S3E14: Gyaaman Must Pay

Bondoukou, the capital city of Gyaaman.

Despite leading the Ashanti to their largest military victory since Osei Tutu after only three years on the golden stool, the remainder asantehene Osei Bonsu's reign was far from peaceful. From 1811 until 1819, the Ashanti would be enter into two other major wars. 

Illustration of Kumasi, with the wall of the Aban Dan appearing in the bottom-left corner.

The first of these wars, which lasted from 1811 until 1816, pitted the Ashanti against the Fante Confederacy and a faction of Akyem and Denkyira rebels. The Fante had long been the Ashanti's most powerful rival, but Osei Bonsu had forced them to submit to Fante vassalage after a shocking Ashanti victory at the Battle of Abura in 1806. Despite losing many of their most experienced and capable officers at Abura, the Fante quickly rebuilt their ranks into a respectable army. In 1811, the Fante decided to reassert their independence by attacking Elmina and Accra, both controlled by Ashanti allies. While the Ashanti won the early stages of the war, the Fante Twafohene (military leader) switched to a strategy of asymmetric warfare. This new strategy was very effective and, combined with an outbreak of smallpox in the Ashanti army, severely weakened Ashanti control over Fanteman. However, in 1814, the British changed tactics. Instead of trying to fight the Fante themselves, the Kontihene decided that a better strategy was to cut off their supplier. The British Company of African merchants, despite having agreed to a treaty recognizing Ashanti sovereignty over the southern coast, supplied the Fante with arms and ammunition.

Fort Winneba, the fort that Osei Bonsu's army seized in 1814

In 1814, the Ashanti decided to force the British not to sell weapons to the Fante. They successfully captured the British fortress Winneba using tactics they had practiced at a replica European castle in Kumasi, known as the Aban Dan. The British were defeated and the forts governor executed. After the battle of Winneba, the British agreed to half weapons sales to the Fante. From there, Fante supplies dwindled, and they sued for peace in 1816. The treaty signed between the Fante, British, and Ashanti stipulated full Ashanti access to the coast, exclusive Ashanti weapons trading rights during wartime, and a recognition of Ashanti sovereignty over the coastal peoples. However, the Fante did successfully prove to the Ashanti that they could not be governed easily. The war reinforced that the Fante Confederacy would continue to exist as a separate state, albeit as a subject of the asantehene.

In 1817, tensions arose on the other side of the Ashanti empire. Under the rule of Queen Ama Tamia and her brother Kwadwo Adinkra, the kingdom of Gyaaman had created a replica of the Ashanti golden stool for their own royal family. This stool was a brazen challenge to Ashanti authority, as well as an announcement that the state would no longer pay tribute to their Ashanti neighbors. Enraged, Osei Bonsu mobilized an army to march north and crush Gyaaman. After a hard fought battle on the Tain river, the Ashanti emerged victorious and later crushed the Gyaaman army at Nkoransa. The king and queen were either killed by the Ashanti or committed suicide. Gyaaman was ransacked, with almost half of its population either killed or sold into slavery. With these two victories, Osei Bonsu solidified his position as the most capable Ashanti military monarch since Osei Tutu himself. 

The Ashanti Empire at its height in 1818, featuring roads.

S3E13: The Battle of Anomabu

 

Fort William, Anomabu. The site of the battle

In 1806, war between the Ashanti Empire and their neighbors/rivals the Fante confederation broke out. The main issue of contention: the Fante's harboring of several rebellious noblemen who exhumed the graves of an important Ashanti family. This grave insult could not go unpunished, so when it was discovered that the noblemen had fled into the Fante confederation's lands, the Ashanti demanded their extradition. When the man who delivered the message was executed, the asantehene Osei Bonsu and the Kotoko council declared war on the Fante.

A wing of the Ashanti Royal Palace, illustrated by T.E. Bowdich

The two armies met at Abura, where the Ashanti scored an incredibly crushing victory that eliminated nearly the entirety of the Fante's professional soldiers. The few survivors, as well as many civilian refugees, retreated further south to escape the Ashanti. As the Ashanti pressed on deeper into Fante territory, and the situation became more grim for the Fante, many retreated to hide in the forts owned by the British, Dutch, and Danish trading companies on the coast. One of the rebellious noblemen who provoked the war, along with a crowd of several thousand Fante refugees, fled to the British Fort William at the Fante town of Anomabu. As the pursuing Ashanti army, commanded by Osei Bonsu himself, approached, the British allowed 2,000 of the Fante including the rebellious noble into Fort William. Several thousand more were left outside to fend for themselves. 

