La Continuación del Teatro Social: Augusto Boal

The British advance and the consolidation of an African prejudice

The first explorers’ perceptions on the Gurensi were collected and confirmed by the ones who followed them, i.e. the British officers. Here I will describe how this savageness bias was consolidated amongst the colonial administrators. Although the officers were aware of their biased source of information, which was the Mamprusi ruling class, they continued to preserve it. Banditry and savageness provided a valid justification to the military operations they were going to undertake. I will therefore follow the arrival of colonial troops in what would become the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast in a few years’ time. Then I will present the first British military expedition that crossed the Gurensi country and the consequences it had on the officers’ project of conquest.

In the last two decades of the 19^th century, the political unrest of the area amplified owing to the coming of new powers on the scene. The Zabarima warriors consolidated their position under the leadership of Babatu. In the first years of the 1880s, Babatu rose to power and started more military campaigns to expand their area of control, subjugating the weaker and allying with the major powers in the region. After almost ten years, he was able to take control over a significant part of the noncentralized groups in what is today the upper area of Ghana and southern Burkina Faso, occupying towns such as Navrongo and Wa⁶. However, by the mid-1890s, the power of Babatu experienced its first cracks, which manifested itself through the internal mutiny of one of his captains, Amaria.

By 1896 the turmoil was at its peak. Amaria’s revolt against Babatu was still ongoing, and while the French and British troops were approaching, a new power entered on the scene: Samory Turé⁷. In 1895 his army invaded western Gonja and Wa. Although he tried to form a coalition with the Zabarima’s leaders, both Amaria and Babatu, his troops were driven away by the French army.

In fact, these troops, under the leadership of Lt. Paul Voulet, were able to negotiate a treaty with Amaria, in September, that recognized him as the “King of Grunshi”, a brand-new etiquette designed

6 Holden, ‘The Zabarima Conquest of North-West Ghana Part I’, 74–76.

7 For an account on his history see Yves Person, Samori: une révolution Dyula (Dakar: IFAN, 1968).

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without any historical or social precedent⁸. Nonetheless, this alliance gave the French an advantage over the British. Finally, by the end of the year, the British began preparing their military intervention in the region.

After the alliance between the French and Amaria, and the military attack by Samory against Wa in 1896, British troops were sent into the ‘Ashanti Hinterland’ to strengthen their presence in this territory. In the same year, under the leadership of Maj. Henry P. Northcott, they occupied Gambaga, the Mamprusi commercial capital⁹. In 1897, Northcott was appointed the first Commissioner and Commandant in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast¹⁰, a territory whose boundaries were still to be defined. His orders were to occupy the places not already occupied by the French army and continue to pursue, wherever possible, the British advance. In the first half of 1897 two more missions of expansion were undertaken, one in the North-West, under the command of Lt. Henderson, and the other towards the North-East, directed by Cpt. Donald Stewart.

Henderson was able to sign a treaty in Wa but, shortly after, he was attacked and defeated by Samory’s army. On this occasion, the explorer George E. Ferguson, who also participated in the expedition, was killed, and Henderson was captured¹¹. During 1897, the French troops and Amaria’s mercenaries fought and defeated Babatu, backed by the British, and drove him away from Wa¹². In the following months, the Zabarima experienced their downfall¹³. The agreement with the British did not last long and, by the end of the year, they were compelled to leave British territories by Major Morris and his unit of Mossi horsemen¹⁴. By 1899 they were definitely stopped, disarmed and forced to settle peacefully in Yendi.

On the other side, Captain Donald Stewart was sent as North as possible to literally put a flag on the territories he encountered. In his mission, he should have reached Ouagadougou. He advanced to Tenkodogo, where he reached an agreement with the French Cpt. Voulet on the neutrality of those territories. He then came back to Gambaga¹⁵. On his journey, he received rumours about the violence of the “Grunshi” country, and, as I noted in the previous chapter, on the looting activities of the so-called “Tanga-naba”, the alleged chief of Bolgatanga. However, this time, British colonial records are more explicit about the source of their information, i.e. the Mamprusi ruling class. In one report

8 Duperray, Les Gourounsi de Haute-Volta, 93–95.

9 Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, 40.

10 TNA CO 879/50, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary Questions in the Bend of the Niger, Sept.-Dec. 1897, no. 217, Mr. Chamberlain to Governor Sir W.E. Maxwell, 15.10.1897

11 Lentz, Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana, 27–28; Wilks, Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana, 128–32.

12 Wilks, Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana, 132–33.

13 Duperray, Les Gourounsi de Haute-Volta, 105–10.

14 Holden, ‘The Zabarima Conquest of North-West Ghana Part I’, 85.

15 Duperray, Les Gourounsi de Haute-Volta, 100.

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on a military expedition against the “Frafra”, Northcott reveals one of the main factors that biased the British attitude, namely their informants. He wrote:

the definite nature of the information supplied to me, which included a promise of determined opposition to my advance, is partly to be attributed to the difficulty of procuring an efficient interpreter, and partly, I think, to the desire of the Imam of Gambaga to be revenged on certain of the Frafra Chiefs, who had neglected to make the presents to him demanded by the custom of the country¹⁶.

