Albert Adu Boahen

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Albert Adu Boahen (born May 24, 1932 in Oseim, Ghana, † May 24, 2006 ; full name: Albert Kwadzo Adu Boahen ) was a well-known Ghanaian historian and liberal politician.

Life

He was born in the small town of Oseim in the Eastern Province of Ghana (then still the Gold Coast ) as the third of seven children of a farming family. After attending the Presbyterian elementary school, he moved to live with his uncle Joseph Boakye Danquah in the province of Juaben in Ashanti Country. The uncle, at that time a lawyer and politician, made it possible for the boy to attend secondary school. From 1947 to 1950 Boahen attended the colony's oldest and best high school, the Mfantsipim School, where the later UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan also acquired his university entrance qualification. Boahen was admitted to the University of Ghana (then University College of the Gold Coast ) in Legon, a district of Accra , and studied history there until 1956. Because of his academic achievements, he received a scholarship to attend the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. There, in the summer of 1959, he was the first African to acquire a doctorate after an extensive study of British policy towards North and West Africa between 1788 and 1861. The quality of the dissertation was so high that - unlike most doctoral theses in UK universities - it was printed by a reputable scientific publisher. To this day, it is the standard work for this phase of British Africa policy. At the same time, this work initiated a reassessment of the German Africa researcher and Saharan traveler Heinrich Barth (1821–1865), who had so far received little attention in Great Britain and had been forgotten in Germany and was seen as a champion of imperialism in the GDR .

In October 1959, Boahen became a lecturer at the newly founded University of Ghana in Legon, Accra, which from then on remained his academic home. Between 1967 and 1975 he was the first black African director of the Institute for History. However, he did not receive a professorship until 1971, under the government of Kofi Abrefa Busia . The withholding of a professor is likely to be explained, among other things, by Boahen's political activities and his critical statements against the dictatorial rulers in Ghana. In 1990 he was retired (emeritus). During his academic career he had held at the University of Ghana in Legon several important positions, including the position of the Vice-Chancellor ( Vice-Chancellor ).

In the course of his career, Boahen has often held visiting professorships, for example in Australia, Great Britain, the West Indies and especially in the USA ( Columbia University , New York, and Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore ). At the latter university he was commissioned in 1985 to hold the internationally renowned “James S. Schouler Lectures”. He gave a lecture on “African Perspectives on Colonialism”. In book form, these lectures became a historical classic. For the journal of African History published by the London School of Oriental and African Studies he acted as co-editor and advisory board. Professor Boahen also held teaching positions at African universities, especially in Nigeria and Sudan, and was also consulted as an external examiner for the West African Examinations Council in other English-speaking countries in the region. In Germany, Adu Boahen remained largely unknown, as his colleague Joseph Ki-Zerbo, with his overall history of Africa, suddenly became famous in specialist circles and with a wider audience in 1978 and thus ousted him from public and scientific attention.

Boahen's first important publication was intended as a handbook for students at English-speaking universities in Africa, but it quickly became the handbook for West African history in general and saw several revised editions: Topics in West African History (1966 etc.) In 1975 The Revolutionary Years appeared: West Africa Since 1800 (2nd edition 1977). In addition, Boahen, who was responsible for teacher training in Legon, worked on textbooks that were also introduced as textbooks in other Commonwealth countries - including countries in the Caribbean. Since 1971 he has acted as advisor to UNESCO on issues of African history. A high point of his academic career was his appointment as President of the International Committee of Historians in 1983, which was commissioned by the world organization to publish an eight-volume history of Africa from the Stone Age to the present. The seventh volume of the General History of Africa , supervised by Boahen , which deals with colonial rule between 1880 and 1935, is described by experts as the best-edited part of the series. Boahen received the “Avicenna Medal” for his scientific achievement in this mammoth project.

Boahen founded his own science publisher (Sankofa) in 1996, in which he published a work on the importance of the Mfantsipim School in Ghanaian history in 1997 and a presentation of the more recent history of his home country from 1876 to 1976 in 2003. His last publication concerned the war between the British and Ashanti from 1900 to 1901. He received the 1997 NOMA Award for his efforts in publishing in sub-Saharan Africa .

