The Rest Is History - 269: Ghana: The Ashanti Empire

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

On today's World Cup episode, Tom and Dominic discuss the Ashanti Empire. Tune in to hear about the Anglo-Ashanti wars, the Golden Stool, the role of Robert Baden-Powell and much, much more. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Our observations had taught us to conceive a spectacle exceeding our original expectations, but they had not prepared us for the extent and display of the scene which here burst upon us. An area nearly a mile in circumference was crowded with magnificence and novelty. At least a hundred large umbrellas or canopies which could shelter thirty persons were sprung up and down by the bearers with brilliant effect. The superior captains in attendance wore a shanty cloth of extravagant price.

These were of incredible size and weight, and thrown over the shoulder exactly like a Roman toga. A small silk fillet generally encircled their temples, and massy gold necklaces intricately wrought suspended Moorish charms. Gold and silver pipes and canes called the eye in every direction. Wolves and ram's heads as large as life, life cast in gold were suspended from their gold handled swords so that tom holland was t.e bowditch who was the first englishman to leave a written account of the court of the king of ashanti after his visit in may 1817 and we're in the middle of our great world cup odyssey, aren't we, through the countries that have qualified for the tournament in Qatar. We are talking about the Ashanti Kingdom. So this

is the episode for Tom? For Ghana. For Ghana. And I will confess right away that I know genuinely nothing at all about this subject. So I'm greatly looking forward to being educated, Tom, are you? Well, I'm not going to pretend that I am in any way a specialist in the study of the Ashanti Empire either. Actually, ever since I read Dan Morris's book, Heaven's Command, which describes the British expeditions against this extraordinary empire in what is now Ghana, Ashanti land. And I guess the Ashanti are probably up there with the Zulus as the African empire that most impressed the British. And because the British tended to write the earliest reports, they're a kind of very vivid record. Today is Ghana. And as you will know ghana is

the oldest football association in africa 1920 so ghana is is the coast is the gold coast yeah and so it's a place where ever since the the arrival of the portuguese you have the interface with europeans there is this kind of fascinating synergy and also the forest of what is now ghana is linked to um the lands further north, so the Islamic world too. So this is kind of through the early modern period, there is this kind of interface between the European powers on the coast, the Islamic civilizations to the north, and the various peoples who are kind of moving in to what will become Ghana. And of all these people, the Ashanti are by far the most famous and in terms of building

huge empires and constructing cities, the most impressive. So where did the Ashanti come from? Well, the Ashanti themselves have various traditions. So one of the traditions is that they fell from the sky. Another tradition is that they emerged from holes in the ground. Okay. And another tradition is that they emerged from a lake called Bazomptwe, which James Morris describes as a sinister tree infested mere, which intermittently belched gas and mud from its recesses. And actually, the tradition is that it's not just the Ashanti who come from Lake Bazomptwe, but the entire human race. So what you get with those three traditions is the idea that the Ashanti have always been in Ghana, whether they've fallen from the sky, whether they've emerged from a lake, or whether they've emerged from the ground.

And actually, one of the things that strikes me reading about the Ashanti is the kind of the trace, the echoes of Greek or Roman traditions. I mean, obviously they're completely coincidental, but the Athenians had this idea that they, what they called autochthonous, that they were sprung from the soil and that this gave them a peculiar hold on the land that they lived in. So that was part of the Ashanti tradition. But there is also a tradition that they came from the Savannah to the north. And that is obviously what, likelier than the fact that they came from the the savannah to the north and that is obviously what likelier than the fact that they fell from the sky or that they came from the lake probably and just to uh so the coming from the savannah to the north can you put us um in time a little bit more specifically so

when are we talking about probably over the course of the middle ages right that's quite a long period yeah i i mean because because there are no real written records about it. The archaeology is difficult because there's rainforest everywhere. So it's difficult to really say anything more certain than the fact that various peoples, various groupings are migrating into this region and indeed over the whole of all along know, all along the coast, not just into Ghana. Over the course of the Middle Ages. And with the coming of the Portuguese, you start to get a degree of state building because the Portuguese are buyers for slaves and for gold. Yeah, yes.

