Slavery, Memory and Religion in Southeastern Ghana, c.1850}}}Present [Hardcover]

This book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s.Slavery, Memory and Religion in southeastern Ghana, c. 1850 - present aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of cultic practices collectively known as Fofie, which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past.Slavery, Memory and Religion in southeastern Ghana, c. 1850 - present aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of cultic practices collectively known as Fofie, which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past.Based on a decade of fieldwork in southeastern Ghana and analysis of secondary sources, this book aims to reconstruct the religious history of the Anlo-Ewe peoples from the 1850s. In particular, it focuses on a corpus of rituals collectively known as Fofie, which derived their legitimacy from engaging with the memory of the slave-holding past. The Anlo developed a sense of discomfort about their agency in slavery in the early twentieth century which they articulated through practices such as ancestor veneration, spirit possession, and by forging links with descendants of peoples they formerly enslaved. Conversion to Christianity, engagement with modernity, trans-Atlantic conversations with diasporan Africans, and citizenship of the postcolonial state coupled with structural changes within the religious system  which resulted in the decline in Fofie's popularity  gradually altered the moral emphases on legacies of slavery in the Anlo historical imagination as the twentieth century progressed.1. Ghosts of slavery?; 2. The Anlo-Ewe: portrait of a people; 3. The dance of Alegba: Anlo-Ewe religion; 4. Slavery in the Anlo imagination; 5. Early modern Anlo, c.17501910; 6. Gods from the north, c.191040; 7. Yesu vide, dzo vide, c.1940lcw