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The Ashanti Confederacy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

William Tordoff
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Extract

The Basel missionaries, Ramseyer and Kühne, had this to say of Ashanti government in the reign of Kofi Karikari (1867–74):

…the reins of the Ashantee government are not exclusively in the hands of the king, nor does he possess unlimited power, but shares it with a council which includes, besides his majesty, his mother, the three first chiefs of the kingdom [Juabenhene, Bekwaihene, and Mamponghene], and a few nobles of Kumasi (Coomassie). This council is called ‘Asante Kotoko’, or the Ashantee porcupine, which means that like the animal of that name, nobody dare touch them.…It is this Kotoko council which rules the entire kingdom, and deals with the people, who must obey, whatever their own wishes or inclinations may be, in the most despotic way.…In important matters all the other chiefs of the kingdom are called together to discuss the case, but they are sure to vote in accordance with the view of the council, for who would dare to oppose the Kotoko?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , November 1962 , pp. 399 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

2 They were captured in 1869 by Adu Bofo, the Gyasewahene of Kumasi, who led the Ashanti Army in a campaign against the Ewe.—Ramseyer, F. and Kühne, J., Four Years in Ashantee (London, 1875), chs. III and IV.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Afua Kobe, the Queen Mother of Ashanti or Asantehemaa, was, according to Ramseyer and Kühne, Kofi Karikari's mother and niece of King Kwaku Dua I. Ibid. 308–9.

4 Ibid. 305.

5 Bowdich, T. E., Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (London, 1819), 105, 252 and note, and 253.Google Scholar

6 Ramseyer and Kühne, op. cit. 307–8.Google Scholar

7 A small part of W. Hutchison's Diary is reproduced in Bowdich, op. cit. ch. XII;Google Scholar the remainder is (so far) missing. Hutton's, W. account, A Voyage to Africa (London, 1821),Google Scholar supplements the more informative work by Dupuis, J., Journal of a Residence in Ashantee (London, 1824).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Huydecoper, the reference is: Archives of the Netherlands' Possessions on the Coast of Guinea.—Huydecoper's Journal of his Mission to Kumasi, 28 April 1816 to 18 May 1817, K.v.G. 349 (State Archives, The Hague).

8 Bowdich, op. cit. 235 and 252n.Google Scholar

9 See Rattray, R. S., Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford, 1929), 272;Google ScholarWilks, Ivor, “The Rise of the Akwamu Empire, 1650–1710’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana (Achimota, 1957), iii, Pt. 11, 526–7.Google Scholar

10 Busia, K. A., The Position of the Chief in tile Modern Political System of Ashanti (London, 1951), 90. Ivor Wilks of the University of Ghana informs me that the Akwamu (national) Army also had nifa nnaase and benkum nnaase.Google Scholar

11 Wilks, Ivor, The Northern Factor in Ashanti History (Legon, 1961), 13.Google Scholar

12 Bowdich, op. cit. 14–31, 167, 170–1, and 482–3.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. 181–5. This northern route was still of major importance in the late nineteenth century. See Freeman, R. A., Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman (London, 1898), 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 See Priestley, Margaret and Wilks, Ivor, ‘The Ashanti Kings in the Eighteenth Century: A Revised Chronology’, Journal of African History (1960), 1, no. 1, 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a contemporary account of the campaign, see Bosman, W., A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705), 77.Google Scholar

15 Dupuis was appointed by, and was responsible to, the British Government, as distinct from the British Company of Merchants (abolished in 1821).Google Scholar

16 Dupuis, op. cit. app., cxxxii, n.Google Scholar

17 Banda was incorporated in the Confederacy as an ‘auxiliary kingdom’, and the Gyamanhene was ‘reduced … to the condition of a tributary’.—Ibid. 230.