And so a kind of international process of exchange is starting to build up and you need structures in place to be able to ship these things to the coast yes and then to sell them and then to regulate their trade or whatever i suppose exactly and so by the 17th century there is this uh this people this empire called the denkira and they are occupying the Gold Coast in Ghana and the kind of region inland. And they are the dominant power. And there are various kind of other peoples who are subordinate to them. And among these people are the people who will become the Ashanti. I'm going to call them the Ashanti throughout, but they only get to be called the Ashanti later on for a reason that we'll come to. So by the 17th century, an Ashanti state is starting

to incubate within the broader empire of the Denkira. And there are all kinds of stories told about this process that for anyone familiar with Greek or Roman mythology would be familiar. So they talk about how their state is founded by two twins called Twm and Antwi. And the kind of echoes of Romulus and Remus there are, you know, suggestive. Because these are, I guess, kind of primal legends. There are only so many origin stories that you can construct. But what's clear is that by the 17th century, a bit like the Denkira further south, the people who will become the Ashanti are starting to consolidate. And again, it's basically, I think, because with the introduction of large quantities of iron,

it's possible for them to start clearing villages. So you start to get this pattern of very thick jungle and open patches where the soil is kind of very red. And that means that they can start to plant crops. And this is a period in the 17th century when the produce of the Americas is starting to be introduced, and particularly maize. And so I remember when we did our episodes on Portugal, somebody on Twitter said, I hope you're going to talk about how the Portuguese introduced maize into Africa and how this became the staple crop. And we didn't, did we? But no, we didn't. I mean, did the staple crop and we didn't did we but no we didn't i did well because i didn't i mean did you know that i didn't know i didn't i didn't know that so this is our opportunity to uh to make amends for that um but it's it's not so it's not just maize that's being introduced it's avocados tomatoes pineapples oranges all that kind of stuff they

come from america's yeah i didn't know that, Tom. Well, this is an education, Dominic. But you will know that, of course, that the other thing is the gold. Yeah, hence the Gold Coast. Yeah, so even if the people who will become the Ashanti are being obliged to kind of hand gold over to their superiors, to their masters on the coast, the Denkira, they're still getting a bit of it. So the fruits of that is starting to percolate back. And basically by the 1670s, they're kind of on the move, but they're still not really ready to make a pitch for independence, still less for conquest. So in 1680, they have a king who gets killed in battle. And there's a rather sad entry in history that was published in Ghana in the 1970s that said he was buried in an area close to the present day Barclays Bank, but his head was taken away by the Denkira. So that was rather sad. And a kind of reminder of the fact that this is a very

dangerous world where attempts at rebellion against Imperial Labour Lords are not going to go down well. Although interestingly, you talked about battles battles partly because so much of the areas is as you said thick dense forest presumably these battles are quite small scale by early modern european standards are they yes but as we will see that tends to change under the ashanti right who one of their slogans is that they have teeming thousands. So they are very proud of the enormous numbers of warriors that they can call upon. Anyway, so the guy who's buried close to Barclays Bank

and whose head gets taken away, he was a guy called Abira Yeboah, and he has a nephew called Osei Tutu. And he is the guy who is commemorated by the Ashanti as the founder of their greatness. He's the Cyrus the Great. Yes. And again, there are kind of echoes of maybe more biblical legends. So the story is that his mother was barren for many, many years, couldn't have a child. And then she goes to the shrine of a very powerful river and

prays to the God there. And miraculously, she becomes pregnant. So that's a kind of staple of biblical stories of prophets. So he is given as a hostage to the Denkira. And this is a bit like, I guess, Philip of Macedon going to Thebes you know he's treated quite well you know he's treated as a prince he's he's brought up oh you know a bit like i don't know barbarians going to the court of consented april he's he's brought up by the denkira in their ways um and in fact he ends up as a shield bearer to the king so this is a great honor and this clearly gives him the chance to study the way that the denkira fight so he's studying the denkira so it's very philip of macedon because that's very yes philip were studied the themans didn't he um and used his knowledge and that's

fascinating yeah or say arminius the uh the the german auxiliary who ends up wiping out the three legions um a virus yeah so it's a standard kind of imperial technique and the denkira are clearly doing it however i'll say tutu is a naughty boy and he gets embroiled in a in a sex scandal when one of the princesses gets pregnant. There is much to do and he has to run away. So he escapes. And he's now very much on his uppers because he's being hunted by the Denkira. He can't go back. He'd take up his princely status. Seems like he's burned his bridges.

