machin - Pages 71 thru 80

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became) was coming to his rescue. I suppose Rattray was aware that for
some time things had been moving in his direction: that anthropology was
ceasing to be merely a useful hobby and was becoming the science of the
moment. As long ago as 1906, Northcote Thomas had urged, in the preface
to his series of books on The Natives of the British Empire, that
ethnography be studied ‘from a political and commercial, no less than from
a scientific point of view.’ He pointed out that in twenty-five years the
Berlin Museum had accumulated ethnographical collections more than ten
times as large as those of the British Museum, and that England ‘with the
greatest colonial empire which the world has ever seen’, lagged far behind.
In 1913, there had been a Royal Commission on University Education, and
a British Association report, both of which had recommended very
strongly that all colonial servants should have expert knowledge of the
peoples they governed:

‘An accurate acquaintance with the nature, habits and customs of alien

populations is necessary to all who have to live and work amongst them
in any official capacity, whether administrators, executive officers,
missionaries, or merchants, because in order to deal effectively with any
group of mankind it is essential to have that cultured sympathy with
them which comes of sure knowledge.’

Rattray quoted from both reports in the preface to his Ashanti.⁴⁷ The

scheme by which the Oxford Diploma course had been set up, and by
which he was encouraged to join it, was part of the same movement. But
the strongest impetus was given by Sir Frederick Lugard’s successful
experiment in Indirect Rule in Northern Nigeria.

Now that the first flush of success for the policy of Indirect Rule is long

over, it is often pointed out that it is virtually impossible to govern a
country of millions with a small force of colonial officials except through
Indirect Rule. The West African colonies (like others throughout the
world) had been won and kept by gaining control of the existing centres of
government — either through treaties with the chiefs, or by setting rival
chiefs against each other and putting a protegée in the seat of power. The
great Nineteenth Century governors, Goldie in Nigeria and Maclean in the

47Rattray (1923) p.5

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Gold Coast, had used this method. Lugard was the most successful, because
he was dealing with an area — the Muslim north of Nigeria — which was
already organised into comparatively well-defined large areas, with
obvious, autocratic centres of power. The sceptic could say that Indirect
Rule in Northern Nigeria meant making the emirs pay homage to the King,
and then leaving them to get on with governing as they always had done.

The real significance of Indirect Rule as a theory was more

psychological than political. It expressed a new faith in Africans as human
beings rather than savages who had to be ‘pacified’. Nineteenth Century
administrators discovered, often to their amazement, that the natural state
of African society was not always brutal anarchy. They found that even
when there were only a handful of Europeans, things often jogged along in
a peaceful, sometimes almost civilised way, give or take the odd riot or
case of witchcraft or human sacrifice. People grew their yams and cassave,
took them to market, married and held funerals, and thieves and other
trouble-makers were tried in the traditional manner. Some institutions
could not be tolerated: slavery, for instance (we had expelled it from our
system, after much agony and soul-searching, so why should they still be
allowed to keep it?), human sacrifice (which as Rattray was to show, was
not as brutal as it appeared), and mutilation or execution for crimes other
than murder (which had recently been abolished in England). Otherwise,
so long as the traditional forms of government were stable, they could be
governed with very little effort on the part of the colonialists. But perhaps
the most surprising thing about the Africans was their ability to absorb
European ideas, and in many ways adapt to them, and it was this feature,
paradoxically, which presented the gravest threat to colonial government
and to European colonial psyche.

As soon as Africans picked up European ideas, they began to undermine

traditional forms of government and — even more dangerously — the
traditional social order. It was notorious that the worst criminals in native
society were very often the Christians, because they had removed
themselves from the sanctions of traditional religion. The worst political
troublemakers were the native lawyers, often from the Europeanised
mulatto society of Lagos, Cape Coast and Freetown. The colonisers’
greatest fear was of a growing band of detribalised, half-educated,
Europeanised Africans with no vested interest in either traditional society
or the colonial system.

The theory of Indirect Rule averted the threat psychologically by

replacing it with the idea of apartheid at its most benign. Its most famous

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expression was in Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa,
where he defined the ‘true conception of the inter-relation of colour’ as:

‘complete uniformity in ideals, absolute equality in the paths of

knowledge and culture, equal opportunity for those who strive, equal
admiration for those who achieve; in matters social and racial a separate
path, each pursuing his own inherited traditions, preserving his own
race-purity and race-pride; equality in things spiritual, agreed
divergence in the physical and material.’48

In practical terms, it was an attempt to get the best of both worlds: the

colonised received enlightened administration and development in exchange
for the goods to pay for the administration, and providing a market for
British trade. This is what ‘Dual Mandate’ meant.

