Anglo‐Asante Wars (1823–1831, 1863–1864, 1873–1874, 1896, 1900)

Abstract The Kingdom of Asante, whose empire stretched from the rainforests in the heart of what is today the nation of Ghana in West Africa into the savannah far to the north, resisted European encroachment throughout most of the nineteenth century. With a territory of some 140,000 sq miles, Asante, with its capital at Kumasi, had long been a regional power. The state had been founded as a confederacy of vassal kingdoms in 1701 under the rule of King Osei Tutu I. The symbol of royal sovereignty was the Golden Stool, which was believed to hold the soul of the Asante people and over which all kings were lowered and raised three times without touching it upon their accession to the throne. The mistaken British belief that the Golden Stool was an actual throne and that, once their armies had seized control over Asante, it should be surrendered so that their royal governors could sit upon it, would lead to conflict with the Asante in 1900.