The Fall of the Asante Empire

by Robert B. Edgerton

  Prempe was recognized only as the king of Kumase by the British although he was clearly king of Asante to his people. He certainly comported himself as if he were king, and his political activities became meddlesome enough at times that Governor Maxwell was convinced he was planning to usurp British power.30 The shrewd Prempe always stopped short of sedition, however, and lived a rewarding seven years until his death in 1931. In 1935 he was succeeded by the son of his eldest sister, who like Prempe I was light-skinned and a Christian. Nana Osei Agyeman Prempeh II was installed by the British as the king of Asante, and the Asante state was reborn as a confederacy. For the first time since 1896, the Golden Stool was displayed in public. Every Asante present honored it by standing.31

  10

  “For the Ashes of Their Fathers and the Temples of Their Gods”

  IN REFLECTING ON A CENTURY OF ARMED CONFLICT BETWEEN THE Asante and the British, nothing stands out more dramatically than the lost possibilities for peace. Despite the militancy of many members of the dominant inner council, the only Asante king who actually sought war with the British was Osai Yaw, whose campaign resulted in a politically embarrassing defeat near Dodowa. With this one exception, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to its bloody end, Asante government actively pursued peaceful relations with the British. They did not do so because they were unwilling to use war as an instrument of policy—they initiated war with several African opponents at various times throughout the century, including the peaceful era generated by Maclean—but because they well understood that only peace with Britain could ensure that their trading lifeline to the coast would not be broken. They found the peace they sought during Maclean’s era; but before Maclean’s time and after his death, British policy was to circumvent the Asante or to destroy their power, not to make them friendly trading partners.

  British reasons for rejecting a peaceful alliance with the Asante were not confined to economic self-interest, although that was an important consideration especially during the latter part of the century. The implacable hostility of the Fante to their Asante overlords spawned such vivid claims about Asante cruelty, rapacity, untrustworthiness, and lust for war that British officials seemed to be blinded to a more balanced view. Their reliance on Fante interpreters did nothing to achieve this balance. The British were also appalled by Asante executions, which they believed were human sacrifice, not a form of criminal justice, and which they were led to believe were far more frequent and cruel than similar practices engaged in by other societies in the Gold Coast. Despite abundant evidence that Asante kings were constitutional monarchs with whom binding treaties could honorably be negotiated, they persisted in thinking of them as bloodthirsty and untrustworthy autocrats. And even after a century of contact with the Asante, the British failed to comprehend Asante values, their veneration of their ancestors, their ideas of an afterlife, their pride and honor, their loyalties and obligations, and least of all, the central significance of the Golden Stool. These factors and others played a part in bringing about conflict, but at bottom neither the British traders early in the century nor the British government officers who came later had any desire to share power on the Gold Coast with the Asante. The Asante were seen as dangerous adversaries, and it only remained for changing circumstances to dictate when British military power would be called into play.

  The power of the two adversaries changed profoundly over the century. When King Osei Bonsu’s army swept down on the Fante at Cape Coast in 1806, the Asante Empire was still at the pinnacle of its political and military power. Its wealth was great, and not only was its army superior to any of its African enemies, it could have held its own against anything short of a large-scale European expeditionary force. The Asante army of the early nineteenth century had no cannon, but its flintlocks were nearly as efficient as the smooth-bore muskets carried by European soldiers. Given this relative parity in weapons, the huge size of the Asante army, along with the hostile forest terrain, the hot, rainy weather, and the ravages of disease, would have made it impossible for anything less than a major European military force to have marched to Kumase, won a battle, and returned to the coast with more than a small fraction of its men still able to fight. With the British army stretched to its limits in wars against the French and Americans, there was no realistic possibility that the British government would have dispatched such a large force to West Africa. The Asante Empire could not begin to match the technological marvels of Great Britain, but early in the nineteenth century the Asante were supreme in their own domain.

  Sir Charles MacCarthy’s disastrous campaign against them in 1824 suggests that the balance of power had changed little even then, although his campaign was hardly a true test of either Asante or British strength. As the years passed, however, Asante political control over its empire gradually eroded, and by the time Sir Garnet Wolseley led his expeditionary force to Kumase, the political power of Greater Asante had been weakened in many ways, and the disparity in the means for making war had grown extreme. Wolseley’s men had modern breech-loading rifles, Gatling guns that fired five hundred rounds a minute, and much-improved artillery. The Asante troops still relied on their antique flintlock, smooth-barrel muskets. By the end of the century, when Colonel Willcocks was called upon to quell an Asante rebellion with his even more modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery, Greater Asante was largely depopulated, its sense of political community was in disarray, and its weapons, except for a small number of British rifles, were the same as those used in 1806. Willcocks did not have white British troops as Wolseley did, but his African soldiers were well disciplined, and their weapons were as devastating as any then available in the world. At the close of the nineteenth century; the British Empire was still a great world power while the Asante Empire had ceased to exist.

