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History of the Ashanti People

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Asante (Ashanti) History Much of the modern
nation of Ghana was dominated from the late
17th through the late 19th century by a state
known as Asante. Asante was the largest and
most powerful of a series of states formed in the
forest region of southern Ghana by people known
as the Akan. Among the factors leading the Akan
to form states, perhaps the most important was
that they were rich in gold. In the 15th and 16th
centuries, gold-seeking traders came to Akan
country not only from the great Songhay empire
(in the modern Republic of Mali) and the Hausa
cities of northern Nigeria, but also from Europe.
After the Portuguese built the first European fort
in tropical Africa at El Mina in 1482, the stretch of
the Atlantic coast now in Ghana became known
in Europe as the Gold Coast. Akan entrepreneurs
used gold to purchase slaves from both African
and European traders. Indeed, while Europeans
would eventually ship at least twelve million
slaves to the Americas (the estimates vary
between 20 - 40 million people who were sent to
the Americas as slaves from West Africa by
European slave traders), they initially became
involved in slave trading by selling African slaves
to African purchasers. The Portuguese supplied
perhaps 12,000 slaves to Akan country between
1500 and 1535, and continued selling slaves
from Sao Tome and Nigeria to the Gold Coast
throughout the 16th century. Before Benin
imposed a ban on slave exports, a Portuguese
slave trader reported that at Benin they
purchased, "a great number of slaves who were
bartered very profitably at El Mina. The labour of
these slaves enabled the Akan to expand gold
production by developing deep-level mining in
addition to panning alluvial soils. Even more
importantly, slave labor enabled the Akan to
undertake the immensely laborious task of
clearing the dense forests of southern Ghana for
farming. The most prominent historian of Asante,
Ivor Wilks, suggests that while some farming on
a very limited scale had probably been practiced
in the Ghanaian forests for millennia, only when
the Akan began importing slaves in the 15th and
16th centuries were they able to shift from an
economy which relied primarily on hunting and
gathering to one which became primarily
agricultural. As this transition to agriculture took
place, Akan communities not only planted more
of their traditional crops - plantains, yams, and
rice - but also adopted a wide variety of new
crops from the Americas, including maize (corn)
and cassava, which were brought to Africa by
Europeans. Farming led to rapid increase of
population in the forest region. As the population
grew, small groups migrated across the
Ghanaian forest, searching for good farm land.
Often these groups were led, believes Wilks, by
entrepreneurs who used slave labor to do the
initial work of clearing forest. Later, these
entrepreneurs would invite free settlers to join
them, and in this way new communities were
created throughout the forest. These
developments set the stage for state-building in
the 17th and 18th centuries. Politically ambitious
groups sought not only to establish control over
gold production and trading, but also to impose
their authority on the new farming communities
in the forest. Consequently, formerly independent
villages combined together in growing states.
Whereas in the late 1500s Akan country
contained at least 38 small states, by the mid-
1600s it had only a handful, and by 1700 only one
state Asante reigned supreme. The events
which led to the foundation of Asante began with
the rise of Denkyira, a state which waged wars
to gain control of the Akan gold trade between
1650 and 1670. These wars led many refugees to
flee into uninhabited forest regions. Among the
refugees were the clan of Oyoko, who settled at
Kumasi, the town which would later become
famous as the Asante capital. Initially the small
town of Kumasi had no choice but to become a
vassal of powerful Denkyira, a situation which
required not only that it pay tribute, but also that
it send a hostage to live in the court of the
Denkyira ruler as his servant. The chief of
Kumasi chose a nephew, Osei Tutu, to become
this hostage. According to Akan traditions, after
becoming a distinguished general in the Denkyira
army, Osei Tutu rebelled against the Denkyira
king by refusing to hand over gold booty which he
had captured in war. Then Osei Tutu fled home to
Kumasi. His action must have marked him as a
man of exceptional courage and leadership, for
when the Kumasi chief died, probably in the early
1680s, the people of Kumasi selected Nana Osei
Tutu as his successor. Osei Tutu soon expanded
his authority, initially by placing the communities
within a radius of about fifty miles of Kumasi
under his control, and eventually by challenging
Denkyira itself. In wars from 1699 to 1701, he
defeated the Denkyira king and forced numerous
Denkyira sub-chiefs to transfer their allegiance
to Kumasi. In the remaining years before his
death in 1717, Osei Tutu consolidated the power
of his state. Osei Tutu was succeeded by Opoku
Ware, who increased AsanteÃ‚Â¹s gold trade,
tried to reduce dependence on European imports
by establishing local distilling and weaving
industries, and greatly increased the size of
Asante. At his death in 1750, his realm stretched
from the immediate hinterland of the Gold Coast
to the savannahs of present-day northern Ghana.
By this time it controlled an area of about
100,000 square miles and a population about
100,000 sq. miles and a population of two to
three million. As Asante(Ashanti) grew, it
developed an administrative structure modeled
on that of its predecessor Denkyira. Historians
sometimes speak about Asante's "metropolitan"
and "provincial" spheres. "Metropolitan" Asante
consisted primarily of the towns in a fifty-mile
radius around Kumasi. The rulers of these
towns, many of whom shared membership in the
Oyoko clan, participated in the enthronement of
Asante kings, served on the king's advisory
council, and retained considerable autonomy. By
contrast, outlying Akan regions were more
clearly subordinate and were forced to pay
tribute to the Asante rulers. The most distant
districts of the state which were populated by
non-Akan people annually sent thousands of
slaves to Kumasi." "Opoku Ware and his
successors tried to centralize power in the
hands of the king, or Asantehene. They placed all
trade under state agencies controlled by the
Asantehene, and created a complex
bureaucracy to govern and collect taxes. They
curbed the power of the military by creating a
palace guard whose commanders were chosen
by the Asantehene(Ashanti King) himself. Asante
achieved a high degree of administrative
efficiency (its well-maintained roads, for
example, were famous) and the ability to
implement sophisticated fiscal policies.
Nevertheless, the Asantehene(Ashanti King) and
his state always had many opponents. Opoku
Ware himself barely survived a revolt by military
leaders in 1748, while towns around Kumasi
resisted interference by the Asantehene
bureaucracy. Much of the opposition to the king
came from a class of wealthy traders. The
nineteenth century brought new adversaries:
British traders and colonial officials who wished
to end Asante control of coastal towns and trade
routes. Between 1801 and 1824, Asantehene
Osei Bonsu resisted the spread of British
influence, and led the defense of Kumasi when
the British attacked in 1824. Although Asante had
exported slaves to the Americas throughout its
history, when Europe gradually ended its slave
trade in the 19th century Asante was able to
compensate for the decline in slave exports by
increasing sales of kola nuts to savannah
regions to the north. Like virtually all African
societies, however, Asante was unable to
prevent European colonization. Its independence
ended in 1874, when a British force, retaliating
for an Asante attack on El Mina two years earlier,
sacked Kumasi and confiscated much of its
wealth, including its artistic treasures. Kumasi
was captured by the British Army in 1873 (as a
result of which much of the magnificent Asante
gold regalia can be seen in London in the British
Museum). After a final uprising in 1901, led by the
Queen Mother of Ejisu (Nana Yaa Asantewaa)
Nana Yaa Asantewaa Asante came into British
Protection and finally became a region of the
Gold Coast colony.