Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Palace Court Language in Theophilus Opoku’s Annual Report for 1900

Introduction

On 2nd July 2024, I visited Gerlingen in southern Germany alongside colleagues from the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, the University of Ghana, and the University of Basel. Our shared interest in exploring the home base of the Basel Mission (BM) in Switzerland and Baden-Württemberg, the birthplace of most of the missionaries trained in Basel and sent to the then Gold Coast colony in the nineteenth century. The Gerlingen exploration illustrated the ways in which the BM’s in the Gold Coast originated in the Wurttemberg pietistic mindset of protestant missions and their cultural background in Europe.[1] The last day of our excursion was dedicated to the workshop and launch of Michelle Gilbert and Paul Jenkins’s annotated source collection on Theophilus Opoku.[2] Here, we learned that most contemporary scholars reading Theophilus Opoku’s reports may find his use of language extreme and, to an extent, offensive. Thus, the reflections here are on Opoku’s profound understanding of his mother tongue concerning nineteenth-century Akuapem palace court language and how that influenced his reporting of local events to the Home Committee of the BM.

BM Station Akuapem

The BM enterprise successfully established the first pietistic African Christian community in the interior of the Gold Coast at Akuapem in the early 1840s. BM records show how its expansion from the coast towards inland communities like Akuapem stimulated pietistic Christian conversion activities and the Christianization of indigenous inhabitants. In the process, Wurttemberg pietism established a strong influence on these farming communities in the following areas: 

These were its adherence to the concepts of “rebirth” and “true discipleship,” its cultivation of the mission compound as a self-sufficient community of the faithful, its commitment to transforming the convert in both spiritual and worldly arenas, and its strong support for the provision of “Christian” education across the social spectrum.[3]

In Akuapem, principles of pietistic education came to define the first generation of missionaries’ relationship with pupils, and schooling at first meant taking local children into the missionary household. The schoolchildren lived with the Wurttemberg pietists who acted as “their parents”. The adoption of these missionary children was a unique method exerted in Akropong, where the consent was not only granted by their parents but included high-ranking traditional chiefs. Theophilus Opoku was one of the children from the Asona adéhyé-abusua (Asona royal family) household. When the Wurttemberg pietist A. J. Mader arrived at Akropong, the capital of the Akuapem state, in 1851, he adopted Opoku as his son and supported his education and Christian upbringing. Opoku was taught by many pietists, including J. G. Widmann and J. G. Auer, a school principal from Wurttemberg who introduced many educational reforms during his time on the Gold Coast. Opoku was one of the best students throughout his education and very successful in his missionary work as an evangelist and teacher-catechist before being ordained in September 1872. His ordination witnessed the Basel mission services of its first pietistic locally trained minister.

Despite his childhood conversion and pietistic upbringing, training, and subsequent missionary work, Opoku, like most of his fellow members of the royal family, maintained his pre-Christian informal learning from the family household and palace, as seen through the strong connections he drew between language and cultural identity. The pre-Christian knowledge that David Asante, Edward Samson, Theophilus Opoku, N. V. Asare, and other members of the Akuapem royal households acquired was mostly through symbols and coded languages, including proverbs, parables, and appellative poetry, that gave children a sense of belonging and shared a prevailing worldview. During their adult life, members of the royal family would engage with the palace court and its specific language.[4]

Akuapem royalcultural manners are perhaps best reflected in speech. However, what came to be called the traditional standard Akuapem Twi language, or in other words understood to be a model for correct Akuapem Twi, was the language of the royals. The Akuapem Twi, as the state’s official language, established a new evaluative function after its reduction into writing and subsequent engagement with other European languages. The BM offered perspectives supporting cultural diversity in Akuapem through multilingual openness and establishing Twi and English as educational languages. During the time of Opoku and his contemporaries, the linguistic challenge was to bridge the gap between teaching and learning in a local language or the mother tongue and integrating a written language in the broadest sense. The complexity at the initial stage was that European missionary teachers depended on the indigenous pupils to learn the local language, while the pupils depended on the teacher to learn the written languages. The integration was the precondition for Opoku and his contemporaries to develop written or formal oral language in systematic learning situations. The evidence in Opoku’s reports proves that he mastered both languages and was able to merge cultural elements of the two in his narratives.

