Ashanti Colony

A kingdom conquered in stages over a century, and the one African state that beat a British army badly enough to be remembered for it. The Asante Empire was founded around 1701 by Osei Tutu, unified by the Golden Stool that the priest Okomfo Anokye is said to have called down from the sky as the soul of the nation, and it grew rich on gold and on selling captives into the Atlantic trade. It fought Britain five times. In 1824 an Asante force destroyed a British column and killed the governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, whose skull was reportedly kept as a war trophy. Britain sacked Kumasi in 1874 and imposed an indemnity, deposed and exiled Asantehene Prempeh I to the Seychelles in 1896, and finally provoked the War of the Golden Stool in 1900 when Governor Hodgson demanded to sit on the stool itself - a demand that misunderstood the object completely, since no person including the Asantehene ever sat on it. Yaa Asantewaa, the queen mother of Ejisu, led the rising that followed. Britain annexed Ashanti as a separate colony in 1902, distinct from both the Gold Coast Colony and the Northern Territories. Prempeh was allowed home in 1924. The colony was merged into Ghana at independence in 1957. Kumasi remains the Asante capital and the second city of Ghana. The Golden Stool has never touched the ground and is still kept. Yaa Asantewaa died in exile in the Seychelles in 1921. The Asantehene remains a recognised traditional ruler under the Ghanaian constitution. Kente cloth is the kingdom's best-known export.

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