The Structure of Greater Ashanti

The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)
Author(s): Kwame Arhin

Source: The Journal of African History, Vol. 8, No. 1 (1967), pp. 65-85
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/180052
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Journal of African History, vIII, I (1967), pp. 65-85 65
Printed in Great Britain
THE STRUCTURE OF GREATER ASHANTI
(1700-1824)
BY KWAME ARHIN
'If my messengers go to Cape Coast fort, and if the

gold, and casks of goods, then I can't take that, but
books.' Osei Tutu Kwame.
SINCE T. H. Bowdich and

traditions of Ashanti,' her
received considerable attent
journalists, professional s
academic ones-who have sin
in Ashanti-British affairs.
these writer has been that t
inland peoples were raided f
were attacked to clear the p
the articles acquired from th
ammunition to facilitate th
What I should like to call
history was first propoun
A. B. Ellis3 and has recen
Fage wrote:
The defeat of Denkyera had b

inexhaustible demand for slav
Gold Coast. Their conquest of
large extent inspired by the
money into the pockets of the
also enabled them to secure gu
which provided them with m
also with a protected market i
European imports.4
This, of course, is no more th

deliberately became a slave-
could hardly have been mor
but profit, for which they
1 T. E. Bowdich, A Mission fro

Dupuis, Journal of Residence in A
2 Brodie Cruickshank, Eighteen
3 Sir A. B. Ellis, A History of t
4 J. D. Fage, Introduction to the
5 W. E. F. Ward, A History of G
5 AH VIII
66 KWAME ARHIN
Fage accordingly thought of the Ashanti state as a vast 'organization for

slave-raiding and trading'.6
In considering the barbaric theory of the Ashanti wars, I shall argue from
an assumption of the correctness of Max Weber's general theory of political
expansion which states:
One might be inclined to believe that the formation as well as the expansion of
Great Power Structures is always and primarily determined economically. The
assumption that trade, especially if it is intensive, and if it already exists in an area,
is the normal pre-requisite and the reason for its political unification might
readily be generalized. In individual cases this assumption does actually hold...
Closer attention, however, may often reveal that this coincidence is not a necessary
one, and that this causal nexus by no means always points in a single direction.7
Weber shows that economic and political causes of expansion may be

inextricably interwoven, and even that an economic superstructure may be
erected on a political foundation.
This is not that far removed from the case of Ashanti unless one assumes
that European and African political processes are essentially different. There
is enough evidence on which the view may be advanced that the Ashanti
wars represented a political expansionary process which, starting from the
immediate Kumasi area, later stretched out to include those peoples with
whom the Ashantis enjoyed a large degree of cultural homogeneity. On this
view European trade was a facilitating, and not a causal, factor in the
organization of what I have called Greater Ashanti. The evidence I have
in mind is the sort of which Ernst Cassirer speaks, but which is normally
rejected as not offering conclusive evidence for the historian. This is oral
tradition, which is embodied in social and political institutions, in 'religious
rites and ceremonies',8 and often attested to by such concrete evidence as
war prizes and artistic creations. In preliterate societies that 'undying
dialogue between the past and present' which E. H. Carr suggests con-
stitutes history,9 goes on in a more intensive manner because the past is, so to
speak, written in periodic ceremonies scrupulously performed. In the case
of Ashanti, and in this way, history is re-enacted, reinterpreted and trans-
mitted in the Adai festivals every forty days and in the Odwira10 festivals
every year.
I wish to consider in this paper the principles on which the Ashantis
sought to organize some of their conquered territories, for the light which
6 J. D. Fage, op. cit. 97.