18 In respect of the Ashanti kings of the eighteenth century, I have adopted throughout the revised chronology of Priestley and Wilks.—op. cit. 96.Google Scholar

19 Reindorf, C. C., The History of the Gold Coast and Asante (Basel, 1895), 90.Google Scholar

20 Bowdich, op. cit. 235.Google Scholar

21 Dupuis, op. cit. Pt. II, xxvi.Google Scholar

22 Ibid. 236.

23 Bowdich, op. cit. 317.Google Scholar

24 For the relationship between Ashanti and Akwamu, see Dupuis, op. cit. 234 and pt. II, xxvii;Google ScholarBowdich, op. cit. 236, and Wilks (1957), 226.Google Scholar

25 Bowdich, op. cit. 179.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. 181–2.

27 See Wilks (1961), 15, n. 3.Google Scholar

28 According to Dupuis, this was the fourth embassy to be sent to Kumasi by the kings of Dahomey, the first having been sent in the reign of Osei Tutu.—Dupuis, op. cit. 243 and note, 244 and 249.Google Scholar

29 Ibid. 239.

30 Ibid. pt. II, xxvi.

31 Whydah, on the border of modern Dahomey, formed part of the Akwanou empire from 1702 to 1727. For its relationship to Akwamu, see Wilks (1957), 124–5.Google Scholar

32 Dupuis, op. cit. pt. II, xxxix.Google Scholar

33 See Bowdich, op. cit. 20–1.Google Scholar

34 Ivor Wilks, ‘Some Developments in Akan Administrative Practice in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’—paper read at the Annual Conference of the Historical Society of Ghana, Jan. 1959, and forthcoming in the Transactions of the Society.Google Scholar

35 Akwamu had placed its ‘provinces’ under an administrator, drawn generally from the Akwamu royal family, appointed by and responsible to the king, and resident in the territory which he administered. Power was thus put into the hands of men who might try and usurp the paramount stool. Such a bid was made in 1729 by Amu, Governor of Accra and matrilineal uncle of the Akwamuhene, Ansa Kwao; its effect was disastrous— the overthrow by the Akims of the whole western part of the empire.—Wilks, Ivor, ‘Akwamu and Otublohum: An Eighteenth-Century Akan Marriage Arrangement’. Africa (London, 1959), xxix, no. 4, 393–404.Google Scholar

36 An Asafohene was ‘chief of an asafo’ or body of fighting men, whether kinsmen, slaves, or freemen, who rendered military service in return for the chief's protection. The asafo was comprised of units known as auto, literally ‘guns’; and the number of ‘guns’ which an Asafohene had at his disposal was the measure of his strength. One traditional account, related by Busia, says that the Adumhene (for example) had atuo nson or seven ‘guns’.—Busia, op. cit. 92.Google Scholar

37 Bowdich, op. cit. 235.Google Scholar

38 Ibid. 235–6; and Dupuis, op. cit. 42, 67, and 99.

39 Dupuis op. cit. 44.Google Scholar

40 Ibid. 45.

41 Bowdich, op. cit. 83 and 41.Google Scholar

42 Dupuis, op. cit. 235.Google Scholar

43 See Bowdich, op. cit. 233.Google Scholar

44 Ibid. 232 and 256.

45 Rattray, op. cit. 76–7, and chs. XVIII–XX, XXII, and XXIII.Google Scholar

46 See Prince John Owusu-Ansa's Comment, quoted by Brackenbury, H., Narrative of the Ashanti War (2 vols., London, 1874), II, 224.Google Scholar

47 Rattray, op. cit. 120.Google Scholar

48 Ibid. 236. See also Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (Oxford, 1923), ch. XXIV.Google Scholar

49 Rattray (1929), ch. XXIV. A second version of the origin of the Golden Stool is to be found in Rattray (1923), ch. XXIII. See also Smith, E. W., The Golden Stool (London, 1926), ch. I.Google Scholar

50 Bowdich, op. cit. 231.Google Scholar

51 Busia, op. cit. 52–6;Google ScholarRattray (1929), ch. XIII.Google Scholar

52 Busia, op. cit. 29–36;Google ScholarRattray, R. S., Religion and Art in Ashanti (Oxford, 1927), ch. XII.Google Scholar For an early, vivid description of the king's Odwira or Yam Custom, see Bowdich, op. cit. 274–80.Google Scholar

53 Rattray (1929), 105 and ch. XIV.Google Scholar

54 Ibid. 187.

55 Busia, op. cit. and 99. There is no doubt that tributaries could be destooled by the king. For an example, see Wilks (1961), 14.Google Scholar

