Read on Twitter
Figured that Twitter might be a useful space for me to share fragments of my research, an informal research diary, if you will. As such, I'll be (periodically) sharing primary source material relating to my project in the coming days, weeks, months, until I get bored, basically.
Today, I've been leafing through parliamentary correspondence on the fifth Anglo-Ashante war (1900-1901), popularly known as the 'War of the Golden Stool,' referring to the attempt of Frederick Hodgson, Colonial Secretary of Gold Coast, (1888-1898) to sieze the (...)
Golden Stool of Ashante, a symbol of governing power for the Ashante people, symbolic of the soul of the Ashante Nation. Hodgson, originally ignorant of the significance of the stool, demanded to that it be turned over to him as a representative of Queen Victoria (...)
Here is a Python-esque verbatim transcript of Hodgson's demands to a conference of Ashante chiefs: 'Where is the Golden Stool? Why am I not sitting on the Golden at this moment? I am the representative of the paramount power; why have you relegated me to this chair?' (..)
Somewhat predictably, Hodgson incited the most incendiary response from the Ashante, who launched a revolt against the British Gold Coast Protectorate in order to protect their stool. Typical of the violent, punitive expedentionary military strategy of late-Victorian British (..)
Colonial administrations, the British Protectorate launched full scale assault on the Ashante, ramping up their search for the stool. Hodgson, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, became the object of press ridicule at home, owing to the costly (...)
Nature of the expedition (both monetarily and militarily). The stool remained hidden from Hodgson, even as the Protectorate successfully annexed the Ashante, who preferred to give up their Ashantene (King), Prempeh I, to the British than their sacred stool (...)
Reporting to the Colonial Office in 1901, after the conflict had ended, Hodgson seemed undeterred by the mockery and scrutiny which undermined his expedition, reasserting the significance of the stool to colonial ambitions on the Gold Coast (...)
Hodgson: 'Finally, I will refer to the Golden Stool, about which so much has been said in the newspapers. Very few peoole seem to realise the political value of a tribal stool. They regard it as the throne of the reigning chief for the time being and nothing more. But as a (...)
Matter of fact the stool is of far more importance to a tribe than the kind who occupjes it. To deprive a tribe of its stool is to deprive a king or chief of all power [...] the whole history of Ashante is attached to it, and only the possessor of it is acknowledged as Head (...)
Or Master of the Ashante. The Golden Stool is, therefore, a valuable asset to the Colonial Government, and it is a matter for regret that its delivery was not insisted upon in 1896 [at the conclusion of the 4th Anglo-Ashante war].'
One crucial observation to be made about this affair being: the negation of the value of blackness (per Denise Ferreira da Silva) is enacted through the desacralisation of black African cultural artefacts, the rejection of black African spirituality as 'fetish,' and the (...)
Alienation of blackness as a standing reserve of material for exploitation by whiteness (the gold is ours! the soul is ours!). Late-Victorian 'small wars' shouldn't only be of interest to military historians, historians of colonial Britain and the like, but to (...)
Thinkers of race attempting to locate the consolidation of an exclusionary, white episteme - which delineates black lives as expendable - in the extractivist, imperialist, corporate capitalism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Thought this may be of interest @jovan747!