But then he meets a remarkable man called Okonfo Anokye. So if I'll say Tutu is King Arthur, Okonfyo Anokye is Merlin or Gandalf. He is a man who has deep, deep command of magic. And the story is that he was born with the white tail of a cow in one hand and totem poles in the other. And these are signs of his remarkable destiny. And it probably won't surprise you to learn that his mother, who had a peculiarly coloured hand,

had been executed by the King of Denkira as a witch. She had a peculiarly coloured hand. That's the story. That's the story. Yes. What was the colour? Not sure. Maybe a birthmark on her hand? you and your withering skepticism okay fine i'll just believe it i shed a green hand let's crack on so with the backing of this guy with his command of of deep magic i'll say tutu

is able to start thinking well i'm going to get my own back on the Denkira and I'm not only going to get my own back, I'm going to take them over. And he recognises that to do that, he has to forge a single people out of the many different kind of tribal entities, different villages, different groupings that are scattered over the forest. forest and each grouping that the head of each grouping brilliantly the marker of his power is a stool okay they're absolute masters of uh woodwork in fact their craftsmen are are sensational and so the stools are often beautifully you know the the more beautiful the stool the more prestigious uh you are but um basically there can be only one and so um a confo innocue burns all the stools of all the uh you know all the various tribal leaders he

incinerates them as a marker that there can be only one and then a spectacular miracle there are sacrifices are performed and the blood steams up to the sky. Sacrifices of animals, presumably. Well, possibly or possibly not. We'll come to that later. Okay. Yeah. The drums quicken and out of the blood of the sacrifices, a black cloud seems to gather.

And it's not immediately obvious to people. And then, you know, only a few kind of pointing out saying, what's this cloud? And then it gets thicker and thicker and thicker, blacker than a thundercloud. And then thunder starts to rumble from out of it. And then thick white dust emerges from the cloud and then falling very, very slowly, turning like a seed in a breeze, know dropping from a tree do you know what descended what what appeared is it a stool it is a stool dominic and it glints with gold and yet it's not entirely made of gold so it's an extraordinary thing because below the gold it is

that there is exquisitely fabulously carved wood it fell slow, you know, like this kind of seed. Drops, it drops, it drops. And then do you know into whose lap it falls? King Arthur. Yeah, Osei Tutu falls into his lap. And this is a sign. And there's no doubt that this happened, right, Tom? I mean, this absolutely happened.

This absolutely happened, as also is the next thing that happened, because Akamfo Onokye takes the stool and he puts it down, and then he does what I think anyone in this situation would do, which is to get an albino to sit on it. Obviously, obviously. And the albino man just vanishes. He just goes like that, and he's gone. And he vanished.

He sat on the stool and vanished. Yes. And the reason for this is that he's been swallowed up by the stool and has given the stool his soul. So now the stool has a soul. Of the albino. Yeah. It's a bit like the wishing chair in Enid Blyton that had a soul. This is now the soul of this new people that has been forged by this.

Yeah. And so the stool is the golden stool it's called the the sicker door coffee the golden stool created on a friday and so this is now the great it's more than an emblem because it has this living soul uh and from that point on dominic no albino man was ever put to death in the shanty empire oh that's a nice so that's a nice touch yeah um so so they've got that they've got've got the golden stool created on a Friday now. So that's tremendous. But now they need a capital.

And so Osetutu does this in a very sensible way. He plants a tree in three locations and he waits to see which one is going to grow the fastest. And the tree that grows the fastest is a place that comes to be called Kumase. And so this becomes the capital. And this is the place that Bowditch will come, who described it in the passage that you first read. So they've got the stool, now they've got the capital, now they need an army. And what happens next is very, very Spartan. So if I say Tutu is a bit

like King Arthur, he's also a bit like Lycurgus, the guy who establishes the Spartan constitution and turns them into a kind of great war machine. What he does is to drill them and to make them kind of professional. Their entire focus is going to be war. And because they're drilled, they can kind of maneuver. And again, a bit like the Spartans, a bit like the Zulu, they're very, very adept at holding a center and then kind of like the Zulus called the bullhorns kind of curling around and flanking. Enveloping their opponents. Yeah. And the Ashanti compare their army to a porcupine because, you know, it's kind of the spike bristling with spears. But also with guns because they are, you know, it's not just spears.

