The Fall of the Asante Empire
Page 31
Whatever the reason for their failure to use bayonets, it is also odd that the Asante did not use swords to defend against them. An Asante sword was an inferior weapon against a bayonet—or a steel saber for that matter—but it was better than no weapon at all. When in 1900, the Asante fought the British hand to hand, they used neither swords nor (except rarely) even the knives they carried to behead their victims.5 At the beginning of the century, the Asante threw spears with great accuracy, but they soon after abandoned them, leaving the musket as their only weapon.
Much was made by the British of Asante reluctance to fight at night. It is true that many African armies would not fight at night because of fear of the evil spirits thought to attack men in the darkness; the Asante to some extent shared this dread. Other armies, such as the Zulu, chose not to fight at night because military honors could only be won if a man’s heroism were witnessed by others; the Asante shared this view as well. But the reality is that the Asante army did sometimes—though seldom—fight at night. When the army approached Dodowa in 1826, its commander urged a night attack led by torch-carrying scouts. King Osei Yaw chose, in general, to attack in daylight so that the pageantry and invincibility of his army could be seen by his enemies. Earlier at Cape Coast, however, Osei Yaw had planned to attack the fort at night, shielded by the diversionary tactic of burning the houses of the surrounding town. Asante troops fought several battles at night during civil wars that followed the Wolseley invasion, and after Captain Hall had been driven back from Kokofu to Esumeja in 1900, the Asante continued their futile but furious attack throughout the night. Other night fighting was aborted because torrents of rain during these battles fell more heavily at night than during the day, making it impossible for the Asante to prime their flintlocks.
Night fighting has become an issue because the reluctance of the Asante to attack at night deprived them of a possible tactical advantage. The Asante often drummed and sang for much of the night, keeping the British awake; but if they had used the night to attack British camps—particularly when Wolseley was marching on Kumase—they could have slowed their advance significantly. As it was, Wolseley only beat the rains by a day or two. Without the threat of night attack, the British did nothing to fortify their camps and seldom took the precaution of posting sentries. What is more, night attacks against the unprotected carriers could have created panic and conceivably disrupted Wolseley’s campaign altogether.
Another reason why Asante bravery and discipline did not produce more victories was the relative inflexibility of their tactics. For at least one hundred years before the Asante army ever collided with the British, they had enjoyed success against their enemies by using their classic enveloping formation, which sent large numbers of men around each flank of the enemy to, if all went well, surround and destroy them. Used against African opponents, most of whom conceded defeat if threatened by envelopment, their traditional tactics were usually successful. When an African opponent’s flanks were threatened, they withdrew, and when their rear was attacked, they broke and scattered.6 The Asante themselves always marched into battle supported by a large rear guard that faced to the rear to beat off any attack that might come from that direction. This tactic succeeded against MacCarthy but failed against Wolseley, who simply charged straight ahead in his large square formation, confident that his strong rear guard could hold off the expected Asante attack.
Had Asamoa Nkwanta, the Asante commander in 1874, agreed to mass his troops in front of the British, as had been proposed, instead of dispersing most of them around the flanks of Wolseley’s formation, he would have had a far better chance of stopping the British advance, which as it was, broke through only after hours of heavy fighting against a thin screen of Asante soldiers. The British tactic of advancing despite threats to their flanks and rear surprised the Asante. Asante tactics rarely surprised the British, but occasionally there were signs of innovation. Osei Bonsu’s troops were preparing to blow up the fort at Cape Coast when a peace treaty was agreed upon, and later, scaling leaders were used in a failed attempt to take the fort at Elmina. The proposed night attack at the battle south of Dodowa would probably have succeeded had it been attempted, and some of the Asante ambush strategies were novel.
