State and society in pre-colonial Asante
By: T.C. McCaskie.
Series: African studies series ;; 79
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 492
Subjects: Ashanti (African people) -- History.; Ashanti (Kingdom); Ghana -- History.
Description: Scholarship on the West African kingdom of Asante is at the leading edge of Africanist research. In this book, T.C. McCaskie gives a detailed and richly nuanced historical portrait of pre-colonial Asante. His delineation of state and society in Asante in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is centred on an extended analysis of the crucial ritual of the annual Kumase odwira festival.

It is at once a profound historical reconstruction of an African polity, and a deeply informed meditation on key Asante concepts and ideas. Throughout the book, the Asante experience is consistently discussed in relation to a broad range of historiography and critical theory.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 442-473) and index.