Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History

Great Britain’s abstention from slavery came with the rise of evangelism and other campaigns around liberalism that grew as the non-aristocratic wealthy burgeoned. This moral high ground proved faulty because throughout history, Great Britain had been one of the greatest proponents of slavery. In the 1800s, this internal moral stance became external as Great Britain sought to poise itself as “the most ‘civilized’ people of the world (122). They used this moral shift to justify their colonization of countries, so long as they brought the people prosperity, which they themselves assessed they did. While claiming democratic values, Great Britain stripped many countries of their agency and used pseudoscientific racist language to perpetuate negative beliefs about African and South Asian peoples. While occupying countries like Abina’s, they “still truly believed that they were acting in the best interest of their African ‘wards’” (123).

Great Britain tried to structure the Gold Coast the way it structured its own middle class, especially in the Colony and Cape Coast, the latter of which was briefly independent in the 1700s; however, Asante and then Great Britain imposed new expectations in the Gold Coast. England’s hegemony wasn’t only in laws and taxes, but also the imposition of “British-style housing, straight roads, new decision-making bodies, and rules about what behavior was acceptance in the city” (124). If anyone stood in opposition to England, like King John Aggrey did in 1865, the British simply replaced them and ignored the resulting protests. Despite inherent tensions, British and African peoples intermingled regularly. African peoples who viewed British ideals favorably gathered to write a constitution for the Accra Confederation of 1873, and many newspapers also adopted British ways of thinking. This mindset was mostly restricted to the upper class, as the lower classes and Protectorate territories resented many British rules.

This section attempts to define the word “slave” by presenting a broader picture of life in the Gold Coast. Historically, the Gold Coast formed units around extended families, also known as abusua. If a person were cast out of their abusua or if their abusua fell apart, a person could join another abusua—but wouldn’t enjoy the same privileges as the original members, and in many instances, were regarded as enslaved people with limited freedom. Chiefs and leaders also created legions of “royal slaves” through conquests and kidnappings to ensure their own enslaved people wouldn’t be loyal to one particular abusua (125). The idea of being indebted and repaying debts was an intrinsic part of Akan society, and these relations were further complicated by domestic enslaved people and other relationships. For context, the authors explain that this kind of slavery is different from that in the Americas because it was motivated by politics and social norms rather than economics, and it was limited in scope. The Gold Coast’s form of slavery was generally an assimilative process in which a person could become a full member of society over the course of their life or in a few generations, which wasn’t the case in the Americas.

The Atlantic slave trade had a significant impact on the nature of slavery in Africa, and because there was such high demand for labor for goods like sugar, European and American slave traders offered extreme wealth to anyone in the Gold Coast who could provide the labor of enslaved people. By the 1790s, Europe and America had enslaved more than 74,000 African peoples, and Asante fed this machine with captured communities and children. Chiefs gained prosperity by selling their own people into slavery, and justified themselves by enacting laws to make slavery a punishment for crimes like debt and adultery. As Africa’s rich resources, like grains and palm oil, became of more interest to Europe, the demand for enslaved people grew. American slave traders preferred men, and the chiefs liked to keep women around as potential wives, so these combined factors led to many women remaining in the Gold Coast. Great Britain banned the slave trade in 1807 and criminalized slavery in 1874, which also contributed to the rise of enslaved women because they were generally seen as less significant. While Great Britain claimed to be abolitionist, the reality was that most citizens willfully ignored slavery because acknowledging and eliminating it would destabilize economic gains. Citizens also used America’s version of slavery to morally justify Great Britain’s version of slavery as a kind of parent-child relationship. This attitude meant that those who were enslaved had to seek emancipation themselves, and this process was incredibly difficult.

Abina Mansah managed to defy the odds and reach Cape Coast to challenge her status as an enslaved person. Although the only historical record that remains of Abina are court transcripts, historians learned more about her through her testimony and name—which indicates she’s a third daughter and was born on a Tuesday. When Abina was first captured, she was taken to Coomassie, the capital city of Asante, and then to a province known as Adansi. When the Anglo-Asante War of 1873-1874 broke out, Abina “was again taken as spoils of war” by Kofi Karkari, deposed king of Asante (128). Karkari took her to another Asante district, Kawnwoma, where Yowahwah (Yaw Awoah) purchased her and claimed to marry her, though historians think this marriage was a cover for enslavement. Yowahwah took Abina to Salt Pond and left her with Quamina Eddoo. When Abina was told she had to marry Tando, she fled and found attorney James Davis, who helped her in her trial.

The important men in Abina’s story are James Davis, William Melton, and James Hutton Brew. James Davis was an educated Christian lower-middle-class man who spoke several languages, was of diverse heritage, and was related to an important merchant family—and later served as Abina’s lawyer. Judge William Melton worked for the British Colonial Office and was not formally trained as a judge, though he tried to be fair and often turned to advisors, who didn’t always have fairness in mind. James Hutton Brew, Quamina Eddo’s lawyer, was of Irish descent and had close ties to British authorities, though he was seen as shifty by some—partially due to complex perceptions of racially diverse individuals and his role in the development of the Asante Confederation, an attempt to build an independent state based on European ideals which failed and briefly landed him in jail. Brew was the only trained lawyer who questioned Abina during the trial. Interestingly enough, Eddoo was also nearly erased from history like Abina.