The political role

Adu Boahen belonged to the generation of Ghanaian intellectuals who had striven for the independence of the Gold Coast and who saw personalities such as Kwame Nkrumah and Joseph Boakye Danquah as their political models. Boahen therefore always saw himself as a political historian who, however, refused to go with the flow. He was one of the few black African historians from around 1960 who did not see their task in drawing an idyllic picture of the African past before the age of colonialism. He rejected the Ghana myth, represented by his uncle Joseph Danquah and Kwame Nkrumah, according to which modern Ghana emerged from the medieval Gana empire and therefore completed a glorious line of tradition in African history, even if he supported the underlying intention, namely the creation of a Ghanaian national consciousness that transcends all ethnic borders. In a little-known article on the history of the slave trade that appeared in a student-edited magazine, he emphasized the active role that Africans themselves had played in human trafficking. This earned him vocal protests from young historians who interpreted the history of African-European relations exclusively as a history of colonial crimes.

Influenced by his uncle, Boahen pleaded for a parliamentary system based on the British model and the greatest possible political freedom for the individual. As early as the mid-1960s, Boahen went on a confrontation course with Kwame Nkrumah. Although he paid his respects to his efforts for national unity and the promotion of the educational system, he kept his distance in view of the autocratic form of rule, the Marxist tendencies and the pronounced personality cult and was one of the sharpest critics of the founder of the state for many years, even after he had already overthrown ( 1966) and died in exile in Romania (1972). In his opposition Boahen succeeded his uncle Joseph Danquah, who was arrested in 1965 without a valid court judgment and died in prison under circumstances that have never been clarified.

Boahen supported the bourgeois-liberal government of Busia, which was overthrown by General Acheampong in 1972 . Under Busia, the historian also temporarily held the post of head of the Ghanaian news agency. The fall of Busia was followed by seven years of corrupt military dictatorship . During this time, Boahen was arrested several times for statements hostile to the regime and for his activities in the People's Movement for Freedom and Justice. Boahen welcomed the first military coup by young officers in April 1979, led by Air Force Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings , as an opportunity to eradicate corruption in the country. Before the general election in the second half of the year, Boahen moved from the Progress Party (PP) to the United National Convention . Boahen was blamed for the election defeat of the sure favorite PP.

In the years of the second military dictatorship under Jerry Rawlings, Boahen was again in opposition to a regime that did not meet his ideas of democracy. Although he was the target of police spying on several occasions, Boahen was spared arrests and other intimidation measures in view of his international standing as a scientist. In February 1988 he gave three lectures in front of the "Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences", which met on the premises of the British Council , because this meeting place offered relative security from interference by the police. The title of the lectures was: “The Ghanaian Sphinx: Reflections on the Contemporary History of Ghana, 1972–1987”. In his remarks, the historian attacked the military dictatorship and described it as a monster that, like the sphinx of ancient mythology, devours people, but nevertheless inevitably must perish. The book with the lectures appeared in the same year, and it broke the "culture of silence", as the atmosphere under the military regime was called, lasting. In retrospect, political observers state that Boahen's lectures indirectly set the "second independence of Ghana" in motion. The weakness of the regime was already evident in the fact that Boahen was not arrested, as expected, but only banned from lecturing and placed under police supervision in his place of birth, far from Accra. Nonetheless, Boahen and other opponents of the military managed to rally large sections of the population behind them and, in 1990, to bring the "Movement for Freedom and Justice" back to life.

After the gradual reintroduction of democratic conditions and the re-approval of parties, Boahen was nominated as a candidate for the office of president by his New Patriotic Party (NPP), which primarily represented the interests of the middle class, but lost in a controversial election against his opponent Jerry in 1992 Rawlings, who ran as a candidate for the National Democratic Congress party. In the years that followed, there were fierce intra-party conflicts that weakened Boahen's position and led to his defeat in the 1998 top candidate for the presidential election, John Agyekum Kufuor , who led the party to victory in 2000 and became president. On various occasions Boahen was accused of not being a political leader, but rather a political visionary or dogmatist.

End of life

After his retirement in 1990 Boahen devoted himself not only to politics, but also to agriculture. He bought a farm on which he grew cocoa and other typical products, while at the same time advocating the interests of the Ghanaian smallholders. In the last years of his life, the historian Adu Boahen worked on an overall presentation of the history of Ghana and on a book about his home region of Dwaben (Juaben). Both works remained unfinished because Boahen was permanently bedridden after suffering a stroke in 2002. In 2003 a commemorative publication entitled Ghana in Africa and the World was published in his honor . It was published by the Nigerian historian Toyin Falola . Two years later, an Adu Boahen Reader followed with excerpts from the most important works of the Ghanaian. Adu Boahen died on the evening of his 74th birthday in a military hospital in Accra. His long-time adversary, Jerry Rawlings, was among the mourners. Posthumously he was awarded the highest distinction in the country, the “Order of the Star of Ghana”. On July 6, 2006, Adu Boahen was honored with a state ceremony.

