The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  As Scott’s column approached Kumase, a group of high-ranking Asante envoys, attempting to meet with the colonel to discuss peace, were beaten and robbed by the Hausa soldiers. Officers eventually restored order, returned the Asante envoys’ property, and flogged some of the thieves. A newspaper correspondent for the Daily Telegraph commented, consistent with the rabidly racist feelings of many Britons on this expedition, “Sambo does not bear flogging well, usually howling piteously.”36 Captain Donald Stewart, Scott’s so-called political officer, apologized to the envoys and asked them to assure the king that it was an accident. He also assured them that the British had no intention of deposing King Prempe if he accepted British protection, allowed a resident to be appointed, paid a war indemnity of an unspecified amount, and provided hostages to assure payment of the balance. The Asante were not pleased, but they dutifully returned to Kumase.

  On the night of January 16, Scott’s army camped just outside Kumase. In a scene reminiscent of Wolseley’s expedition, a tremendous thunderstorm kept everyone awake all night. When word came the next morning that Scott’s scouts had entered Kumase without opposition, Scott called the correspondents together to hear this fatuous declaration: “I want you correspondents to make a note of it: That it has been entirely owing to the rapidity of my movements there has been no fighting. The celerity of my movements have [sic] completely paralyzed Prempe’s efforts. Besides, bear in mind, we have come up in far less time than Lord Wolseley took in the last war.”37 One correspondent felt compelled to observe that Wolseley had to fight his way to Kumase.

  As a Hausa brass band incongruously played “Home Sweet Home,” the British troops marched smartly into the bedraggled city, watched by a small crowd of somber Asante. After posting sentries, Scott met with King Prempe at about 5 P.M.. Prempe greeted him with a wildly discordant medley of drums, horns, and metallic clanging, complete with dancing executioners and dwarfs as well as endless shouted eulogies by pages to the greatness of the Asante monarch. Following an exchange of greetings, Scott told the king that he would meet with him again when Governor Maxwell arrived in a day or so. He also peremptorily told him not to make loud noise at night, to cut the long grass in the streets, and to clean up the “filthy” city. Prempe returned to his palace accompanied by the Ansa brothers, who despite their European clothing joined in some riotous dancing on the way. The British troops put up tents and “slept soundly under cover, convinced there would be no attempt on the part of the miserable natives to disturb their rest,” as one member of the expedition scornfully put it.38

  The next day, as Colonel Scott waited for Governor Maxwell, he was informed that eight people held as captives by King Prempe were pleading to be rescued before they were executed. These people were relatives of King Akrampa, a rival claimant to the throne before Prempe had been enstooled. Most of his followers had already died or been executed, but these eight, including his sister, were still alive, and they begged for their lives. Sir Francis was unwilling to interfere in any way, saying that their rescue might annoy King Prempe, and besides, as a correspondent who was a witness reported, “He was sure the black people did not mind or care much about their fate.”39 Colonel F. J. Kempster of the West Yorkshire Regiment angrily objected, insisting that all human beings cared about their lives. After some vigorous discussion Scott reluctantly agreed to the rescue, and at ten that night British troops drove away the Asante guard and freed the prisoners. Scott would have been surprised by their reaction. “When at last they were made to understand they were set free, their joy and gratitude were unbounded, and they cried and blessed their deliverers again and again.”40

  Two days later at 6 A.M., not an hour King Prempe would ordinarily have chosen to conduct state business, Captain Stewart and an escort of special-service troops waited impatiently for King Prempe. The king, as it turned out, was ready promptly at six, but some members of his large retinue were tardy. When Stewart was told that the king was not yet ready, he testily said that he would give Prempe five more minutes and if he were not ready by then, his troops would enter the palace by force and carry the king to the meeting place. Three minutes later, drums and horns sounded furiously, functionaries of all sorts dashed about, and King Prempe, his mother, and entourage appeared. He was carried in his hammock, where he sat propped up by silk cushions and shaded by a blue velvet umbrella. Led by a detachment of British troops, the Asante were ushered into a large square of more British troops, who were lined up two abreast. The soldiers, with white leather belts and shoulder straps contrasting with once red coats and with bayonets glistening in the sun, were a striking complement to the multicolored silk togas of the Asante court and the formal European clothing of the Ansa brothers. To add a note of even greater incongruity, three scarlet-clad hunchbacked dwarfs danced in front of the king.

