Landscapes of Memory: Sandra E. Greene on Sacred Space and Colonial Transformation in Ghana

In her seminal 2002 monograph, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana, historian Sandra E. Greene delivers a detailed examination of West African environmental, religious, and cultural history. Published by Indiana University Press and recognized as a finalist for the prestigious 2003 Herskovits Prize, the book analyzes how the Anlo-Ewe people of southeastern Ghana conceptualized, inhabited, and transformed their physical environment during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By tracking the impact of European colonialism, German Protestant missionary intervention, and internal political realignments, Greene illustrates that geography is never a static backdrop—it is an active archive of human memory, spiritual power, and socio-political struggle.

Core Theoretical Framework and Historical Foundations

At the heart of Greene’s study lies a fundamental premise: landscapes are dynamic, socially constructed spaces imbued with historical meaning. In indigenous Anlo-Ewe cosmology, geography was intrinsically bound to the divine. Sacred groves (avewo), bodies of water, settlement sites, and even the physical human body functioned as dwelling places for trɔwo (deities) and tɔgbuiwo (ancestral spirits). These physical sites served as legal deeds, historical markers, and moral anchors for the community.

The encounter with European imperialism fundamentally disrupted this indigenous spatial order. North German (Bremen) missionaries and British colonial administrators sought to re-map, re-name, and secularize the African landscape according to Western cartographic, legal, and theological norms. However, Greene rejects simplistic binary narratives of absolute indigenous resistance versus total cultural erased conversion. Instead, she demonstrates how the Anlo-Ewe engaged in an ongoing process of negotiation—relocating shrines, adapting ritual practices, reinterpreting traditional memory, and occasionally choosing to abandon sacred sites when they no longer served immediate socio-political needs.

Chapter-by-Chapter Overview and Case Studies

Greene structures her investigation around specific geographic, cultural, and spiritual sites, grounding broad historical shifts in concrete regional case studies.

Introduction — Landscapes as Archives: Sets up the theoretical framework connecting memory, spatiality, and colonial power, establishing the Anlo-Ewe region as a dynamic locus of spatial contestation.

Chapter 1: Sacred Sites and the Naming of Space: Focuses on the founding narratives of Anloga (the traditional Anlo capital) and surrounding settlements. Indigenous naming conventions functioned as oral legal deeds and spiritual boundary lines. British colonial surveyors and European missionaries attempted to impose modern cartography, seeking to secularize local place names and fix fluid boundaries into rigid administrative zones.

Chapter 2: The Body as a Sacred Site: Argues that in Anlo worldview, the human body operates as a primary sacred site linked directly to environmental purity. The Bremen Mission targeted physical customs—such as home burials beneath compound floors, traditional mourning rites, and bodily adornment—labeling them "heathen." Conversion required a spatial physical realignment, removing converts from family compounds and relocating them into segregated mission "salvation villages."

Chapter 3: Notsie and the Politics of Origin: Examines the ancestral walled city of Notsie (in modern-day Togo), from which Ewe populations migrated in the seventeenth century to escape the despotic ruler Agokoli. As colonial borders (the Anglo-French division of Togoland) physically separated the Anlo from Notsie, Anlo elders and intellectuals utilized oral traditions of the site to construct a broader, unified Ewe ethnic consciousness (Eweland) in response to imperial fragmentation.

Chapter 4: Sacred Waters and the Sea Deity Nyigbla: Analyzes the powerful military deity Nyigbla, associated with thunder and coastal waters. Priests of Nyigbla exercised substantial political authority, controlling seasonal fishing rights and civic rituals around the Keta Lagoon and Atlantic coast. British colonial authorities and Christian missionaries systematically undermined the cult's influence, leading to the gradual political decline of Nyigbla's shrines and the transformation of these sacred waters into secular economic zones.

Chapter 5: The Sacred Grove of Kpota: Focuses on the Kpota sacred grove near Anloga, traditionally reserved for burying those who died "bad deaths" (such as infectious diseases or suicides) to prevent spiritual contamination. Christian converts and colonial authorities deliberately violated long-standing taboos by clearing portions of Kpota for agriculture and road construction, sparking intense local debates over the nature of sacrilege and cosmic order.

Chapter 6: Memory, Erasure, and Reconstruction: Explores how twentieth-century Anlo communities navigated abandoned shrines and converted spaces. Greene emphasizes that the fading of certain sacred sites was often a deliberate historical choice by locals adapting to modern socio-economic conditions, while contemporary cultural organizations now work to preserve remaining sites as historical heritage.

The Role of the Bremen Missionary Society

The Norddeutsche Missionsgesellschaft (Bremen Mission), which arrived on the Slave Coast in 1847, played an extraordinarily invasive role in reshaping Ewe life. Driven by German Pietism alongside Herderian ideals of cultural linguistic identity, the missionaries executed a multi-faceted transformation:

Spatial Segregation: By constructing distinct "salvation villages," missionaries physically removed converts from family compounds, severing the immediate link between living lineages and ancestral home shrines.

Desacralization of Nature: Missionaries encouraged converts to farm in sacred groves and traverse taboo waters, attempting to prove empirically that traditional deities possessed no punitive power.

Invention of "Eweland": The NMG standardized Ewe into a written language and translated the Bible, inadvertently defining the geographic boundaries of a unified "Eweland" across previously autonomous polities (such as Peki, Ho, and Anlo).

Theological Reframing: The mission adopted the traditional Ewe supreme deity name, Mawu, to represent the Christian God, while reclassifying local protective spirits (trɔwo and legbawo) as evil spirits under the domain of Abosam (the Devil).

Burial and Bodily Discipline: The mission banned intramural home burials, establishing grid-style extramural cemeteries and enforcing European dress to signify inner moral transformation.

Intellectual Continuity: Connecting Sacred Sites to Greene's Earlier Work

Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter represents a direct analytical evolution from Greene’s first major book, Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe (1996).

While her 1996 study concentrated primarily on social institutions—tracking how gender roles, clan hierarchies, slavery, and intermarriage defined Ewe identity during precolonial trade and military expansion—her 2002 work shifts focus to spatial grounding. Sacred Sites demonstrates that the social structures detailed in her earlier book were dependent on control over physical geography.

Furthermore, where the 1996 text relied heavily on oral traditions and trade archives to reconstruct chronological political events, Sacred Sites expands its methodology by treating the physical landscape itself as an archive. The narrative of Notsie, for instance, evolves from a political migration story in the 1996 book into a contested spatial symbol of modern cultural nationalism in the 2002 volume. Together, both works establish Sandra E. Greene as a definitive voice in West African historiography, illustrating how social identity, religious belief, and environmental landscape continuously reshape one another across centuries.

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