Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | The 'Akim' or 'Achim' in the 17th century and 18th century historical contexts: who were they? |
| Author: | Addo-Fening, R. |
| Year: | 1988 |
| Periodical: | Research Review |
| Volume: | 4 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 1-15 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Ghana |
| Subjects: | Akim polity history traditional polities 1500-1599 1600-1699 |
| Abstract: | Researchers seem to be agreed that in the 16th and early 17th century the modern subdivisions of Akyem in present-day Ghana - Abuakwa, Kotoku and Bosome - were part of Accany, which was either 'a loose confederation of States with kinship ties' or 'a general geopolitical term' that referred to 'a congeries of States' in the 'heartland of the Twi-speaking or Akan peoples'. Early in the 17th century, commercial rivalry and warfare triggered a dispersion of Accany peoples. One of the earliest waves of migrants which moved eastward towards the river Pra laid the foundations of the premier Akyem State. The exact territorial limits of 17th-century Akyem remain obscure, however. Besides, the term 'Akim', as used particularly in 17th-century contexts, makes no distinction between Abuakwa, Kotoku and Bosome. The author examines these two puzzles of territorial delimitation and ethnic identity. He concludes that 17th-century Akyem was located in the auriferous lands of the Birem valley west of modern Banso and that the term 'Akim' in 17th-century contexts referred unambiguously to Akyem Abuakwa. The subsumption of the Kotoku and the Bosome under the Akyem ethnic label is as much an ex-post-facto rationalization of the 18th-century historic cooperation between Kotoku and Abuakwa as of the subsequent reestablishment of the Kotoku and Bosome States on Akyem soil in the early 19th century. Notes, ref. |