In his 1971 inaugural speech, the Asantehene (King of Asante), Opoku Ware II, proposed the reconstruction of the traditional Asante palace, which was demolished in 1874 when the British colonial forces attacked the “national” capital, Kumase. The aftermath of the attack witnessed the British attempt to alter and reinvent the architectural landscape of the city, beginning with the construction of a European self-contained house to serve as the palace of the Asante kingdom in 1925. This paper combines rhetorical analysis of the inaugural speech with a close examination of the official residence of the Asantehene to understand how the palace historically functioned as the setting for the performance of the local art of governance. By reading along and against the grain of the king’s speech, I use the physical structures of the palace as framework to understand the conservative nature of the architectural landscape of Kumase. In doing so, I offer a response to Louis Nelson, who in a social history of architecture in Jamaica, appealed to historians to generate narratives that embody events with places where they occurred. Thus, by focusing on the speech, I demonstrate the entangled relationship between past events and the places where they occurred in an attempt to unravel broader themes on Asante architectural and political history. Ultimately, this paper will help us understand the position of Kumase within the imagined and real geopolitical landscape of contemporary Ghana and within the context of global history of resistance to empire.

Last modified

• 09/18/2020

Creator

• Tony Yeboah

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-ayag-jc70

Keyword

• history

Date created

• 2020

Resource type

• Video

Rights statement

• In Copyright