Lugard’s book did not come out until 1922, three years after Guggisberg

arrived in the Gold Coast, but his ideas were already current amongst the
more liberal colonial thinkers. In his development of trade, the building of
roads, railways and Takoradi harbour, in his improvements in health and
education, and above all in the founding of what was to become the first
university for black Africans at Achimota, Guggisberg turned the Gold
Coast from a backwater into a model of Indirect Rule. Feral Benga, the
Senegalese dancer, said after visiting it soon after the Guggisberg era ‘At
last I have seen the poor niggers in a place which they can call their
own’.⁴⁹ Guggisberg’s greatest achievement perhaps was to convince many
Africans that British rule was really in their own best interests.

Guggisberg could not have begun to carry his vision into practice had he

not already in the Gold Coast a number of colonial officers who were as
inspired as he was by the idea of Indirect Rule. One of them was C.H.
Harper. Harper had been at Exeter College, Oxford, where he had met
Marett and joined the Service as a Gold Coast Cadet in 1900. He took part
in the final Ashanti campaign, in 1900, and then quickly rose in the Civil
Service to become a Provincial Commissioner in the Eastern Province.

48Sir F. Lugard, The British Mandate in British Tropical Africa, 1922, p. 87.

49Quoted in Geoffrey Gorer, Africa Dances, 1935, p.282.

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During the 1914 War, he stood in for Clifford for a short time as Acting
Governor and when Sir Francis Fuller retired as Chief Commissioner in
Ashanti in 1920, Guggisberg appointed Harper in his place.

Harper’s time in the Eastern Region had stood him in good stead as

preparation for Ashanti. The Akim people, who constitute the dominant
population in the area, are closely related to the Ashanti in their language
and social organisation. Cycling from village to village through the hilly
country, sometimes as far as the thirty miles from Kibi to Koforidua in a
day, he had acquired a thorough grounding in Akan language, law and
psychology. He was also lucky in that the paramount chief of Akim
Abuakwa was one of the outstanding men of his generation: Nana Afori
Atta. Harper first knew Ofori Atta when he was hardly more than a boy,
and clerk to his uncle, then Paramount Chief. Harper lent him his Weekly
Times, because Atta had already learned to read and write English fluently.
He had already shown himself prepared to brave the wrath of the
traditionalists, by being imprisoned for three weeks by his aunt, the Queen
Mother, for daring to wear a collar.50

In Ofori Atta, Harper was given the perfect example of the native

hereditary chief who was quite capable of mastering European ideas, and
who accepted many of the inovations of British rule but who also wanted to
preserve the spirit and much of the form of traditional government. In his
relations with Harper, he was the teacher and Harper the pupil almost as
often as it was the other way round. Harper had the sense to realise that he
could not direct Atta without first mastering the traditional law himself.
Through Ofori Atta he was given insight into the considerable complexity
of native society which deepened his respect for it and also his sense of the
difficulty for a British administrator in mastering it. His experience in
Akim stimulated the amateur anthropologist in himself, and at the same
time made him realise how badly a professional was needed.

Harper’s predecessor in Ashanti, Sir Francis Fuller, dedicated his book

A Vanished Dynasty: Ashanti to ‘All those of my colleagues who so loyally
and ably assisted me to convert a sullen and suspicious race, still smarting
from defeat, into a contented and prosperous people.’51

50This contrasts with his later insistence on wearing traditional costume, for instance

when visiting the London Zoo.

51Francis Fuller: A Vanished Dynasty: Ashanti, 1921, p. v.

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In the book, he told of the ups and downs in relations between the

Ashanti and the British, ending in a kind of apotheosis of Ashanti as a
nation of

‘valiant, clever and lovable people, of whom it is no exaggeration to

say that they bear no malice and nurse no grievance. Indeed, the staunch
loyalty of the ASHANTIS towards the British Government and their
many fine qualities have gained them the respect and admiration of all
who have been fortunate enough to labour with an for them.’52

So in less than half a generation the Ashantis had been transformed from

cruel and merciless foes, given to orgies of human sacrifice, into placid
and well-to-do cocoa farmers. It boded well for Harper’s Chief
Commissionership.

