Ivor Wilks

Professor Emeritus Ivor G. Wilks (19 July 1928 – 7 October 2014) was a noted British Africanist and historian, specializing in Ghana. Considered one of the founders of modern African historiography, 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.

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. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984. South Wales and the Rising of 1839: Class Struggle as Armed Struggle. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 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. 1993. Forests of Gold: Essays on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 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. Trondheim: Norwegian University of Science and Technology.