Prempeh I

Prempeh I was Asantehene when the British annexed Asante, was deported for twenty-eight years, and came home to a throne that no longer formally existed. He was enstooled in 1888 at about eighteen after a civil war over the succession, and spent his first years reuniting a confederacy that had been coming apart since the defeat of 1874. The British offered protectorate status repeatedly and he declined, sending an embassy to London in 1895 to argue the case directly; the mission was refused an audience. An expedition marched on Kumasi in January 1896, and rather than fight a war he could not win he submitted; he was arrested anyway along with his mother, father and senior chiefs, made to prostrate himself before the governor, and deported first to Elmina, then Sierra Leone, and from 1900 to the Seychelles. The Golden Stool was not surrendered with him, and the demand to sit on it four years later produced the rising led by Yaa Asantewaa, who was acting as regent in Ejisu in his absence. In exile he learned English, was baptised an Anglican, and petitioned continuously to return. He was allowed back in 1924 as a private citizen and recognised in 1926 only as Kumasihene, chief of Kumasi, not as Asantehene of the nation. He spent his last years reassembling the institutions quietly, recovering the remains of former rulers that had been scattered, and building the church and school system. He died in 1931. His nephew Prempeh II was recognised as Asantehene in 1935 when the British restored the confederacy, having concluded that indirect rule needed it.

MyHistorian
A causal knowledge graph of history