Ivor Wilks


Professor Emeritus Ivor G. Wilks was a noted British Africanist and historian, specializing in Ghana. He was an authority on the Asante Kingdom in Ghana and the Welsh working-class movement in the 19th century. He had one of the most distinguished careers of any historian of Africa. At his death, he was Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University in Illinois, USA.

Life and career

In the 1940s Wilks was a Lieutenant in the British Army, in Palestine. He attended Bangor University, and as an ardent supporter of Welsh independence participated in Welsh Nationalist politics and the Welsh Republican Movement. Graduating in 1951, he took a degree in philosophy at Oxford University.
In 1953 Wilks left Oxford for the University College of the Gold Coast, 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 at the University of Ghana, Legon.
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 one of the masters of African historiography.

Awards