Detention Without Trial in Early Colonial Asante: The Upturned and Negated Lives of Kwame Amankwa and His Fellow Prisoners.

This paper deals with the imposition of British colonial rule over the great West African forest kingdom of Asante (1901), and its immediate aftermath. Specifically, it focuses on the prolonged detention without trial under special ordinances of Kwame Amankwa and others who were arrested and removed to custody on the seaboard of the Gold Coast Colony. It discusses at length the entanglement of Kwame Amankwa and others in the coils of British colonial legislation and practice as they sought release into freedom and a return to Asante. Thus, the paper deals with the impact of the new colonial order on the lives of named individuals, and in doing so it suggests ways in which the new dispensation impacted on received ideas of history and culture as expressed in personhood and ideas of a stable belonging among those affected by it. It is suggested that the experience of the named individuals discussed was an extreme version of the doubt and despair that affected many Asante from time to time as the new order embedded itself. In general terms, this paper seeks to explore the still neglected response of Africans as individuals to the advent of colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]