It's absolutely guns. They're practicing with guns. They're sourcing guns from the coast. As I say, are they trading directly with the Portuguese as well, or do they have to go through their imperial overlords for that? It's not entirely clear. As I say, I'm not entirely on top of the trade mechanics of this, and I'm not entirely on top of exactly when it is that this war machine becomes fully equipped with rifles. But basically, Dominic, the key is it's very, very frightening and very, very menacing.

Okay, I'll bear that in mind. And essentially, the point comes where they think we're ready to take on the Denkira and to throw the Denkiran yoke off. But to begin with, I'm afraid to say it goes very badly for them. Fortunately, however, Nokia is able to step in and do his magic stuff. So he uses his magic to secure the defection of various Denkiran generals. So they come over with their their troops um and the other thing that he does is very cool is that um he turns himself into a vulture and he scatters the the body parts of one of the uh one of one of their own generals who's fallen in battle um uh

scatters it all over the enemy oh my god that was very off-putting yeah it is off-putting. Yeah, it is off-putting. And it's not good for the Denkirin morale at all. And even more impressively, he shits in the eye of the enemy general. In his capacity as a vulture. Yes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, of course. I mean, he wouldn't. And so the net effect of this is that at a place called Fayasi, they win a tremendous victory.

They basically wipe out the Denkira. And the Denkiran king, he was so confident of victory that he wasn't even in the battle. And he was off playing a kind of chess a bit further back. And so he gets captured red-handed. And he gets brought before, I say, Tutu. And he behaves very, very well, very bravely. He embraces, willingly embraces death.

And he says, my crown is lost. My empire is lost because of war. And in the Tui language, Asha means war. And Ti apparently means because of. I'm not pretending I'm in any way familiar with the language if you have any ghanaian listeners i i apologize for my how does it compare with your portuguese tom i think slightly better i think slightly better but you put so you put uh and t together you get a shanty so a shanty literally means because of war. So it's an empire.

The very name of it is expressive of military power. And so the Danquean king dies saying, I die because of war, you know, Ashanti. So the king gets his head chopped off, and then he gets his body parts get divided up, and they get kind of scattered all over this emergent empire. And again, this is strong stuff. So the Ashanti are born. The Ashanti are born.

And basically, as the Denkirans had ruled the people who become the Ashanti, so now the Ashanti are ruling the Denkirans. And this gives them direct access to the coast. Yeah. And so this is all entirely good news. Excellent. And I'd like to think there are more delights coming in the second half. Are there? Lots.

Yes. Brilliant. Lots. Great. All right. We'll see you after the break. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

So, welcome back to The Rest Is History. we are talking about the ashanti and tom the ashanti have been born because of war what happens next they've got their empire uh presumably it's strength to strength is it yeah they just they because their army is so efficient much more efficient than the denkiran army had been and so that now they've got the preponderance, they can just basically swallow everyone else up. And so they swallow up more and more peoples, more and more kingdoms, and they established this huge empire across much of what is now Ghana.

So can you give us any dates? Yeah, so we're now into the 18th century. We're into the 18th century now. I would guess we're talking 1730s, something like that. So to give that a bit of context for British listeners, so this is the period of the ascendancy of Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister, the Industrial Revolution, I suppose. And meanwhile, in what is now gone of the Ashanti Empire,

it's kind of strengthening its grip. That's basically the picture, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, I suppose it's the period out in the broader world when the British are starting to come to power. And this is going to be quite an important part of the story because the British, along with the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, they all have kind of trading ports, forts along the Gold Coast. But it's over the course of the 18th century

that the British start to monopolise that. So the other European powers start to fade away. So by the 19th century, it's basically under British control. And that's going to be a very important part of the story later on. But because those European powers are there, the Ashanti can now profit directly from the trade in gold and the trade in slaves. So it's gold and slaves, and that's the underpinning of their power. And it makes them very, very rich. And it enables them to fashion the incredibly sophisticated society that Bowditch sees when he comes at the beginning of the 19th century. Right, the umbrellas, the wolf's heads,

