and gladly dedicate themselves to agriculture. They plant yam in large portions of land. But yet, they manifest their desire of absolute independence, and they refuse to leave their villages to sell their harvest. At the most, some of them, very rarely, go to Kandé. The others try to sell their products in the market of Takpamba, attended by some traders from Mango, Katchamba and Tangaâ.
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 220.
In the last decades, Konkomba have organised themselves in expanding their own control over their yam production and have established trade points in important southern Ghanaian markets, like Old Fadama in Accra (also known as Agblobloshie). Nowadays, indeed, they are not only farmers but also traders, adjusting to the current need of the market and asserting, once again, their independence. See Giulia Casentini, âPartecipazione politica, mobilità e appartenenza: il ruolo dei migranti di ritorno in Ghanaâ, in Selenia Marabello, Umberto Pellecchia, eds., Capitali migratori e forme del potere. Sei studi sulle migrazioni ghanesi contemporanee, Roma, CISU, 2017, 103â124.
Robert Sutherland Rattray, anthropologist and British colonial administrator, first in India and then in the Gold Coast, defined as âlegitimateâ those groups with a centralised structure of power, with a chief at the top, that proved to be useful to the management of the colony. Rattray, The Tribes of the Ashanti Hinterland.
Wyatt MacGaffey, âThe Residue of Colonial Anthropology in the History and Political Discourse of Northern Ghana: Critique and Revisionâ, History Compass, 8, 6, 2010, 431â439.
Strassoldo, âLa teoria del confineâ.
Strassoldo, âLa teoria del confineâ.
Jean Allmand, John Parker, Tongnaab: A history of a West African God, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2005, 215.
Charles Piot, Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Hastings Donnan, Thomas Wilson, Borders: Frontiers of Identity, Nation and the State, Oxford, Berg, 1999.