Chapter Five
The Rumor of the Human Sacrifice of Two Hundred Girls by Asantehene [King] Mensa Bonsu in 1881-82 and its Consequent Colonial Policy Implications and African Responses [1]
Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry
By the early 1880s, the defeat of the Asante Kingdom by the British in the Anglo-Asante War of 1873–74 had exacted its toll on the kingdom with serious consequences. For one thing, the power and stability of the kingdom had dwindled considerably as member and vassal states alike broke away with impunity. For another, the Asante rulers had to contend with British colonialism that had been paradoxically imposed on the very allies, the coastal states, that had given military and logistical support to the British-led armies during the war of 1873–74. Under this looming shadow of nascent British imperialism, a rumor swept through the British colony of the Gold Coast, adjacent to the Asante Kingdom, in November 1881, that Asantehene [King] Mensa Bonsu (r.1874–1883) had sacrificed 200 girls.[2] Within days it had infected the British public through the London-based newspapers that had published the rumor. Prompted by the London-based Aborigines Protection Society (APS), the Colonial Office authorized the Gold Coast colonial government to investigate the rumor.[3]
Overall, throughout the nineteenth century, the subject of human sacrifice[4] formed a censorious leitmotif in the writings of Europeans, including government agents and Christian missionaries, who visited Kumasi, the Asante capital.[5] Human sacrifice in Asante was also covered by the Gold Coast newspapers and the London-based African Times.[6] Embellished with inordinate exoticism, such accounts reached the Gold Coast African intelligentsia, the British authorities in the Gold Coast, the British public, and the Colonial Office. The question of human sacrifice crystalized into a major problem in the turbulent relationship between the Asante rulers and the British officials in the Gold Coast.[7] The Asante rulers believed that the British officials were unduly using the question of human sacrifice to interfere in Asante affairs, pointing to the imperialist strategy
of control through categorization.[8] For their part, the British officials contended that human sacrifice in Asante exemplified the sanguinary despotism and cultural atavism that underscored the norms and traditions of Asante, bereft of what could be gained from the messianic intervention of Christianity and the mid-/late Victorian imperial “civilizing” mission.[9]
In her path-breaking book, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa, Luise White explains that historians have not paid much attention to rumors as historical sources because of the problem of authenticity.[10] In sum, the tendency has been to avoid rumors as historical sources, despite the fact that rumors contain rich layers of information on the colonial era in Africa. The present study applies White’s historical method by using rumor as a source of colonial history. The subject of human sacrifice and / or capital punishment has punctuated Asante historiography; for example, it was the subject of a lively debate between Clifford Williams and Ivor Wilks.[11] Although complementing the Williams-Wilks debate, the present study does not seek to explain whether the Asante rulers decapitated humans for the purposes of ritual performance or capital punishment, the focal point of the debate. Rather, following White, my intention here is to use the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls to reconstruct history: how the Gold Coast colonial government used the imperial gaze of an assumed superior moral stewardship against the practice of human sacrifice to intervene in Asante national affairs, in some sense, what Edmund Collins calls “the panic element.”[12] Additionally, the present study shows how the realm of rumors served as a composite means of official information-gathering by the colonial state. Thus, it illustrates how the rumor affected colonial policy, in this case, toward Asante, and how the rumor illuminates the broader history of the Gold Coast and Asante. Finally, the study looks at how the rumor and its implications were interpreted by the various sectors of the colonial society, especially with regard to the African intelligentsia’s perceptions of the British imperial attitudes toward Asante.
These outlined thematic trajectories are discussed in several main sections. Borrowing from sociological and anthropological paradigmatic approaches, the first part historicizes and theorizes the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls. The second portion examines the origin of the rumor and also looks at how it spread through The Gold Coast Times, (Cape Coast), the first newspaper to publish the rumor, as well as the London-based newspapers, namely The Times,Standard, and thepan-Africanist African Times. The third part probes the depths of the colonial government’s efforts to decipher the rumor, while the fourth section examines the African intelligentsia’s perceptions of the rumor and colonialism. The fifth part looks at how the colonial state amassed information from local rumors, while the sixth section illustrates how such rumor-based information shaped colonial policy. The final part, "Rumor and History and Rumor as History," uses the rumor to illuminate aspects of the history of the Gold Coast and Asante during the dawn of colonial rule in the late nineteenth century.
Some caveats are duly warranted here. First, although, the rumor centered on Mensa Bonsu, the present study does not seek to examine his reign nor the political challenges that faced the Asante Kingdom in the 1880s. Indeed, both topics have formed the subject of numerous studies.[13] Second, due to the paucity of sources, the reconstruction of the Asante reaction to the rumor is limited to Mensah Bonsu’s diplomatic efforts to deny the rumor by sending several emissaries to the colonial government.