all that stuff. Yeah. And so the umbrellas and all that kind of stuff. The Ashanti kings employ Muslims from the north to kind of run their bureaucracy because they're obviously literate. Yeah. But they themselves are not interested in that. And so they need markers of status because this is actually a very sophisticated political system. And it's quite an oppressive system. So there are, you know, there are you know there are spy the kings employ spies everywhere they're kind of constantly checking reporting back to the king

what's going on but because it's non-literate it's it's dependent on visual markers of status right uh and and so this is very important and so all the kind of, you know, the staffs, the swords, the gold pectorals, all that kind of stuff, you know, these aren't randomly chosen. They are as significant as similar such things would be in, say, a Byzantine court. So this is the extraordinary civilization that Bowditch and the British come across in the early 19th century. And when you say come across, Tom, just a quick question. So the Europeans are meeting the Ashanti on the coast? They are. The Ashanti control that trade, but the Europeans have not yet

really penetrated into the interior. Is that right? Exactly. By and large? Yeah, exactly, because it's dense, dense forest, and the Ashanti are very intimidating. So it's a kind of dangerous thing to do. But by 1820, the first British consul arrives in Kumasi.

So the British Empire is starting to slightly spread its wings. Yes. And the British have a very ambivalent attitude towards the Ashanti. Because on the one hand, they find it hugely, hugely impressive, as you could tell from the passage of Bowditch's account that you read. So, Comarcy is a very well-planned capital. It's very clean. Its streets are very spacious. British observers are hugely impressed by the toilets, which they say every house has.

They're kind of flushed out daily with boiling water. There's a daily litter collection. It's very impressive. And there are buildings in Kumasi of a kind that Europeans would be impressed by. So there's a palace built of stone that was built in 1822. The doorways, the windows are sheathed in so it's it's a kind of really very very very impressive the laws are quite exacting so uh no one is allowed to whistle no one's allowed to smoke a pipe and do you know the penalty for sneezing death death yeah death for sneezing

yeah so it's it's no nonsense, sensible policies, law and order. The British Observer is very impressed with the cleanliness of the upper classes. Well, they're not sneezing, I mean, among other things. And every morning they're washing. They're washing themselves with soap and water, and they are perpetually cleaning their teeth. And this is seen as splendid. But the masses, the British complain, are very dirty.

But, I mean, british are obviously in no position to criticize because you could say exactly the same of britain so i mentioned the the denkir and king playing a game like chess yeah but he gets captured um and this is a game called awari and very popular i gather across central africa particularly associated with the Ashanti who are very, very good at it. They're spectacularly good at working gold, spectacularly good at working wood, as we see with all the various stools and so on. And their architecture is really very, very impressive. The British are inclined to see Africans as savages,

as people who have no sense of civilization. They cannot project that stereotype onto the Ashanti. The Ashanti are clearly hugely sophisticated, culturally adept people. However, there are also ways in which the British find the Ashanti not just off-putting, I think, but alarming. So you talked about slavery. There is a lot of slavery. And by the 1820s, this is the age of abolitionism in Britain. The Royal Navy is starting to patrol and try and get rid of slavery. And British hostility to the slave trade is obviously not good news for the Ashanti. So that's a source of tension. They're also very, very keen on conquering people.

And again, the British, with a hilarious display of hypocrisy, disapprove of this. They feel that the Ashanti are altogether too imperial. And there is also the issue of human sacrifice. So you asked about this earlier. Yeah. And I'm aware from having read about, say, the Aztecs, the Mexica, that narratives that Europeans have received. About, yes, can be very loaded, can't they?

Can be very loaded. And I don't know enough about the anthropology of this to say, but it does seem from the books that I've been reading about this, all of them, some of them were kind of written in the 1890s, right the way up to the 1980s. So I don't know what the latest thinking on this. So if there are people who can correct me on this, I'd be interested to hear it. But basically, human sacrifice kind of lies at the heart of the Ashanti state, because when they're about to go to war with the Denkira, so Andar Setutu, large numbers of warriors volunteer themselves to be sacrificed in order to guarantee victory, it is said. And it's this kind of offering of blood

that fertilizes the greatness of the Ashanti Empire. The albino bloke. I mean, presumably that's some folk memory of a sacrifice performed at a stall or something. Perhaps. And when kings die, there are a lot of slaves get kind of immolated, rather like the kind of Viking ship burial assumption that the kings should not go into the afterlife without a great train of slaves to follow them. So slaves and criminals, they all get butchered. There is scope there for the British to feel morally superior.

