Agotime are an amalgamation of Dangme-speaking people and some elements of ethnic Ewes found in the Agotime-Ziope District (formerly Adaklu-Anyigbe) in the Volta region of Ghana.
They today are fond of the claim that they dominated most of their Ewe neighbors because of their pursuit of war as a vocation. They are well [ads1]known for their ancient Kente weaving skills. At Kpetoe they celebrate Agbamevoza: Agotime Traditional Area Kente Festival. Every year, since 1995, the Agotime Kente Festival has taken place in the town of Kpetoe. The festival was established to celebrate and promote the Kente weaving industry for all of Agotime, this being one of the areas in Ghana, apart from Bonwire in Ashanti Region, with the largest concentration of weavers, a primary occupation for many men, and a source of cultural pride for its people
Background
Historically, Agotime appeared in the Danish sources in the first half of the eighteenth century. Danish historian, Ole Justesen records that a letter from the Danish factor at Keta in 1749 referred to Kwahu traders having arrived at Agotime in order to purchase slaves and ivory, and relayed their demands for more trade goods (including iron bars and knives) to be able to exchange for them. “The following year, an Agotime caboceer (roughly speaking, “chief), Keteku, sent a message promising to settle some outstanding palavers with Anloga and Keta in order that his people could bring their trade goods southwards. He promised to come with traders from four or five Agotime towns and to bring thirty slaves and a supply of ivory with him. A subsequent 1751 letter reported that the “Agotim Caboceer,” presumably the same Keteku, had indeed sold a quantity of slaves and ivory at Klikor. A correspondence from 1754 on the subject of bad debts refers to credit having been extended to Agotime traders by the Danish factors (Nugent 2008)
Origins
The Agotime are Dangme diasporans who migrated from the vicinity of Ada, but sought sanctuary from political violence in the late seventeenth century by relocating east of the Volta. They were scattered across what is now the Volta Region of Ghana and southern Togo, and this small Dangme groups are mostly indistinguishable from their Ewe neighbours today. The Agotime share borders with some of the larger Ewe-speaking dukowo, notably Ho and Adaklu in Ghana and Agu in Togo by fighting the Agu-Ewe and the Adaklu-Ewe and thereby established the right to settle at their present location. This view of Agotime of having defeated Adaklu is subject of controversy between them. The Adaklu traditions recall that the Dangme strangers requested land from them, and were told to settle at a place where a particular kind of palm tree, the fan palm or agoti, grew in profusion. Living amongst the palm trees (literally, “agoti-me”) the settlers came to be known as Agotime rather than as Adangbe (or Adampe/Dangme). This Adaklu version contradicts Kwame Ampene`s version that the Dangmes “crossed the Volta and subsequently settled in the Ho area where the split occurred, and each took a different and adopted a new name: thus AGOTIME (where the money)”
Despite this historical contentions, the Agotime people who were Dangmes also accepts that they became mixed with various Ewe peoples as they established their locally dominant position. The area the Agotime settled was reputed to be rather dry, seem to have taken a pride in not working the land, instead, they carved out a niche for themselves as traders, operating along both the north-south and east-west axes.
The traditions of particular settlements suggest that Agotime was a composite society made up of not just of Dangme core, but other fragments as well. Robert Cornvin in historical and linguistic study of Togo, “Histoire du Togo”, at page 108, found out that out of the ten constituent units of Agotime identified in Togo, towns such as Adame, Ando, Amoussoukope, Agoudouvou, Adjakpa, Batome, Zukpe, Letsoukope, Nyitoe, and Kpodjahon -Ando and Nyitoe are typically “not pure Agotime.” It is argued that the Andos were Ewes who seem to have been forced into a client status, while the Nyitoe apparently came from Adaklu. Batome was a slave village belonging to a war-chief of Kpetoe in Ghana, although nobody is keen to advertise the fact today. For instance, the Agoue clan in Kpetoe is also allegedly made up of people who were originally captives from Agu, and at least one other village can tell a similar story.
The issue of who is a pure Dangme raged among the Agotime.
Over the course of the twentieth century, there has been a bitter rivalry between Kpetoe and the village of Afegame that claims the headship for itself. The Afegames insist that they are “pure Dangmes” whereas the Kpetoes are a melange of disparate peoples. Whereas this is intended as a damning criticism, it confirms the indigenous Dangme version of events which takes pride in this depiction because it underlines the military success of the core Dangme group from the time of their arrival in the area. In this interpretation, the Afegame are cast as losers in the distribution of the spoils. As Nene Keteku, Paramoung Chief of Agotime argues: “The Ando and Atsi tribe remnants, mostly women and children were captured and sold into slavery. The beautiful women were forced to marry the Leh [Dangme] men. Legend had it that the marriage of such women brought a lot of family misunderstandings and that was the reason for most clans leaving Wenuam [Afegame] to put up new villages and settlements.”
Whatever be the case, the current origins of the people shows that apart from certain royal houses nobody can claim to be pure Agotime: the point is that the collective name of Agotime refers to people who ended up living ‘amongst the palm trees’ and says nothing about a single origin or culture. Nugent contends that such renditions of the past do make the best sense of Agotime history, apart from anything else, they underscore the crucial point that while the Agotime distinguished themselves from their Ewe neighbors by virtue of their calling to trade and warfare, these same activities created tributaries, marital alliances, and slaves, inevitably converting Ewes into Agotimes.
Source
Ole Justesen, ed., Danish Sources for the History of Ghana, 1657-1754 (Copenhagen: Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, 2005), 766, see Entry XI 84 for 5 May 1749.
Kwame Ampene, THE STORY OF AVATIME
Paul Nugent, Myths of Origin and the Origin of Myth: Local Politics and the Uses of History in Ghana s Volta Region, Working Papers on African Societies, no. 22 (Berlin: Das Arabische Buch, 1997)
Paul Nugent, “A Regional Melting Pot: The Ewe and Their Neighbours in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands,” in Benjamin Lawrence, ed., A Handbook of Eweland: The Ewe of Togo and Benin (Accra: Woeli, 2005), 29-43.
Paul Nugent, “Putting the history back into ethnicity: enslavement, religion, and cultural brokerage in the construction of Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime identities in West Africa, c. 1650–1930.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 50, no. 4 (2008): 920-948.
Robert Cornevin, Histoire du Togo (Paris: Editions Berger-Levrault
