Nananom what?

I might as well start with Nananom Mpow itself. Nananom Mpow is an abandoned traditional shrine located between Mankessim and Saltpond, in southern Ghana. For several centuries, it was the most import religious site for the Fante people, the dominant ethnic group in this part of Ghana.

Nananom Mpow was significant in several respects. It was the burial site for three mythical or semi-mythical heroes who had led the Fante migration from the northern savannas of Ghana to the coast. It was the home of a powerful obosom, or nature deity. And in the nineteenth century, if not earlier, it was an important judicial authority, where disputes were settled and crimes punished.

There were probably many sites that combined spiritual and political functions in pre-colonial Ghana, like Nananom Mpow; another, better known example is the shrine at Kete-Krachi on the river Volta. But one of the things that makes Nananom Mpow important is that it was the site of a major confrontation between Christians and non-Christians. This confrontation led to the abandonment of the shrine and created an opening for Christianity to spread among the Fante.

In brief: in 1851, a group of Methodists violated the confines of the sacred grove. They were assaulted and forced to flee down the coast to Cape Coast, the centre of British power in the region. The British authorities summoned the priests of Nananom Mpow to answer for their conduct; they reluctantly came. In the hearing that followed, fines were levied on both the Christians and their persecutors, although the latter were punished more heavily.

So far, so even-handed. But the proceedings took an unexpected turn when allegations were made that the priests of Nananom Mpow were engaged in a plot to poison the Christians. One witness, a former priest who had converted to Christianity, began to reveal the "tricks" used at Nananom Mpow to impersonate the voice of the obosom. The shrine was discredited before a packed audience, and the British governor punished the conspirators with heavy fines. Nananom Mpow was abandoned soon afterwards.

The collapse of traditional religious and political authorities in the face of pressure from European officials and missionaries is one of the key themes in Fante history during the nineteenth century. As, indeed, it was elsewhere in Africa -- Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart engages exactly the same themes. Christian missionaries began work in earnest among the Fante in1835; by the mid-1870s, some six thousand were Methodists, and a further twenty to thirty thousand were in regular church attendance. in the 1830s the British government had little direct control beyond the walls of the coastal forts at Cape Coast, Anomabu or Dixcove; in 1874, the region was proclaimed a crown colony.

The events at Nananom Mpow are thus a kind of synecdoche for the transformation of Fante culture -- a single episode that is both a single point in this process, and a representation of the whole. Nananom Mpow is a starting point to explore the religious and political transformation of Fante culture, the growth of British power, and the spread of Christianity.