The Asante World

Edmund Abaka, Kwame Osei Kwarteng, Edmund Abaka, Kwame Osei Kwarteng

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781351184052
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Afrique

The Asante World provides fresh perspectives on the Asante, the largest Akan group in Southern Ghana, and what new scholars are thinking and writing about the "world the Asante made."

By employing a thematic approach, the volume interrogates several dimensions of Asante history including state formation, Asante-Ahafo and Bassari-Dagomba relations in the context of Asante northward expansion, and the expansion to the south. It examines the role of Islam which, although extremely intense for just a short time, had important ramifications. Together the essays excavate key aspects of Asante political economy and culture, exemplified in kola nut production, the kente/adinkra cloth types and their associated symbols, proverbs, and drum language. The Asante World explores the Asante origins of Jamaican maroons, Asante secular government, contemporary politics of progress, governance through the institution of Ahemaa or Queenmothers, epidemiology and disease, and education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Featuring innovative and insightful contributions from leading historians of the Asante world, this volume is essential reading for advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars concerned with African Studies, African diaspora history, the history of Ghana and the Gold Coast, the history of Islam in Africa, and Asante history.

Chapter One
Introduction

Edmund Abaka and Kwame Osei Kwarteng

The Asante, as a people, a kingdom, an empire, and a “historically conscious and culturally integrated”¹ entity, has existed from the late seventeenth century to date. In the late nineteenth century (1874), Britain conquered its nemesis on the Gold Coast for about half a century, and the Asante Confederacy was broken up. However, about five decades later, the Confederacy was revived, albeit a smaller version than its imperial predecessor, but alive and well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Right into the twenty-first century, the Asante have not abandoned “a sense of identity: a consciousness of cultural and linguistic community, an awareness of the past, and a highly particular vision of the unity of the past, the present, and future.”² Asante identity and consciousness are alive and well in Ghana today, and it would be correct to argue that Asante identity and consciousness have cast a long shadow on the places where Asantefoɔahene and Asantefoɔahemaa have been enstooled, diaspora style, in Canada and parts of the United States. In these two countries, Asante funerals are as vibrant and compelling in their emotions, loyalty, and intensity in this present time as they were in the past.

To this day, the Asante stand out as one of the leading custodians of Ghana’s culture. The Asante empire became more extensive than any of the Akan Kingdoms that preceded it, such as Bono Manso, Denkyira, Akwamu, and the Fante States, encompassing more than modern-day Ghana to include parts of modern-day Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo at the height of its power. It similarly lasted longer than many Akan states. In terms of culture and other institutions, Asante has turned out to be the quintessential epitome of Akan culture and civilization, albeit having absorbed, in principle, some of its predecessors’ institutions and practices.³ Asante was preceded by other Akan states, the foremost being Denkyira, which imposed a harsh political and economic control over its neighbors. That harsh political and economic control would later be the raison d’être for Asante’s attack on Denkyira and its subsequent victory at the battle of Feyiase (1700), which would propel Asante on the path to “nationhood” and would lead to a vibrant and vigorous state-building project in the Akan heartland.

The growth and development of an inland kingdom

The Asante achievement in the forest zone’s heartland represents quite a remarkable story of socioeconomic transformation and political sagacity that welded a center and its periphery into a formidable political entity capable of resisting British imperial designs for over half a century. Asante emerged as a dominant economic power in the forest zone in the late seventeenth century after a consolidation process that led to several Akan states’ emergence in the Volta Basin. These early states included Bono Manso, Akwamu, Denkyira, and the Fante States. The rise of the Akan states in the forest region, many scholars agree, resulted from a commercial process that had begun in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, involving the gold trade between the Akan, on the one hand, and the Wangara of Mali and the Portuguese, on the other.⁴ A new world system predicated on Atlantic commerce between the fifteen and seventeenth centuries went on to have significant implications for the emergence of the Akan States as the Akan, the Wangara, and the Portuguese, due to the rising market for gold bullion in Europe at that time, became interconnected in a network of gold production and exchange. As Wilks argues, this exchange undergirded a process of transformation (from foraging to sedentary agriculture) that led to state-building in the Akan forest zone and, ultimately, contributed to Asante’s emergence.⁵

From state formation to empire: the early Asante rulers (Obiri Yeboa, Osei Tutu and Opoku Ware)

Asante’s origins date to a unification process that started with a nucleus of the Oyoko clan, which expanded from Asantemanso and grew, over time, into separate states within a radius of about 30 miles of modern Kumasi, gradually developing into a strong union.⁶ They were exceptionally fortunate to be blessed with able leaders such as Twum and Antwi, Kobia Amanfi (c. 1621–1643), Oti Akenten (r. 1644–1668), Obiri Yeboah (1669–1695), Osei Tutu (c. 1695–1717), and Opoku Ware (1720–1750). Asante expanded beyond the Akan region to finally encompass an area the size of modern-day Ghana and beyond, to parts of Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Togo.

