The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000 Year History of Wealth, Greed and Endeavour

by Martin Meredith

  The defeat of Amadou and Samori ensured that France became the dominant power in western Sudan. But French forces still had to fight their way across much of the interior – subduing resistance in Futa Jalon and the great Mossi empire based on Ouagadougou – before they were able to link up their trading posts on the coast of Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire with their vast hinterland. Small-scale revolts against French rule broke out time and again. The Baoulé of Côte d’Ivoire fought the French village by village until 1911. The Jola of Senegal were not fully defeated until the 1920s.

  43

  BY RIGHT OF CONQUEST

  Ever since the founding of the Akan state of Asante at the end of the seventeenth century, the Golden Stool had fulfilled a crucial role in national life. Akan chiefs had hitherto acted as the guardians of ceremonial wooden stools which were used as a symbol of their authority and the well-being of their peoples. The stools were said to contain the spirit or soul – the sunsum – of Akan communities. But when contemplating how to bind together Akan chiefdoms into the Asante kingdom in the 1690s, Osei Tutu introduced a Golden Stool – the Sika Dwa – to represent the spiritual unity of the Akan people and to signify their sovereignty. ‘This is the sunsum of a new Asante nation,’ the king’s high priest declared. ‘If it is ever captured or destroyed, then just as a man sickens and dies without his soul, so will the Asante lose their power and disintegrate into chaos.’ The Golden Stool – a curved wooden seat encased in gold and hung with bells – was accorded its own Chair of State, shaded by its own palanquin and attended by its own acolytes.

  A succession of thirteen kings – Asantehene – were enstooled at elaborate ceremonies in the capital, Kumasi, at which the Golden Stool featured as the embodiment of the nation. But then, in one of those incidents that peppered Europe’s occupation of Africa, a British official demanded that the Golden Stool be surrendered to the British. What followed was known as the War of the Golden Stool. For the British, it was just another tiresome conflict. For the Asante, it was the final struggle to retain their independence.

  At the height of its power in the early nineteenth century, the Asante empire encompassed an inner core of six metropolitan chiefdoms centred on Kumasi and an outer circle of other Akan-speaking provinces and tributary states that stretched from the savanna regions of the north to coastal ports in the south. A system of ‘great roads’ kept Kumasi linked to all corners of the empire.

  Asante was essentially a military society with a military ethos, able to put into the field up to 80,000 men. It owed allegiance to the Asantehene, but the power of the king was not absolute. As well as an inner council of advisers, both the Asantehene and the chiefs or lesser kings participated in a national assembly. There was no single royal family. The asantehene was chosen from a group of eligible matrilineal candidates by the Queen Mother and prominent chiefs, a system that limited the dangers of succession disputes. Prominent features of Asante rule included frequent executions and rituals of human sacrifice.

  The empire was served by an effective bureaucracy that used the skills of literate Muslims from the north. Officials were often appointed by merit rather than by birth. The wealth that underpinned the empire came from both agriculture and gold-mining. Most gold was produced by slave labour. Some gold mines were owned directly by the asantehene and operated by his agents. Others were owned by Akan chiefs who paid taxes to the state. Akan peasants also washed alluvial gold from rivers. Gold dust was used as a medium of exchange. Every man of substance carried scales and gold weights. Even bananas were priced in gold dust.

  The opulence of the Asante dazzled European visitors. In 1817, Thomas Bowdich, an official of the African Company of Merchants, set out from Cape Coast Castle on a mission to make contact with Osei Bonsu. After crossing the coastal plain of Fante, he entered the dense gloom of the tropical rainforest and three weeks later arrived at Kumasi, 140 miles to the north. Some 30,000 people gathered to witness his entry and to watch an exuberant welcome of martial music, gunfire and dancing.

  Bowdich described Kumasi as a well-planned city with wide, named streets, carefully planted banyan trees and a distinctive style of architecture. Houses were built with high-pitched thatched roofs, projecting eaves, complicated plaster fretwork and ornaments of animals and birds; many were furnished with lavatories that were flushed with boiling water. Streets were swept every day and kept clean. The palace complex in the centre of the city covered five acres and consisted of a maze of interconnected courtyards and passages. It housed a number of administrative departments such as the treasury and the asantehene’s personal rooms and harem.