7 H. H. Gerth, and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London,
1947), I62.
8 Ernst Cassirer, Essay on Man (Yale University Press, 1962), 173.
9 E. H. Carr, What is History? (Penguin, I964), 30.
10 For accounts of the Ashanti Adai and Odwira festivals see R. S. Rattray, Ashanti
(Oxford, 1927). For a sociological analysis, see K. A. Busia, The Position of the Chief in the
Modern Political System of Ashanti (Oxford, 195I), ch. ii. During these ceremonies, the
past was not merely recited; it was dramatized, and casts of heads of slain chiefs and other
war relics were paraded for all to see.
THE STRUCTURE OF GREATER ASHANTI (I700-I824) 67
they may throw on the meaning of the Ashanti wars. 'Greater Ashanti' is
used instead of 'empire' because I am not yet clear whether the territorial
results of the Ashanti wars can be called an empire, whereas it does seem
that the organization of some of these territories implied a definite con-
ception of the Ashanti expansion as embracing a people essentially one,
with traditions of one origin and with clan ties. The relative success or
otherwise of these measures, though interesting, must be considered
separately, since it is at the moment only peripheral to our purposes here.
What it is desirable to examine is the set of relations that the Ashanti
sought to create between the king of Ashanti and the chiefs of some of the
conquered territories. It is considered that this set of relations can be
abstracted from the measures that the Ashantis adopted in the intercourse
between themselves and those territories. It is material in such an exercise
to discuss the factors that conditioned Ashanti attitudes to the various
subdued territories for, to appreciate the Ashanti efforts, it is necessary to
look at them in the time perspective. One must appreciate the background
to Ashanti expansion and the context of the Ashanti military excursions.
The background is the pre-I7oo Ashanti tradition, and the context the
position of the Ashanti in relation to their neighbours, including the
European traders in the forts of trade along the Gold Coast.
The following points will be considered: the pre-17oo Ashanti tradition;
the context, and the sequence, of Ashanti military excursions; the various
territories with which the king of Ashanti maintained ties as the result of
Ashanti warfare by the year I820, when Joseph Dupuis visited Kumasi and
subsequently wrote his Journal; a classification of these territories according
to the ties maintained with them; measures of integration of some of the
territories; and the factors that affected the determination of the sort of ties
maintained with a conquered territory. Conclusions will be drawn from
these discussions on the meaning of the Ashanti wars. I shall use the
normal written sources to be mentioned in due course, and also information
that I have been able to collect during visits to Ashanti and beyond.
Bowdich,"l Dupuis,12 and later Ashanti traditions all assert that Ashanti
expansion was proceeding apace before I700. 'Ashanti' in this period is
to be used to include principally the Amantuo, groups of autonomous
Ashanti states united by kinship (clan) ties between their heads. The chiefs
of Kumasi, Dwaben, Bekwai, Kokofu and Nsuta all belonged to the Oyoko
clan and were clan (if not closer) brothers.l3 The core of these states,
segments of the Oyoko clan, migrated from the Adansi-Akrokerri area14
and founded their settlements close together in their present habitation.
This migration is probably to be connected with the activities of the
11 Bowdich, 23I-2.
12 Dupuis, 225.
13 R. S. Rattray, Ashanti Law and Constitution (Oxford, I956), ch. 10, 76.
14 Dupuis, 229. In the Stool Histories collected by J. Agyeman-Duah for the Institute
of African Studies, University of Ghana, most of the informants assert this area as their
original home; this is also emphasized by informants in Akrokerri.
5-2
68 KWAME ARHIN
Denkyera state, south of Ashanti, which according to the chief spokesman

of the Akrokerrihene, threatened the Adansi, i.e. pre-Ashanti groups. The
Kumasi area also offered strong natural defences in the form of a ridge of
hillocks and swamps often impassable in the rainy season. It was very fertile
and already inhabited by the Tafo, Asafo, Amakon and Suntreso peoples.
These places are within the confines of the Kumasi of today. Here either
Obiri Yeboa or Osei Tutu transferred his followers and set up the capital
of future Ashanti. The foundation of Kumasi was itself an exercise in
expansion, the germ of the idea that conquest was a legitimate politic
weapon. The hornblower of the chief of Tafo still defies-'piridu
'push off! push off!'-the Ashantehene to lay off his land; the traditions
Suma (in the old Gyaman kingdom in Ivory Coast)15 state that Ob
Yeboah died at Abessim, six miles from Sunyani on the direct Kumasi
Sunyani route, during a series of wars in a contest for the occupation of th
Kumasi area. It will be suggested that the wars with the people cal
the Brongs in north-western Ashanti in the second decade of the eighteenth
century were a continuation of these wars for supremacy. The Nkoran
people under their chief Bafo left Amakon, a suburb of Kumasi, duri
these wars.16
The years before I700 saw Ashanti under Osei Tutu push out from th
Kumasi limits: Offinso,l7 a district north of Kumasi and situated between
Kumasi and Takyiman, was conquered, and Rattray was told that Sehwi18
in the western hinterland of the Gold Coast was subdued by Osei Tutu;
here the Ashantis had a taste of European goods on a large scale. Osei Tutu's
military accomplishments were probably facilitated by the ownership of
guns, for which he may have held a monopoly for some time. He obtained
these, says Reindorf,19 by bartering a number of his followers in Christians-
borg Castle on his way from Akwamu to succeed Obiri Yeboah. The
sojourn in Akwamu yielded a number of fruitful experiences: Osei Tutu
stayed in Akwamu at the peak of her power and learnt something of the
Akwamu political organization, some of whose military ideas he incorporated
into the organization of the Ashanti army. Osei Tutu, even today referred
to as Nyame Kese, the great god, undoubtedly laid the foundations of the
Ashanti history of which we speak today.
The pre-I7oo Ashanti tradition, then, amounts to this: Ashanti ex-
pansion was going on within the confines of central Ashanti and in the
west; the relative efficiency of the gun had been demonstrated; the limited
co-operation that had existed between the amantuo states had proved a
source of strength. It is not surprising, then, that in the face of a renewed
15 Collected by the writer.