A view of Fort William from the ground

The Fante inside the fort, terrified that the British would sell them out for their own safety, barred the British in the fort from sending any sort of communication outside as the Ashanti army approached Fort William. The Ashanti army outside, unaware of the reason for the lack of communication, began to massacre the Fante outside of the fort's gates to provoke a response. Still receiving no response, the Ashanti began to try to capture the fort. The Ashanti army, as a mobile force designed to encircle their enemies in open battle, had little experience in siege warfare. Inexperienced in siege warfare, the Ashanti incurred heavy casualties and made little progress in overcoming the fort's walls. However, after six hours of fighting, the British began to run low on gunpowder and supplies, and surrendered. 

In the wake of the battle, Osei Bonsu extracted a treaty of submission from both the British and the Fante, with both sides acknowleding sole Ashanti sovereignty over the coast of Ghana. However, the rebellious noble managed to escape before the surrender. Ashanti's troubles on the coasts were far from over. Next episode, we'll see the Ashanti struggle to deal with multiple wars in the south, a war in the north, and see Osei Bonsu struggle to right his failure to capture the rebellious nobleman who started this entire war in the first place.

S3E12: Osei Kwame - the Muslim Asantehene

In 1781, the new asantehene Osei Kwame ascended to the throne of the Ashanti Empire. He had been put in his position after a violent succession dispute between himself and the son of Konadu Yaadom, the powerful Asantehemaa, or queen mother. On the back of a coalition primarily composed of the empire's rising bourgeois class who felt left out of the avenues of power, and the empire's Muslim minority, Osei Kwame managed to win this early succession dispute and win the kingship of the empire.

Mosque in Kumasi, with Ashanti Muslims outside

Osei Kwame's rule was rocky from the very beginning, as he had to purge numerous government ministers and replace them with loyal allies to secure his own power. But, Osei Kwame's personal religion would prove to be an issue as his reign progressed. Due to his upbringing at the hands of predominately Muslim wet nurses and servants in the city of Mampong, Osei Kwame held a deep-seated affinity for the Islamic faith. This would prove to be a problem, as he perceived numerous aspects of traditional Akan religions as being at odds with his personal beliefs.

The Adinkra Symbol for Gye Nyame, representing the unrivalled omnipotence of Nyame (God)

The Akan religion is technically monotheistic, with there existing only one true God (Nyame.) However, religious exercise of the faith relies heavily on the veneration of the abosom: spirits created by Nyame to fulfill his will on earth. To outsiders, abosom often appear to be worshipped as gods, even though their role in the religion is more akin to a messenger angel than a god per say. Regardless, the importance of these abosom was perceived by Osei Kwame to be at odds with the Islamic faith, which commands that there exists no god but the one true Abrahamic God, and that all other gods are merely false idols. 

An artist's rendition of an Ashanti execution. The fact that these men were decapitated, instead of strangled as was more common, shows that their alleged crime must have been especially heinous.

Another important component of Akan religion is ancestor worship, which proved similarly difficult to Osei Kwame to partake in. Particularly, the execution of prisoners in the Ashanti Empire often carried an overtly religious tone, with criminals being offered as sacrifices to the ancestors. Osei Kwame strongly hated these proceedings, and is recorded to have regularly refused to attend executions, unusual for the Ashanti king.

The current Asantehene, Osei Tutu II, at a recent Ashanti Yam festival

However, the final breaking point for Osei Kwame came in 1799, when he refused to attend the annual yam festival. This festival, celebrated to mark the beginning of the new harvest, possessed incredible significance for the Ashanti. Not only did the king engage in several important religious ceremonies, such as the cleaning and veneration of his ancestors' funerary stools, but he also received the pledges of loyalty from amanhenes from around the empire. Osei Kwame skipped the festival. This outraged numerous members of the Ashanti public. Not only was he disrespecting the empire's religious customs, but he was also shirking his own secular duties. Kwame was overthrown by an angry mob and imprisoned. He escaped his imprisonment to the city of Juaben, where he held out for four years while continuing to claim status as the rightful Asantehene. However, in 1803 Osei Kwame committed suicide after it was revealed that his longtime lover was, in fact, his cousin.