How the kingdom was built
The Asante were one Akan state among several, overshadowed by Denkyira to their south. In the late seventeenth century Osei Tutu became their leader, with a priest named Okomfo Anokye as his adviser, and over the following decades they defeated Denkyira and absorbed or subordinated their neighbours. Kumasi became the capital, and by the early eighteenth century Asante was the dominant power in the forest belt.
The state was held together by more than military force. Conquered peoples were often incorporated rather than destroyed, and the empire ran on a sophisticated administration with provincial governors, a treasury and a road network. At its height it controlled most of modern Ghana and reached into what is now Ivory Coast and Togo.
The Golden Stool
The Golden Stool is the single most important object in Asante history, and the reason is that it is not a throne. The account is that Okomfo Anokye called it down from the sky and it landed on Osei Tutu's lap, and that it contains the soul of the Asante nation. The Asantehene sits on his own stool. Nobody sits on the Golden Stool, including the king.
That distinction is why the events of 1900 happened. The British had assumed that defeating the Asante meant taking their throne, and had asked why they could not sit on it. For the Asante, capturing or sitting on the Golden Stool would have meant the end of the nation itself. It was never taken.
- The Asantehene does not sit on the Golden Stool.
- It represents the soul of the nation rather than a seat of government.
Four wars with the British
The British and the Asante fought repeatedly through the nineteenth century. The first major war ran from 1823 and cost the British commander Charles MacCarthy his life. Further wars followed in the 1860s. In 1873 and 1874 a British force under Garnet Wolseley advanced on Kumasi and burned much of it, an event remembered as the Sagrenti War, from a mangled rendering of Wolseley's name. That defeat broke Asante's hold on its southern provinces.
By 1896 the British had decided to end the kingdom outright. They occupied Kumasi and arrested Asantehene Prempeh I, along with senior members of his family and court, and deported them, eventually to the Seychelles.
Yaa Asantewaa and 1900
In 1900 the British colonial governor, Frederick Hodgson, demanded the Golden Stool. The remaining Asante leaders met at Kumasi and, according to the account that has been handed down, the senior men were reluctant to fight. Yaa Asantewaa, the Queen Mother of Ejisu, challenged them, asking whether they would let the British take what remained of the nation. She took leadership of the resistance.
The war that followed, often called the War of the Golden Stool or the Yaa Asantewaa War, lasted into 1901. It was the last major armed resistance to British rule in the region. It failed, and Yaa Asantewaa was captured and exiled to the Seychelles, where she died in 1921. The Golden Stool was never surrendered. It was reportedly hidden in the forest, and a later attempt to find it led to a famous confrontation in 1921.
- Yaa Asantewaa was Queen Mother of Ejisu, not of the whole kingdom.
- The war ran from 1900 into 1901 and was the last major Asante resistance.
What survived
The kingdom was not destroyed, and that is the part often left out. Prempeh I was allowed to return in 1924, though as a private citizen rather than a ruler. In 1931 his successor was recognised as Asantehene, and the position was restored in a form that still exists. The Asantehene today is a major figure in Ghanaian public life, with a role in customary authority, dispute resolution and development that sits alongside the elected state rather than under it.
Manhyia Palace in Kumasi is still the seat, and the museum there tells this history from inside the institution that lived it. The sword Okomfo Anokye is said to have driven into the ground at Kumasi is still there, and nobody has pulled it out.
Where to see it
In Kumasi, Manhyia Palace Museum is the essential stop, and the Okomfo Anokye Sword Site and Kumasi Cultural Centre are close by. The Asante Traditional Buildings, a group of surviving shrine houses, are UNESCO-listed and scattered around the region. The Yaa Asantewaa Museum at Ejisu is in her restored home, a short drive out of the city.
Read about the Golden Stool before you go. The museums are small and the objects are not spectacular in the way a European palace is spectacular. The story is what makes them worth the trip.