Professor Emeritus Ivor G. Wilks (19 July 1928 – 7 October 2014)"Professor Ivor Wilks is dead"
, Starr FM. was a noted

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Africanist and

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, specializing in

Ghana Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...

. Considered one of the founders of modern African historiography, he was an authority on the

Ashanti Empire The Asante Empire (Asante Twi: ), today commonly called the Ashanti Empire, was an Akan state that lasted between 1701 to 1901, in what is now modern-day Ghana. It expanded from the Ashanti Region to include most of Ghana as well as parts of Iv ...

in Ghana and the Welsh working-class movement in the 19th century. At the time of his death, he was

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of History at

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, USA.

Life and career

In the 1940s Wilks was a Lieutenant in the

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, in

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. He attended

Bangor University , former_names = University College of North Wales (1884–1996) University of Wales, Bangor (1996–2007) , image = File:Arms_of_Bangor_University.svg , image_size = 250px , caption = Arms ...

, and as an ardent supporter of Welsh independence participated in Welsh Nationalist politics and the

Welsh Republican Movement The Welsh Republican Movement ( cy, Mudiad Gweriniaethol Cymru) was a Welsh nationalist political party. It was founded in 1949 as a split from Plaid Cymru. The group, some of whom had previously been members of the Labour Party aimed to build ...

.Jeff Rice
"Emeriti professors' papers published, launching new series"
Program of African Studies newsletter, Fall 2011/Volume 22, Number 1, pp. 6–7. Graduating in 1951, he took a degree in philosophy at

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. In 1953 Wilks left Oxford for the University College of the Gold Coast (now the University of Ghana), where he devoted his long career to what he described as the decolonization of West African history. His work examines the nature of power and leadership, collaboration and resistance. He was instrumental in setting up the

Institute of African Studies The Institute of African Studies on the Anne Jiagee road on campus of the University of Ghana at Legon is an interdisciplinary research institute in the humanities and social sciences. It was established by President Kwame Nkrumah in 1962 to encou ...

at the University of Ghana,

Legon Legon , a suburb of the Ghanaian city Accra, is situated about north-east of the city center in the Accra Metropolis District, a district in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. Legon is home to the main campus of the University of Ghana. Ghanaia ...

. In 1966 he relocated to Northwestern University in the USA, where he remained until retirement. He was married to Grace O. Amanor and then to Nancy Lawler from 1989. He had four children, who live in Ghana, the USA and the UK.

Contributions

His 1975 book ''Asante in the 19th Century'' remains both a classic and a standard text of Africanist scholarship. Wilks was the author of 178 published works, and is considered one of the founders of modern African historiography.

Awards

* ASA Distinguished Africanist Award 1998, * Herskovits Professor of African Studies, * Professor Emeritus

Selected bibliography

* 1961 ''The Northern Factor in Ashanti History''. Legon: Institute of African Studies. * 1975. ''Asante in the Nineteenth Century: The Structure and Evolution of a Political Order''.

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. * 1984. ''South Wales and the Rising of 1839: Class Struggle as Armed Struggle''.

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. * 1986 (with N. Levtzion & B. Haight). ''Chronicles from Gonja: A West African Tradition of Muslim Historiography''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. * 1989. ''Wa and the Wala: Islam and Polity in Northwestern Ghana''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Ivor Wilks
"Wa and the Wala: Islam and polity in northwestern Ghana"
Cambridge University Press, 1989. * 1993. ''Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante''.

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. * 1995. ''A Portrait of Otumfuo Opoku Ware II as a Young Man''. Anansesem Publications. * 1996. ''One Nation, Many Histories: Ghana past and present''. Anansesem Publications. * 2001. ''Akwamu 1640–1750: a Study of the Rise and Fall of a West African Empire''. Department of History.

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References

External links

Program of African Studies, Northwestern University

The Writings of Ivor Wilks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wilks, Ivor 1928 births Historians of Africa 2014 deaths British Africanists Northwestern University faculty University of Ghana faculty Alumni of Bangor University Alumni of the University of Oxford British historians British expatriates in the United States British expatriates in Mandatory Palestine British expatriates in Ghana