John Mensah Sarbah Laments The Loss of West African Archives

Here’s an exciting archival find! (yes these are among the things that I find exciting)

Long long long before my Accra Archive project, before Judith Opoku-Boateng set out on her career path in archival studies, before Anita Afonu was inspired to preserve Ghanaian film archives, and before all of us Ghanaian archivists, historians, and memory workers were even a twinkle in our mothers’ eyes, John Mensah Sarbah lamented on the loss of West African historical records. Here’s an extract from his Preface to ‘Fanti National Constitution’, first published in 1906. (Highlights and notes are mine)

In the year 1888, the Supreme Court being in Gothic House, Cape Coast Castle, he (Mensah Sarbz is referring to himself in third person, cos why not?) found some Kru boys one day cooking their midday meal, and burning as fagots several bundles of papers. On the ground were many more. Asked, whence they got them, they replied, from a big box close by, the contents of which they were at liberty to use in any manner they pleased. It was the Gold Coast version of an old, old story over again: Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarging discovery, and recording it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lighting a fire with the record, and flavouring its one roast with the burnt souls of many generations. On inquiry, the District Commissioner said the box was full of rubbish, and the Kru boys had spoken truly. Next day, for threepence, two of these bundles changed hands; examined, they were found to contain papers, the most important whereof are now published.

The remaining contents of the box were shortly afterwards pitched into the sea, it was said, by order of an high official. The archives of the Colony have been mostly destroyed. History is sometimes trouble-some; historical facts are often embarrassing in West Africa, and nothing so facilitates a spirited, indefinite policy as-a clean foolscap sheet of paper.

Source: Sarbah, J. M. (2004). Writings of John Mensah Sarbah. Thoemmes Press.