And I think throughout the 19th century, that is always a key motor for British imperial expansion. Obviously, there's greed, there's a desire to kind of seize control of trade routes, but there is also this kind of sense of moral superiority that is a kind of rocket fuel for for imperial expansion so the sort of counter i mean the example is david lewisting most famously isn't it um yeah so it's sort of people even if even if we might regard it now as hypocritical they at the time want to believe in a civilizing mission i suppose that's true isn't it i mean yes it's not i mean

they don't regard it themselves as pure hypocrisy do they well no they don't regard it themselves as pure hypocrisy, do they? Well, no, they don't regard it as hypocrisy. They regard slavery as an evil and that they see it as their mission to stamp it out. Yeah. And that's definitely, I mean, it's not just hypocrisy. I mean, it's not just a kind of cover. They passionately believe it. And an example of this is a man called Sir Charles McCarthy, who is the governor of the British territories along the Gold Coast. And he's an interesting... So he's actually Franco-Irish.

So I think his father was a French emigre from the Russian Revolution, and his mother, Dominic, was from Cork. So... Ah, very good. Very good stock there. And he's a very, very keen abolitionist. He corresponds with Wilberforce. He's very into all of that. And he feels that what the Ashanti are getting up to is very poor form. And so in 1823, he launches an expedition against them. But he doesn't take as many people as he should because he's complacent and overconfident.

And at a place called nasa man cow i hope i've pronounced that right he uh he gets ambushed and his head gets chopped off uh and his skull gets taken to uh kamasi and it's lined with gold and it's used as a drinking cup now it so often happens in history doesn't it i mean i'm thinking about all kinds of Bulgars and, you know, it's very petrified. It's very petrified behavior. Very petrified. Yes, it's very, very, very petrified behavior. So that hasn't gone well.

But then it's the Ashanti's turn to underestimate the British because they then attack the Gold Coast wanting to wipe, get rid of the Europeans altogether so that they can control the whole trade. And the British managed to stave off the attack with the help of the Den trade um and uh the british managed to stave off the attack with the help of the denkira so the denkira so there's a kind of tug of war now between the british and the the ashanti over who is going to be the preponderant imperial power and the denkira have decided that they'd rather side with the british than with with the ashanti

um and so by 1826 the british are able to to basically to force the Ashanti to a score draw. And they do this with the help of Congreve rockets, which are now kind of in their heyday and nothing that the Ashanti have seen before. And so they establish a river is kind of established as the markers between the two empires. And in 1831, that is confirmed as the border. And then over the course of the 19th century, it's trade and war. So the British do start to supply the Ashanti with the kind of the appurtenances of industrial civilization. And because the Ashanti are status obsessed, all these appurtenances take on tremendous kind of significance. They'll even have carriages.

There are no horses, but they'll get people to kind of draw them. And there's a British observer who describes going into the Stone Palace and having a look and saying that it's a bit like a gentleman's club, that there are copies of the times kind of scattered around. That seems strange. Yes. So it's a kind of curious mix. But at the same time that trade is. That seems so strange. Yes. So it's a kind of curious mix. But at the same time that trade is going on, wars are being fought. And over the course of the 19th century,

there are actually four more wars. And it's the last three that are really devastating for the Ashanti. Because by this point, Britain is at its imperial industrial heyday. And really the balance of power has shifted so dramatically in the favor of the British. And the Ashanti don't really understand this. They don't really appreciate this.

Because I think the Ashanti see the British as both perfidious and cowardly. And the British see the Ashanti as kind of just terrifying savages who need to be tamed. And neither characterization is a fair one. But by 1872, the Ashanti are still doing this kind of, oh, let's go off and raid the Gold Coast and see if we can conquer it. And this is a foolish thing to be doing in 1872.