The most original innovation was the widespread use of stockades in 1900. The idea of stockades was not original to the Asante, but their use of these defensive structures was an effective response to the British use of machine guns and powerful artillery. In fact, the construction of so many large stockades surrounded by flanking fortifications and supported by well-built war camps was a considerable achievement for people who had to use rude axes to cut down huge trees before shaping them into logs. Slaves were used for most of the heavy labor, but the design of the stockades, as well as the transport and supply system developed to support the troops sheltered behind them, was ingenious and quite effective until British flanking tactics and even heavier artillery eventually turned stockades into death traps. In a final tactical innovation the Asante commander Kofi Kofia had his men fight on the defensive by lying down in the open in an inverted crescent to protect their flanks. The Asante commanders were not as flexible as the British were in devising better ways to defeat their opponents, but they were far more creative about warfare than the Zulus, who in 1879 fought seven major battles against the British and used the same enveloping tactics in all seven.
A major tactical failure on the part of the Asante was their inability to disrupt British supply lines. In all the British campaigns against the Asante, survival as a fighting force depended on the regular provision of supplies from the coast. Thousands of men, women, and children carried food, ammunition, and medical supplies on their heads along narrow roads that were often little better than paths, and they were rarely guarded by more than a handful of armed men. Small groups of Asante soldiers could easily have moved unseen through the dense forest to positions from which they could have fired devastating volleys at short range into these easy targets. They did attack these supply columns on a few occasions and always with some success, but if they had done so more often and with greater force, carriers would have refused to work without large escorts of troops, and the British never had enough soldiers available to them to guard their long supply lines and still conduct offensive operations. Such a tactic could have slowed British operations to a standstill, and the need for larger numbers of troops to defend miles of jungle paths might have made operations against the Asante more costly than the British government would have thought tolerable. The British were well aware that their campaigns were terribly vulnerable to disruption by such attacks, and they were as surprised as they were grateful that the Asante largely left their supply lines alone. Guerrilla warfare also could have tipped the scales toward the Asante, but Asante armies had always fought in large formations and continued to do so throughout the century, despite the fact that their enemies had sometimes been quite effective in using guerrilla warfare tactics against them.7
That the British officers who led African troops against the Asante in 1900 showed considerable tactical initiative, just as Wolseley had done in 1874, should not be taken to mean that the British army always showed greater flexibility than the Asante did. In South Africa in 1900, British battalions again and again marched shoulder to shoulder against Boer machine gun and artillery fire only to be slaughtered by an enemy they never even saw. Almost one hundred years earlier, at the Battle of New Orleans, British battalions that marched slowly toward the American breastworks were shot down so easily and in such numbers that the American riflemen actually wept as they pulled their triggers.8 The appalling losses of World War I were due in no small measure to British tactical rigidity.
It is quite obvious that as the nineteenth century progressed, the Asante inferiority in weaponry put them at a decisive disadvantage, but of equal if not greater significance in the outcome of most battles against the British was the astonishing inability of the Asante to shoot straight. In most battles the As
ante soldiers were armed only with Dane guns, whose limited range gave the British a tremendous advantage, but even so, in battles like the crucial ones in Wolseley’s march to Kumase, Asante fire was so heavy that it stripped the bark from the trees above head height, and leaves from overhead showered down on British troops who were for the most part unscathed. In 1900 almost all Asante fire, except for that at short range, went over the heads of the British troops, and in this war the Asante had enough captured British rifles that even reasonably accurate fire would have inflicted heavy losses. Sometimes, as in the war’s last great battle, the sheer volume of Asante rifle fire was so heavy that the British troops refused to advance even though almost all of the bullets were passing well over their heads. The Asante were hardly unique in their inability to aim Western firearms accurately. Loaded as heavily as they were and fired from the hip, Dane guns were wildly inaccurate, and men unfamiliar with sights on modern rifles or with their tendency to fire high due to recoil were likely to fire over their enemy’s heads unless carefully drilled to fire low, as British troops were. This pattern of firing high allowed European armies to defeat many African armies, including the Zulus, whose rifle fire in 1879 was, if anything, even more inaccurate than that of the Asante.