The first prominent Asante ruler, Obiri Yeboa, “enlarged the ranks of the original Oyoko group of Kumasi” and secured “his lineage as the ruler of the new union.”⁷ In an expansionist drive against neighboring states and the Dormaa, Obiri Yeboa lost his life in the late 1670s. His more illustrious successor Osei Tutu would consolidate and weld the nascent kingdom into a formidable political entity by the time of his death. Armed with valuable political and military information from his previous sojourn in Denkyira (at the court) and with the support of Akwamu on the one hand, and his political authority buttressed by the religious authority of Okomfo Anokye, the legendary priest of Asante lore, on the other, the foundations of the Asante empire were laid with the shift in the capital from Kwaaman to Kumasi.

The first order of business was the consolidation and institutionalization of political and social systems that would anchor the new state. Moreover, in this, Osei Tutu turned out to be quite a nation builder. He sought to forge the Asante states into an Akan state that embodied the shared destiny of the Oyoko clans. The Asante nation was welded together with symbols pregnant in meaning and solidified the unity of the various Oyoko states. Through the symbolism of the golden stool, purported to have been conjured by the legendary priest and advisor, Okomfo Anokye, Osei Tutu forged a “more lasting union” among the Asante states. The golden stool was supposed to encapsulate the Asante nation’s soul and spirit and, by extension, the source of its strength. Okomfo Anokye reportedly told the Asante that the golden stool “embodied the soul and unity of the Asante people, that under no circumstances should it be lost.”⁸ While the act conferred spiritual imprimatur on the Oyoko dynasty, it imbued the Asante state with political and cultural unity and would stand the test of time to live on through the ages. As a people, the Asante had believed all along in the unifying power of the golden stool and had always protected it from all enemies – internal and external. One of the series of events that culminated in the Yaa Asantewaa War of 1900 was the British Governor Hodgson’s demand to sit on the golden stool as the representative of the Queen of England.⁹ It is not for nothing that the regional hospital in Kumasi is named the Okomfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) and that a statue of the legendary priest stands tall near the hospital and close to the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD), Kumasi, welcoming people to the Garden City.

With the assistance of his close friend and advisor Okomfo Anokye, Osei Tutu put in place the structures that would anchor the unity of the new nation. Next to the unifying symbol of the golden stool was a constitution that would undergird the political system. At the head of the Union was the Asantehene, followed in rank by the Amanhene of the Amantuo States. These chiefs were divisional rulers who wielded considerable autonomy but had to declare their allegiance to the Asantehene, attend the annual Odwira¹⁰ festival, and participate in wars declared by the Asante state. Thus, there was a hierarchy of authority with the Asantehene as the head, albeit a primus-inter-pares, when the Amantuo States met in Kumasi. The Asantehene was thus the head of the Confederacy; each of the Amanhene recognized his right to impose national levies and also had to contribute troops in times of war. To anchor all this, they had to “recognise the superiority of the Asantehene’s major oath.”¹¹ These political and cultural symbols were all designed to weld together the Asante states. It is worthy of note that the constitution was modeled on earlier or existing Akan practices and has stood the test of time (Figure 1.1).¹²

Other symbols designed to hold the nascent state together included the Odwira Festival, celebrated annually to “renew the Union,” with all the trappings of a state project in mind. The festival was a time for rekindling the bonds between the Asantehene and the Asante chiefs on the one hand, and between metropolitan Asante and the provincial states on the other. A renewal of pledges of allegiance to the Asantehene, a resolution of all ongoing disputes between chiefs, and veneration of ancestors – usually departed chiefs – added a cultural dimension and a rich tapestry to the political project of nation-building that had been put together by Osei Tutu and Okomfo Anokye at the onset of the Asante Union.¹³ At the celebrations, songs and recitals added to the deep and compelling emotional symbolism of Asanteness and Asante life and ethos.¹⁴

Figure 1.1 The Sword of Okomfo Anokye Embedded in the Ground, Bantama, Kumasi. Source: © Francis Kyei Poku. The belief in the circumstances of the sword being embedded in the ground attests to the state of the historical memory and the contribution of Okomfo Anokye to Asante’s nation-building project in the late seventeenth century. Anokye was believed to have significant spiritual powers.

Having put in place the new nation’s structures, Osei Tutu embarked on wars of expansion that would, unfortunately, culminate in his death in 1717.¹⁵ To engage in this dimension of nation-buildi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Index