Asante Identities

T. C. McCaskie holds the only established university post in Asante Studies, as Reader in Asante History at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham. He is author of State and Society in Precolonial Asante and of numerous papers on Asante.

• International African Library Published in association with the International African Institute, London Table of Contents: Introduction Adeebeba Lives: the Nineteenth century Adeebeba Lives: Contextualizing Community and Identity Adeebeba Lives: The Twentieth Century Conclusion 6 x 9, 229 pages, 5 maps, 28 b & w illustrations

"Using dozens of boxes of leftover data from the monumental 1940s Cambridge West Africa Institute's Ashanti Social Survey, McCaskie (West African Studies, Univ. of Birmingham) has written a microhistory of the little village of Adiebeba from its beginnings in the Asante Kingdom through its incorporation into the city of Kumase in 1954 just before the end of British rule in the Gold Coast Colony. Adiebeba changed drastically. Village endogamy gave way to stranger marriages. The desire for the sweet things of life-kerosene lighting, cooking oil, metal pots and pans, clothing (especially underwear), soap, cosmetics, and tinned food-gave rise to an unrestrained pursuit of money and the destruction of lives and families. Still, traditional belief in fetishes (witchcraft), the power of juju, and ancestor worship persisted, notwithstanding the determination of Christian missionaries. Adherence continued also to the idea that the ancient antecedents of the Asante, the Koa people, were part of the lost tribe of Israel and that the name was transmuted first to Koana, then to Gwana, and finally to contemporary Ghana. With photographs, maps, and bibliography, the monograph is highly recommended as a significant contribution to the International African Library series. All levels. -W. W. Reinhardt, Randolp" -Macon College, Choice, January 2002