The wars between the Asante and the British were not chivalrous, but neither were they as brutal as might have been expected. British officers were often kind to Asante civilians and military prisoners, and their troops were under orders not to loot, rape, or brutalize in Asante villages. With a few exceptions they behaved well. However, Kumase was burned, the palace was destroyed, royal tombs were desecrated, and in 1900—by which time civilization might have been expected to set higher standards of military conduct—a campaign of terror against civilians was carried out that included the enslavement of Asante women and children. Even so, British officers often attempted, sometimes successfully, to save Asante wounded or prisoners from torture and death at the hands of their merciless African allies, who also regularly slashed and mutilated Asante corpses so savagely that British officers were sickened.
For their part the Asante beheaded wounded supply carriers and Hausas but did not generally mutilate dead bodies or torture prisoners, although there is no reason to believe that they would never have done so had there more often been victories in battle. When they did win, as against Sir Charles MacCarthy in 1824, they exercised remarkable restraint. They took two officers and two British soldiers captive. One officer was killed because he could not keep up with his captors, but the other was treated reasonably well and later released in good health. The two soldiers were both well treated, as were the European prisoners held in Kumase by King Kofi Kakari.
The Asante fought with undeniable valor, discipline, and skill, and on the whole they followed their rules of war without excessive cruelty. Colonel Willcocks wrote that he felt he had been in a fair fight against them. He added that they were such fine soldiers the British army in West Africa should attempt to recruit them. Until 1917 the loyalty of the Asante was so much in doubt that they were not permitted to join the British-led Gold Coast Regiment, which was, not coincidentally, headquartered in Kumase and seen by most Asante as the enemy. The pressing need for more manpower eventually led the British to attempt to recruit Asante, but few volunteered and most of those soon deserted.9 Even greater efforts to recruit Asante into the British army were made in World War II, but the Asante did not flock to the colors of Britain this time either. They remained loyal, but they were not interested in soldiering. Though the Asante were much the largest ethnic group in the region, they provided fewer than 10 percent of the entire Gold Coast military establishment during the war, and by the time of independence, only 5 percent of Ghana’s army was Asante.10 Asante militarism did not revive during the struggle for independence that led to the birth of Ghana in 1967 or during the turbulent years that followed. Although the Asante formed their own national liberation movement in 1954 to demand self-rule in what would soon become the independent state of Ghana, their leaders and their king prevented armed Asante from using military means to alter the electoral process.11
If it is true, as it appears to be, that the Asante would have taken up arms to defend the Golden Stool in 1921, it seems equally true that once the stool’s safety and sanctity were ensured, they saw no further need for war. In earlier times they had figuratively fought “for the ashes of their fathers and the temples of their gods,” as Victorian poet Thomas Macaulay once wrote of British warriors. With impressive finality the Asante put aside their great warrior tradition to become prosperous farmers, traders, businessmen, artists, engineers, lawyers, educators, and doctors—not soldiers. Abruptly, without declarations or fanfare, they were through with war.
Notes
Chapter 1. A Cause Worth Dying For
1 Davidson (1966:42-43).
2 Fynn (1971a).
3 Rattray (1929).
4 Bowdich (1819; rev. ed. 1966:122).
5 Posnansky (1987).
6 T. 70/31. Governor John Hippisley, Cape Coast castle, 13 July 1766.
7 Wilks (1975:20).
8 Reindorf (1966:130-31); Wilks (1975).
9 Bender (1978:137).
10 Muffett (1978:280).
11 Peires (1989).
12 Muriuki (1975:155).
13 Ibid.
14 Iliffe (1979:93).
15 Bridgeman (1981).
16 Edgerton (1989).
17 Stratton (1964).
18 Hubert (1938).
19 Wilks (1975); Hagen (1971).
Chapter 2. The Empire of Gold
1 Ramseyer and Kühne (1975); Morris (1970).
2 Fynn (1971b:135).
3 Yarak (1990).
4 Davidson (1966:19).
5 Anquandah (1982).
6 Davidson (1966).
7 Wilks (1975:692-693). Estimates like these are necessarily imprecise because the exact weight and purity of the gold was not known.
