The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  Kwaku Dua invited the missionary Freeman to a sumptuous dinner, to which the king wore an elegant European brown velvet suit with silver lace, a white linen shirt, white satin trousers, and a silk sash around his waist. Two golden knives were suspended from a chain around his neck, and another large gold chain coiled six to eight times around his neck before hanging down to his waist.38 A middle-sized man of about thirty-six who, unlike most wealthy Asante, neither smoke nor drank, the king was courteous to Freeman and was satisfied about the missionary’s good intentions. Freeman returned to the coast convinced that a mission would be established, but in his absence conservative Asante resistance to Christian influence grew, and it would be more than a half century before a Christian mission actually opened in Kumase.

  During Governor Winniett’s visit to Kumase in 1848, King Kwaku Dua took him to task for British newspaper accounts that characterized the Asante as bloodthirsty savages addicted to human sacrifice. Winniett was surprised that the King knew anything about the British press and was not able to appease Kwaku Dua.39 From this time on, relations grew more troubled, but no serious rift took place until 1862 when an elderly and wealthy Asante citizen was accused of hoarding gold nuggets rather than conveying them to the king, their rightful owner. Rather than risk facing trial in Kumase, this man fled to the British protected territory along with many of his retainers. King Kwaku Dua requested his extradition, as he had a treaty right to do, but Richard Pine, the new governor, was convinced of the man’s innocence. A lawyer himself, Pine was torn between the treaty, which required extradition, and his conscience. Pine refused extradition, and Asante pleas went unanswered.

  That there had been no armed conflict between the Asante and the British since 1826 is truly extraordinary. During this thirty-six year period the world was hardly a peaceful place. America fought a war against Mexico and began its terrible civil war, much of West Africa was torn by tribal wars, and Britain fought colonial wars in Canada, Aden, Afghanistan, Lebanon, India, South Africa, Burma, Persia, China, New Zealand, Bhutan, and Ethiopia, as well as the horrible Crimean war against the Russians. The Asante fought states to the north during this period, including a three-year war against the Gonja that was raging while Freeman and Winniett were in Kumase. The Asante and the British were anything but unwilling to wage war, but until Pine’s fateful decision, they had lived in peace with one another for over three decades.

  Reluctantly, King Kwaku Dua I, fundamentally a man of peace, felt obliged to assert his treaty rights. Over the objection of his councillors, who recommended further negotiation, the king uncharacteristically called for mobilization, and the inner council finally agreed. An army of as many as sixty thousand men commanded by Owusu Koko, the son of King Osei Bonsu, moved south with little opposition. After brushing aside some troops from a rival state, advance units of the Asante army came up against a native army bolstered by four hundred disciplined troops led by a British major named Cochrane. Instead of facing the Asante as his men urged, Cochrane ordered a retreat, leaving behind a rear guard that was easily overrun. This shameful performance left the Asante with a clear path to the coast. But before launching a major invasion of the south, General Owusu Koko offered Governor Pine another choice—extradition of the wanted man or war. Pine chose war, declaring that he would fight “until the Kingdom of Ashantee should be prostrated before the English Government.”40 For someone with very little military force, this was an incautious threat. But before the Asante general could make up his mind to order an attack, the rains came, and he withdrew his army to Kumase. The king was so angry that he ordered a court of inquiry into the conduct of Owusu Koko and his senior commanders, at least one of whom was executed for dereliction of duty.41

  Pine was aware that his luck could run out if he did not establish a strong military force. The cost of maintaining a large native militia was beyond his means, and Britain rejected his appeal for two thousand regular white troops. Still, Pine was determined to show the flag, and he eventually decided to march the troops he had—men from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th West India Regiments, six hundred in all—to the Pra River. The troops marched during the dry season and built a fortified camp well supplied with arms, ammunition, and food; but even during the dry season neither the West Indian troops nor their white officers had great enthusiasm for their role. A force of this size could not possibly cross the Pra to invade Asante territory, nor could it hope to stand very long against a determined Asante attack. More likely, an Asante army would simply bypass their position and sweep on to the coast. When the rains returned, the health of the men quickly deteriorated, and soon many were down with malaria and dysentery. As soon as the rains abated enough to allow travel, the entire force straggled back to the coast, leaving behind their only partially destroyed supplies, cannon, and stores of ammunition. Not a shot had been fired. King Kwaku Dua was amused, remarking that “the white men bring cannon to the bush, but the bush is stronger than the cannon.”42 Pine’s failed gamble left British prestige at a new low. A noted Gold Coast historian wrote, “Never did any enterprise end in such utter failure.”43

