MC_A Concise History of Africa

INDEPENDENCE AND NATIONHOOD

W hat is a nation? In general, it is a large body of people united by descent, history, culture, or language, which inhabits a particular state or territory. In pre- colonial Africa, states were created by the vagaries of the economy, while in colonial times, administrative convenience seems to have been the main criterion. Western thought was unable to cope with the notion of subtle, stateless societies, such as those of Africa, being accustomed to nations

BELOW: Ashanti Yam Ceremony. A page from a book by Thomas E. Bowdich - Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819). OPPOSITE ABOVE: Gezo was a King of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present- day Benin, from 1818 until 1858. OPPOSITE BELOW: A typical Ghanan fishing village in Axim, northern Ghana. Ghana formerly called Gold Coast was the first African country to gain independence.

whose charted history was of a particular people, despite the fact that such ancient kingdoms as Dahomey, Benin, that of the Ashanti in Ghana, also the kingdoms of East Africa, had once existed in Africa. Pastoral nomads and agriculturalists did not necessarily fit these Western notions of nationhood, so Africans were deemed to have no history of their own. Colonial rule tended to fossilize institutions. Where kingdoms and states had risen, bloomed and

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