The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  The existence of the Asante kingdom was apparently not known to Portuguese traders until 1698, when its war with the Denkyira began, but its prosperity and power became generally known to Europeans soon after. Arab traders and dignitaries also knew of Asante by this time and some had almost certainly visited Kumase, but the first person to leave a written record of such a visit was the director-general of the Dutch trading company, J. P. T Huydecoper, in 1816. Huydecoper, the son of a Dutch trader and an African mother, was able to speak Asante well enough to have intricate political conversations with the king, Osei Bonsu, and he wrote about these talks in some detail. He did not, however, have an eye for Asante life and seldom recorded anything of interest about what he saw in the capital, despite spending an entire year there. He was followed to Kumase the next year by four Britons, one of whom, a twenty-six-year-old named Thomas Edward Bowdich, wrote a fascinating and largely accurate account of his five-month residence in the Asante capital.9

  Bowdich traveled to Kumase because John Hope Smith, the new British governor of the African Company of Merchants at Cape Coast, decided to send a mission to the Asante to negotiate a treaty and to establish a resident merchant among them before Britain’s Dutch competitors could fully capitalize on Huydecoper’s visit. Smith gave command of the mission to Frederick James, a veteran officer of the company, who would be accompanied by Bowdich (who happened to be Smith’s nephew) as its scientific observer, William Hutchinson, who would become the British resident in the Asante capital, and Henry Tedlie, a young physician.10 In addition to three interpreters, Smith also sent an African carpenter, bricklayer, and cooper to build Hutchinson a house that would serve as the company’s embassy and over one hundred Africans to carry the mission’s supplies. Governor Smith instructed his men to learn everything possible about the Asante kingdom, its power, trade relationships, and anything else that might be useful to the British merchants.

  The Bowdich expedition left Cape Coast in late April 1817 to begin the 140-mile journey to Kumase. It was an unfortunate time for such a trip because the spring rains were due in May, and once they struck, the travelers would have hard going with slippery mud and flooded rivers. The best route followed a war-ravaged path through the seemingly impenetrable jungle that lay between the pounding surf of the coast and the Asante capital. White men, who were usually unable to walk any great distance in the West African heat and humidity, were typically transported in large, canopied, hammocklike contraptions carried by four Africans. It would take the British caravan almost a month to reach Kumase, an average progression of only five miles per day.

  Near the coast the going was relatively easy as the single-file column pressed its way along a pulverized quartz path; but soon the sea breezes of the coast were left behind, and the heavily laden carriers entered the tropical rain forest that would envelop them for the next month. Although the forest’s lofty canopy of trees, some of which soared to over two hundred feet, created a relatively cool shade, the midday temperature still reached 90°F, and at night it did not drop below the mid-seventies. Much of the way was through mangrove swamps, where putrefying vegetation and dark stagnant water gave off a suffocatingly vile odor. There were few flowers to brighten the way at that time of year, but large butterflies and dainty hummingbirds darted around the men, and there were flocks of larger birds such as hornbills, crown birds, parrots, toucans, warblers, and cranes, not to mention numerous crows, hawks, and vultures. At night leopards could be heard coughing, lions roaring, and beetles chirping loudly like crickets, but nothing made as much noise as the little rabbit-sized pothos, a kind of lemur that sometimes screeched so piercingly that sleep was impossible. The tropical rain forest was inhabited by all manner of animals, including miniature zebra and full-sized elephants, with large numbers of civet cats, wild hogs, anteaters, antelope, sloths, monkeys, and even chimpanzees, but the dense unbroken underbrush of vines, ferns, and creepers usually kept man and animals apart from one another. Snakes—including a fourteen-foot-long python—and scorpions came into closer contact, as did voracious ants that would attack sleeping humans. Mosquito bites also annoyed the men, although no one then realized that the result could be a deadly bout of malaria. In 1817 and for the remainder of the century, it was believed that “fever,” as it was known, was caused by poisonous air, particularly the decaying and malodorous effluvia of swamps. In fact, the word malaria was a contraction of the Italian words for bad air, “mal aria.”