  It was a costly failure for the British, and it left them in a politically precarious position, to be sure, but it was to have tragic consequences for the Asante as well. It led them to doubt the willingness of the British government to send white soldiers to the Gold Coast, and when a powerful British force threatened to invade the Asante homeland a decade later, the Asante rulers under-estimated the killing power of British weapons and the resolve of their leaders.

  Pine’s war was such a failure that the British government was at a loss as to how to proceed. Simply to withdraw from the Gold Coast was an unacceptable alternative, but the Asante and British were still technically at war, and there was little hope that their differences could easily be reconciled. Trade was disrupted everywhere, the Asante war faction was stronger than ever, and the entire Gold Coast was on the verge of war when in April 1867, at the age of seventy, King Kwaku Dua I died suddenly in his sleep. While various political factions struggled to enstool their respective favorites as king, many people, including some members of royal family, had to be sacrificed to accompany Kwaka Dua to the next world. One of those killed was the nephew of Asante’s most powerful general, Amasoa Nkwanta, who had reorganized larger Asante units into twenty-man platoons and had invented the rapid reloading procedures for muskets by using slaves. Nkwanta was so outraged that he threatened to raise an army and march on Kumase. He finally agreed not to do so after a close relative of the man who had killed his nephew had been executed in retaliation, but he refused to have anything further to do with the army for almost six years.44

  After three months of bitter infighting, a successor to the kingship was chosen—Kofi Kakari, Kwaka Dua’s sister’s daughter’s son, a legitimate heir but hardly the only contender. Deciding on a new king always brought powerful factions into competition, but in the end the new Asante king was chosen by an electoral majority, if not a consensus. This time the second most powerful man in the kingdom, General Owusu Koko, was in no mood for democracy. He arranged to have Kofi Kakari kidnapped and held in seclusion while he pressed his own claim to the stool. Koko was found out, convicted by a court, and sent into exile.45 Only then did Kofi Kakari become king. Known to the British as “King Coffee,” Kofi Kakari was thirty years old when he was enstooled. He was of medium height, had a full beard, and was said to be handsome except for some smallpox marks on his face. He was typically pleasant, courteous, and considerate to his European prisoners, who came to know him well. But the Asante court was no place for a pleasant young man with no military experience. His predecessor Kwaku Dua I was a much older, widely respected sovereign, who was gifted at the palace intrigue necessary to control the aggressive and competitive generals and war hawks who sought to control policy. When necessary, he could dominate them by the force of his personality and authority. Kakari was incapable of controlling his “elders,” as he called them, and he was fearful that
he would appear weak before the generals who had chosen him to be their king. Puzzled and intimidated by the intrigues of the royal family and the great men who elected him to office, he told the captive missionaries, Ramseyer and Kühne, that his ascendancy to the throne “was like a dream to him.”46 He was also dominated by his priests and Muslim advisers, whose insistence on divination, human sacrifice, and religious ceremonies was usually repugnant to the men of the inner council, who much preferred secular political decision making.

  The new king soon made more enemies through his wanton sexual debauchery. He not only collected a huge harem of legitimate wives, he often made sexual advances to the wives of powerful men. To secure the favors of these women, he lavished so much gold on them that the previously vast treasury was quickly depleted. His uncomplimentary nickname was Osape, “one who scatters gold.”47 When he was enstooled, it is said that he promised his people, “My business shall be war.” Whether he actually said this is not certain, but he did wear a cap covered with flints, a traditional symbol of war, and war would in fact prove to be his business.

