TY - JOUR
T1 - 'A Modest, but Peculiar Style'
T2 - Self-Fashioning, Atlantic Commerce, and the Culture of Adornment on the Urban Gold Coast
AU - Von Hesse, Hermann W.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s).
PY - 2023/7/30
Y1 - 2023/7/30
N2 - Through their participation in an unequal Atlantic commerce, African merchants on the Gold Coast consciously transformed their dress in ways that expressed their cultural dynamism and economic success in an increasingly interconnected world. In discussing the web of cross-cultural commercial exchanges between Africa, Asia, and Europe, this article moves away from the tendency to regard Africans who adorned themselves in imported European clothing and textiles as 'creole' or 'Europeanized' elites. Labels like these not only assume the existence of an African cultural essence, but (inadvertently) deny the dynamism that has always characterized African cultures prior to the Atlantic economy. In the case of the Gold Coast, I examine how the Gã and Fante mercantile elite translated imported textiles and clothing into new cultural meanings, aesthetics and norms that emphasized family integrity, power as well as the ancestral, material and commercial value of inherited imported articles of adornment.
AB - Through their participation in an unequal Atlantic commerce, African merchants on the Gold Coast consciously transformed their dress in ways that expressed their cultural dynamism and economic success in an increasingly interconnected world. In discussing the web of cross-cultural commercial exchanges between Africa, Asia, and Europe, this article moves away from the tendency to regard Africans who adorned themselves in imported European clothing and textiles as 'creole' or 'Europeanized' elites. Labels like these not only assume the existence of an African cultural essence, but (inadvertently) deny the dynamism that has always characterized African cultures prior to the Atlantic economy. In the case of the Gold Coast, I examine how the Gã and Fante mercantile elite translated imported textiles and clothing into new cultural meanings, aesthetics and norms that emphasized family integrity, power as well as the ancestral, material and commercial value of inherited imported articles of adornment.
KW - African Diaspora
KW - African modernities
KW - Ghana
KW - West Africa
KW - accommodation to colonialism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85162119321&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85162119321&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0021853723000294
DO - 10.1017/S0021853723000294
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85162119321
SN - 0021-8537
VL - 64
SP - 269
EP - 291
JO - Journal of African History
JF - Journal of African History
IS - 2
ER -