  Across the square from the umbrella-shaded royal party sat Governor Maxwell, flanked on one side by Colonel Scott and on the other by Colonel Kempster. They sat on folding camp chairs that were perched precariously on top of a dais made of large biscuit boxes. The arrangement was hardly majestic, but elevation over native peoples was always a vital prop of colonial rule, just as it often was with African kings. Wearing a white toga, the light-skinned, plump King Prempe, with what observers found to be intelligent eyes, sat silently holding a kola nut in his mouth. In Asante court tradition the nut symbolized the king’s inability to speak an untruth. Not surprisingly, the British found the practice absurd. Major Robert Baden-Powell—who would later found the Boy Scouts and use an Asante scouting sign as the model for the Boy Scout salute—was not impressed. He wrote that the king’s “flabby yellow face” glistened with oil and “his somewhat stupid expression [was] rendered more idiotic by his sucking a large nut like a fat cigar.”41 An aristocratic young officer agreed, describing the king as “an oily, well-fed looking brute.”42 Both agreed that he appeared agitated.

  Without any diplomatic preamble Governor Maxwell began by accusing the Asante of not maintaining the road to Cape Coast and not abolishing human sacrifice. The first charge was true enough, but the British had not maintained the portion of the road that ran through their colony either, and the abolition of human sacrifice was an utterly bogus issue. It had never been a part of the treaty Wolseley signed at Fomena, it still survived quite openly within the British protectorate, and Prempe had in fact abolished it! What he still practiced was the execution of murderers, something the British preferred to think of as human sacrifice, a nice way to maintain their moral ascendancy Without any semblance of diplomatic courtesy, Governor Maxwell then told his interpreter to tell the king that he must submit to British rule and pay the remaining forty-eight thousand ounces of the now twenty-two-year-old indemnity of fifty thousand ounces of gold. As these dramatic events were unfolding, soldiers from the Old West Yorks were passing out in the heat, one after the other. In all, thirty-six of them collapsed, joined by one soldier from the special-service corps. They lay unceremoniously in the dust until the ceremony was over.43

  For some time Prempe sat motionless, apparently struggling with his emotions. No Asante king had ever made a personal submission to another authority. Finally, Prince John Ansa whispered something in his ear, and King Prempe deliberately removed his golden sandals and a golden circlet from his head. Joined by the queen mother, Prempe walked slowly toward the biscuit box dais. Mother and son knelt awkwardly and put their arms around the leather boots of the governor and the two colonels. The Asante onlookers were utterly still as they watched this unprecedented humbling of their monarch. When Prempe regained his seat, he rose again and through John Ansa said, “I now claim the protection of the Queen of England.”44 He added that he had 680 ounces of gold that he was prepared to pay now and would pay the remainder in installments.

  Maxwell dismissed the king’s offer as “child’s play,” adding that he could not believe that the king had so little gold. Prempe repeated his offer and Maxwell again demanded more, reminding him that since the tr
eaty of twenty-two years earlier, only two thousand of the fifty thousand-ounce indemnity had been paid. Prempe responded that the Asante government had never been pressed for the money before and that he did not have it now. Maxwell was unyielding. He had already decided that, in order to prevent Prempe from negotiating with the French, he would have to be removed from his stool. Maxwell also believed the widespread rumors that King Prempe had his own fabulously rich gold mine. (In fact, there was such a mine, and when after much difficulty the British found it, southwest of Kumase, in 1900, they were surprised to discover that a rich reef had been dug out for a length of one hundred yards with large, well-timbered galleries built all along the tunnel. How much gold was available to King Prempe in 1895 is, however, not known.) Maxwell next announced that he would take the king, the queen mother, and others of high rank as hostages until the remainder of the indemnity was paid. Prempe again asked to pay in installments: “It is usual for a man, before he takes his meals, to take something to sharpen his appetite. Then, if the Governor takes an instalment, that will sharpen his; he will look the keener after the remainder.”45

