King Of The Gold Coast

“Provocative and well written . . . a must-read for any scholar interested in African identity, the transatlantic slave trade, and resistance.” —American Historical Review Although they came from distinct polities and peoples who spoke different languages, slaves from the African Gold Coast were collectively identified by Europeans as “Coromantee” or “Mina.” Why these ethnic labels were embraced and how they were utilized by enslaved Africans to develop new group identities is the subject of Walter C. Rucker’s absorbing study. Rucker examines the social and political factors that contributed to the creation of New World ethnic identities and assesses the ways displaced Gold Coast Africans used familiar ideas about power as a means of understanding, defining, and resisting oppression. He explains how performing Coromantee and Mina identity involved a common set of concerns and the creation of the ideological weapons necessary to resist the slavocracy. These weapons included obeah powders, charms, and potions; the evolution of “peasant” consciousness and the ennoblement of common people; increasingly aggressive displays of masculinity; and the empowerment of women as leaders, spiritualists, and warriors, all of which marked sharp breaks or reformulations of patterns in their Gold Coast past. “One of the book’s greatest strengths is the ways in which Rucker painstakingly traces how ethnic labels were appropriated, recast, and ultimately employed as a means to establish community bonds and resist oppression . . . Chapters that focus on the creation of the Gold Coast diaspora, religion, and women make for a captivating text that will be of interest to graduate students and specialist readers. Recommended.” —Choice

Chicago's breathtaking Lake Shore Drive, with its beaches and luxury homes, has its origin in a neglected marsh and a clandestine land development. Meet the uncrowned king of the disputed shore, George Wellington Streeter, the outlandish swindler, unlikely hero and self-proclaimed founder of the Gold Coast who tried to secede from the state of Illinois. Opposing him was the quiet vision of Potter Palmer and the full weight of his investment syndicate. With this keen piece of investigative history, Wayne Klatt uncovers the secrets that both sides of the conflict managed to keep in spite of lawsuits, state inquiries, a presidential forgery and two murder trials.

Kingship (chieftaincy) disputes are commonplace in Ghana. These disputes may begin as rivalries among eligible candidates, or when ineligible candidates are elected caretaker kings due to their invaluable services to a royal family. However, upon the demise of the caretaker rulers, sometimes their descendants refuse to cede power, thus creating protracted and sometimes violent power struggles. This is exactly what happened to the Ᾱwutu-ābe (Effutu) of Simpa. In 1898, twenty-seven years after the death of a caretaker ruler elected by the Otuano Royal Family for his invaluable service to the royal family, his nephew contested the throne plunging the Ᾱwutu into a cycle of contentious internecine struggle. The Making of an African King examines the source of the struggle as seen by colonial administrators, and the final court ruling in June 2013 between the patrilineal Otuano Royal Family against the non-royal Acquah faction that favors the matrilineal system of descent practiced by the Akan.

Whatever one may think about the rights and wrongs of colonial rule, it is hard to deny that during the first half of the this century those African countries, which then came under British administration enjoyed a period of stability which most now look back upon with a profound sense of loss. Paradoxical though it may seem, one of the bulwarks of that stability was each country’s indigenous army. Trained and officered by the British, these force became a source of both pride and cohesion in their own country, none more so than the King’s African Rifles. founded in 1902 and probably the best known of the East African forces. In this, the first complete history of the East African forces, Malcolm Page, who himself served in the Somaliland Scouts for a number of years, has had access to much new material while researching the history of each unit from it’s foundation to the time of independence. Historians in several fields will be grateful to him for having put on record this very important period in the annals of both Great Britain and East Africa while the memories of many who served there were still fresh, and they themselves will perhaps be most grateful of all for this lasting tribute to the men they served and who served them, for in that shared sense of duty lay the true spirit of East African Forces.

In The Sun King’s Atlantic, Jutta Wimmler reveals the many surprising ways in which Africa and America channeled cultural developments in France, exploring their impact on material culture, theatre, science and religion.