  Kofi Kakari’s first crisis was the Fante blockade of the Elmina people who lived in the area surrounding the Dutch fort of the same name. The Elmina were ancient allies of the Asante who had long provided them with military protection in return for tribute and free trading access to the Dutch. In 1868 the new king sent two large armies, one of which he commanded in person, along with a smaller one to relieve the Elmina and destroy the Fante coalition of allies. Fante resistance was unexpectedly resolute, and desultory fighting dragged on into 1869. In the course of events, one of several Asante forces took two mission stations, capturing a French trader and two European missionaries, one of whom had a wife and infant. Once these people arrived in Kumase, Kofi Kakari treated the hostages well, but although the Asante soldiers who escorted them proved to be quite kind, the officer who commanded their escort to Kumase was so harsh that all the adults suffered badly and the baby boy died. Asante villagers were kind to the white captives throughout their long and hard march, and when the Ramseyer’s son died, they somberly placed flowers in his hands. These Europeans were valuable pawns for Asante diplomacy, and while the war was bogged down in inconclusive battles, the king attempted to trade their freedom to the British for an end to the Fante blockade of Elmina. The British felt great concern for the hostages’ welfare, but these people were not British subjects, nor were they captured in British protected territory. As a result, the British were uncertain about what steps they should take. Before negotiations could advance very far, the situation took a dramatic change. The Danes had sold their fort at Accra to the British in 1851, and now in late 1869 the Dutch decided to sell them their fort at Elmina.

  The unending warfare near Elmina had completely disrupted Dutch trade, and it was now threatening Dutch authority altogether. The Dutch government decided to cut its losses and leave the Gold Coast to the British, who despite the turmoil, were interested in the Dutch proposal. When the Asante government learned of the negotiations between the Dutch and English, it quickly protested, pointing out that the Elmina fort was the king’s possession and the Elmina people were his subjects. In support of his position was the fact that the Dutch had paid rent to the Asante every year since 1702, and the Elmina people recognized the Asante state as their protector. Indeed, the original treaty signed by Bowdich and the Asante in 1817 explicitly acknowledged Asante sovereignty over the Elmina people. Undaunted, Dutch authorities permitted the Fante to seize and deport the senior Asante representative to Elmina along with his large staff, all of whom were forced to leave their possessions behind. The Dutch handed the job of over-seeing the deportation of the Asante mission to a British Royal Marine colonel, whose men treated them roughly. When they later told their story in Kumase, the Asante government was furious.48

  British negotiators were concerned about the Asante claims of dominion over Elmina, but the Dutch airily dismissed them, asserting that the money paid annually to the king was not rent but wages, because he was their employee. The British disingenuously accepted this patently absurd Dutch explanation, and the treaty was signed. In response Kofi Kakari sent another message to the Dutch protesting the treaty and reasserting his rights to Elmina. In what was scarcely better than an insult, the Dutch sent a young, semiliterate African clerk named Henry Flange to Kumase to induce the king to waive his rights to Elmina. We know from the European hostages in Kumase that Flange did arrive in Kumase and meet with the king on more than one occasion. He also left a crudely written journal purporting to describe his negotiations. However, when he returned to Elmina, what he presented to the Dutch was anything but crudely written. It was an elegantly phrased “certificate of apology” in which Kofi Kakari waived all rights to Elmina. The certificate was a preposterous forgery, but it was happily accepted by the Dutch and British, who ratified the treaty early in 1872.49 Shortly thereafter, the British took over Elmina fort, and after 274 years of continuous residence, the Dutch left the Gold Coast. The seeds of war had been sown.

