1. ‘I Could Not Look After My Body Or Health’: Marriage, Slavery, Colonialism, And Abina
Trevor R. Getz

2. Regina v. Quamina Eddoo, 1876, Cape Coast Judicial Assessors Court
William Melton, Acting Judicial Assessor
James Davis, prosecutor
Abina Mansah, appearing for the prosecution
Adjuah N’yamiwheh, appearing for the prosecution
James Hutton Brew, defense attorney
Quamina Eddoo, defendant
Eccoah Croom, appearing for the defense
Yawowhah, appearing for the defense

3. Three geographic levels of interpretation
1. The Gold Coast Colony and Protectorate as “state”
3. Akan (Twi-speakers) as socio-cultural community
2. The British Empire as “network” and “system”

4. Abina’s stories in “three keys”
SCOPE
FOCUS
METHODS AND SOURCES
INTERPRETIVE FRAME
The colony
Negotiation and impact of abolition
Converging documents and courtroom testimony
Social history
Imperial/global
The colonial courtroom and the meaning of “slavery”
Thick interpretation
World history
Akan cultural world
Marriage
Linguistic analysis, oral histories, and proverbs
Gender studies and ethno-history – informing a critical world history

5. A social history of abolition on the Gold Coast1

6. 1874 colonial establishment
Asante Confederation:
Adanse
1874 Colony and Protectorate: the “Protectorate” is the broader area
Coastal towns: “The Colony”

7. British Press cover 1873-1874 war

8. Abolition of slavery in Gold Coast
July 1874 – Anglo-Asante war ends
July - August 1874 – Anti-Slavery Societies lobby for abolition
August1874 – Parliament investigates several models for gradual emancipation. Chiefs and “educated men” send petitions opposing abolition.
September 1874 – Governor and Executive Council adopt “Indian Model”.

9. “Success” of Indian Model
Abolitionists largely satisfied, yet little economic or political dislocation
Under the surface – slave/master negotiation
Rise in importation of young, female captives
Basel Mission postcard from Gold Coast, 1896: “The freed slave children say ‘thank you’”

10. Abina’s testimony
Abina Mansah, having been promised and declared that she would speak the truth says:
“A man called Yowawhah brought me from Ashantee. I was his wife. He brought me to Salt Pond. Yowawhah went on purchasing goods. On the same day as he finished, he handed me over to defendant to be with with him, and said that he was going back and would return………”

11. World history in the Gold Coast courtroom
Law: The “Indian Model” – adapted from the Raj (India)
Palm oil as imperial commodity
Abolitionism as a British middle-class core value
Conceptualizing slavery as the binary opposite of “freedom”
Paternalism and ethnography:
“Women and children are…. So much property, which [the head of the Akan household] can sell, pawn, or give away at his pleasure” – Brodie Cruickshank
“Slavery here is an emanation of parental and family authority” – 1874 Fairfield Report

12. Melton’s formulation of slavery
Did any money change hands, or were any rituals denoting enslavement carried out?
Was the witness physically abused?
Was the witness called a slave (such local terms as “donko” or “amerfefley”)?
What sort of labor was the witness required to do, and was he or she paid for it?
Was the witness brought into the protectorate from outside?

13. The making of James Hutton Brew – attorney for the defense and cultural broker
Irishman Richard Brew arrived in Gold Coast. He had two children with Afina Anson, the daughter of a local paramount Chief.
Grandson Richard Brew II - court interpreter and magistrate for the British.
Grandson Samuel Kante Brew - “scholar” and slave trader who operated under the Spanish flag.
Son Samuel Collins Brew – merchant and magistrate, married heiress to state of Abora Dunkwa.
Son James Hutton Brew – prince, newspaper founder, and lawyer. Defended Quamina Eddoo

14. Abina’s arguments
“when a free person is sitting down at ease the slave is working that is what I know”.
“I had been sold and I had no will of my own and I could not look after my body and health”.
“As they were in defendant’s house long before if the defendant had done anything for them I could not tell but as for me he did nothing good for me”.

15. “Health” – 19th century Akan conceptions
Spouse
Physical needs met
abusua clan (matrikin)
Relationships
Spiritual protection
Sodalities
(patrikin)

16. Marriage Proverbs “A woman’s glory is her marriage”
Peggy Appiah, Kwame Anthoy Appiah, and Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Bu Me Be: Proverbs of the Akans
“A woman’s glory is her marriage”
“An unmarried person eats scantily”
“A single person is like a dead chicken”
“A new marriage, brother-in-law benefits from it.”

17. Cognates for marriage? Rattray’s Akan categories of marriage
adehye awadie – marriage between a free man and a free women
mpena awadie – concubinage
awowa awadie – marriage between a free man and a pawn
afona awadie – marriage between a free man and a slave
kuna awadie – levirate marriage
ayete awadie – sororate marriage

18. Head drink and marriage rite John Kofi Fynn – Fante oral histories
“The family of the woman is consulted and the necessary formalities performed.”
“When a man loves a woman he first sends envoys to the woman’s father. If the girl is not married the father informs the family. 2 pounds is first charged as Head drink; 4 pounds is secondly charged as marriage rite.”
“The man proposes to the woman, if the woman approves the parents are informed and if they like the man or his character then a day is fixed for the marriage rites.”

19. Divorce Proverbs
Peggy Appiah, Kwame Anthoy Appiah, and Ivor Agyeman-Duah, Bu Me Be: Proverbs of the Akans
“If a marriage stinks, we don’t sleep with it so that the scent becomes good.”
“Divorce does not destroy the town.”
“It is not difficult to get a divorce.”

20. Cognates for “slave”? Rattray’s Akan categories of slavery
akoa - “servant”
awowa - “debt pawn”
donko - “domestic slave”
dommum - “war captive”
akyere - “slave under capital punishment”
1896 Basel Mission image labeled simply “slave children”

21. afona awadie marriages – 1870s
Expanded dramatically with increased importation of women with “donko” status.
Far more affordable than marriage to “free” women with extensive matrilineages.
British magistrates accepted that wives were not slaves.
Wives had neither recourse to divorce nor protection of courts.

22. Yaw Awoah marries Abina
Three advantages for Yaw:
Provided him with a legal justification bring her into the Colony and Protectorate.
Abina as his wife provided him essentially free labor for carrying his goods to the coast.
The relationship may have made Abina amenable to sexual access for Yaw during the period of their relationship.

23. Quamina Eddoo tries to force Abina to marry Tandoe
“Whether the defendant purchased me or not I do not know. If the defendant had not given me in marriage, I could not have formed any idea that he had purchased me.”
“Because defendant gave me in marriage I knew I had been sold”
“I asked him how it was (that when I had been left by Yowahwah to live with him, and that he would return), that he had given me in marriage to one of his people. On this I thought that I had been sold and I ran away. “
PRAAD SCT Regina v Quamina Eddoo 10 Nov 1876, Testimony of Abina Mansah.

24. Abina expresses preference
“My master said that I should be married to Tandoe, and that he would give me plenty of cloths, and I said I did not like him.”
“Defendant asked me if I liked him and I said I did not.”
PRAAD SCT Regina v Quamina Eddoo 10 Nov 1876, Testimony of Abina Mansah.