The people of Ghana: their origins and cultures

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	The people of Ghana: their origins and cultures
Author:	Anquandah, James
Year:	2013
Periodical:	Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (ISSN 0855-191X)
Issue:	15
Pages:	1-25
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ghana
Subjects:	historiography prehistory cultural history
Abstract:	This paper argues for a philosophy of making a 'new' history of Ghana - a history of the people, by the people and for the people. So far, African history emphasizing use of written documents based on data provided by foreign travellers, traders, colonial administrators and missionairies, has served well as useful framework. However, after fifty years of independence there is the need for Ghana's historians to review the way they construct past history in the present. It behoves the 21st century Africanist historians to seek to evolve an authentic history that includes both urban and rural elite and proletariat, rich and poor, free and slave, literate and non-literate, complex and simple societies. The strategy best suited for such a stance is a multi-sourced apporach that winnows data from oral tradition, oral history, written history, archaeology, art history, paleo-historical demography, historical linguistics etc. Bibliogr. [ASC Leiden abstract]