16 See a forthcoming publication of the Institute of African Studies, University of
Ghana: Ashanti and the North West, ed. Jack Goody and Kwame Arhin, Supplement to the
Research Review.
17 C. C. Reindorf, The History of the Gold Coast and Asante (Basel, I895), 54.
18 See Rattray, Ashanti Law.... See ch. xxiv on pre-I7oo Ashanti wars.
19 Reindorf, op. cit. 53.
threat in the form of a demand for tribute from the more southerly state of
Denkyera, the alliance should be converted into a centralized political
authority, though one which was based on decentralization of administra-
tion. Old Ashantis still dramatize the oath that was sworn to establish this
supra-divisional authority. The supra-divisional authority contained
internal strife, and had an undisputed voice in the conduct of external
relations. The chief of Kumasi, now also the king of united Ashanti, became
with the divisional chiefs the supreme legislative body of Ashanti, with
a smaller committee composed of the king, the chiefs of the amantuo and
Mampong among others, as the Kotoko Council, the ruling or executive body
of the nation. The manifest symbols of this unity were the Golden Stool,
new national oaths (i.e. new national justicial institutions in addition to
those of the divisions), and new national festivals centring around the king's
ancestors and accepted national gods. We have gone into all this because we
shall find later that it was these national institutions that Ashantis used to
'integrate' certain of their conquered territories into Greater Ashanti.
The year I700, which is normally taken as a landmark in Ashanti history,
is so, in our view, only because with the writings of William Bosman,20 a
Dutch official at Elmina at this time, Ashanti emerges from obscurity
into the clear light of recorded history. Ashanti history, as a matter of
fact, does not begin with the conquest of Denkyera. For Denkyera was only
a point in a process: when we exaggerate the event of Denkyera defeat we
merely share Bosman's exultation at the fact that the 'towering pride'
of Denkyera had been turned into 'ashes'. The Ashantihene's drummer
does not share, and has never shared, the view that history began for
Ashanti on the battlefield of Feyiase where Denkyera was defeated. He
tells Ashanti in his question and answer at a festival gathering:
Odomankoma bo ade, Where is the origin of Osei Bediako?
Berebo bo ade, At the very beginning of creation
Osei Bediako firi he? When Odomankoma, the tireless creator,
started creation,
Osei Bediako firi Abrenkese He created Abrenkese Nyame ani,
Nyame ani
Daammere a Odomankoma bo ade The home of original creation
Kankyerekyere, kankyerekyere And of Osei Bediako.
That is, history began for the Ashantis when they started their movement
from the Adansi hills under Osei the warrior.21
Nevertheless the Denkyera event is important. The loot that Bosman
states the Ashantis acquired from Denkyera provided part of the sinews of
20 William Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the North and South Coasts of
Guinea (English trans., London, I705).
21 The Ashanti drummer was the foremost Ashanti historian. His drums had to beat
out at festivals the history of the nation or division from its infancy. I understand f
Professor Nketia that the drummer usually starts off with the earliest occurrence
significance in the national or divisional history. Osei Bediako means 'Osei the warr
this usually refers to Osei Tutu.
70 KWAME ARHIN
Ashanti wars in the north-west, and it also provided some of the incentive
for future warfare. No soldier fights on an empty stomach, and even during
wars that are supposed to be idealistic, soldiers who accept these ideals have
still to be paid and fed.
The Ashantis were not operating in an isolated social and political
environment. Indeed the barbaric theory of Ashanti warfare has so much
vogue simply because the supposed pattern of the wars on the coast and in
the immediate hinterland has been imposed on those of Ashanti. Since
slaves were acquired for sale in insignificant feuding encounters, genuine
political activities have been seen as raiding ventures, and every political
organization as a slave-trading joint enterprise or partnership. Such has
been the normal interpretation of the Denkyera and the Akwamu22 military
exertions which culminated in impressive political organizations. To see
the Ashanti wars in true perspective we must see the social, economic and
political milieux within the confines of present-day Ghana in which they
were acting about the year I700.
To the north-west of Ashanti lived the Brong, united in a political
organization embracing the Dormaas, the people of Suma (Nweneme), and
other Gyaman territories under the king of Gyaman. Close by was Takyi-
man, remnant of the sizeable Bono kingdom. With the Brongs, the Ashantis
had been in conflict since the time of Obiri Yeboah.23 In Bontuku was also