Mensa Bonsu succeeded Asantehene Kofi Karikari (r. 1867-1874), his senior brother, who was dethroned in mid-1874 for committing offences against the state, including the removal of gold buried with Asantehene Osei Yaw Akoto (1824-1833) and Asantehemaa [Queen] Afua Sapon (r. 1826, ca.1859).[14] According to Wilks, Mensa Bonsu’s initial reign was successful because he was able to quell revolts, for example, by the Dwaben state against the Asante center. Also, Mensa Bonsu initiated policies of administrative and military reforms that bore the signs of progress and peace unlike the conflict that had existed during the reign of his predecessor, Kofi Karikari.[15] These progressive policies lasted until about 1879-1880 when the Domankama or Abonsam-kom, a conservative cultist movement, attempted to assassinate Mensa Bonsu. Thereafter, Mensa Bonsu purged the movement and its sympathizers, including his perceived political opponents.[16] Wilks explains that by the end of 1881, Mensa Bonsu’s “conduct became increasingly erratic as he sought to secure his personal position against any future challenge,” and consequently, he surrounded himself with a special 600-strong palace guard equipped with the best and most modern guns in the arsenal of the Asante Kingdom.[17] Apart from using the palace guard for his personal safety, Mensa Bonsu used it as an instrument of suppression, persecution, and elimination of his political opponents.[18] In spite of Mensa Bonsu’s efforts to stifle dissent, by April 1883, popular opposition, championed by the nkwankwaa or "the young men intensified" and led to his overthrow on March 8, 1883.[19]
Insights into Mensa Bonsu’s bloodthirsty disposition are based on colonial reports and Christian missionary accounts whose biases have not been distilled, but by all accounts Mensa Bonsu was a cruel king. Wilks, quoting from Captain Knapp Barrow’s report, stresses that the charges preferred against Mensa Bonsu included “cruel tyrannical acts,” “heavy fines and barbarous cruelties,” and “ordering and enforcing decapitation without the knowledge and consent of his chiefs.”[20] T. C. McCaskie notes that “Mensa Bonsu carried punitive exactions to new and insupportable levels.”[21] McCaskie, quoting from the indigenous Christian missionary N. V. Asare, adds that Mensa Bonsu “‘was very mean.... He was wicked. He delighted in killing people. He had people prepared for execution while eating, and as soon as he had finished, the executioners took the culprit away to be killed before Mensa Bonsu went off for his sleep... People who roamed about at night were often executed.’”[22] Additionally, “‘King Mensa Bonsu was the most cruel amongst all the Asante sovereigns, he beheaded plenty of people in his time. He was not only cruel, but very wicked and avaricious.’”[23] Thus, in 1881-82, when popular opposition mounted against Mensa Bonsu, he used political violence as an instrument of policy; it was in this context that the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls became current in the Gold Coast.
Theorizing and Historicizing the Rumor of the Ritual Murder of 200 Girls
In his ground-breaking sociological study of rumors, Tamotsu Shibutani explains that a rumor “is ordinarily regarded as a false report, or at least one which is unverified or probably false,” that each “rumor has a history, but it cannot be discovered in the biography of any of the individuals participating in it....”[24] Thus, the credibility of the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls was in doubt, yet it set off alarm bells because the Asante rulers had been known to engage in human sacrifice. Shibutani further explains that “unverified reports are considered seriously only in the absence of reliable news.”[25] Similarly, due to the lack of reliable news from Manhyia, Mensa Bonsu’s palace, regarding human sacrifice, the rumor was considered with all seriousness by various constituencies, including the APS, the Colonial Office, and the Gold Coast colonial government.[26]
Jean-Noel Kapferer has argued that sources of rumors are “in the end, of but little importance.”[27] He explains that, “many rumors are the result of an event whose meaning is uncertain or ambiguous” and “rumors win us over because they provide an occasion to better understand the world; they considerably simplify it and allow us to detect therein a framed order.”[28] This definition clearly exemplified the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls. As noted, the Asante rulers had been known to engage in human sacrifice, but the rumor further stimulated public interest because of the large number of victims, the reasons behind the act, and the contention that all the victims were girls. Kapferer further argues that one reason for the rapidity of passing on a rumor is that “knowing something in advance is a source of competitive edge, whether in the economic or social spheres, or in day-to-day life.”[29] This applies remarkably to the press that saw the rumor as a commodity to market in order to gain a competitive edge. Also, the publication of the rumor by the Gold Coast Times, the Times, the Standard, and the African Times “accelerated and accredited” the essentials of the rumor in “one fell swoop”; overall, the spate of publications “penetrated into thousands of homes.”[30] The media’s coverage of a rumor can be “that of a critique or combat” and this “attitude is frequent in political editorials.”[31] These theoretical tidbits help to explain the rapidity with which the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls spread and how the effects of the combative newspaper coverage aroused the attention of the APS, the Colonial Office, the colonial government, the African intelligentsia, and the ManhyiaPalace.