  Maxwell was not amused by Prempe’s wit. He read the names of the hostages he would take from a list he had drawn up before leaving the coast. He also announced that the two Ansa brothers were under arrest for forgery. The Ansas were immediately handcuffed, while the King was forced to remove all emblems of his sovereignty. The Asante onlookers were stunned and angry, but a large guard of troops with fixed bayonets surrounded the royal party. Led by Major Baden-Powell, as unsympathetic to Africans as anyone could be, two companies of West Yorks smashed the doors of the royal palace and seized more hostages. Once again, the palace was looted, but this time little of value, except to the Asante, was found. As vultures looked on from nearby cottonwood trees, the hostages set out for Cape Coast, carried in hammocks but under heavy guard.

  While the despondent royal hostages were being carried away from Kumase, some of Scott’s men explored the once vibrant but now almost deserted city. Large parts of Kumase had never been rebuilt after Wolseley burned it, but the royal palace of stone that Wolseley destroyed had been replaced by several huge bamboo huts that to the British resembled barns. Most of Kumase’s dwellings and offices were in sad disrepair, but some of the beautifully ornamented, ocher-red-painted structures that impressed earlier visitors still stood. Some British officers actually believed that the ocherous red paint used on the polished clay friezes that decorated these houses was made from the blood of victims of human sacrifice, particularly virgin girls.46

  Drawn inexorably to the execution area, the British invaders found that it had been in recent use. In addition to skulls and bones displayed on the buttresses of cottonwood trees, decaying bodies were strewn about in the long grass. The stench was as terrible as it had been in 1874, and the vultures as numerous and well fed.47 The British still did not understand that these victims were considered criminals, not innocent human sacrifices, and that their bodies were exposed in this manner instead of being buried in order further to deter crime.

  Many British troops went beyond sightseeing; they ransacked the city, carrying away valuables and smashing and burning what they did not take a fancy to. A British surgeon condemned the burning of old and beautiful houses as sheer vandalism.48 The royal mausoleum at Bantama, which had escaped destruction by Wolseley, was not spared this time. Many of the valuables buried there had been removed before the British arrived, but the coffins still contained royal skeletons. By Governor Maxwell’s order the mausoleum was burned, its religious artifacts smashed, and the nearby sacred trees destroyed by ax, gunpowder, and fire. The blazes lasted all day, as religious shrines were added to the pyres. While Bantama was being desecrated, Fante carriers were busily removing the teeth from bodies in the exhumed grave. They wore them as necklaces.49

  Scott’s expedition marched out of Kumase on January 22 to begin the long, fourteen-day trek back to Cape Coast. The Ansas, under criminal arrest, were made to march the entire distance handcuffed. The royal hostages were carried in hammocks and reasonably well treated, but the queen mother was not impressed. She spat at any white man who ventured close to her. As soon as the hostages reached the coast, small boats took them out to the HMS Raccoon, waiting offshore. It was the first time any of the royal family had seen the ocean, and it could not have been a happy day for them. They were imprisoned in the fortress at Elmina, whose people had long been loyal to the Asante kingdom and where European traders had paid rent to Asante kings for over two hundred years. After nearly a year they were taken to Sierra Leone, but so many Asante trekked all the way to Sierra Leone with gifts of gold dust and news of Asante politics that the British moved the royal hostages, their spouses, and children—fifty-six in all—to the totally inaccessible Seychelles Islands, off the coast of East Africa. Prempe would live in exile there until 1924.

