ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the complex paths of diffusion and perception of a classic ethnographic publication of the early nineteenth century, Thomas Edward Bowdich's Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee. Thomas Edward Bowdich's Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee was published in London in 1819 by John Murray. Specialists describe it as a rich and vivid source on the history of the Asante Empire. In Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, Bowdich describes a journey he undertook into the hinterlands of the Gold Coast in 1817. Bowdich's book is particularly well-known for its largest illustration, a transverse insert sheet folded four times showing a festival in Kumase called Odwira – at which Bowdich and his companions were present. This annual festival took place on the occasion of harvesting the new yams, and which Bowdich and other Europeans in the 19th century called the "yams custom".