8 Gros (1884:197).
9 Bowdich (1866; original 1819). For a discussion of his accuracy, see Busia (1951).
10 James indiscreetly revealed to Dr. Tedlie that he was jealous of Governor Smith and intended to divert Asante trade to his own fort of Accra. James was also unable to cope with Asante negotiators. When James was confronted by King Osei Bonsu about British interests, he was so taken off guard and unable to explain the purpose of his mission that young Bowdich had to step in to save the day. Thereafter, Bowdich was the de facto head of the mission, and James returned to Accra in disgrace.
11 Bowdich (1966:23-24).
12 Ibid., 31.
13 Ibid., 34.
14 Hutton (1821).
15 Ibid., 216.
16 Schildkrout (1987:86).
17 Bowdich (1966:115).
18 Freeman (1843).
19 Huydecoper (1962:26).
20 Bowdich (1966:76).
21 Hutton (1821:208).
22 Ellis (1893:292).
23 Freeman (1843:147).
24 Huydecoper (1962:25).
25 Tufuo and Donkor (1969:47-48).
26 Rattray (1929).
27 Freeman (1843:132).
28 Wilks (1975).
29 Freeman (1898:135).
30 Freeman (1843:132).
31 Bowdich (1966).
32 Bowdich (1966:32).
33 Lewin (1978).
34 Schildkrout (1987:107).
35 Wilks (1975:130).
36 Tufuo and Donkor (1969:70).
37 Bowdich (1966:278).
38 Hutton (1821).
39 Aidoo (1975:142).
40 Huydecoper (1962:24).
41 Freeman (1843:128).
42 Ramseyer and Kühne (1875:164).
43 Bowdich (1966:421).
44 Claridge (1915).
45 Bowdich (1966:123-124).
46 Robertson (1819).
47 Dupuis (1966:140).
48 Lewin (1978).
49 Bowdich (1966:421).
50 Rattray (1929:91).
52 Rattray (1916:118).
53 Tufuo and Donkor (1969:26).
54 Bowdich (1966:295).
55 Wilks (1975:695).
56 Ibid.
57 Bowdich (1966).
58 McLeod (1981); Wilks (1975).
59 Tufuo and Donkor (1969:77-84).
60 Adjaye (1984).
61 Ibid., 68.
62 McLeod (1981); Lewin (1974:I, 186).
63 Bowdich (1966:320).
64 Arhin (1987:56).
65 Fynn (1971a:7); Arhin (1987).
66 Wilks (1975).
67 McLeod (1981:72).
68 Dummett (1987).
69 Anquandah (1982).
70 Fynn (1971a:78); Dummett (1987:223); Herskovits (1962:173-174).
71 Yarak (1990)
72 McLeod (1981:15).
73 Fortes (1950).
74 Bowdich (1966:302).
75 Busia (1951:7).
76 Busia (1951:27).
77 McLeod (1981).
78 Ramseyer and Kühne (1875:167).
79 Rattray (1929:360).
Chapter 3. “A Bravery Not to Be Exceeded”
1 T. 70/26. Committee of Merchants, London, to John Hippisley, Cape Coast castle, 3 September 1766.
2 Claridge (1915:I, 245).
3 Ibid., 248.
4 T. 70/35; H.D. 431 Accounts and Papers [1817] vi, 401.
5 Cruikshank (1853:I, 79-80).
6 Dupuis (1966:263).
7 Claridge (1915:I, 254).
8 C.O. 267/144.
9 Claridge (1915).
10 Bowdich (1966:317); Wilks (1975:676).
11 Hagen (1971).
12 Aidoo (1975:I, 73).
13 Rattray (1929:123); for an outline of Asante army organization, see Miles (1968) and Arhin (1980).
14 Fuller (1921:14).
15 Rattray (1929:122).
16 Kea (1971:213).