BMA QD-30.112.00108, “Pfarrer Opoku,” BMArchives, https://www.bmarchives.org/items/show/71941
BMA QD-30.112.00108, “Pfarrer Opoku,” BMArchives, https://www.bmarchives.org/items/show/71941

Influence of Court Language in the Open Paragraph of Opoku’s Report for 1900

The BM successfully studied and documented the Akuapem Twi language, as seen especially in the monumental works of Hans Nicolai Riis (a nephew of Andreas Riis) and J. G. Christaller in the Twi grammar books, dictionaries, translation of the Bible and hymns, the collection of Twi proverbs, and other linguistic materials. Many of these studies were co-written and edited with several Akuapem-adéhyé converts. At the time of reporting from Akropong in 1900, Opoku had spent over half a century involved with the BM and was one of the most experienced indigenous missionary agents. Writing from Akropong, his “hometown”, and on issues about his people, Opoku utilised his command of Akuapem-adéhyé usage of the language as an expression of cultural identity. In the opening paragraph of Opoku’s report to the BM in 1900, he gives exultation to God that “we [missionaries] may become useful in His service and to impact the knowledge about Him and His free salvation without our own merit to our benighted and ignorant countrymen and also to be prepared for eternity.”[5] The emphasis here is on the phrase “benighted and ignorant countrymen”. The word “benight” in the Twi language means duru sum or ye tumm, figuratively used for the mind and implies a form of moral and physical life in total darkness.[6] Opoku employs the word “ignorant” or ↄkwasea (pl. nkwaseafo) in the literal sense of “simpleton, dunce, dullard” to describe the state of the people. In this context, Opoku knows God did not hold his ignorant countrymen accountable for the gospel message.

Moreover, he is conscious of the adage from the palace court language indicating that “a stranger does not break laws.”[7] According to indigenous customs and traditions, this saying shows that “ignorance of the law” does excuse. Thus, Opoku’s plea is for his countrymen who are “overtaken by darkness” and “lacking knowledge or awareness in general” message of the gospel. Using “benighted and ignorant countrymen” thus does not have to be read as derogatory or insulting. Instead, it justified the condition of the countrymen and explains the patience and caution that one needs in order to serve and impart the true knowledge of God to them for eternity.      

Opoku draws the line between his countrymen living in darkness and the true Christians living in light, as it appears in the rest of the report. Those living in the missionary quarter referred to themselves as Christians, and an outside community known as ↄman (pl. aman), meaning “town.” This term is synonymous with kurow, a collection of houses more extensive than a village or a town’s inhabitants as a community’s political body.[8] The Wurttemberg pietist and the pioneer missionaries repeatedly used the term manmu or countrymen for the members of the Akropong community, as it appears many times in Opoku’s reports.

Conclusion

These reflections focussed on the meaning of the carefully conscious language in Opoku’s introductory paragraph, which appeals to his first readers of the BM Committee and the larger audience as he was aware these reports might be published for a larger audience. The phrase “benighted and ignorant countrymen” indicates that consciousness is a requirement and not merely a suggestion, as Opoku would have us believe. The first paragraph allows readers to take the clues and draw conclusions based on the information given, as discussed above. The phrase “benighted and ignorant countrymen” is theologically loaded, and Opoku readers may not have been aware of the application of culturally rooted use of the Akuapem-adéhyé court language, which I detected in this paragraph and the rest of Opoku’s 1900 Report from Akropong-Akuapem. Having previously spent time studying in Akuapem Twi as his first language and English as a second language, Opoku’s focus was on the speech of missionaries in a cross-cultural context and how he used language to construct and perform identities. Opoku never lost touch with his Akuapem-adéhyé roots, as it is vividly identified through his reports and other writings.

Portrait Francis Addo Sakylama
About the author:Francis Addo

I am a PhD candidate at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, and Culture, Akropong-Akuapem. My research is on the work and contribution of indigenous missionary agents to the Basel Mission Church, Gold Coast (1842-1918). I am interested in Basel Mission’s educational, medical, and agricultural foundations that contributed to the Christianization of indigenous farming communities in the interior of the Gold Coast. Along with my academic interests, I am engaged in the chieftaincy institution and local community projects in Akuapem.