Explanations of words

The part of the name "Kwadzo" does not come from the Akan, but from the Ewe language, which is widespread in the eastern region of Ghana. Apparently the historian's mother was a member of the Ewe. He mostly just called himself Adu. In his books and articles he was always called A. Adu, which is typical for European educated Ghanaians or West Africans, who like to abbreviate the Christian or European name component in favor of the second, always traditional name. Boahen's well-known Nigerian fellow historian is called Jacob Festus Ade Ajayi, but is always called J. F. Ade Ajayi . The same applies to K (enneth) Onwuka Dike, who was the first black African ever to receive a doctorate in history in Great Britain.

The name of Boahens Verlag “Sankofa” is a term from the Akan language and freely translated means “respect for the ancestors”.

Fonts

  • Britain, the Sahara and the Western Sudan, 1788-1861. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1964, (Boahen's dissertation).
  • Topics in West African History. Longmans, London 1966 (and more often; 2nd ed. Longman, Harlow 1986, ISBN 0-582-58504-X ).
  • with James B. Webster: The Revolutionary Years. West Africa since 1800. Longmans, London 1967 (and more often; New edition, with Michael Tidy. Ibid 1980, ISBN 0-582-60332-3 ).
  • Ghana. Evolution and Change in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Longman, London 1975, ISBN 0-582-60065-0 .
  • Politics in Ghana, 1800–1874. In: Jacob F. Ade Ajayi, Michael Crowder (eds.): History of West Africa. Volume 2. Longman, London 1974, ISBN 0-582-64519-0 , pp. 167-260.
  • African Perspectives of Colonialism (= The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History. 15). Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD et al. 1987, ISBN 0-8018-3456-2 .
  • as editor: L 'Afrique sous domination coloniale, 1880–1935 (= Histoire Générale de l'Afrique. 7). UNESCO et al., Paris 1987, ISBN 92-3-201713-X (English edition: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935 (= General History of Africa. 7). Heinemann et al., London et al. 1985, ISBN 0-435-94813-X ).
    • L'Afrique face au défi colonial. Pp. 21-38, ( Africa and the colonial challenge. Pp. 1-18).
    • with M'Baye Gueye: Initiatives et résistances africaines en Afrique occidentale de 1880 à 1914. pp. 137–170, ( African initiatives and resistance in West Africa, 1880–1914. pp. 114–148).
    • La politique et le nationalisme en Afrique occidentale, 1919–1935. Pp. 669-694, ( Politics and nationalism in West Africa, 1919-35. Pp. 624-647).
    • Le colonialisme en Afrique: impact et signification. Pp. 837-864, ( Colonialism in Africa: its impact and significance. Pp. 782-809).
  • The Ghanaian Sphinx. Reflections on the Contemporary History of Ghana, 1972–1987 (= The JB Danquah Memorial Lectures. 21, ZDB -ID 757463-0 ). Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Accra 1989.
  • Mfantsipim and the making of Ghana. A Centenary History, 1876-1976. Sankofa Educational Publishers, Accra 1996, ISBN 9988-76311-5 .
  • Yaa Asantewaa and the Asante-British War of 1900-1. Subsaharan Publishers et al., Accra et al. 2003, ISBN 9988-550-99-5 .
  • as editor with Emmanuel Akyeampong, Nancy Lawler, TC McCaskie and Ivor Wilks: "The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself" and other Writings by Otumfuo, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I (= Fontes Historiae Africanae. NS 6). Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2003, ISBN 0-19-726261-9 .
    • Agyeman Prempeh in the Seychelles, 1900-1924. Pp. 21-42.
  • Africa in the Twentieth Century. The Adu Boahen Reader. Edited by Toyin Falola . Africa World, Trenton NJ 2005, ISBN 1-59221-297-2 .

Festschrift in honor of Adu Boahen:

  • Toyin Falola (Ed.): Ghana in Africa and the World. Essays in Honor of Adu Boahen. Africa World Press, Trenton NJ 2003, ISBN 1-59221-069-4 .

Honors

Web links

Unfortunately, it is hardly possible to get really reliable information and data on Adu Boahen's academic and political career, as he has never been the subject of a carefully researched biography despite his outstanding importance for the study of African history. Even the exact date of his "Sphinx lectures" is given differently. Therefore the above information is to be regarded as provisional and has to be partially checked. The following links are primarily obituaries and not always characterized by a sufficient degree of objectivity.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ References in Academic Historiography in Nigeria , accessed on August 9, 2012 (English).
  2. ↑ welltempered.net ( Memento from December 29, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Boahen, Albert Adu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boahen, Albert Kwadzo Adu (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ghanaian historian and liberal politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 24, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Oseim, Ghana
DATE OF DEATH May 24, 2006