situated that important trade centre where Ashantis exchanged gold and
kola for slaves and an assortment of goods coming in from the countries of
the Niger Bend and the Maghrib. Takyiman was important in that, as the
home of the first of the centralized Akan kingdoms, it had the most
specialized skills in craft production and was therefore the source of
Ashanti gold-weights and balances.24 This view of Takyiman is further
supported by the tradition of the Bonwire kente weavers that kente weaving
originated in Takyiman.25 Takyiman was also undoubtedly rich in gold, and
lay on the route to Nsawkaw within the Begho/Bontuku trade area.
In the north and north-east lay the Gonja and Dagomba states; Salaga
in Gonja was purely a traders' town, to which came merchandise from the
north-east and where Ashantis exchanged for it kola and slaves. Yendi,
the capital of Dagomba, was a market and the source of cloths and thread
that were much better made than those of Ashanti, and also of iron.
Dagomba also controlled the trade-route to the Hausa states of the north-
east and therefore the movement of Hausa traders to and from Salaga.
Ashanti trade at Salaga, therefore, depended to some extent on Dagomba.
The Gonjas and the Dagombas were spatially distant and culturally
different from Ashantis. The Brongs were nearer and, like the Ashantis,
22 For a stimulating study of the Akwamu empire, see Ivor Wilks's 'The rise of the
Akwamu empire, I650-7IO0' Trans. Hist. Soc. Ghana, III, pt. 3 (1958).
23 Nweneme (Suma) oral traditions; field-notes: these are corroborated by Sunyani and
Nkoranza traditions, see Goody and Arhin, op. cit.
24 Eva Meyerovitz, Akan Traditions of Origin (London, 1950), 35; also Reindorf,
op. cit. 72. 25 Personal field-notes.
THE STRUCTURE OF GREATER ASHANTI (I700-I824) 7I
were Akans. This point is made because it will be argued that the evidence
points to a difference in the political treatment of the two categories of
peoples, Akans and non-Akans, who were subdued by the Ashantis.
It will be suggested that spatial contiguity and cultural homogeneity were
factors in the construction of Greater Ashanti.
The south of Ashanti, like the north-west, was dominated by Akan
groups with small islands of Guangs and Gas. In the south-west were
various Akan peoples and political groupings: Assin, Denkyera, Fanti,
Sehwi, Wassaw, Twifu, Aowins and Nzima; in the south-east, Kwahu,
Akim, Akwamu, Akwapim, Ga and Ada and, beyond, Eweland. By the
time Bosman wrote in I701, Denkyera, which before the end of the seven-
teenth century had subjected Assin, Sehwi, Wassaw and Twifu, had herself
become subject to Ashanti. Akwamu had destroyed the Accra kingdom, but
was herself poised for a decisive battle with the Akims which led to the
dispersal of the Akwamus from the Accra hinterland to their present habita-
tion on the hills beyond the Volta.26 The Fantis were not politically
united, but they controlled a system of alliances which stretched from
Gomoa, about twenty miles west of Accra, to the Cape Coast-Elmina
boundary of the Sweet River. The Elminas maintained a special relationship
with the Ashantis which dated probably from the defeat of Denkyera to
1872, the eve of colonial rule. The Aowins and the Nzimas were indepen-
dent, but engaged with the Dutch in unceasing struggles to maintain
their economic and political freedom of action.
The southern coast was important for reasons generally known and
already here hinted at: the coastline was dotted with European trade posts
where guns, powder and shot could be obtained in exchange for slaves, gold
dust and ivory. Access to the eastern trade posts, Accra and Ada, was
controlled by the Akwamus who, in addition to their imposts on, and armed
plundering of, inland traders, told frightful stories of the Europeans to
scare away prospective inland traders.27 Fantis controlled access to the
western posts after the Ashantis had eliminated the Denkyeras and the
Assins. Upon the defeat of the Denkyeras, Wassaws and Sehwis in the
south-western hinterland, the Ashantis formed some sort of an alliance
(expressed in a joking relationship which has lasted to today) with the
Nzimas for the purpose of securing easy passage to Kankyiabo (Half-
Assini), where the Ashantis first started trading.28
Political domination in the south was fraught with potential dangers
of contamination by foreign influences and conflicts with the Europeans,
whose divisive activities account for the hardening of the segmentary
principle among the coastal Fantis in a period when centralization was
proceeding apace among the forest people, the Akims, Akwamus and
26 F. R. Romer, The Coast of Guinea (Copenhagen, I760), extracts from ch. iv, translated
and mimeographed by the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana.
a7 Ibid.
28 Information from the chief of Kukuom situated on the old trade route to Half Assini.
72 KWAME ARHIN
Ashantis. The European presence in part explains the Ashanti delay in

