DEFINING AKYEMFO - THE CONSTRUCTION OF CITIZENSHIP IN AKYEM ABUAKWA, GHANA, 1700-1939

Mapping states in pre-colonial Africa cannot be described as one of th e more sophisticated or memorable achievements of historians of Africa .(1) So far as the delimitation of the historic Twi-speaking, Akan pol ities of southern Ghana is concerned considerable progress, in orthogr aphy and in the location of toponyms at least, has been made since the drafting of the attractive and hence much reproduced Dutch 'Map of th e countries of the Gold Coast' of 1629. Finding out where places are i s relatively unproblematic. Cartography is a process and can never pro duce an exact reproduction of realities. For example, defining the mod ern administrative boundaries of Akyem Abuakwa is a simple enough exer cise and, by now, a mostly uncontentious one after mon than a century of recent, administratively driven cartography. But that defined space is, of course, the product of a great deal of contingent and lustily contested history. No less important, any cartographic representation must itself invite contestation. There is an Implicit confidence in th e final shape of any map which is instantly gainsaid by subversive que stions about what is being represented. Maps convey partisan views of space and especially of its ownership; this has been apparent to anyon e witnessing the degrading wrangles over cartography in the tragic the atre presented as 'peace-making' in Bosnia. Moreover the conventions o f two-dimensional map-making are not universal; they are, rather, dict ated by intriguingly varied cultural histories. Human beings do not pe rceive space identically and have not done so either over time(2) or a cross cultures. This article is concerned less with questions of where than with questions about who. Thinking about maps merely provides so me analogies and questions about the perceptions of those who inhabit these spaces. Part of the problematic revolves around our contemporary but curious wish to quite literally map identity.(3) These complex qu estions cannot be neatly unpacked and I begin with a brief considerati on of place.