Additionally, Hans-Joachim Neubauer notes that rumors “often indicate a prejudice... rumors may indeed express or even intensify a latent prejudice,” and rumors “are always connected with the fears, hopes, and expectations of people.”[32] Undoubtedly, imperial prejudice as well as genuine public
concerns underscored the respective calls by the APS, Colonial Office, and the newspapers to investigate the rumor. It was the shared anxieties both in the Gold Coast and in Britain that kept the rumor mill alive as the public tried to decipher the rationale for the alleged sacrifice. For her part, Luise White states that, “rumor was news that one later learned was false….” and that, “what characterized rumors was the intensity with which they were spread.”[33] Also, “Rumor may simply be poised between an explanation and an assertion: it is not events misinterpreted and deformed, but rather events analyzed and commented upon.”[34] This explains how the rumor of the ritual murder of the 200 girls spread and gathered additional strains of information, leading to further distortion of the original piece of rumor.
Spreading the Rumor of the Ritual Murder of 200 Girls
The origin of the rumor of the ritual murder of 200 girls is difficult to determine. One interpretation stipulated that the rumor had come from a trader from Asante who had passed through Winneba.[35] Another interpretation had it that the rumor had come from a “refugee,” indeed, one of those slated to be ritually killed, but who managed to make good her escape to the coast.[36] The rumor was subsequently published in the Gold Coast Times founded by James Hutton Brew and which in 1881-82 was being edited by Timothy Laing.[37] Contrary to the conclusions in the colonial reports that the Gold Coast Times had published the rumor once, the rumor appeared in three separate issues of the newspaper.[38] Among other things, the Gold Coast Times reported that:
The report relative to the inhuman act said to have been committed by the monarch [Mensa Bonsu] was delivered to some persons who went to Moree... by an Ashantee refugee, a girl, who fearing she would be included in the two hundred who were so cruelly murdered, fled to the colony for refuge. I say “murdered” for it was nothing less. The house in question was not one of the king’s houses but the Royal Mausoleum, situated I believe in Bantama, the window of which having fallen down, these unfortunate girls, who were virgins, were cruelly and inhumanly murdered; and their blood was taken (not kept) and mixed up with the swish which was used when a new window was being put in.[39]
Two weeks later, the Gold Coast Times affirmed that the “information from T. D. N. of Winnebah throws further light on the subject of the recent destruction of two hundred females in Commassie. The question of whether this tragic act was committed or not is now, we believe, too clearly solved. There need be no more misgivings as regards the truth of the rumor that so many beings had been sacrificed.”[40] The sources do not allow us to ascertain who T. D. N. was, but it was Laing’s way of authenticating his earlier publication of the rumor.
Kapferer writes that, “without having created them, the media sometimes act as powerful transmission relays and accelerators.”[41] The reasons why the Gold Coast Times rushed to publish the rumor without ascertaining its validity is difficult to gauge. Kapferer explains that “the mass media... engage in competitive struggle for scoops.”[42] However, this does not adequately explain the situation because the Gold Coast Times was the sole newspaper in the Gold Coast during the period of the rumor. Thus, other reasons can be garnered to explain why Laing published the rumor. Certainly, the sensationalism of the rumor could facilitate the selling of the newspaper, but more importantly, Laing published the rumor to draw further attention to human sacrifice in Asante. This supports Kapferer’s view that the “mass media public allows for instantaneous transmission of news to tremendous numbers of people.”[43] Given that the editorial of the Gold Coast Times regularly covered Asante affairs, the latter reason is more plausible than the former.
Pressured by the APS and the Colonial Office, Gov. Samuel Rowe wrote to the editor of the Gold Coast Times, Laing, to ascertain the origin of the rumor.[44] In his response, Laing wrote:
In reply to your letter... relative to the sacrifice of 200 females in Coomassie,
I have to state for the information of his Excellency the Governor-in-Chief that
I received the intelligence from a Mr. John Grant, a native of this town, who
obtained it in conversation with a certain woman now living in Cape Coast.
The latter it appears heard the news from the lips of one of the intended victims
who escaped to the Colony, and whom she met in the village of Moree.[45]
This points to the fact that Laing did not check the authenticity of the story. More importantly, the rumor appears to have been passed down to several people before Laing received it.
The rumor reached England from the Gold Coast through the purser of one of the mail steamers; the sources also indicate that the rumor reached London via a Reuter’s telegram.[46] Several of the London-based newspapers, including the Standard, the Times, and the African Times carried the rumor.[47] Among other things, the Times stated that, “Information of a startling and sensational nature was received here a few days ago to the effect that the King of Ashanti had put to death 200 young girls.”[48] The Times continued that it had received confirmation that such wholesale human sacrifices were known to be a custom of Asante rulers, hence it hoped that the rumor would be investigated.[49] Perhaps due to the fact that the African Times had a large readership in Africa and was the only British newspaper devoted to news from Africa, it was more cautions in