Akan

The Akan, inhabitants of the forest regions of modern-day southern Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, speak Twi (part of the Kwa language family) and today include the Akyem, Akwamu, AsANTE, Fante, and Guan, all in Ghana, and the Baule and Anyi of Cote d’Ivoire.

The Akan originated in the basin of the Pra and Ofin Rivers in modern-day Ghana. Oral traditions indicate that centralized government did not exist in Akan communities until after the 15th century, when the Akan were incorporated into northern trade networks. Small Akan communities bound by kinship, clans, and common religion gradually transformed into centralized states as the transSaharan (see Sahara) trade routes that previously terminated in the savanna extended into the forest regions. The Akan traded GOLD and kola nuts in return for Turkish carpets, blankets, cotton cloth, leather, and brassware.

Economic and political transformations continued with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1471 on the Ghana coast. The booming Atlantic trade brought French, English, and Dutch merchants in the 16th century, followed by the Danes and Swedes in the 17th century. The Atlantic trade also brought maize (see CORN), sweet potatoes, and manioc from the Americas that strengthened Akan agriculture. The growing economic competition created political tensions that accelerated Akan state formation. A Dutch map printed in 1629 showed 38 states along what had become known as the Gold Coast. The 100-year period from 1650 to 1750 marked the most active period of Akan state formation. It also coincided with the height of slave exports (see SLAVE trade) from the region.

Two of the earliest and most powerful Akan states were Denkyira and Akwamu, which rose to power through control of gold-producing areas, trade routes, and coastal towns. They maintained power by developing effective military strategy and incorporating villages into a dual arrangement of military and civilian administrative structures.

Further reading: T. C. McCaskie, State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante (Cambridge, and New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1995); Ivor Wilks, Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1993).

—Tom Niermann

Albuquerque, Alfonso de (1453-1515) Portuguese admiral and colonial administrator

Alfonso de Albuquerque was one of the leaders of Portuguese explorations of the wider world in the era of Christopher Columbus and the great Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama. But rather than set his sights on the Western Hemisphere, Albuquerque instead concentrated his efforts in the expanding Portuguese seaborne empire that would eventually embrace parts of Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Ocean basin, and the Spice Islands of the Southwest Pacific. The son of a family that was already involved in military actions for the Portuguese, Albuquerque began to fight for the state while still in his teens, particularly in North Africa, where Portugal hoped to gain control of lands and ports then administered by the Moors. Like others of his elite status, Albuquerque followed these early efforts while serving in the military at home, until King Manuel I sent him as a commander to the sea route between southern Africa and India.

Albuquerque understood his mission well and recognized the need to subdue Muslim Indian hostility toward the Portuguese. To that end, he sailed in 1503 to Cochin (on the west, or Malabar, coast of India), made an alliance with the local Hindu leader, and built a fortress. After a brief return to Lisbon in 1504, he sailed once again in the service of the state, this time to the Red Sea, where he arrived in 1506 with the goal of solidifying Portuguese trading authority in the region, particularly the lucrative trade between India and Arabia. Following the tactic he used before, he ordered the construction of a large fort, this time at Socotra on the Gulf of Aden. By the summer of 1507, only months after completing the fort, he sailed northward and led the Portuguese capture of the strategically located Hormuz. Once in command, he brutalized the Persians and Arabs he had captured. Yet despite his barbarous tactics, which included chopping the noses (and other body parts) off his captives, Albuquerque retained control of the region and soon began to study and map it.

For his service, Albuquerque received an appointment to be the Portuguese governor of the East Indies. In that capacity, he ordered an assault on the Indian port at Goa, then under Muslim control. Using a massive force of combined Portuguese and mercenary soldiers and sailors, he led a months-long campaign that succeeded in late 1510. Albuquerque followed the victory with what might today be called a crime against humanity when he ordered the

Execution of the Muslim men who had faced him and commanded his own men to marry their widows.

Albuquerque, who was “more of a soldier and administrator than an explorer,” as the historian Angus Konstam has noted, spent the remainder of his life in the service of the Portuguese Crown. He sailed east in 1511 to assist the Portuguese assault on Malacca, another strategic port, which sat astride the narrow strait that divides the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. Upon his return to India, Albuquerque needed to defend Goa once again, but in the end was unable to protect all that he had fought to achieve. The Portuguese lost Socotra in 1514, the last major conflict that Albuquerque would have observed before he died at sea in Indian waters in late 1515.

Further reading: Angus Konstam, Historical Atlas of Exploration, 1492-1600 (New York: Facts On File, 2000).

Alexander VI (1431-1503) pope A member of the famous Borgia family, Pope Alexander VI, through the Treaty of Tordesillas, divided the New World between Spain and Portugal.

Alexander VI, born Rodrigo Borgia, came from a family with high church connections; his mother was the sister of Pope Callistus III. Borgia became a cardinal in 1456. With the help of his family’s wealth and influence, he was elected pope in 1492, the same year Christopher Columbus made his historic voyage. Though ambitious and hard working, he was perhaps best known for his moral failings. He had a long-term mistress and may have had as many as nine children, two of whom he fathered after becoming pope. As pope, Alexander approved of the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 and promoted a crusade against the Turks. His contemporaries, while admiring his political abilities, were repelled by his sensuality and moral lapses.

Further reading: Margery A. Ganz, “Alexander VI,” in Encyclopedia of the Vatican and Papacy, ed. Frank J. Coppa, (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999); J. N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250-1516, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1978); J. H. Parry, The Discovery of South America (London: Paul Elek, 1979); Christine Shaw, “Alexander VI,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, vol. 1, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 19.

—Martha K. Robinson