However, Harper had no illusions about the difficulties facing him. He

knew that, unlike Akim, the traditional government of Ashanti had been
severely disrupted by the long series of wars, culminating in the exile of
their Paramount Chief, the Asantehene, to the Seychelles in 1900. For the
time being, the disruption might work to the British advantage, together
with the sedative effect of economic prosperity, but British rule could only
be permanent and effective if it worked through a stable system: that is, the
traditional system re-established and strengthened by the British, modified
only where absolutely necessary. And in order to rebuilt the traditional
system, it was necessary first to understand it.

During his leave, before taking up the appointment in Ashanti, Harper

visited Marett in Oxford and discussed it with him, He may well have
decided already to ask Guggisberg to release Rattray as a full-time
anthropologist, but Marett certainly encouraged him up to the hilt, his
academic greed aroused at the thought of the wealth of material which
should come out of the plan. Harper had come across Rattray, and he may
have shared the commonly-held doubts about his ‘soundness’, in which case
Marett reassured him. On his return to take up residence in Kumasi in
September, Harper wrote to Guggisberg asking for Rattray’s release from
the Secretariat. ‘I want an expert’, he said ‘to collect and report upon all

52Ibid. p.229.

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manner of customs, fetish, stool, marriage, burial, family, games, etc. etc.
and to codify native law and custom with regard to land, timber, hunting,
fishing, travelling. Such work would be of scientific value and of
incalculable importance from an administrative point of view.’53

There was every reason to expect Guggisberg to agree. He had started

life in the colonies as a surveyor, and as such he knew it was impossible to
build a road, either literally or metaphorically, without finding out the lie
of the land first. The idea of a ‘government anthropologist’ was perfectly
in keeping with his ideas about Indirect Rule. If a government
anthropologist was going to be appointed, then Rattray was the obvious
choice. Then again, Rattray had hardly made himself indispensable in the
Secretariat. The only consideration against the appointment — apart from
the fact that it was unprecedented — was that Rattray’s fellow officers
would think it was far too kind a fate for him. Guggisberg quite rightly put
aside that objection, negotiated with Milner, the Colonial Secretary, and in
1921, Rattray was appointed Special Commissioner and head of the
Anthropological Department in Ashanti. As Guggisberg’s biographer,
Ronald Wraith has observed: ‘It is to Guggisberg’s credit that he found a
constructive channel for a peculiar talent instead of bemoaning the fact that
it was peculiar.’54

From the moment of his appointment, things started moving with dizzy

speed. He spent his leave in England making plans and buying equipment.
Harper was a little taken aback to receive, in his first letter from Rattray,
an application for £60 to buy a cinematograph — by no means standard
issue for anthropologists in 1921. The money was refused, but Rattray
bought the camera all the same, using his stamps from the Lome Post
Office which had increased considerably in value, and an elephant tusk. He
also got hold of sound-recording equipment, which at that time still
consisted of a His Master’s Voice horn attached to a machine which
scratched lines on copper cylinders, as well as a good supply of still-
camera film and developing materials.

The Rattrays sailed for Sekondi in July. Harper was unable to give them

suitable quarters in Kumasi, so they had to live in Obuasi, the gold-mining
town down the railway line from Kumasi to the coast at Sekondi. Harper

53C.H. Harper, Memoranda, Correspondence and Diaries 1904-35. Rhodes House

MSS Brit. Emp.

54R.E. Wraith, Guggisberg, 1967, p. 206.

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went to meet them almost as soon as they arrived and had a long talk with
Rattray about his plans. The main point to be discussed at first was whether
he should consider himself as the central co-ordinator of a team of
researchers — that is, any political officers who were interested in making
ethnographic notes as part of their normal work — or whether he should
taken on all the research work himself. At least, that is how he put the
alternatives to Harper. But in actual fact, there was no choice to be made.
Being Rattray, it was wildly improbable that he would sit in an office in
Obuasi sifting through other people’s notes, and throw away the chance of
becoming a full-time ethnographic explorer. He was absolutely convinced
that no-one else in the country was capable of understanding the people as
he was, as he said, as tactfully as he knew how, in his preface to Ashanti:

‘As I fortunately possessed the trust and confidence of many of these

old people and was able to converse directly with them, I thought I could
not do better then attempt at once to secure and preserve as groundwork
for future investigation the valuable materials which could only be
gained by direct and personal touch with those who possessed it .... I
hope that the short delay that may ensue before my colleagues are asked
to step in, and assist the new Department, will not be misunderstood by
them, as I trust that the present activities of the Department will aid
investigators in the future and increase the value of their work.’55

Later events showed that passing on the torch to his ‘colleagues’ was not

high in his list of priorities, and throughout its ten years’ existence the
Anthropological Department of Ashanti remained to all intents and
purposes one and the same as Captain R.S. Rattray.

His anthropological training and experience told him that there were two

areas with which to begin his research: Family and Religion. Brenda
Seligman had convinced him that the royal road towards the understanding
of ‘native’ society was the structure of the extended family or clan — the
Classificatory System, as she called it. As a result, he looked for a suitable
Ashanti who would be prepared to sit down with him and go through every
detail of his family tree and the terms used in describing it. He soon found
one in Kakari, ‘an old Ashanti aristocrat’, as he described him, from

55Rattray (1923) p.7.

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Odumase, near Mampong, ‘who left his own village to follow me,
contributing each day from his treasures of African lore’.⁵⁶ By the time
Rattray wrote those words, a year later, Kakari was dead, though he had
gained a kind of immortality by providing the model for the Ashanti
Classificatory System in the first paper produced by Rattray’s Department.

So far as religion was concerned, it was a question, first of all, of

recording ceremonies and the first to be reported was a Wednesday Adae
ceremony in Bekwai. The Wednesday Adae occurs every forty-three days,
and is an invocation of the ancestors. Rattray’s account of the occasion he
witnessed on 17th August, 1921 — the first, he claimed, ever to be
witnessed in its entirely by a European — is a fine example of his talent
for sticking closely to facts but at the same time invoking the spirit of the
ceremonial, and his own excitement at witnessing it. It is worth repeating
here (in abridged form and with many of the technical details left out) to
show how much more Rattray was than a human tape-recorder:57

'On the morning of the 16th, the ‘white’ stool of the paramount chief

and his chair were scrubbed by the stool-carriers in the court-yard of
the ‘palace’, and the cooks likewise thoroughly cleansed the calabashes to
be used at the next day’s ceremony. A sheep was chosen; the townsfolk
laid in a store of food, firewood, water, etc. The chief personally
arranged about the proper supplies of palm wine, rum, and whisky, and
his treasurer counted out the money and weighted out the gold dust
required for the occasion.

On the evening of the Adapa the drummers and horn-blowers

assembled, and almost every variety of these instruments was to be seen.

Then, as Bowdich wrote a hundred years ago, ‘music and firing

beguile the night’. About nine o’clock the following morning every one
concerned assembled in the small courtyard inside the chief’s palace.
This yard was flanked on the right by the very beautiful old ‘Nyame
dan’ or temple to the great God of the sky. At the other end of the yard
was the open side of the usual three-walled Ashanti house, and opening
off this, on the right, was a low door leading into the stool house. The

56Ibid. p. 23.

57It takes up pp. 94-104 of Ashanti.

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head stool-carrier, a most important person in an Ashanti court, and like
other stool-carriers generally recognisable by the manner in which the
hair of his head was cut, unlocked this door and we all entered a very
small room, so dark, however, that I could not at first distinguish
anything.

The chief and all present were dressed in their oldest cloths. On

entering the room the chief bared his shoulder and slipped his sandals
from off his feet, standing upon them. He greeted the spirits, saying:
Nananom samanfo makye o (‘Spirit grandfathers, good morning’). He
then seated himself upon his stool.

As soon as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw at the end of

the room, opposite to the door, a long low platform, raised about three
feet off the ground, made of upright poles with cross sticks laid upon
them. Upon this table or rack were set the ancestral stools, as yet
invisible, for all were covered with one large coarsely woven native
cloth. The head stool-carrier came forward and removed the covering.
There were thirteen blackened stools, many crumbling to pieces with
age. Each stool lay upon its side, the seat facing towards us. They were
caked with clotted blood, and pieces of fat could be seen round the
centre supports of many them.58

Thirteen stools were in three rows. Two brass bells were the only