  At first the Europeans were impressed by the magnificence of the rain forest’s immense trees, but soon they felt depressed by the solid walls and ceiling of dark green, which seemed to entrap and suffocate them. For most of the journey they could not see more than a few feet on either side of the path. Increasingly claustrophobic, they longed for clearings or rises that would permit them to escape from the jungle even for a short while. Eventually they came to a few open places where the land had once been cultivated, and there were occasional ridges, one of which rose to one thousand five hundred feet. When it was possible for the Britons to look out over the forest beneath them, all agreed that the spectacle was truly magnificent. After passing through a dark, trackless stretch of jungle near the border between the coastal Fante people, bitter enemies of their Asante overlords, and metropolitan Asante, they encountered abandoned villages where the ground was littered with human skulls, relics of an earlier Asante invasion of the south. When the column soon after reached a small clearing, Bowdich, undaunted by the earlier grisly sight, wrote that

  Nothing could be more beautiful than its scenery … light and shade were most happily blended … trees towering in the shrubbery, waved to the most gentle air a rich foliage of dark green … the tamarind and smaller mimosas heightening its effect by their livelier tint … the cotton trees overtopped the whole, enwreathed in convolvuli, and several elegant little trees, unknown to me, rose in the background, intermixed with palms, and made the coup d’oeil enchanting.11

  As the British mission crossed the Pra Bdver and entered metropolitan Asante, it began to encounter inhabited villages. Some of them were small, with their thatched-roof mud houses somewhat the worse for wear, but even these places had one wide main street, and most villages struck the visitors as being surprisingly clean. Coastal villages had never made this impression. The members of the mission also commented favorably on the lush fields that lay outside the villages. The Asante inhabitants of these towns, whom Bowdich described as clean and cheerful, were also friendly and respectful, a sharp contrast to the sullen Fante the column had previously endured.

  On the nineteenth of May, the column came to a halt one mile south of Kumase. Messengers were sent to announce the arrival to the Asante king, who sent word to the British mission to wait in a nearby village until he finished his bathing (high-ranking Asante bathed at least once a day, using imported Portuguese soap, and none among them was more fastidious than King Osei Bonsu). At two o’clock the expedition was invited to enter Kumase. The first thing the men saw was an offering of a dead sheep wrapped in red silk, suspended over their pathway by two tall poles. Before they had time to speculate about the possible meaning of this sacrifice, they were greeted—or, more accurately, engulfed—by more than five thousand people, most of them warriors, firing their muskets in the air so often that it soon became difficult for the English visitors to see their welcomers through the smoke. But they could not fail to hear the deafening cacophony of the drums, elephant-tusk horns, reed flutes, wooden rattles, and iron gongs played with what Bowdich called “a zeal bordering on phrensy.”12 When the air cleared enough for the white men to see, Bowdich and his comrades found themselves encircled by warriors and their officers who bounded about passionately waving Danish, Dutch, and British flags, some of which had been set on fire by discharges from their muskets.

  For half an hour the throng continued its welcoming dance, led by military officers whose dress excited the wonder of the white men. Each officer wore an immense cap topped by three-foot-long
plumes of eagle feathers, with gilded ram’s horns thrusting out to the front. On their chests they wore red cloth vests covered with amulets of gold and silver, as well as various small brass bells, shells, and knives that jangled as they moved. Three or four animals’ tails hung down from each arm, and long leopards’ tails dangled down their backs, covering a small bow. A quiver of poisoned arrows hung from their right wrists, and each man brandished a small spear covered with red cloth and silk tassels in his left hand. They wore loose cotton trousers that were stuffed into soft, red leather boots reaching to mid-thigh, where they were attached by small chains to cartridge belts worn around the waist. Finally, each man held between his teeth a two-foot-long iron chain that had a scrap of paper covered with Arabic writing attached to the end. Although the British officers were dressed in imposing scarlet and white uniforms and carried swords, they must have felt underdressed.