Indeed, he later remarked that the Gurensi land was «composed of men whose naked savagedom was a by-word of contempt among the more civilised inhabitants of the Mamprusi towns»¹⁷. Still in 1907, the biased nature of information was recognized by one officer when he wrote that

the native reports are based on an almost complete want of knowledge of the hilly parts of Fra Fra; they are very frightened of the Fra Fra at home and so build up all sorts of generalities from a few cases of robbery and murder. I have never been able to get definite information from other natives nor to find a man who has lived in the so called bad parts of Fra Fra¹⁸.

Apart from their biased informants, the officers’ confusion was amplified by imprecise geographical data and the lack of linguistic knowledge. A map was drawn by Ferguson in 1893¹⁹ using his information and other sources, like the one drawn by Louis Binger²⁰, but it was mostly inaccurate and full of mistakes (see Figure 10). Moreover, the language differences of the region did not ease their work. In fact, the pronunciation of most of the places differed according to the speaker, and therefore in the map many of the places were misspelt.

In June 1898, the Anglo-French Convention established the 11^th degree of latitude as the border between French and British territories. This border indiscriminately cut the societies that inhabited the area of interest. The Anglo-German agreement of November 1899 would follow, and the boundaries would be legally clarified by the Order in Council of 26 September 1901, when the Protectorate of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast was formally declared²¹. The ‘Ashanti Hinterland’, with its heterogeneous societies, was now under formal British control. However, while the British did not yet administer the area, they were able to set up an agreement with the rival European powers concerning the boundaries of their alleged possessions. Nonetheless, they did not know exactly what was inside the area they circumscribed. They still needed to materially conquer

16 TNA CO 879/52/2, Correspondence relating to the Northern Territories, Jan.-Jun. 1898, no. 437, Hodgson to Chamberlain, 31.05.1898, enc.: Northcott to Hodgson, 08.04.1898

17 TNA CO 879/58, Further Correspondence relating to the Northern Territories, 1899, no. 96, Northcott to Colonial Office, 09.07.1899

18 NAG ADM 56/1/429, Monthly Report Navarro District, District Report, Navarro, June 1907

19 TNA MPG 1/939/2, Map of the Hinterland of the Gold Coast Colony [now Ghana] Compiled by Mr. G E Ferguson from his own surveys from native information & from existing maps

20 Binger, Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée.

21 Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, 40.

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and subdue the societies that lived within it. The colonial ignorance and prejudices would manifest themselves in the administrative framework that the officers would create for the region.

Since the appointment of Northcott as Chief Commissioner for the Northern Territories, it was believed that the kingdoms north of Asante were in the past both more powerful than their actual status and that they extended much further than they actually did²². Thus, Mamprugu, Dagbon, Wa, and Gonja were thought to have been weakened by the incursions of the Zabarima and Samory’s army, and therefore lost their supremacy on the noncentralized societies. These societies, in turn, felt into an uncontrolled state of anarchy that enhanced their savagery. In appointing the chiefs, the old and lost paramountcies should be revived for the sake of a working administration. The notion of a

“Greater Mamprusi”, the old fallen kingdom whose boundaries would have also encircled Bolgatanga, was the highest example of the British efforts to create a hierarchical chain of intermediaries that would have permitted the control and the implementation of their policies over a vast and heterogeneous territory. From the first decade of the 20^th century since the implementation of the indirect rule in the 1930s, hierarchies among chiefs started to be created, negotiated, and consolidated, mostly according to loyalty and assistance of administrators²³.

22 Iliasu, ‘The Establishment of British Administration in Mamprugu, 1898-1937’; Jeff D. Grischow, Shaping Tradition:

Civil Society, Community and Development in Colonial Northern Ghana, 1899-1957, African Social Studies Series, v.

14 (Leiden; Boston [Mass.]: Brill, 2006), 29–33.

23 Ladouceur, Chiefs and Politicians: The Politics of Regionalism in Northern Ghana, 42–44. On this see also chapter 4.

Figure 10. Map of the Gurensi area, derived from Binger’s and Ferguson’s maps, 1905 Source: NAG MP 56

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The next chapters will consider in detail the implementation of the first colonial policies and their consequences in Bolgatanga. Before embarking on such a discussion, it is necessary to analyse the details of the first encounters between the colonial army and the people in Bolgatanga. It is in these events that the nature of the manifold relationship of indifference, violence, fear, manipulation and compliance between the officers and the Gurensi entrenched itself. This relationship would affect the future of Bolgatanga and its people, as it would profoundly affect the political balances of the settlement introducing the chieftaincy. In the next section, I will consider the first indirect contact between the British army and Bolgatanga and its alleged chief, the “Tanganaba”.