  In view of the British superiority in weaponry, it is truly extraordinary that Wolseley’s force came so close to being defeated in 1874 and that Willcocks’s superbly armed men took so long to overcome Asante resistance in 1900. The dense rain forest was an obvious Asante ally, as were malaria, other diseases, and rains, all of which adversely affected the British; but even in 1874, when the Asante army had been devastated by the long and disastrous campaign of 1873, it was still a formidable force. Its discipline was unique among African armies and, in fact, very few preindustrial armies anywhere were able to inculcate such discipline. Officers gave orders and they were obeyed. Troops marched with precision and maneuvered precisely, their muskets held at exactly the same slope, and they fired volleys on their officers’ orders. By comparison the vaunted Zulu armies were ill disciplined. They fought with great courage but so regularly violated orders that they often defeated themselves.

  The Asante accomplishment in forging a strictly disciplined army is the more remarkable because most of its common soldiers were slaves, many of whom had only recently been captured. We have no first-person accounts to tell us how these men, who were ordinarily gold miners or laborers, were so successfully made into part-time soldiers. We know that officers carried whips and used them and that deadly force was sometimes used as well. We know that newly captured slaves who did not yet have a stake in Asante life were not allowed to use firearms. They were required to carry supplies under close guard.1 We know, too, that class distinctions set officers well above commoners and slaves. Recall the words of the captured prince (see chapter 7) who complained bitterly that he had been held with a “mere” captain, and the latter with a lowly warrior. But we also know that slaves could be unruly and sometimes rebellious, so much so that the government continually worried about outbreaks of violence. Yet when these men were on campaign, they were somehow made to obey their officers, and they fought superbly. We can only marvel at the organizational genius that made this possible.

  Though discipline was crucial to its success, the greatest military asset of the Asante army was the courage of its men. The Asante troops unfailingly impressed British officers with their courage, or pluck, as they usua
lly called it. Most of these white officers were themselves such conspicuously brave men that it took a great deal to impress them, but Asante valor impressed them in battle after battle. To be sure, the British sometimes scorned the Asante for running when charged with bayonet and sword, but they were simply in awe of the Asante willingness to stand and die against rifle bullets, machine guns, and modern artillery. When they examined the terrible wounds the Asante dead and wounded suffered and realized that these men had stood their ground for hours while men next to them were being shot to pieces or blown apart, they were even more impressed. Lord Moran, who served in both world wars and was in addition Churchill’s doctor, observed that courage is finite and expendable.2 All troops have a breaking point, but the Asante were willing to stand against deadly fire for far longer than the British had thought possible. It is worth recalling that the experienced and undeniably valiant soldiers of the Black Watch and the Rifle Brigade wavered under Asante fire in 1874 and they were not under well-aimed fire, much less a devastating cannonade of high-explosive rockets or shells. And while it is true that the West African soldiers who fought for Willcocks in 1900 were unexpectedly brave and resolute, they were also not under machine gun or artillery fire, nor were they asked to stand with empty rifles against a bayonet charge.

  Why did the Asante fight so bravely for so long? As nearly as we can tell from this distance in time and culture, they did so for many of the same reasons that British officers did—personal honor, unit pride, social recognition, the hope of reward, and the fear of being branded a coward. Peer pressure was also an important factor (Thomas Fuller aptly wrote in 1732, “Many would be cowards if they had enough courage.”) Asante military units were drawn from the same locality. Men knew one another, and even slaves were members of families; their future well-being, like that of freemen, depended in no small measure on their conduct in battle. Every Asante boy was raised in a warrior culture that called for great deeds in battle like those of his ancestors, his kinsmen, and his peers.3 Every young Asante man, especially those of prominent families, also knew that success in warfare was the royal road to honor, wealth, and power. Victorious officers received formal honors, great wealth, and the king’s personal recognition. Ordinary soldiers were honored and rewarded, too. An Asante general who won a particularly significant victory could become immensely rich, as Adu Bofo did just before Amankwatia’s abortive invasion of the coast in 1873. Adu Bofo received more wealth in land, gold, slaves, and villages than Wolseley did for his victory the following year, and Wolseley was more than handsomely rewarded.

  But bravery was not inspired solely by the expectation of wealth and glory; there were terrible punishments for a defeat, especially when it was thought to have been caused by cowardice. Every senior commander took a public oath in the presence of the king swearing that he and his men would die before they would retreat in the face of the enemy. Many junior commanders repeated the same oath before their general. These oaths were treated with deadly seriousness. Many Asante commanders were known to have killed themselves when the fortunes of war turned against them, and those few commanders who were accused of cowardice yet did not kill themselves were, depending on their rank and social connections, either executed or publicly humiliated and stripped of wealth and social standing. Soldiers from all parts of the Asante Empire were bound by the same covenant, and they joined with their officers in the daunting task of assuring that the many slaves in the army would fight as bravely as the native Asante did. The details of how they accomplished this are not known beyond the documented facts that Asante prevented them from retreating by the use of sword and whip and that slaves sometimes benefited from the spoils of war as well as the honors that came to brave and victorious men.