  When the welcoming ceased, the British-led column moved on to deposit their supplies and gifts in a large house that had been assigned to them. As they did, they were serenaded by various bands that this time melodiously played drums, horns, and flutes in concert. The visitors were soon ordered to walk toward the king’s palace while much of the population of Kumase gathered around to stare at the white men. As they made their way through the throng, they were exposed to the spectacle of a man being led along to his execution. He was made to walk with his hands tied behind his back, a knife passed through his cheeks to prevent him from uttering a curse that could endanger the king. One ear had been cut off and was carried by a man who walked ahead; the other ear hung by a small strip of skin. His bare back was gashed and bleeding, and small knives had been thrust up under each shoulder blade. The wretched man was being led along by a cord that had been passed through his nose. It is likely that he was paraded before the British visitors as an object warning of what would happen to malefactors.

  After this unfortunate man had been led away, the four Englishman and their interpreters were led down a very broad street toward the marketplace, where they were stunned by the “magnificence and novelty” of the next scene that “burst” upon them, as Bowdich put it.13 As they entered the market area, which Bowdich estimated to be a mile in circumference, they were confronted by an enormous throng of people, and they had to avert their eyes to escape the blinding glare produced by the sun reflecting off masses of gold ornaments worn and carried by the king, his court, various attendants, and thousands of soldiers. As the British visitors were staring in frank amazement at the display of gold, no fewer than one hundred bands began to play, alternating between drum and horn motifs and softer, more melodic tunes featuring long flutes and instruments that resembled bagpipes. As the music continued, scores of huge silk umbrellas, each large enough to provide shade for thirty people, sprung open, adding bright splashes of scarlet and yellow to the scene.

  The Britons were invited to come forward to take the hand of each military officer, chief, noble, and important figure in the king’s entourage. Most of these men wore heavy silks thrown over the left shoulder like a Roman toga, and they displayed so much gold and silver that the British visitors continued to be dazzled. Some wore ornamental lumps of gold attached to their wrists that were so heavy they had to be supported by boy attendants. Others had solid gold, life-size wolves’ or rams’ heads suspended from their gold-handled swords. Bowdich noted that these swords were apparently not reserved for ceremonies: their blades were rusted in blood. Large numbers of young officers bedecked in leopard skins, equipped with elephant-hide cartridge boxes encrusted with gold, silver, blue agate, and shells, and carrying gold-handled swords and long Danish muskets, also ornamented with gold, sat on the ground. Next, the Britons were startled to find themselves facing seventeen men of apparently superior rank who were dressed as Arabs. As the Englishmen passed by, these men, whom the British interpreters called Moors, glared at them with undisguised hostility. As the visitors passed by the master of the bands, the keeper of the royal burial ground, the gold horn blower, and many other dignitaries, there was a prolonged clamor of horns and drums announcing the presence of King Osei Bonsu.

  Before they could approach the king, the white visitors met the royal executioner, a huge, heavily muscled man wearing a gold breastplate and holding before him the execution stool, which was clotted in blood and nearly covered by a thick deposit of human fat. He shook the stool in a clear warning of what awaited anyone who violated Asante law.14 Four of the king’s spokesmen came next, then finally the keeper of the treasury, who ostentatiously displayed the boxes, scales, and weights of his office, all made of solid gold. Finally, the white men reached the king, who courteously extended his hand. About forty to forty-five years old, the heavyset Osei Bonsu was every inch a monarch. His dress was magnificent but restrained. He wore a rich green silk toga, and his golden ornaments were of the finest workmanship. Even his white leather sandals were delicately ornamented with gold and silver. There were gold castanets on his finger and thumb, which he clapped to enforce silence. His head was shaved except for a quarter-sized tuft of hair on his temple, and he had a three-inch-long beard. 15 All the European visitors characterized him as handsome, friendly, and dignified. When another English visitor was introduced to him four years later, he was too drunk to carry on a dignified conversation, but he was nevertheless courteous and his bearing was regal.