Fighting banditry in the region: the British “civilizing” mission

The first rumours Cpt. Stewart collected in 1896 on Bolgatanga were that it was the home of a ferocious bandit, the “Tanganaba”, a man that surrounded himself with rascals and criminals to pillage the passing caravans²⁴. This first indirect contact between Stewart and the “Tanganaba” is emblematic for two reasons. Firstly, it further exposes the prejudices of savageness that the British officers continued to have for the Gurensi. These prejudices would indeed serve to legitimize colonial intervention in the area. Secondly, the contact is emblematic because it made explicit one of the primary purposes behind British intervention, i.e. the control of trade. What was considered banditry, and that later would motivate many of the raids of “pacification”, was not accepted by the officers.

Stewart wrote in his report on the “Tanganaba”:

Later on, if I go to Wagadugu, this Chief might be visited, and, if necessary, an end put to his depredations. The people are only armed with spears and bows and arrows (poisoned), it would be an easy matter to handle them in this open country. A seven-pounder gun ought to be sent here in case it was ever necessary to send an expedition against any village in the future. ²⁵

As a matter of fact, despite ongoing military operations, the trade in the region continued to flow²⁶, and with it the ambiguous and sometimes violent relationship between the Gurensi and the caravans²⁷.

24 See § 1.4

25 TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, Jan.-Aug. 1897, no.

65, Maxwell to Chamberlain, 05.02.1897, enc.: Stewart to Colonial Secretary, 29.12.1896

26 Stewart reported that caravans continued to cross the region despite the state of war. See TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, no. 173, Maxwell to Chamberlain, 31.03.1897, enc.: Stewart to Col. Secretary, 18.02.1897

27 That same year, a group of Mossi merchants that crossed the region reported that people in the Gurensi area attacked them. The Gurensi would have captured two men and cut them into pieces. In TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence

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British presence had not yet changed the situation much. The state of insecurity and violence that had characterized the previous decades also proceeded into the last years of the 19^th century.

However, in what the officers already regarded as British territory, every act of violence that disturbed this flow had to be sanctioned. Indeed, Northcott’s political agenda in the first years after consolidating British power in the Northern Territories relied on the fostering of trade²⁸. His policy depended on three pillars: commerce, taxation and peace²⁹. Peace was indeed a necessary prerequisite

to enhance the trade and gain merchants’ trust. Thus, banditry and raiding were to be stopped at any cost. Stewart was therefore allowed to use his own discretion in dealing with the “Tanga-naba”³⁰. In this way, it is possible to see how the unstable political context of those years – as well as British perceptions of it – allowed the British officers to completely justify their military actions in the alleged

relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, no. 252, Maxwell to Chamberlain, 05.05.1897, enc.: Stewart to Colonial Secretary, 27.03.1897

28 TNA CO 879/58, Further Correspondence relating to the Northern Territories, 1899, no. 96, Northcott to Colonial Office, 09.07.1899; see also Alan Edward Garrard Watherston, ‘The Northern Territories of the Gold Coast’, Journal of the Royal African Society 7, no. 28 (1908): 359.

29 Wilks, Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana, 142. In the next chapter more space will be devoted to the analysis of British taxation and commercial policies.

30 TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, no. 94, Maxwell to Chamberlain, 16.02.1897, enc.: Hodgson to Stewart, 10.02.1897

Figure 11. "Playing at War". Gurensi warriors (1927 ca.) Source: Cardinall, A. W., ‘In Ashanti & beyond’, pp. 208-209

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name of pacification and civilization. Further on, I will consider how traders took advantage of this British “civilizing” mission, using denunciations of banditry as an effective weapon of reprisal against the Gurensi.

However, before Cpt. Stewart could begin to use his seven-pounder gun, violence was already associated with Europeans. In these years, the French and German methods of conquest differed from the British ones, who were more prone to diplomacy. Stewart reported that «all the natives are frightened of the white men on account of the Germans on one side and the French on the other shooting freely and burning right and left; this makes it very difficult for them to believe that we are different»³¹. However, this same policy of «shooting freely and burning right and left» would be adopted by some British officers in the following years, making them just another set of raiders in a context of instability and violence. The so-called “punitive” raids would become a feature of British intervention in the Gurensi country in the first decade of the 20^th century. Intended to bring peace through military attacks, they targeted the regions that did not comply with their orders and those denounced of robbing the caravans, such as “Lobi” and “Grunshi”. Many of these operations were led by young officers who undertook military expeditions to win medals and promotions, not caring too much about diplomacy³².

The next section intends, therefore, to present these military expeditions, and in particular, those that reached Bolgatanga. These operations were extremely violent, destroying entire settlements, burning the crops and confiscating the livestock. The people in Bolgatanga survived the military operations thanks to the diplomacy that the man the British recognized as the “king” of the town, Apase-nyԑlom Adongo, displayed to the British troops. In this way, the compliance offered by Adongo placed him in a material and political advantage over the other families and communities of the area. Nonetheless, it had an overall protective consequence for the settlement in that Bolgatanga was not destroyed by colonial raiders.

31 TNA CO 879/48, Further Correspondence relative to Boundary question in the Bend of the Niger, no. 108, Maxwell to Antrobus, 27.02.1897, enc.: Stewart to Maxwell, 11.01.1897

32 Raymond B. Bening, ‘Administration and Development in Northern Ghana’, Ghana Social Science Journal 4, no. 2 (1977): 63.

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