  To see Asante bravery in perspective, it is important to keep in mind that they were only part-time soldiers. Each Asante man over the age of eighteen was required to own his own musket and other weapons, but years could go by before a man might be called to serve in a military campaign. British soldiers were full-time warriors, who spent every day of their military service, which could last for many years, learning to follow orders without question and to believe that their regiment was the most magnificent fighting machine on earth. Led by officers and noncommissioned officers for whom bravery in battle was everything, it is little wonder that British soldiers fought so courageously. Like the Asante, the Zulus were only part-time soldiers, but they too belonged to regiments, each with its own name, great traditions, distinctive shields and uniforms, and a determination to outdo all other regiments in battle. The Asante had no equivalent experience. Unlike the Zulus, Asante soldiers did not come together on a regular basis to dance or practice military tactics. They did not even wear uniforms or carry shields that distinguished one unit from another. The Asante were farmers, traders, and craftsmen who, like European militiamen, only occasionally went to war, but when they did, they displayed great discipline and fought with uncommon valor.

  What may be most important of all is the role that women played in encouraging bravery. Any able-bodied Asante, free or slave, who failed to answer his chief’s call to war was subjected to the most vicious verbal and physical assaults by the women of the village. The life of such a man would scarcely be worth living, and if he had a wife or wives, these women would freely join in the public humiliation heaped upon him. On the other hand, men who staunchly went off to war had their virtue extolled by their women, many of whom marched at least part of the way into battle with them, singing praise songs, carrying their gear, and cooking their food. A common soldier might not gain by going to war, indeed he might be maimed or killed, but Asante women saw to it that he could not gain by avoiding his duty Why women took so active a role in promoting bravery in military service is not well documented, but far more so than in most African societies, women and men among the Asante had relative equality and a similar stake in all affairs of the state. As a result of their adherence to a cultural system of reckoning both descent and inheritance through the female line, women played a central role in Asante affairs, including, through the office of the queen mother, the decision to go to war. It is obvious that a woman could stand to gain if her husband, son, brother, or close kinsman achieved wealth, honor, or power, but well beyond this profit motive Asante women were taught to believe in the greatness in the Asante union and the need for war to maintain and enlarge it. Doubtless, much suffering came to these women when their men died in battle or their homes and fields were destroyed by invading armies, but the willingness of Asante women to support warfare was as consistent over the century as it was essential to the success of Asante armies.

  Defeated Asante armies, such as those at Dodowa in 1826 and Abrakrampa in 1873, were capable of conducting such skillful fighting retreats that they earned the admiration of British officers; yet Asante soldiers, particularly in 1900 and to a lesser extent in 1874, sometimes broke ranks and ran, although usually only after they were charged by sword-waving British officers leading soldiers with fixed bayonets. It must be understood, however, that few troops anywhere were known to stand resolutely against bayonets during the nineteenth century. European armies often charged their enemies with bayonets, but with the major exception of the Russians and Japanese, who often fought to the death with bayonets in Manchuria during their 1904/05 war, it was uncommon indeed for these weapons actually to be used—the defenders usually fled long before the attackers’ bayonets could be brought into play. In fact, a British surgeon who served in the Peninsular War between the British and the French, both great proponents of bayonet charges, concluded that no regiment on either side ever stood against bayonets in that long and bloody war.4 The Asante were in very good company when they fled from a long line of bayonet-wielding enemies. It should also be recalled that sometimes they did stand and fight against bayonets even though their weapons put them at a deadly disadvantage.

  It is also true that once Asante soldiers began to turn tail and run, they seldom re-formed t
o fight a rearguard action. Precipitous retreat was known to all armies, although it was extremely rare for British troops, who usually fought from a square formation, to run. But compared to the Zulus, for example, no doubt the most celebrated warriors in Africa, the Asante ran under some semblance of control. When the Zulus ran away, there was no stopping them, as they freely and good-naturedly admitted. Asante soldiers could be brought under control by their officers and turned about to fight again. And sometimes, as we have seen, they fought hand to hand before they were willing to retreat.

  In view of the Asante fear of bayonets, it is puzzling that they made no apparent attempts to provide themselves with weapons to defend against them. As mentioned earlier, their Dane guns took so long to reload that unless the troops were lined up in at least three lines to fire in sequence, they were defenseless against bayonets. And during the nineteenth century wars against the British, the only times they were thus deployed, the battles were fought in the jungle, and there was no bayonet charge. Their six-foot-long muskets were too long and heavy to be used effectively as clubs; apparently, such a use was rarely even attempted, though the British sometimes used their lighter rifles and carbines in this way. Nevertheless, the Asante did not attempt to make or purchase bayonets of their own. It would not have been difficult for Asante blacksmiths to manufacture bayonets, and a bayonet on the end of a six-foot-long Asante musket would have been more than a match for one on the end of a four-foot-long British rifle. Perhaps the problem was that a bayonet would have to be permanently fixed to the barrel, making the musket more difficult to load and use in the thick brush.