  After the king greeted the Englishmen, they were passed on to meet beautiful female attendants, small boys holding elephant tails whose job it was to clean up the king’s spit, and obese eunuchs who oversaw his hundreds of wives. Prominently displayed under a protective umbrella was a stool, entirely encased in gold, whose significance the Englishmen did not understand. This was the Golden Stool, the most powerful and sacred symbol in Asante culture. The Asante believed it had been conjured down from the skies during the reign of Osei Tutu, over one hundred years earlier. The stool not only symbolized the king’s authority to rule, but it was thought to contain the soul of the Asante people and to assure their well-being. As the English visitors moved farther from the king and his retinue, they were greeted by numerous older men of high rank who were carried by their slaves, as well as the children of chiefs and nobleman who were so weighed down by their golden jewelry that they too had to be carried. Finally, as the white men were escorted to their quarters, they were entertained by royal dancers, dwarfs, mimics, and buffoons.

  At eight that evening, his way lighted by hundreds of torches, the king paid a visit to the Englishmen, asked their names for a second time, and wished them a good night. Bowdich and his colleagues could not agree on how many people they had seen in Kumase, but they all estimated the number of soldiers alone at thirty thousand. When Huydecoper visited a year earlier, he estimated that he had been greeted by fifty thousand people and had been introduced to sixty generals in a single day. Still astonished by the power and pomp of the Asante court but exhausted by the excitement of the day, the four Britons slept for the first time in Kumase.

  In the ensuing days the visitors exchanged gifts and pleasantries with the king, to whom they had been instructed to give pledges of harmony, friendship, and goodwill. Surrounded by his councilors, interpreters and large retinue, Osei Bonsu met his visitors in any one of the many round rooms that made up a five-acre palace complex dominated by a large European-style two-story building made of stone. Despite the intimidating ambience Bowdich did his best to convince the Asante King that British motives were wholly altruistic, consisting of nothing more than a desire to share the benefits of British civilization with the Asante. King Osei Bonsu readily acknowledged the superiority of British technology, but wryly observing that one of the northern provinces that the Asante had conquered was as inferior to the Asante as the Asante were to the British, he assured Bowdich that there was not a single person in his kingdom who would go there solely to share Asante art and technology. This being so, the king pointedly asked, “Now, how do you wish to persuade me that it is only for so flimsy a motive
that you have left this fine and happy England …?” The next day an Asante prince asked Bowdich why, if Britain were so selfless, it had behaved so differently in India.16 Bowdich was astonished that the Asante had heard anything about India and was at a loss for words. Events would soon confirm the Asante suspicion that altruism was not Governor Smith’s motive for sending his representatives to Kumase.

  As the days passed, the British visitors continued to be impressed by the size of Kumase, the complexity of its court and government, and the novelty of Asante life, but initially they were severely limited in their ability to learn much about the Asante state because, unless they were summoned to meet the king, they were usually restricted to their residences. Even so, there were memorable experiences. When they were invited to dine with the king and members of his court, they were first served what they referred to as a “relish … sufficient for an army” consisting of soups, stews, plantains, yams, rice, wine, spirits, oranges, and “every fruit.” Next, dinner was served on a large table under four scarlet umbrellas. The plates were gold, the knives, forks, and spoons were silver. The table held an entire roast pig, roasted ducks, chickens, stews, vegetables, and fruit, accompanied by port and Madeira wine, gin, and Dutch cordials served in glasses. Bowdich was an educated Englishman from the port city of Bristol who read Latin, Greek and French, but he wrote that “we never saw a dinner more handsomely served, and never ate a better.”17 Two decades later, when another English visitor was received in Kumase, he was served an equally impressive dinner while being serenaded by a Dutch-trained brass band wearing blue dress uniforms trimmed in red.18 Osei Bonsu sometimes wore European clothing to dinners like these, a custom that some of his successors continued.