The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  Throughout the preceding seven months, while the Asante army was rampaging through the coastal countryside, Purdon and his officers were frantically recruiting, arming, and training men from their African allies. By August Purdon had a reasonably well armed force that, for the moment at least, appeared willing to fight. In addition to the African soldiers’ muskets and knives, Colonel Purdon had several cannon and an ample supply of the newly invented Congreve rockets. He also had excellent intelligence about the movements of the Asante, who were uncharacteristically open about their intentions. Purdon took up a defensive position some eight miles south of Dodowa on an open plain. If the Asante meant to attack, as Asante prisoners said would soon happen, they would have to charge across flat and open grasslands. Purdon positioned his men along a line that stretched over four miles. His best trained militia were in the center, backed up by British officers and sixty Royal Marines who had just disembarked with their own artillery and rockets. Large tribal contingents were on each flank under the command of their kings.

  It was a colorful army by any standard. Each contingent camped under the battle flag of the European nation to which it felt allegiance: many British, Dutch, and Danish flags waved in the slight breeze. Each man wore white sea shells or a strip of white calico to distinguish himself from the Asante; some tied the calico to the barrels of their muskets. There was much singing, dancing, and drumming, but there was still no certainty that this coalition would stand and fight. The Asante army was in position by Sunday, but on that day everyone knew they would never attack. Hoping that the Asante king would not outflank him tomorrow and that the kings of his coalition would not decamp overnight (something that would almost certainly have occurred if the squabbling kings had been given another day to quarrel among themselves), Colonel Purdon waited for Monday morning to arrive.

  He need not have worried about being outflanked. King Osei Yaw’s scouts had informed him that the strongest African coalition forces were in the center, reinforced by the British officers and marines. He decided that his honor called for him to attack the center because it was the strongest part of the British line. He rejected the urgings of his advance guard’s commander, Yaw Opense, to attack at night under torchlight, insisting instead that he would defiantly show himself to his enemies in the morning light. He also asked his commanders to give up their hammocks and lead from the front rather than push from the rear, an altogether unconventional idea. But then, this would be an unconventional battle. After his men painted their bodies with white stripes, the attack came on Monday morning, at the gentlemanly hour of 9:30 A.M. The Asante moved forward in disciplined ranks, also waving British, Dutch, and Danish flags along with many others of their own design. With drums pounding and horns playing, the Asante charged through heavy cannon fire toward the British center. Many men fell before the front rank drew near enough to kneel and fire a return volley. The British forces returned fire, and before either side could reload their long muzzle-loading muskets, the two shouting and screaming armies were tangled up together in a savage hand-to-hand knife fight that lasted for over two hours. The British militia fought courageously but were being forced back when the British left and right flanks overcame initial defeats and began to drive the Asante flanks back.

  Despite these reverses miles away on either flank, the Asante troops in the center appeared to be on the verge of victory. The situation was so serious that several of the African kings made plans to blow themselves up, and one British officer prepared to blow up his gunpowder to keep it out of Asante hands. At this critical point in the battle, Colonel Purdon ordered his Congreve rockets into use and dozens of these new weapons began to arch deafeningly through the sky trailing red sparks and smoke before they landed with tremendous explosions that sent jagged shards of metal in all directions. The Asante might have stood their ground despite the terrible wounds the rockets’ fragments produced, but the red flashes followed by the sound of explosions convinced them that the British had called down the force of nature’s thunder and lightning against them. This was too much.21 Slowly, and in reasonably good order, the Asante center fell back.

  As the British-led African militia pursued, they ripped open the bellies of wounded Asante and tore out their hearts. They also clubbed their own wounded to death to end their suffering. As it became obvious that the battle was lost, several Asante commanders ignited kegs of gunpowder and blew themselves up, in one instance slightly wounding some nearby British officers. The once faint-of-heart king, Osei Yaw, had been in the thick of the battle, and suffering from seven wounds, he was sitting quietly, preparing to die, because in the confusion of the retreat, the man responsible for guarding his stool had lost it. Several brave Asante officers dashed back into the thick of the battle and returned with it in triumph. Despite his wounds the king would survive the battle.

