The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War For Africa'S Gold Coast

348 Pages·2002·3.14 MB·English

by  Robert B. Edgerton

THE FALL
OF THE
ASANTE EMPIRE
THE HUNDRED-YEAR WARN
FOR AFRICA’S GOLD COAST
Robert B. Edgerton
THE FREE PRESSA
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Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Edgerton, Robert B.
The fall of the Asante Empire: the hundred-year war for Africa’s Gold Coast /
Robert B. Edgerton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN: 0-7432-3638-6
eISBN: 978-1-45160373-6
1. Ashanti (Kingdom)—History. 2. Ashanti (African People)—History. 3.
Ghana—History. I. Title.
DT507.E34 1998
966.7′018—dc20 94-36626
CIP
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. A Cause Worth Dying for
2. The Empire of Gold
3. “A Bravery Not to Be Exceeded”
4. “The Bush Is Stronger Than the Cannon”
5. “Does It Not Make One’s Heart Ache?”
6. “The Most Horrible War”
7. “Britannia Waives the Rules”
8. “We Are Going to Die Today”
9. “An Inaudible Murmur of Admiration”
10. “For the Ashes of Their Fathers and the Temples of Their Gods”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface
WHEN DURING THE PAST CENTURY WESTERNERS THOUGHT ABOUT Africa, it is
unlikely that they paid much attention to the military prowess of the African
societies that were reportedly being conquered with little difficulty by one
European force or another. There was one notable exception. The dramatic 1879
war between the Zulus and the British immediately captured the imagination of
people throughout the West. In the first great battle of their six-month-long war,
the Zulus very nearly annihilated a large British force, killing 52 officers, 806
soldiers, and about 500 of their African allies. More than a century later, the
pageantry of red-coated Britons wielding bayonets against the short stabbing
spears of flamboyantly costumed, impossibly brave Zulu warriors continues to
be celebrated in books, on television, and in epic motion pictures such as Zulu
and Zulu Dawn. The extraordinary bravery and the military success of the Zulus
earned them the respect of the British who fought against them and fascinated
generations of Europeans and Americans, who have read about their resistance
or seen it depicted in films. But for most people in Europe and America,
recognition of the valor of African fighting men begins and ends with the Zulus.
It has gone very largely unnoticed that both before and after the Anglo-Zulu war,
African soldiers fought against invading European armies whose modern rifles,
machine guns, and artillery killed them in terrible numbers. The men, and
sometimes women, in these African armies were often gallant, and sometimes
they won battles despite their inferior arms. But most of the battles these African
soldiers fought made little impact on European consciousness at the time, and
they have since faded into almost complete obscurity.
Some of the longest and most effective military resistance to European
conquest took place in West Africa; by far the longest was the century-long
struggle of the Asante of Ghana against the British. From 1807 to 1900, Asante
armies fought numerous small and large battles against the British. In several of
these they were the clear victors, the only West African army to defeat a
European army in more than one major engagement. In the final conflict of
1900, despite the British use of machine guns and powerful 75mm artillery, the
Asante several times forced British columns to retreat. One of the British
invasions of the Asante kingdom was led by Sir Garnet Wolseley, Britain’s best-
known general at the time and the man who later commanded British troops
during the Zulu war. Wolseley had fought and been wounded in several previous
wars, but he called his campaign against the Asante the “most horrible war” he
had ever fought in. And he very nearly did not win it.
The Asante and the British fought more than one horrible battle. They fought
bravely and cruelly as they struggled with disease and starvation as well as
bullets and bayonets. Most of all they struggled with their colossal
incomprehension of one another’s values, religious beliefs, diplomacy, sense of
honor, and national purpose. Much of this misunderstanding was the inevitable
consequence of the British insistence on their racial and cultural supremacy, but
the Asante too could be arrogant and self-righteous. The roots of conflict lay in
the differing cultural heritages and economic interests of the two peoples.
Although the most fundamental cause of the conflict was economic, the Asante
practices of human sacrifice and slavery also played a part, as did British
ignorance about the significance of the Golden Stool. Not only did the two
nations misunderstand one another, they consistently underestimated one
another’s military strength.
What follows will describe the conflict between these two proud peoples,
especially their military campaigns and something of the men who fought in
them. The emphasis will be on the military resistance of the Asante, but that can
only be understood by examining the actions of the British, not least because
most of the firsthand accounts of these wars were written by them. Over the
course of the nineteenth century, the Asante and British troops fought dozens of
battles. Some were small-scale affairs fought more or less by mistake. Others
were well-planned campaigns that involved many thousands of men. The Asante
fought with such bravery that from the first battle to the last the British sang
their praises. Despite an inferiority in weapons that grew as the years passed, the
Asante willingness to face death in battle never wavered. How they fought and
why they did so is the subject of this book.
Acknowledgments
THIS BOOK DESCRIBES THE MILITARY CONFLICT BETWEEN THE Asante and British that
filled the nineteenth century. In the mid-1980s, when my long-standing interest
in this subject was piqued enough to start this project, all of those people who
had firsthand knowledge of the events had passed on, and although searches of
the Public Record Office in London, the Balme Library at the University of
Ghana, the Basel Missionary Archives, the British Museum, and many other
libraries and archives yielded much, I discovered nothing of major significance
that previous scholars had missed.
Instead of continuing my frustrated search for something original, I found
myself relying heavily on the published work of scholars, missionaries, soldiers,
travelers, and newspaper correspondents. To modern-day scholars who find
themselves cited in the bibliography, I extend my thanks for their marvelous
work, as I do to all of those earlier merchants, missionaries, soldiers, colonial
officers, and newsmen who braved inclement weather, deadly diseases, and
bullets to record their experiences of that tumultuous century.
This book, like my two earlier books for The Free Press on African resistance
to colonial rule—Like Lions They Fought and Mau Mau—is meant mainly for
the general reading public rather than scholars. To make the book as accessible
as possible to these readers I have avoided the use of technical anthropological
terms for various aspects of Asante society and culture, and I have held the use
of Asante terms to an absolute minimum. For example, I have referred to the
Asante monarch as “king” rather than Asantehene, the Asante term, which is
routinely used by most scholars when referring to the holder of this office. I have
also tried to reduce the number of place-names for villages, rivers, districts, and
the like as well as the personal names of men and women whose roles were not
central to the events being described. For this I apologize to the Asante people,
but I hope that they will understand that my purpose is to make their history