  Taken to an audience with the king, Bowdich passed through a vast throng of courtiers and officials standing beneath huge umbrellas, dressed in fine kente cloth and silks and wearing an array of golden ornaments.

  An area of nearly a mile in circumference was crowded with magnificence and novelty. The king, his tributaries, and captains, were resplendent in the distance, surrounded by attendants of every description . . . The sun was reflected . . . from the massive gold ornaments which glistened in every direction . . .

  Introduced to Osei Bonsu, Bowdich found him an impressive figure. ‘His manners were majestic, yet courteous.’ After several months of negotiations and debate, Osei Bonsu signed a treaty agreeing to promote trade with the British at Cape Coast Castle.

  Life in Kumasi became increasingly urbane. Foreign visitors brought the asantehene many gifts: plumed hats, gilt mirrors, four-poster beds, flags, magic lanterns, clocks. In 1841, a Wesleyan Methodist missionary, Thomas Freeman, came with a European carriage drawn by human labour. Freeman was invited to a sumptuous dinner at the palace at which the asantehene, Kwaku Dua, wore an elegant brown velvet suit with silver lace, a white linen shirt, white satin trousers and a silk sash around his waist. Dinner was accompanied by a band of musicians, trained by the Dutch at Elmina, wearing blue dress uniforms trimmed with red, and equipped with flutes, clarinets, French horns and drums. During his visit, Freeman went to visit the asantehene’s stone-built Palace of Culture to view his collection of arts and crafts. ‘We entered a court yard, ascended a flight of stone steps, and passed through an ante-room into a small hall, in which were tastefully arranged on tables thirty-one gold-handled swords.’

  For much of the nineteenth century, the British in their trading forts on the coast remained on amicable terms with the Asante empire. There were numerous disputes and several bouts of warfare, but also prolonged periods of peaceful trade. In 1843, the British government took steps to take over from a Committee of Merchants direct responsibility for the administration of the settlements on the Gold Coast, asking each settlement to sign a ‘bond’ authorising a British governor to act for it in certain judicial matters. The area under Crown Rule became known as the British Protected Territory. But the ‘bonds’ left unresolved the issue of sovereignty over what had previously been acknowledged as the southern provinces of the Asante empire. The British came to regard Asante as an expansionist power, seeking to extend its control over the Fante population and coastal trade. The Asante, for their part, were determined to preserve the integrity of the empire and ensure access to coastal ports.

  The issue of sovereignty erupted in 1872 when the Dutch negotiated to sell their fort at Elmina to the British in defiance of the claims of the Asante. The Dutch had paid rent to the Asante every year since 1702. Moreover, the treaty signed by Bowdich and the Asante in 1817 had recognised Asante overlordship of the settlement there. ‘The fort of that place have from time immemorial paid annual tribute to my ancestors to the present time by right of arms,’ declared the asantehene, Kofi Kakari. ‘It is mine by right.’ Nevertheless, the sale went through.

  At a meeting of the national assembly, the Asantemanhyiamu voted to go to war. In January 1873, an Asante army crossed the Pra River which marked the southern boundary of metropolitan Asante and established a forward base only five miles from the British headquarters at Cape Coast Castle; two other armies w
ere sent to the south. By October 1873, however, a peace party at Kumasi had gained a majority in the Asantemanhyiamu and the invasion force was ordered to withdraw back across the Pra River.

  The British response to the invasion was to assemble an expeditionary force of 4,500 men under the command of General Sir Garnet Wolseley. Although the Asante armies had withdrawn by the time it arrived in Cape Coast, Wolseley was determined to show what British military might could achieve. ‘King Coffee is too rich a neighbour to be left alone with his riches,’ observed the journalist Henry Stanley, who accompanied the expedition. The first columns left Cape Coast in December 1873 and reached the Pra River in January 1874. After attempts at a negotiated settlement failed, British forces advanced towards Kumasi. South of the capital, they encountered fierce resistance. When they finally entered Kumasi, the city was largely deserted. The asantehene and the bulk of his army had retreated, taking with them the Golden Stool, but leaving behind a palace still filled with a huge amount of treasure. The palace was plundered, then blown up; the stone-built Palace of Culture was also destroyed; royal tombs were desecrated; and the rest of the city was set ablaze. Leaving Kumasi an inferno, Wolseley led his force back to the coast.

