S3E7: Kusi Obodom - The Enlightened Ashanti King?

 

Map showing the general areas of control of various factions, including in gold the areas that broke away from Ashanti influence (The Gonja region is said to have rebelled, but that the rebellion was put down pretty quickly)

This episode begins with the collapse of the Ashanti government. As will continue to be a major factor throughout this series, power disputes between the newly created Nsafohene (government bureaucrats) and Amanhene (local governors) came to a head around the end of Opoku Ware's time on the throne. His precarious efforts to balance power between these two institutions resulted in him receiving the favor of neither, and a 1748 coup in Kumasi forced the asantehene to flee from the capital city to Juaben.

When Opoku Ware died in 1750, the tensions between the nsafohene and amanhene boiled over into an outright civil war. The nsafohene supported Dako, Opoku Ware's assigned heir who promised to continue his uncle's policy of centralizing the government's power. The amanhene sided with Kusi Obodom, a half-blind, elderly, and alcoholic ruler who sought to allow more self-government to the amanhene. While the details of the war are lost, after seven years of hard fighting, the amanhenes' faction came out on top.

Despite keeping his promise to delegate much of his power to the amanhenes, Kusi Obodom did actively reform many aspects of Ashanti life, including the empire's law code. Many aspects of Ashanti Law which he viewed as unnecessarily harsh or draconian, including the right to hold accused people in jail before their trial indefinitely, and the punishment of executing people for insulting the golden stool, were abolished, as limits to pre-trial jailtime were instituted and the penalty for insulting the stool was lowered to time in prison. 

Additionally, Ashanti laws at this time were modified to include additional punishments committed by members of abusua (tribes) against members of other abusua. This was done to prevent intertribal conflicts from escalating into cycles of familial violence, and to increase the confidence among tribal families in the ability of the Ashanti state to dole out proper justice.

When reading through Ashanti law-codes, I saw an interesting passage in the section on incest. Ashanti law prohibits sexual activity not only with blood relatives, but with relatives by marriage as well. As the law code lists off which in-laws are off limits, they include a reference to a "sister's wife" as someone you should not court. This provoked further interest in the Ashanti's stance on homosexuality, which I cover in the latest premium episode available on Patreon. The answer is unlikely to be what you expect, as Ashanti society had dramatically different stances on lesbianism and homosexuality among men.

In the end, however, the civil war resulted in the amanhenes controlling much of the true power in the Ashanti Empire. As we'll see, the issue of control between the amanhenes and nsafohenes will not be resolved by this civil war, and remain a common theme throughout Ashanti history.

Ghana continues to have traditional amanhene today, who act as local traditional leaders. Pictured here is the amanhene of Gyadam, a town in Ghana's eastern region.