  The Asante had been stockpiling muskets, gunpowder, and lead in earnest since 1870, and there could have been few people in the Asante government who did not believe that war was near.50 One of the many reasons why some Asante wanted war was the senior generals’ jealousy of a somewhat junior commander, Adu Bofo, who had achieved a signal success in a relatively small campaign to the east. The Ewe people of what is now Togo to the east of the Gold Coast had been openly rebellious toward the Asante, and their discontent was threatening to spread to other districts closer to Kumase. With an army of fifteen thousand men, Adu Bofo crossed the Volta River, utterly smashed several Ewe armies, and returned to Kumase with tons of booty and thousands of prisoners, including the French merchant Marie-Joseph Bonnat and missionaries Johannes Kühne, Friedrich Ramseyer, his wife Rose, and their infant son.51 When the Europeans protested that they had nothing to do with the war, Adu Bofo disingenuously replied, “I am the slave of my King. I must send you to them.”52

  The power of the Asante state had declined since the visits of Huydecoper, Bowdich, Dupuis, and the others earlier in the century, but the pomp of the king and his court was as majestic as ever. Soon after their arrival in Kumase, the ragged European prisoners were led toward the king by an officer carrying a gold-hilted sword in a leopard-skin scabbard and wearing a magnificent fan-shaped tuft of eagle feathers in his cap. After bowing to the king and removing their hats, the prisoners were allowed to sit while a seemingly endless procession of notables passed before them. The loud, clear tones of elephant-tusk horns vied with flutes and drums as the silk-robed, gold-bejeweled chiefs passed by. Heralded by eighty men—each wearing a monkey-skin cap adorned with gold—dwarfs, buffoons in red flannel shirts, and sixty boys—each wearing a Koranic charm sewn into leopard skin—King Kofi Kakari arrived, carried in his throne chair under a rust silk umbrella as pages fanned him. His arrival was marked by even louder music, including thirty boys who kept time by shaking calabashes filled with pebbles. He was followed by hundreds of executioners of all ages, each with two knives slung around his neck, who danced along behind him to the dismal three beats of a drum that signified death.

  Boys with swords, fans, and elephant tails danced around the king, shouting at the tops of their voices, “He is coming, he is coming. His majesty the lord of all the earth approaches!35 The king wore golden sandals, a richly jeweled turban, a yellow silk toga, and dozens of golden bracelets and pendants. Six pages guided him along, crying out, “Look before thee, O lion! Take care, the ground is not even here.”53 King Kakari stood staring at the Europeans, apparently the first whites he had seen, before dismissing them with a kindly expression and moving on. This panoply of regal power was nothing out of the ordinary. King Kofi Kakari was not personally fond of pomp, but such processions were common-place in Kumase where there always seemed to be an occasion to reaffirm the king’s supremacy. This was often done by displaying an assortment of European clothing and musi
cal instruments. On one procession there was a fife-and-drum corps dressed in Danish and Dutch uniforms, a band playing cymbals, clarinets, and European snare drums, while various dignitaries marched along wearing fragments of European clothing. According to the captive missionaries, “… one had a scarlet coat, but no trousers; another wore a long dressing gown, reminding one of a German university professor; one of the generals was in a brown velvet dress and sash, another had proudly donned a field marshal’s hat and white cockade, while to the lot of a third had fallen a woman’s undergarment, in which he found it somewhat difficult to walk.”54 One supposes that the impression made on the Asante audience was rather more favorable than that made on these Europeans.

  Wearing a cap with bull horns and falcon feathers, the general, Adu Bofo, soon after returned to a huge welcoming celebration in Kumase that lasted five days. The shaggy-haired returning soldiers, dressed in oddments of Asante and European clothing, followed their officers, who wore battle-soiled red and yellow coats covered with amulets and antelope-skin caps decorated with feathers, gold emblems, and religious charms, past a huge throng of people who overflowed the vast marketplace. As each unit passed before the king, the men stopped and fired a salute. As usual, the onlookers were streaked with red paint to symbolize the blood of the men who had died, and as the magnitude of the losses became clear, many sobbed and shrieked in mourning. The next day was spent in mourning. The red painted men and women of Kumase fasted, cried, and drank large amounts of brandy provided by the king.55 Although 136 senior officers had died in the campaign, Kofi Kakari rewarded General Adu Bofo with gold, many slaves, and large tracts of land.