Reconstructing Dagaaba History through Verbal Arts. (M.A. Thesis)

Lwanga Songsore

University of Ghana

Year of submission: 2019

This thesis uses the African concept of Reincarnation and the abstract Bakongo concept known as Kinenga, as my conceptual framework, to reappraise and reconstruct the last dozen years of the 19th century in North-Western Ghana. This period was the high point of the Babatu and Samori raids that caused turbulence among the inhabitants of the whole of Northern Ghana.

With a particular focus on an agglomeration of some Dagaaba societies in the North-West, termed here as the Manlarla alliance, I have demonstrated, the workability of the aforementioned conceptual framework and applied the value imbued in it to expand the discourse of this turbulent period. In doing so, I succeeded in arguing that, the 19th-century turbulence for the Manlarla alliance is an undying phenomenon that is enshrined in rich tradition and reconstructed disciplinary history and may remain so if its adherents perpetuate its being by supplying insightful and innovative forms of re-imaging the events of the period.