  The increasingly westernized Fante population at Cape Coast gave a formal dance in honor of Scott’s expeditionary force. One officer who attended wrote that he was “astonished” to find the African women dressed in “smart low-necked frocks” and the men “perfectly dressed in evening clothes” except for the fact that all wore red socks. Another officer decided that he would like to dance with one of the African ladies and asked her partner’s permission. The man surrendered her reluctantly saying quite sternly: “For dance, yes; for make love, no.”50

  For his bloodless victory Sir Francis Scott was made an honorary major general, and the other officers were promoted at least one grade. No shots had been fired, but the campaign had not been without cost. Despite quinine, over 40 percent of the white officers and men fell ill, some seriously enough to be invalided home before they reached Kumase. Two officers, eight noncommissioned officers, and eight white soldiers died. One of those who died of malaria was Prince Henry of Battenburg; Prince Victor survived his bout with the disease. The African troops suffered almost as badly.51

  The Ansa brothers were imprisoned without bail until February 12, 1896, when they were tried in the supreme court of the Gold Coast. In May they were acquitted of all charges of forgery. Furious, the government ordered a second trial, this time for embezzlement. It was obvious to everyone that the charges were trumped up to punish the educated Ansas for their many efforts to restore and reunify the Asante kingdom. An editorial in the Gold Coast Chronicle, hardly a newspaper sympathetic to the Asante, concluded that “the arraignment of persons before a British Court of Law for alleged offenses committed under circumstances and in a country where the court had no jurisdiction, is a monstrous piece of high-handed despotism for which there is no excuse.”52 Friends of the Ansas in London insisted that they had been maliciously prosecuted, and Chamberlain was forced to defend the role of the Colonial Office in action before Parliament. Neither the question of the Ansas’ prosecution nor the more embarrassing question of the legality of the British invasion and the imprisonment of the king was resolved. It was apparent to most that the royal hostages were taken, not as security against payment of the indemnity of fifty thousand ounces of gold, but to prevent the king or his legitimate successor from signing a treaty with the French or Germans.53 In these heady days of imperial expansion, the niceties of international law were so often waived that wags changed the lyrics of the popular patriotic song “Rule Britannia” from “Britannia rules the waves,” to “Britannia waives the rules.”

  Even in this climate of colonial arrogance, it became increasingly awkward for the Colonial Office to justify the British government’s patently illegal takeover of the Asante government. Secretary Chamberlain himself initially had been shocked by Maxwell’s unauthorized arrest of King Prempe, but Maxwell was eventually able to bring him around to support the action.54 To put the best face on his actions, Maxwell asked three Asante to serve in what he called the Council of Administration, which would, as he conceived it, be a puppet government for the British resident. To lead the council he chose Opoku Mensa, the most senior leader left in Kum
ase and a man totally loyal to King Prempe. Together with the other two well-respected council members, Opoku Mensa was able to subvert many of the resident’s plans. The council soon gathered support from districts beyond Kumase, taxed traders for money to support the king at Elmina, and lobbied mightily for his release, even hiring lawyers to draw up petitions on his behalf. As time passed, Opoku Mensa became widely recognized as the representative of the king, ruling in absentia.55

  It was clear that the Asante government could function quite well even without its king, as a British Colonial Office report sourly noted: “I am afraid the Chiefs are slowly returning to their old ways…. There is no doubt that much of their doings are unknown to the Resident.”56 Although his plans were often subverted, the British resident in Kumase was able to force the chiefs to provide men for road building, to build an imposing stone fort for the defense of the residency, and most detestable to the proud Asante, who had never served as carriers, to carry Europeans and their goods. Those who refused were beaten by Hausa soldiers, who often took the law into their own rough hands.

  Soon after Prempe’s arrest, Maxwell returned to England to assure members of the chambers of commerce in London, Manchester, and Liverpool that “Ashanti is now open to British trade.” He urged British traders to become “pushfull” about exploiting economic opportunities in the Gold Coast, which he promised to turn into “one of the brightest jewels in the British Crown.” Businessmen were quick to take him up on his invitation. By the end of 1899, twenty-five licenses had been granted to mine gold, exploit timber, and export rubber, all from large parcels of land owned by wealthy Asante or the king. Asante miners had worked every gold-bearing deposit in the country long before European miners arrived, but there was still a great deal of gold to be had, and some of these gold-mining concessions allowed the government and private investors to profit immensely.57 For example, the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, Ltd., was given a ninety-nine-year lease not only for mineral rights but for timber and rubber as well. It made its first shipment of gold in 1898. By 1946 it had produced almost six million ounces of gold.58