  The Asante rear guard now moved up to protect the army’s retreat, but the British-led forces were far more interested in collecting the spoils of war than they were in pursuing the still-dangerous Asante. About two million dollars worth of gold, including one nugget weighing twenty thousand ounces, and other valuables were gathered up along with many prisoners.22 By now the long, dry grass was on fire, and although it is impossible to recapture the scene of the battle or its sounds adequately, Ricketts recalled the day this way: “the explosion of Asante captains, who at intervals blew themselves up in despair, which was known by the smoke that arose over the trees; the shouts and groans of the combatants, with the burning grass, and the battle raging all around, formed no bad idea of the infernal regions.”23

  At around one in the afternoon, the severed heads of prominent and even royal Asantes were brought into the British camp. A great stir was caused when what was thought to be the skull of Sir Charles MacCarthy was discovered. Carried in a leopard-skin cover, the skull was wrapped in paper covered with Arabic characters and a silk cloth. Ricketts reported that before the battle King Osei Yaw had poured rum on it and invoked it to cause all the heads of the whites to lie beside it on the battlefield. Delighted to have recovered MacCarthy’s skull, Lieutenant Colonel Purdon had it sent to England. Embarrassingly, the skull proved not to be that of Sir Charles MacCarthy at all, but that of the late King Osei Bonsu. His younger brother had taken it into battle with him in the hope that it would offset the effect of an omen that had warned the king not to launch the campaign.24 All that night the wails of Asante women searching for the bodies of their loved ones could be heard in the British camp.25

  Probably because they fought in front of their men instead of in the rear, at least seventy Asante divisional commanders and princes were killed or committed suicide. Several thousand Asante soldiers died with them, and many others, like the king, had grievous wounds. Despite these dreadful losses the army retreated in order, ferrying its men across the flooded Pra River without incident. There were many reasons for the Asante defeat. Their army was outnumbered by men with better arms, and they attacked the strength of the British line. The British rockets were a terrifying and deadly weapon that they did not understand. Also, smoke from the grass fires and the musketry was so thick that one of the two divisions of the Asante center mistook the other for the enemy and fired on it throughout the battle. Their Akin and Assim allies also fled at the first sign of fighting, leaving the Asante left flank vulnerable. Not least important, the British-trained African militia fought with unexpected resolve. It was a humiliating loss for Osei Yaw, especially because as a result of the defeat, he was forced to renounce his sovereignty over six southern states, including his most detested enemy, the Fante.

  Though it was clear that Osei Yaw had lost an important battle at Katamanso, Asante military power had not been seriously compromised. As the new British governor, Sir Neil Campbell, wrote after visiting the battleground and talking to some of the officers who took part in it, the extent of the Asante defeat had been “grossly exaggerated.” In his view, despite the size and stalwart defense of the British-led coalition fo
rces, the Asante had “repulsed” them and were on the verge of victory; only the rocket fire saved the day.26 Sir Neil also chided the British officers and the kings of the alliance for allowing their African allies to cut open the chests of the dead and wounded Asante to eat their hearts. The well-intentioned new governor had much to learn about warfare on the Gold Coast.

  Not everyone in Kumase was as willing to minimize the Asante defeat as Sir Neil did. So many men and women of influence in Kumase were openly hostile to him that Osei Yaw stayed out of the city and had to arrange to have many of his enemies killed. Believing that Muslim clerics had used magic to ensure his defeat, the king had many of these men arrested, and he banned all Muslims from entering the palace, a step that did much to destroy their influence with the court.27 Even so, he could not avoid an impeachment contest, and Kwadwo Adusei, a leader of the peace faction in the inner council, began proceedings to have the king removed from his stool. Osei Yaw responded by accusing Kwadwo Adusei of a series of offenses from giving bad advice on strategy to outright treason. After a long and divisive contest Kwadwo Adusei was found guilty and was humiliatingly executed by being pounded to death in a mortar by an elephant’s tusk.28

  But in the political maneuvering that led to the king’s exoneration and the execution of his main adversary, Osei Yaw was forced to make major concessions to the peace faction. In addition to agreeing not to launch any more military expeditions to the south, he even authorized a diplomat to approach the British about peace terms. The envoy wore a monkey-skin cap bearing a five-inch by two-inch gold plate on which gold weighing scales were beautifully etched. As he approached the British governor, he laid the cap at his feet as a symbol of submission to the king of England.29 Even though the Asante king offered an apology and reparations, the coastal chiefs and kings remained skeptical.