56 Rattray (1929), 212.Google Scholar

57 Bowdich, op. cit. 256.Google Scholar

58 Not all the Kumasi chiefs, however, held their land as a gift from the king. Both Tafo, ‘a large aboriginal Inta town’ (Ibid. 170), and Amakom had been established before Osei Tutu's invasion of Nta in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The struggle for control of the area surrounding the new capital, Kumasi—some three miles from Tafo—is recalled in oral tradition. Rattray (1929), 169, 199, and 235.Google Scholar

59 Busia, op. cit. 53.Google Scholar

60 Busia, op. cit. 13–14;Google ScholarRattray (1929), chs. XV and XVIIXXIII.Google Scholar

61 There were (and still are) two Adaes, one held on Sunday (Akwasidae) and one held on Wednesday (Awukudae)—the Great and Little Adae respectively, each celebrated at forty-two-day intervals. The purpose of these ceremonies was to honour and propitiate the spirits of the royal ancestors, and to solicit favours and mercy. Bowdich, op. cit. 281;Google ScholarBusia, op. cit. 27–9;Google ScholarRattray (1923), chs. V–IX.Google Scholar

62 Bowdich, op. cit. 256.Google Scholar

63 Rattray (1929), ch. XII.Google Scholar

64 The Mamponghene had no direct administrative contact with the subjects of his Abrempon, but dealt only with the latter themselves. Busia, op. cit. 61–2.Google Scholar

65 In 1935 the Atenehene, a Kumasi chief, stated: ‘After the 1900 rising Government policy was that all people should serve the Omanhene near whom they lived, but should not come into Kumasi to serve …’—Proceedings of the Meetings of the Committee of Privileges held at Kumasi from the 18 June 1935, to the 3 Jan. 1936, 130; office of the Ashanti House of Chiefs, Kumasi. Thus, the villages in the Tano-Subin valley were placed under the Takyimanhene after the 1900 War. Ibid. 216–48.

66 Archives of the Second Dutch West Indies Company. Despatch of 30 Sept. 1748 from Director-General van Voorst to the Presidial Chamber, Amsterdam, W.I.C. 490 (State Archives, The Hague). See also Dupuis, op. cit. 235.Google Scholar

67 Dupuis, op. cit. 235–7;Google ScholarPriestley and Wilks, op. cit. 93 and n. 52.Google Scholar

68 By 1817, when Bowdich visited Kumasi, there was a well-established, sizeable Muslim community, which occupied one street of the town exclusively. The community included some ‘men of education and talent’, who provided Dupuis with valuable information about Ashanti's past. Bowdich, op. cit. 129;Google ScholarDupuis, op. cit. pt. II, VI. For a discussion of ‘Islam in Ashanti’, see Wilks (1961), pt. II, 14–29.Google Scholar

69 Dupuis, op. cit. 235–6.Google Scholar

70 Bowdich, op. cit. 236 and 240.Google Scholar

71 Bowdich noted that the power of the King of Juaben was ‘equal to the King of Ashantee's’. Ibid. 105.

72 Ibid. 245–6.

73 Ibid. 232 and 256.

74 Rattray (1929), 173.Google Scholar

75 Bowdich, op. cit. 252, n.Google Scholar

76 Ibid. 236; and Bowdich, T. E., An Essay on the Superstitions, Customs, and Arts, common to the Ancient Egyptians, Abyssinians, and Ashantees (Paris, 1821), 54.Google Scholar

77 An abusua is an exogamous matriclan.Google Scholar

78 Busia, op. cit. 93. The subsequent British designation of all the leading Kumasi chiefs as ‘clan chiefs’ is therefore incorrect.Google Scholar

79 Bowdich (1819), 252 and note.Google Scholar

80 Ibid. 105.

81 Dupuis, op. cit. 99.Google Scholar

82 In the Kumasi, as in most Ashanti Divisions, the Akwamuhene was the Kontihene's ‘confrère and second-in-command’. Rattray (1929), 88–9.Google Scholar

