Dear Readers: Here we present a retrospective, provided by CIHA Blog co-editor, Akosua Adomako Ampofo, in honor of Ivor Wilks, an Africanist and historian who was committed to the principles of decolonization and sought to study Africa from an Africa-centered perspective.
by Akosua Adomako Ampofo
In November I had the privilege of being emcee for a memorial event to honour Professor Ivor G.Wilks. The event was organised by the Ghana Studies Association (GSA), a cognate body of the African Studies Association. The event took place during the recent (2014) Annual meetings held in Indianapolis (Nov. 20-23, 2014), and was co-sponsored by the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University where Ivor Wilks had been Professor Emeritus of History.
Several threads run through the memories shared but the three that struck me most were 1) Ivor Wilks’ commitment to his students; 2) the fact that he did not stand on ceremony; and 3) his generosity. I myself first met Ivor sometime in the late 1990s, I believe, at one of the ASA meetings, and was struck by this warm, elderly gentleman with a full head of thick, beautiful, white hair.
At the GSA memorial evening, Professor Jean Alman, currently Professor of History at Washington University, St. Louis, shared how, as a first-generation College student Ivor influenced her love for history, and Ghana. As an undergraduate student at Northwestern Jean Allman worked on Ivor Wilks’ Asante Collective Biography Project that included important Asante personalities. I only learned about this project recently myself when my daughter was looking for sources on an Asante ɔhemma by the name of Yaa Akyaa. In reaching out to historian colleagues Jean shared her own work on the project with me—and thus Ivor’s work continues to impact current generations. Ivor’s impact on Jean was so strong she remained at Northwestern for her PhD in history.
Professor David Owusu Ansah, Professor of history at James Madison University, shared how, following a conversation with Ivor while in Canada to begin PhD work, Ivor wondered how he could not be doing a PhD in history with Asante/Akan historians/Africanists. Ivor invited David to Northwestern; he arrived on a Friday to a school he had not even applied to and by the following week he had been accepted into the history program, and had a position as a TA. David and Jean thus became contemporaries at Northwestern.
Ivor Agyeman Duah, currently pursing a PhD in African Studies at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, first met Ivor Wilks while the former was a graduate student in Wales. Agyeman Duah had been named after Wilks—his father and Wilks having been friends, with the senior Ivor being the best man at the senior Agyeman Duah’s wedding. It is obvious who Ivor Agyeman Duah was named after, and the respect and admiration the junior Ivor held for the senior was just as obvious.
Dennis Lauman, Associate Professor of History at the University of Memphis, and former president of GSA, remembered Ivor Wilks regular support to the association—generous amounts, he noted, that were given without fanfare or any desire for acknowledgement.
Dr Wilhemnina Donkoh, Senior lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, explained Ivor Wilks’ vicarious impact on her life as an historian through Professor Tom McCaskie, who had been Wilks’ student and her own mentor and supervisor, but also through Wilks’ work.
The entire association mourned him deeply, including members who had never had a chance to meet him personally, but who had been impacted by his scholarly work.
Ivor G. Wilks was born on July 19th, 1928 and joined the ancestors on the 7th October 2014. He was a noted British Africanist and historian. He attended the University of Bangor, and also took a degree in Philosophy at Oxford University graduating in 1951.
In the 1940s Professor Emeritus Wilks was a Lieutenant in the British Army in Palestine and also an ardent supporter of Welsh independence. He thus participated in Welsh Nationalist politics and the Welsh Republican Movement. Professor Emeritus Wilks was an authority on the Ashanti Empire in Ghana and has also written on Chartism in Wales, and the working-class movement in the Nineteenth century. His work examined the nature of power and leadership, and the forms of collaboration and resistance.
In 1953 Professor Emeritus Wilks left Oxford for the University College of the Gold Coast (now the University of Ghana) where he devoted his long career to what he described as the decolonization of West African history. He had a distinguished career as a historian of Africa.
Professor Emeritus Wilks started his career at the University of Ghana with the Philosophy Department. And when the decision was taken to establish an Institute of African Studies, he together with Professors Shinnie and Nketia were commissioned as a small Committee in the early 1960s to co-ordinate African Studies with Departments that wanted their students to study African materials.[1] He subsequently took up an appointment as a Senior Research Fellow and later as a Research Professor of the African Historical Studies section at the Institute of African Studies in early 1961. He was thus not only instrumental in setting up the Institute of African Studies, but also with the running of the Institute from its inception. In September 1961, he was put in administrative charge of the Institute following the temporary absence of Professor Nketia who was then the Acting Director (in the absence of Prof. Shinnie).[2] Following the commencement of the Graduate course in African Studies in 1962, Professor Wilks was among the Fellows who taught the eleven (11) pioneer students. His research interests were not only limited to the history of Ghana, but also Arabic documents which led him to publish in 1964 the work; “The Tradition of Islamic Learning in Ghana”.
Professor Wilks is a recipient of numerous awards including: African Studies Association Distinguished Africanist Award in 1998; Herskovits Professor of African Studies; and Professor Emeritus. He is the author of over 178 published works mostly about Ghana, including: The Northern Factor in Ashanti History. Legon: Institute of African Studies (1961); Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1975); South Wales and the Rising of 1839: Class Struggle as Armed Struggle. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press (1984); Chronicles from Gonja: A West African Tradition of Muslim Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1986 with N. Levtzion & B. Haight); Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1989); Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (1993); Akwamu 1640-1750: a Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African Empire. Department of History, Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (2001).
Dr. Adomako Ampofo is Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon and co-editor of the CIHA Blog.
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[1] Agbodeka, Francis, 1998, A History of University of Ghana; pg.168.
[2] Ref: F.569, Letter from R.W.H. Wright, Acting Principal to I.G. Wilks. Esq.;Sept.25, 1961.