Ivor Wilks: A British Africanist passes on
In his inaugural speech establishing the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah’s wish was that, it would become a cutting edge institute that would reinforce his own African personality policy and create confidence of Africa’s contribution to scholarship.
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Ironically, some of the people he had to depend on to achieve this were British academics who had Africa at heart and knew its contribution to civilization.
The British historian Ivor Wilks who passed away at 86 in his rural village in Wales was one of the Africanists who came to teach. He ended up studying and researching into histories- from Akwamu the old empire of the Akan, Ada and to the Gonjas and Mamprusi in the northern and upper parts of the country.
Interestingly, he (obtained his PhD from Cambridge University with these acquired influences from Ghana) and the other Europeans including Thomas Hodgkin who would become the first Director of IAS and other Ghanaian scholars like the late Albert Adu Boahen, J.H. Kwabena Nketia who had completed their studies mainly at the colleges of the University of London started building the African history department and the Institute.
Career in Gold Coast
Wilks’ career in the Gold Coast effectively began in 1953 at the Department of Philosophy and between 1955-1958, he was Resident Tutor for Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions, Institute of Extra-Mural Studies in the University of Ghana; Senior Research Fellow in the IAS 1961 to 1963. From 1964-1966, he was Research Professor in African History and from 1965 to 1966, he was Deputy Director of the IAS.
He also served in other capacities including as Advisory Member, National Executive, People Educational Association of the Gold Coast, University of Ghana Representative on the National Museum and Monuments Board, University of Ghana Representative on the Committee of Management, Asante Cultural Centre, Founding Editor, Ghana Notes and Queries, Member of Council, Historical Society of Ghana all between 1955 to 1972.
In 1966, Professor Wilks left Legon for Northwestern University in the US where he was Professor of History till 1968. He later served as Research Director and Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. He returned to Northwestern University where he later became professor emeritus.
Wilks and Ghana/Africa
Wilks’ importance to Ghanaian and African historiography is not only about some of the most prominent people who were his students including Professor Peter Abrahams who was the first African at the All Souls College of Oxford to current African, European and American scholars who head African studies and history departments around the world and have collectively written thousands of historical works through his influence.
These people showed great appreciation to their mentor in an anthology of essays, The Cloth of Many Colored Silks, reflecting Wilks’ African interest but also British history, The Middle East, with particular reference to Palestine and Israel, Historical Methodology and Philosophy of History.
In 1976, his well-known 800 page Cambridge published book, Asante in the Nineteenth Century was awarded the Herskovits Award of the African Studies Association, a book which is perhaps the most cited of all in that period of Asante’s history.
He also wrote Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante as well as Wa and Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana (1989), monographs, pamphlets, chapters in edited works, periodical and journal articles in excess of 140. Wilks even got the National Endowment of Humanities in the US to sponsor for five years, The Asante Collective Biography in the United States which conducted field work in Asante. The publications of these threw more light on Asante/Akan and African past and as materials later of the Asante National Biography.
Such was his trust level among Asante officialdom that he easily collaborated with the late Prof. Albert Adu Boahen and the Harvard University professor, Emmanuel Akeampong in editing the historical memoirs (The History of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country Itself) of the Asante king Nana Prempeh I who the British had exiled to the Seychelles islands.
Wilks also worked with Prempeh II and eventually became the official biographer of the late king of Asante Otumfuo Opoku Ware II and published, A Portrait of Otumfuo Opoku Ware II As A Young Man. It coincided in 1996 with his silver jubilee as Asantehene. It was launched at the Manhyia Palace by the late former Vice President of Ghana, Ekow Arkaah.
Manhyia Palace Museum
Last year, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II decided that for his contribution to history, a section of the Manhyia Palace Museum would have the Ivor Wilks Collections of Works.
Professor Wilks’ last visit to Ghana was in 1995 when he delivered the University of Ghana’s Aggrey-Fraser- Guggisbery Memorial Lectures, One Nation: Many Histories. He explained the choice of title as predating colonial prejudice: “Well, I was looking at some of the old writers in the colonial period like W.F. Ward who took the line of looking at British colonial period- the control of Gold Coast colony and Asante.
These writers presented issues as if there were nothing but tribes here who were always fighting each other and making wars and that it was the British who came along and stopped the fight….. when the British came, they started destroying and putting people apart-a lot of people with different histories like the Dagombas, Fantes, Asantes and so on were all put together. So there were many histories but for a long period of time, they were slow in coming together to make one nation.”
A life of devotion to Ghana and Africa for more than half a century was also blessed with four Ghanaian children: Kojo Amanoor a professor at the Institute of African Studies, Legon; Dede Amanoor, an international development consultant recently a parliamentary candidate on the ticket of Nkrumah’s CPP, David Amanoor of the BBC World Service and a teacher, Suzanne in California and widow, Nancy Lawler.