83 See Priestley and Wilks, op. cit. 87.Google Scholar

84 Ibid. 88 and note; Rattray (1929), 175 and 202.

85 See Ferguson's, G. E.Memorandum on Ashanti and the Brong Tribes, dated 24 Nov. 1893 and enclosed in confidential despatch of 7 Dec. 1893 from Hodgson to Ripon, C.O./ 96/239; and letter of 11 Feb. 1893 from Stewart and Vroom to Governor, enclosed in despatch of 15 Feb. 1895 from Brandford Griffith to Ripon, C.–7918.Google Scholar

86 Busia, op. cit. 219.Google Scholar

87 Bowdich (1819), 322.Google Scholar

88 Information supplied by Nana Boakye Dankwa and Nana Charles Bonsu, respectively Akyempemhene and Hiahene of Kumasi.Google Scholar

89 Bowdich found that the king's system of espionage was much spoken of ‘for its address and infallibility’—by Opoku Frefre, the Kumasi Gyasehene, and others. See Bowdich (1819), 294.Google Scholar

90 Bowdich (1819), 252.Google Scholar

91 Ibid.

92 Bowdich found that the king and his chiefs spoke in scathing terms of the ‘lower order’ of Ashanti society—Osei Bonsu called them ‘the worst people existing, except the Fantees’. Ibid. 250.

93 Ibid. 253.

94 Ibid. 233.

95 Ibid. 246.

96 Ibid. 253.

97 Wilks (1961), ‘Akan Administrative Practice’.Google Scholar

98 Busia, op. cit. 100;Google ScholarRattray (1929), ch. XII.Google Scholar

99 Busia, op. cit. 100.Google Scholar

100 Ibid.; Wilks (1961), ‘Akan Administrative Practice’; Rattray (1929), 95.Google Scholar

101 Wilks (1961), ‘Akan Administrative Practice’.Google Scholar

102 Rattray (1929), 95–6.Google Scholar

103 Revolt against Kumasi rule on the part of the distant provinces of the empire had been quite common in the eighteenth century. Thus, very soon after his accession to the Golden Stool in (or about) 1764, Osei Kojo had to wage a desperate war against Gyaman, as well as against Denkyera, Wassaw, and Twifo. Dupuis, op. cit. 241.Google Scholar

104 Rattray (1929), 173 and 176.Google Scholar

105 Ramseyer and Kuhne, op. cit. 308.Google Scholar It is difficult to account for the political importance of Nkoranza and Abesim at this time. Bowdich noted that Nkoranza was one of the states which the Ashanti had subdued, but ‘from fidelity, and a long period of military services’, it was generally excused the payment of tribute; he observed that the Asantehene had a high regard for the ability of its people. Bowdich (1819), 321 and 171. The Chief of Abesim was Kyidomhene of Dormaa. In 1893, G. E. Ferguson found that Prempeh's northern army included a contingent from Abesim. Ferguson, op. cit.; C.O./96/239.Google Scholar

106 Ramseyer and Kühne, op. cit. 308.Google Scholar

107 Ibid. 310–11.

108 To take one example. In 1891 the Gold Coast Governor, acting without Colonial Office sanction, offered to take Ashanti under British protection. The national assembly sat ‘almost daily’ over much of the six-week period that H. M. Hull, the officer in charge of the British mission, was in Kumasi. The assembly was divided in opinion but eventually rejected the Governor's offer. See letters from Hull to Brandford Griffith, April/May 1891, in C.–7917.Google Scholar

109 Busia, op. cit. 101;Google ScholarBowdich (1819), 274.Google Scholar

110 Dupuis, op. cit. 236–7.Google Scholar

111 Cf. the Arabic chronicle, apparently of the late eighteenth century, which records the death of Muliki Asanti, the King of Ashanti (Opoku Ware), in A.H. 1163 (early in A.D. 1750): ‘… may God curse him … He it was who troubled the people of Gonja; Continually and at all times did he trouble them…. Whatever he wished, so he did, for he was all powerful in his rule.’ Manuscript Chronicle of Imam Imoru Konandi and Al Hajj Mahama, reproduced in translation in Goody, J., The Ethnography of tile Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, West of the White Volta (C.O., London, 1954), app. iv.Google Scholar

