Notsie Narratives: History, Memory and Meaning in West Africa

The town of Notsie (located in south central Togo) evokes today quite specific memories among the Anlo and other Ewe-speaking peoples of southern Ghana and Togo. To most, the town is remembered as the common home of their Ewe ancestors, a place where a king ruled with tyrannical power, a location where this tyranny led to the great dispersal of Ewe speakers throughout what is now southeastern Ghana and southern Togo. Ewe and non-Ewe alike draw upon these memories for a range of purposes. Historians study them as one of the few indigenous sources of early local history. ¹ Other scholars have explored the importance of this exodus narrative as a charter for delineating what is deemed to be socially and politically acceptable behavior. ² Some argue that these memories explain why Ewe-speaking peoples have historically eschewed centralized political power, while still others deploy them to demonstrate the notion that the Ewe once were and could again be a power to be reckoned with. ³ At no point, however, is Notsie's association with an Ewe homeland seriously questioned.

In the nineteenth century, however, Notsie meant something quite different. To the German missionaries who had begun working in the region after 1847, Notsie was a convenient way to conceptualize as simply as possible the historical origins of a very diverse collection of communities that shared a common language, but whose populations claimed to have come from many difference places. To define a single origin, for the Germans, brought for them order to chaos, simplicity to an unnecessarily complex reality. To those nineteenth-century Ewe and non-Ewe in the region who had to deal with these German conceptions, however, this German understanding of Notsie was only vaguely familiar. For they had their own understandings of their individual histories, languages, cultures and origins. Most recognized that the town had been important historically, especially as a religious center, but it was only one of many such centers. Equally significant is the fact that these local nineteenth-century notions obscured, in their own way, an earlier history that identified Notsie as a major economic center within the region not only by local residents, but also by European traders operating on the coast in the mid-sixteenth century.

Of particular interest in this essay, is the fact that despite these shifts in meanings and memories between the nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, Notsie's status as a site of local and regional importance has defied the erosion of time. ⁴ By the eighteenth century, Notsie had declined in political, economic, and religious significance. In the early twentieth century, it was colonized by Germany and then France. And during postcolonial times it has become further marginalized as a poor upcountry town in the impoverished nation-state of Togo. ⁵ None of this, however, has displaced the cultural significance of Notsie in the minds of many in the region. This essay explores the extent to which Notsie has served as a geographical site through which many in Anlo and many others in southeastern Ghana and southern Togo define themselves. It examines the way memories and meanings associated with Notsie have been shaped over time by a variety of political, religious, and economic agendas that have intersected and overlapped. But perhaps more significantly, it seeks to explain why this site has proven so powerful to so many for so long. I argue that Notsie existed in early-nineteenth-century Ewe memories as a ritual trace, a site of religious significance, but of limited importance in the everyday lives and imaginations of those in the region. It was this quality that made the site attractive for continuous redefinition during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Colonialists, nationalists, and those interested in local development all found in Notsie a shell that could be selectively appropriated, manipulated, and filled with reconstructed Notsie memories and meanings as all sought to...