  Nevertheless, after extensive negotiations a draft of a treaty was formulated, and the Asante peace mission that had taken it to the coast returned to Kumase to be received by two hundred thirty senior chiefs. The treaty called for the king to renounce all warlike acts against the south, as well as the right to tribute from the maritime states under British protection. The king was required to deliver to the British governor four thousand ounces of gold and two members of the royal family as hostages to guarantee the treaty. In return the British guaranteed to restrain the coastal states from all acts of aggression against the Asante state and its traders. The Asante government was disposed to accept the terms of this treaty, but before all of its terms could be worked out, various chiefs of the British protectorate attacked and blockaded Elmina, the Dutch coastal station where the Asante had traditionally conducted trade. When the British could do nothing to lift the blockade, the treaty was left unsigned. In a series of meetings with British envoys in metropolitan Asante in 1828, Osei Yaw made it plain that he did not believe the British were negotiating in good faith. He emphasized his desire for peace but declared that the next move must come from the British.30

  That move was taken in 1829—the same year that Sir Robert Peel introduced “bobbies” to cope with London’s crime—when the British government, frustrated by the futility of its efforts to rule the Gold Coast, gave the administration of the area back to the merchants. The first president of the newly formed merchants’ council did nothing even to attempt a peace settlement and was asked to step down from his office. Nothing further happened until February 1830, when Captain George Maclean of the Royal African Colonial Corps became the second president of the newly established merchant council in Cape Coast. Unlike his predecessors, Governor Maclean immediately opened negotiations with Osei Yaw, while he used everything in his power—which at that time consisted more of the force of his personality than military assets—to intimidate the Fante. While Charles Darwin sailed along the coast of South America in the Beagle, a treaty consisting of the same terms proposed two years earlier was signed in 1831. Maclean would not change the world the way Darwin did, but he would change the Gold Coast, giving it sixteen years of welcome peace and free trade.

  Maclean is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of British colonial relations in Africa. He ruled at a time when the British government had almost no interest in the Gold Coast. He possessed a pitifully small police force of one hundred twenty men to control all of the maritime people of the Gold Coast, and yet he managed to control them with what very soon amounted to absolute authority. He was not only the ultimate policeman, but without any official judicial authority, he quickly became the judge to whom everyone brought the most difficult cases. Known for his scrupulous impartiality, his judgments were obeyed. He was patient, courteous, and wise, the rare British official of that time who actually respected and liked Africans. He was also utterly fearless, often facing down truculent opponents at great risk to his own life. When one local chief defied him, Maclean led his one hundred twenty policemen on all-night marches to surround the offending village. Just before dawn broke, the sleeping offenders were easily taken into custody. Without legal authority over the peoples of the Gold Coast because no official protectorate had been declared by the British government, Maclean nevertheless established his authority over a large and populous area along the coast, and his positive influence was felt throughout the inland area controlled by the Asante and their tributary states. So grateful were the Asante for Maclean’s ability to enforce peace that they gave him a nickname that meant “the white man in whose time all slept soundly.”31 The king was so grateful to Maclean for protecting Asante trade interests that he regularly prayed and conducted sacrifices to assure his good health.32 His good health lasted until 1847 when he died of dysentery.