  Apart from demanding an indemnity of 50,000 ounces of gold, the British then left the Asante government largely to its own devices. Its military power had been broken. It descended into a period of internal turmoil, plagued by dissension and years of civil war. Its former coastal provinces were incorporated by the British into the Gold Coast Colony, administered from headquarters at Christiansborg Castle in Accra, which the British had purchased from the departing Danes in 1851.

  But then another threat to Asante’s independence emerged during Europe’s scramble for Africa. Worried about French activities on Asante’s western borders and German activities to the east, the British in 1890 tried to persuade Asantehene Agyeman Prempe to accept British protection. Prempe, however, declined the offer:

  The suggestion that Ashanti in its present state should come and enjoy the protection of Her Majesty the Queen and Empress of India I may say this is a matter of very serious consideration, and which I am happy to say that we have arrived at this conclusion, that my kingdom of Ashanti will never commit itself to such a policy; Ashanti must remain independent as of old, at the same time to remain friendly with all white men.

  The British government countered in 1894 with a proposal that Prempe should receive a British Resident at Kumasi in return for stipends for himself and his leading chiefs. But Prempe and the Asantemanhyiamu rejected the idea. In 1895, when reports reached London that Prempe was trying to forge an alliance with Samori in neighbouring Bonduku, the British government took a more aggressive approach and sent an ultimatum to Prempe to accept a British Resident and demanded payment in full of the war indemnity of 1874. In December, a British expeditionary force landed at the Cape Coast. When news reached Kumasi, the Golden Stool and other valuables were taken away and hidden. Rather than fight another war, Prempe made no attempt to oppose the invading army. He was duly taken prisoner and sent into exile.

  The British built a fort at Kumasi and posted a British Resident there, but they had no real claim to authority over metropolitan Asante. Resentment over British occupation and the forced exile of the asantehene continued to fester. In an attempt to bolster their legitimacy as rulers, the British began to search for the Golden Stool, believing that by capturing it, they would enhance their claim of sovereignty. As Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain subsequently explained to parliament in London: ‘In the opinion of the tribe, and according to the custom of the tribe, the possession of the Stool gives supremacy . . . Therefore it was of the greatest importance to get hold of this symbol of sovereignty, if we could possibly do it.’

  Determined to break Asante resistance once and for all, the governor of the Gold Coast Colony, Sir Frederick Hodgson, travelled to Kumasi in March 1900 to tell a gathering of chiefs and nobles that Agyeman Prempe would never be allowed to return to Asante. In a show of discourtesy, he remained seated on a chair, telling them: ‘The paramount authority of Ashanti is now the great Queen of England.’ He also insisted that war reparations would have to be paid. And then he demanded that the Golden Stool be surrendered to the British authorities. ‘The Queen is entitled to the Stool; she must receive it,’ he said. According to African translators, he went on: ‘Where is the Golden Stool? I am the representative of the Paramount Power. Why have you relegated me to this ordinary chair? Why did you not take the opportunity of my coming to Kumasi to bring the Golden Stool for me to sit down?’

  Despite the insults, the Asante chiefs remained composed, listening in silence. But within hours they met in secret to decide on war. Three days after Hodgson’s piece of provocation, he found himself under siege in Kumasi, along with an assortment of British troops, African auxiliaries, missionaries and their wives. It took eight months for British forces to fully subdue the Asante uprising. Asante was then annexed ‘by right of conquest’ and ruled by governors from the Gold Coast Colony. An Order in Council on 26 September 1901 stated: ‘The territories in West Africa . . . heretofore known as Ashanti have been conquered by His Majesty’s forces, and it has seemed expedient to His Majesty that the said territories should be annexed to and should henceforth form part of His Majesty’s dominions.’ A cannon was fired in Kumasi at noon every day to remind its residents of Britain’s occupation. The Golden Stool remained hidden.

