In Part I of this article (McCaskie, 1983a) I discussed the relationship between accumulation, wealth and belief in Asante to the close of the nineteenth century. In this concluding part I analyse these and cognate themes in the twentieth century. I remain wedded to the approach outlined in detail in Part I; an attempt to locate action and motive within a cognitive or ‘intellectualist’ framework. But this article is more episodic and less directly narrative than its predecessor. There are reasons for this change of stylistic gear.

Following the growing interest in recent years in social stratification in Asante in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Arhin, 1983a: 2–22; 1983b: 475; McCaskie, 1983: 23–44; Wilks, 1975: 166–719), this note offers a preliminary study of a body of men who became known in Kumasi and the capital towns of the other Asante chiefdoms – in particular Bekwai, Juaben and Mampon – as the akonkofo in the first phase of colonial rule, 1896–1930. The argument of the paper, written in the light of the views of Daaku (1970, 1971) is that the akonkofo, an intermediary group between office holders and non-holders of office (Arhin, 1983a) could emerge as a distinctive sociopolitical category only in the colonial period. The first section of this article, on the origin of the akonkofo, describes the factors that inhibited the rise of ‘merchant princes’ in Asante before colonial rule; the second, on the akonkofo in Kumasi, offers a kind of social portrait of the akonkofo; and the third section, on the position of the akonkofo in Asante society, examines the relationship of the akonkofo to traditional authority. My sources are archival and written. I have also recorded interviews with Barima Owusu-Ansah, over seventy-five years old, and a leading authority on Asante law and constitution, and with Baffour Osei Akoto, senior spokesman (okyeame) of the Asantehene and just turned seventy, as well as conversations with sundry officials at the Asantehene's court.

One of the more interesting historiographical debates that emerged in the course of the great burst of research into Akan (actually primarily Asante) history during the 1950s and 1960s concerned the ‘structure’ of the Asante empire, or ‘Greater Asante’ as one of the contributors to the debate, Kwame Arhin, has termed it (Arhin, 1967). The debates have largely been informed by a synchronic, ‘centrist’ approach; that is, by an approach that views the imperial structure at a given point in time, and primarily from the perspective of the political centre, the capital town of Kumase. The 1970s have seen a proliferation of regional studies of the Akan and their neighbours, and so it is perhaps time to reopen the debate on the nature of the Asante imperial order from a broader perspective, one that is both more sensitive to change over time and includes the emerging views from the periphery (see, for example, Berberich, 1974; Case, 1979; Ferguson, 1972; Greene, 1981; Haight, 1981; Handloff, 1982; Sanders, 1980; Weaver, 1975; Yarak, 1976). The present paper first briefly sketches the social and political setting in nineteenth-century Elmina (εdena), then critically reviews the historiographical debate over the structure of Greater Asante, and lastly offers an alternative approach to the study of Greater Asante based on a case study of the history of Asante relations with Elmina.

The Gezira scheme has been the focus of considerable attention in the literature of development in tropical Africa, especially during the colonial period. This was because the scheme represented one of the largest agricultural projects initiated by a colonial government. Views on the scheme have been divergent: Gaitskell (1959) describes it as a ‘story of development’ while Barnett (1977) calls it an ‘illusion of development'. The focus of the studies, which are extensive compared to other Sudanese studies, has largely concentrated on the relationship (or so-called partnership) between tenants and government, production requirements and output, as well as occasionally on various aspects of the tenants’ lives and activities. Wage labour, which is the main form of labour, has only been given scant consideration. Even so, the focus has been on its contribution to the total labour requisite and its supply and demand patterns. The social relations of wage labour, and especially relations between tenants and wage labourers as the essential core of production relations in the scheme, have been awarded very little attention. This is the main concern of this article. Compared with most labour-market studies, my intention is to go beyond a mere study of factors affecting supply and demand. In conditions of transition to capitalism and fragmented labour markets, the perception of the social and cultural aspects of labour is indispensable for an adequate understanding of the internal mechanisms of the labour market.

The masks and associated traditions of the people of the central Guinea coast of West Africa are among the most obvious and well-known features of the contemporary cultural landscape of the region. For some time social anthropologists have described the functions of the masks as social control mechanisms (Horton, 1976). Recently anthropologists have been elucidating these cultural items in terms of symbolic or structural analyses (Fischer and Himmelheber, 1976; Jdrej, 1976; MacCormack, 1980; Phillips, 1978). So far the studies concerned with symbolism, where they have not been explicitly general and theoretical (Jdrej, 1980; Tonkin, 1979), have confined themselves to a particular culture or a particular mask or subset of masks.