Slavery, Memory and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c.1850–Present

Meera Venkatachalam

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781107108271
• eBook ISBN: 9781316371947
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Based on a decade of fieldwork in southeastern Ghana and analysis of secondary sources, this book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of rituals collectively known as 'Fofie', which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past. The Anlo developed a sense of discomfort about their agency in slavery in the early twentieth century which they articulated through practices such as ancestor veneration, spirit possession, and by forging links with descendants of peoples they formerly enslaved. Conversion to Christianity, engagement with 'modernity', trans-Atlantic conversations with diasporan Africans, and citizenship of the postcolonial state coupled with structural changes within the religious system - which resulted in the decline in Fofie's popularity - gradually altered the moral emphases of legacies of slavery in the Anlo historical imagination as the twentieth century progressed.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Seriespage
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• 1 Ghosts of Slavery?
• 2 The Anlo-Ewe: Portrait of a People
• 3 The Dance of Alegba: Anlo-Ewe Religion
• 4 Slavery in the Anlo Imagination
• 5 Religion and Society in Early Modern Anlo, c. 1750-c. 1910
• 6 Gods from the North, c. 1910-c. 1940
• 7 ‘Yesu Vide, Dzo Vide’: The Dynamics of Anlo Religion, c. 1940-c. 2010
• 8 Conclusion: Ritual Servitude, Trans-Atlantic Conversations, and Religious Change
• Bibliography
• Index