  PART XI

  44

  NEW FLOWER

  Accustomed to centuries of invasion by Muslim adversaries, the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia faced a new menace during Europe’s scramble for Africa: Italy. When the Egyptians withdrew their garrison from Massawa in 1885, at Britain’s behest, the emperor, Johannes IV, had hoped to reclaim the Red Sea port for Abyssinia. It provided Abyssinia with its main outlet to the outside world. A treaty signed by Britain in June 1884 – the Treaty of Adwa – had given Johannes grounds for optimism. In exchange for agreeing to facilitate the withdrawal through Abyssinia of Egyptian garrisons in eastern Sudan, besieged by the Mahdi’s army, Britain had promised to secure free transit through Massawa of all merchandise, including arms and ammunition. But in October 1884, Britain had then reached a secret agreement to allow Italy to take possession of Massawa in order to prevent the French from getting it and thereby gain a route to the Nile.

  The Italian flag was duly raised in Massawa in February 1885. Encouraged by the outcome of the Berlin conference, the Italians soon began to push inland to the Bogos lowlands and probe southwards along the coast. In a letter sent to Queen Victoria in April 1886, Johannes complained: ‘As for our friendship with the Italians, until now we had no enmity, but they have taken my land when I did not take theirs, so I should like to know how to make friends with them.’ When an Italian contingent occupied Sahati, an outpost halfway between Massawa and the highland town of Asmara, Johannes’s general, Ras Alula, went on the attack, asserting it was Abyssinian territory. At the battle of Dogali in January 1887, Ras Alula’s forces annihilated a column of 550 Italians dispatched from Massawa to relieve Sahati. Shocked by the disaster, the Italians resolved to fortify their small colony with roads, bridges, fortresses and the construction of a fifteen-mile railway between Massawa and Sahati. A 20,000 strong expeditionary force was sent to occupy the area.

  Johannes marshalled an army to confront the Italians but faced a simultaneous threat from Mahdists invading from Sudan. In January 1888, a Mahdist army reached Gondar, sacked the city and burned down most of its churches. Facing war on two fronts, Johannes chose to fight the Mahdists. In March 1889, he marched at the head of 100,000 men to take the Mahdist town of Metemma. But on the verge of victory, he was mortally wounded. Three days after his death, the Mahdists intercepted a party of nobles and priests taking his corpse back to Abyssinia. His head was severed and sent to Omdurman.

  On learning of Johannes’s death, Menelik, the king of Shoa, immediately proclaimed himself negus
negast, king of kings. During the eleven years that he had ruled Shoa, he had extended his territory southwards, conquering Oromo neighbours, capturing the Muslim city of Harar and developing his own trade links to the Gulf of Tadjoura, where the French had established a coaling station along the route to Indo-China. Always in need of money, he allowed his southern domain to be ruthlessly exploited for livestock and for slaves for export across the Red Sea. An admirer of modern technology, he drew widely on European assistance to help him acquire arms and develop trade. One of his most trusted aides was a young Swiss engineer, Alfred Ilg, who served as architect, builder, plumber, medical consultant, concessionaire and foreign affairs adviser, remaining with Menelik for twenty-nine years. Menelik also struck up a close friendship with an Italian explorer, Count Pietro Antonelli, who had arrived in Shoa in 1879 to join a mission set up by the Italian Geographical Society three years before. In 1883, Antonelli persuaded Menelik to open up a trade link with the Italian port at Assab and in exchange arranged for the delivery of two thousand Remington rifles. For the next six years, Antonelli served as Italy’s official representative in Shoa.

  In 1886, Menelik moved his headquarters from the mountain range in Entoto to a new site in a valley south of the mountains which he named Addis Ababa or New Flower. It was from there, on the death of Johannes, that he claimed his right to the imperial throne. There was little resistance. Menelik rapidly set out to tour the northern regions in force, receiving the submission of local officials. Henceforth, the empire was run not from Tigray but from Menelik’s sprawling encampment at Addis Ababa.