And so they abortive attack, they get beaten off, and they steal some missionaries and take them off. And the guy who is in charge of reprisals is a man called Sir Garnet Wolseley. I mean, an enormously Victorian general. I mean, the essence of a Victorian general. The moustache, the ramrod back. Yeah. Sir Garnet Wolseley I mean an

absolutely towering figure and in Victorian popular culture and actually Tom you know Henry Morton Stanley um as in Dr Livingston he covered the third Anglo-Oceania war as a war correspondent so I suppose it's the 1870s and by that time you know Britain has really imperialism has become kind of pop culture in a way it has and so the whole thing is done as a as a kind of exemplary it's like a story and yeah and wolsey is aware the whole way through that the eyes of britain are upon him and so he is kind of behaving like the hero of of an exemplary military tale so he he sends an ultimatum to the Ashanti by traction

engine. Traction engine. Yeah. I mean, it's a tremendous thing. And the Ashanti are hugely unimpressed by it, it has to be said, and they reject the ultimatum. And so Wolsey prepares for battle. And in James Morris's accounts of this war, he has my favorite ever footnote. So he says, Sagarnet was quite certain of victory, but was resigned to the possibility of casualties, soldiers being made to die in action. And oh, Saganit wrote, how fortunate they are who do so, to which Morris attaches this footnote. In the event only 18 had the good luck to be killed. The 55 enjoyed the consolation of dying from disease. So it's, and as that implies, it's a route. The king flees Comarcy.

His noblemen flee it. Wolseley enters the city and is hugely impressed by it. Very, very struck by the sophistication of the architecture, the cleanliness of the streets, all that kind of stuff. However, there is also a lot that he is appalled by. And there's a brilliant account. So I will read some of the descriptions of what he found. So he found, it is reported, the great death drum decorated with human skulls and thigh bones. The stools that had belonged to the king's ancestors stood near it. And then outside the palace, this account claims, another spot that was visited was the death grove,

a gruesome hollow in the center of a clump of trees and tall reeds into which the bodies of the victims of human sacrifice were thrown. it was now nearly filled with their remains. So some people argue very bitterly about this now, don't they? They do. Some people say, well, this gives the light to the idea that the British were just evil militaristic bullies. And actually, the Ashanti weren't, you know, they weren't kindly social workers. And we shouldn't present

this in sort of um moralistic good and evil terms in which the British are the bad guys because they're the imperialists and then other people say oh but these accounts of the Ashanti are you know are loaded with uh with prejudice and actually the this is all nonsense and the British are making all this stuff up is there any do you have any sense of whether right i don't know maybe they are i mean as i say i i said earlier i'm not aware of the latest academic thinking on this but these are two empires and empires are founded on violence um and you know the british are more effective in their violence but the ashanti definitely you know i, I mean the whole, you know, they wouldn't have this empire unless they were very violent and

intimidating. It's, you know, that's the way empires are. Yeah. And, and, and we'll see is,

is appalled by, I mean, he was certainly, he, he is sufficiently appalled by what he finds there to blow it all up. So he lays death charges and then he retreats and the whole thing gets blown up. So, I mean, maybe it's just a random act of vandalism i would have thought it's unlikely

i mean it is definitely vandalism but i wouldn't thought he'd do it just for the fun of it right maybe he did i don't know i don't know i'm i'm very open to being corrected on this by people who know i mean the truth i suppose uh the truth is when this is absolutely one of those stories isn't it one of these stories of 19th century imperialism that people look at it through tinted spectacles that reflect their own political prejudices well i i mean i think there's a case for saying that perhaps uh you know i talked about how the the british and the shanti don't really understand each other but on another level you might say actually perhaps they they they understand each other better than we are qualified to do now because we are so instinctively anti-imperial you know wolsey admires the ashanti as an imperial people he admires their discipline he admires

their their courage he admires their character he recognizes them you know rather like the british recognize the zulus as worthy adversaries but he is also sufficiently self-confident in his own morality and in the morality of the empire that he represents for it never to cross his mind that blowing up you know the yeah the the sacred capital of of of a people might in any way perhaps be kind of echoing the very behavior that he's condemning yes so there are two more wars 189696, the king, the British grab him, they depose him, and they remove him to the Seychelles. And Baden-Powell is involved in that war, isn't he?