112 Abolition was effected in two stages, by Acts of Parliament passed in 1807 and 1833. Osei Bonsu was anxious that the African slave-trade should be revived. See Bowdich (1819), 106 and 149.Google Scholar

113 This proverb was related to me by Nana H. Owusu-Ansah of Kumasi.Google Scholar

114 Busia, op. cit. 101.Google Scholar

115 Wilks (1961), ‘Akan Administrative Practice’.Google Scholar

116 See Rattray (1929), ch. XIV;Google ScholarBusia, op. cit. 78–84;Google ScholarBowdich (1819), 296–7.Google Scholar

117 Busia, op. cit. 82.Google Scholar

118 Ibid. 77.

119 This was Ntan kese or Great Oath of Ashanti, which recalled the death of the Asantehene on a Saturday (Memeneda) at Akromanti during the course of the disastrous campaign against the Akim in 1717. Since the body of the king was not recovered, his name became ‘a kunorokosem, something known but not to be mentioned, its utterance strongly tabooed (akyiwadie)’. See Priestley and Wilks, op. cit. 90–1.Google Scholar See also Bowdich (1819), 233 and 297;Google ScholarDupuis, op. cit. 232–3;Google ScholarBusia, op. cit. 75–6.Google Scholar

120 Busia, op. cit. 75–7;Google ScholarRattray (1927), ch. XXII and (1929), ch. XXXVI.Google Scholar

121 For examples, see Busia, op. cit. 77–8.Google Scholar

122 Ibid. 26.

123 Ibid. 24.

124 ‘The religion of the Ashanti’, says Busia, ‘is mainly ancestor-worship.’ Ibid. 23.

125 Ibid. chs. II–III; Colonial Reports, Ashanti, 1921. The subject of Ashanti religion has been treated very fully by Rattray—(1923), chs. IVXX; (1927), chs. I–XX.Google Scholar

126 Busia, op. cit. 36–7.Google Scholar

127 Ibid. 26–7.

128 Thus, the failure of Osei Kwame (1777–c. 1801) to return to Kumasi for his own Odwira provided the Kumasi chiefs with a good ground for destooling a king who was, on other grounds, no longer acceptable to them. Dupuis, op. cit. 245;Google ScholarBowdich (1819), 238–9.Google Scholar

129 See Busia, op. cit. 12.Google Scholar

130 Kofi Karikari was banished to Akropong following his destoolment in 1874. Rattray (1929), 175. Moreover, a destooled chief was not placed, upon his death, with his royal ancestors in the mausoleum.Google Scholar

131 It is said that Karikari was destooled (1874) for rifling the royal mausoleum at Bantama, and Mensa Bonsu, his successor, for extortion and cruelty. Busia, op. cit. 21–2 and 99.Google Scholar

132 Ibid. 96.

133 Ibid.

134 Rattray (1927), 132.Google Scholar Busia maintains that the rites associated with the king's Odwira rekindled the ‘sentiments of solidarity and nationhood’ in the Ashanti chiefs who participated in them. Busia, op. cit. 101.Google Scholar Bowdich commented that the Odwira or Yam Custom ‘seems to have been instituted … to unite such various nations by a common festival’. Bowdich (1819), 256.Google Scholar

135 Busia, op. cit. 54.Google Scholar

136 Rattray (1929), 173. The revised chronology of the reigns of Osei Yaw Akoto and Kwaku Dua I (1834–1967) has been supplied by Ivor Wilks. K.v.G. 699: letters of 4 June, 19 July and 6 Aug. 1834; K.v.G. 389: letter of 20 Nov. 1836.Google Scholar

137 Rattray (1929), 175–8.Google Scholar

138 Claridge, W. W., A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti (2 vols, London, 1915), II, passim.Google Scholar

139 Thus, Bowdich noted that the Akims had, by the early nineteenth century, ‘risen from their dependence at least eight times’. Bowdich (1819), 237.Google Scholar

140 See Papers relating to the Restoration of the Ashanti Confederacy (Accra, 1935), table III, 13, para. 18.Google Scholar