  His remarkable successes on the Gold Coast notwithstanding, Maclean was vilified in some circles in England because his wife, a well-liked poet, died suddenly only a few months after joining him at Cape Coast castle. It was rumored that she committed suicide due to his mistreatment of her or his philandering with African women. A British merchant who was there when she died disputes this, insisting that she was perfectly happy the evening before she died and that she died of a congenital heart defect for which she was taking medication.33

  Osei Yaw died in 1834 and was succeeded by his nephew, Kwaku Dua I. As much as Maclean was respected in Kumase, he was not the only representative of a European power to receive a favorable hearing there. The Dutch had always been sympathetic to Asante interests, and in 1836 they became so impressed by the success Britain had achieved in recruiting West Indians into their army that they decided to emulate them by recruiting Asante men into the Dutch Army to serve in Dutch colonial possessions in the East Indies.34 They asked King Kwaku Dua I to receive a high-ranking emissary, Major General Jan Vermeer, who hoped to establish a permanent army recruiting station in Kumase. In return General Vermeer would promise the delivery of firearms. The request was accepted, and Vermeer arrived in Kumase in January 1837 with one thousand men and a military brass band. He reported that he was greeted by a crowd of sixty-seven thousand people, a suspiciously precise number, but the crowd was clearly a large one. Vermeer gave the Asante king two thousand guns in advance, and the king gave Vermeer two of his nephews to accompany him to Holland, apparently as collateral. One of these boys had an unhappy life and committed suicide, but the other became a successful engineer and never returned to the Gold Coast.35

  The king also sent a few recruits to Elmina who were described as good and strong men, but he asked the Dutch for more muskets and some cannon as well as all manner of presents, including fine silverwork. General Vermeer, now back in Holland, had established as Dutch resident in Kumase the same W. Huydecoper who had visited in 1816. Huydecoper found himself sandwiched between the king, who demanded more and more from the Dutch while he produced fewer and fewer recruits, and Vermeer, who angrily demanded that matters be set straight. Huydecoper was also horrified by the numbers of people who were beheaded, as well as some who were hanged and, Huydecoper wrote, partially eaten. By the time the recruitment
station was closed in 1842, largely due to British protests, just under two thousand Asante, almost all of whom were war prisoners, had been recruited and sent to the East Indies. Many of these men later returned and settled around Elmina.36

  Although there were many threats of war during the reign of Kwaku Dua I, he was devoted to peace and managed, although sometimes with difficulty, to avoid open warfare with the British despite their vacillating policies after the death of Maclean in 1847. Although he did nothing to reduce the numbers of humans who were executed or sacrificed, Kwaku Dua was a wise and prudent king, who continued Osei Bonsu’s policy of trade and peace. He even went so far as to consider allowing British missionaries to open a mission in Kumase. In response the Reverend Thomas B. Freeman was the first European missionary to visit the capital. After a preliminary visit in 1839, when he preached the gospel despite his sense of horror at the headless bodies he so often reported seeing in the dirt along the roads, he returned with a large entourage in 1841, bringing with him a carriage similar to the ones used by European aristocracy. Even though the roads were remarkably well maintained, getting the carriage across the two hundred or so streams and rivers was no small achievement, and Freeman was delighted that King Kwaku Dua I was pleased by the gift. So pleased, as it turned out, that he maintained the carriage in immaculate condition for at least five years, although in the absence of horses, it was pulled by men.

  The carriage was only one example of a dramatic pattern of gift exchange between Europeans and the Asante kings. Gift exchanges were not present in many parts of Africa, but for the Asante and their European suitors they were obligatory. Early in the eighteenth century the Dutch and English were sending gifts as diverse as plumed hats, gilt mirrors, general’s truncheons, four-poster beds, flags, magic lanterns, clocks, silverware, silver-topped canes, all manner of garish uniforms, and, not least, a glass coffin. Much of the material given to Asante kings was little better than junk and was of so little use to them that they stored hundreds of items away in the stone palace, a kind of museum for European exotica. In return Asante kings often presented gifts of far greater value to the Europeans. For example, former Royal Navy Commander Governor Sir William Winniett, who replaced Maclean in 1848, gave King Kwaka Dua I £300 worth of gifts in return for which the king sent 550 men to him bringing bullocks, sheep, pigs, fowls of various sorts, and all manner of food. Winniett characterized the gifts as “magnificent.”37