Correct. And this expedition is led by Robert Baden-Powell, who will go on to found the Scouts. So he removes the king, who's a man called Prempeh, and so he goes off to the Seychelles. You know, the worst places to be, I guess. I was about to say, people pay very good money for that these days but then Dominic in um 1900 yeah you have the war of the golden stool so our old friend

the golden stool is still very much on the scene very much on the scene the golden stool and does it end with the golden stool is that basically the yes it does it does because because the um the British governor of the gold coast goes to Comarcy and he's offended by, you know, he sees it as a kind of a superstitious totem and he's offended by it. And he says, what must I do to the man, whoever he is, who has failed to give to the queen, who is the paramount power in the country, the stool to which she is entitled? Where is the golden stool? Why am I not sitting on the golden stool at this moment? I am the representative of the paramount power in this country. Why have you relegated me to this chair? Why did you not take the opportunity of my coming to Comarcy to bring the golden stool and give it to me to sit upon? This is an absolutely mind

boggling story. Let me get this right. The British representative demanded to sit on the golden stool. They said no, presumably. Yes. Well, because nobody sits on the golden stool. The shanty king doesn't sit on the golden stool you know the british governor is coming and say i want to sit on the stool it's terrible you can't do that and that triggered a genuine war in which triggers a genuine war yes well because they're incredibly offended i mean it's the most offensive thing you could possibly do did the albino guy die in vain didn Didn't die so some British ass could sit on. Yeah. So, Tom, I mean, yet again, I can see both sides in this story.

Yeah, I'm just looking at it now. I've just got the Bodleian website up here. Thousands of people died. 3,000 people or something. Yeah, it's extraordinary. And large numbers of the Chanty elite they they get rounded up and taken off the seychelles as well uh and the golden stall is hidden so the british don't get their hands on it and kind of ship it off to the british museum or whatever so you know

right yeah they're obviously itching to do yes yeah so in the 1920s it's found by um a shanty workman who instead of showing it the respect that they should do they strip it of its gold and this causes of i mean you know fury so there the respect that they should do, they strip it of its gold. And this causes, I mean, you know, fury. So there's demands that they be put to death. But by this point, the British have learned their lesson. They understand, you know, that they're dealing with something, dare I say, sacral. And so they don't consent to have the Ashanti put to death,

the workmen who've stolen it, but they have sent them into exile. And they issue a formal promise to respect the stool and they and they do crikey and in uh in 1933 uh prempay the second is he's been elected as king a couple of years earlier he returns from the seychelles and he becomes king in the traditional ritual in which the golden stool plays the starring role. But he also becomes the leader of a Boy Scout troop. And so there, perhaps, you have a moment where you see the fusion, the integration of these two great empires, these two sacred traditions meeting and mixing. And to this day, there is an Ashanti king, constitutional monarch.

So the ashanti the ashanti kingdom i did not know that yeah so it's it's it's ongoing i think it's a you know it's um it's a remarkable story oh my words i've just looked him up autumn fuo nana osse to to the second yeah so he's named after the founder of the uh he's a Freemason. Tom! I didn't know that. He's the sword bearer of... That's very disappointing. He's the sword bearer of the United Grand Lodge of England. No, I mean, there's all sorts of things going on here, aren't there?

I mean, there's Boy Scouts, Freemasons... Yeah. Golden Stools. Yeah. Gully. Yeah. It's all going on. It is all going on.

It's very Anglo-ish ante. His jewels were stolen from a hotel in oslo i'm just reading bits of the internet i didn't know that i didn't know that but on the subject of kind of anglo um ashanti fusion i'm sure that this is also why the ghanaian uh football association is so old so 1920 when the golden stool was was recaptured was rediscovered. So, yeah. So anyway, I hope you've enjoyed that. So interesting. So interesting. And as, you know, let's be honest, we're not Ashanti experts by any means,

but it's a classic example, isn't it? But it's a classic example of those historical blind spots that people have because, you know, sub-Saharan African history, pre-colonialism is so little known outside Africa, isn't it? Well, it's the lack of written evidence. Lack of written sources, yeah. Which is basically, I guess, why it's only in the early modern period when you start to get European accounts that you have some sense

of these extraordinary states that are presumably emerging all the time. We just don't know about them. Fascinating. Well, thank you, Tom. As a great great man would put it that was an absolute tour de force thank you i know i really enjoyed that i really enjoyed that and as we always say the beauty of this series is we get to do um subjects that wouldn't necessarily have occurred to us trapped in our very anglo-saxon kind of mindset so it's fun to do genuinely global history tom genuinely history dominic yes we have all kinds of treats to come so thanks again to tom and bye-bye bye-bye

thanks for listening to the rest is history episodes, early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com.

That's therestisentertainment.com.