attacking the coastal Fantis.
The chronicle of the Ashanti Wars

In the absence of direct evidence from written sources-statements of
objectives by Ashanti kings, for example-one should seek for insights into
the meaning of the Ashanti wars from their sequence and the directions in
which they were prosecuted. A consideration of sequence and direction in
the light of knowledge of the economic and political situation of their
antagonists may help to lay bare the rationale of the wars. The task left
then would be to inquire how far such a rationale coheres with either an
economic or a political interpretation or both.
The wars of Osei Tutu after I700 suggest both a continuation of the
pre-70oo tradition and a pursuit of the fortuitous. The war with the Akims
was an incidental concomitant of the Denkyera war: the Akims had allied
themselves with the Denkyeras and been defeated along with them.29
When they failed to honour the obligations of a tributary, the Ashantis
tried to bring them to heel, Osei Tutu dying in the attempt. Upon the
defeat of Denkyera, her tributaries-Assin, Sehwi, Twifu and Wassaw-
were regarded as being now within Ashanti political influence,30 and it was
expected that they would recognize this by paying tribute, that is, by
making a symbolic statement of their political subordination. Their
refusal to do so involved the Ashantis in further wars. On the death of Osei
Tutu there began that unfailing cycle of rebellions (from the Ashanti point
of view) or revolutions (from that of the others) which followed every new
accession to the Ashanti stool and which, to the observer, obscures the
structure of Greater Ashanti. It also accounts for later Ashanti attempts to
find means of tightening control of those territories, primarily Akan, with
whom she maintained more than economic ties.
It is true that these wars, like most others that have plagued mankind
from antiquity to our day, had economic overtones, but it is odd that the
economic aspect should be given so much emphasis in contradistinction
to the political significance. It is often forgotten that it was Denkyera
which threatened, and carried the fight home to Ashanti, and not vice
versa. It is interesting that our earliest written source, Bosman, makes no
specific mention of the desire for a passage to the coast. The decisive
Denkyera war had been fought by Ashanti in reaction to Denkyera's
attitudes and activities of a kind usually adopted by the political superior
to the inferior.31 The most impressive fact about the Akan states, often
29 Bosman, op. cit.
30 Bowdich, 233. Dupuis, 230, asserts that upon the death of Osei Tutu, the Ashanti
'empire' extended as far south as within forty miles of the sea coast; but clearly these
'conquests' were indecisive and Opoku had to reconquer them. The indecisiveness of these
conquests may have conveyed the impression of 'raiding'.
31 Bosman, op. cit. Bossiante, the Denkyira King, had violated a wife of Osei Tutu sent
to return him compliments. Later traditions (Rattray) allege the cause of the war to have
been Ashanti objection to her tributary relations to Denkyira.
obscured by activities incidental to the European economic presence, is their

attempts to construct 'greater power structures'. We know that from the
time of Oti Akenten, before Obiri Yeboah (who died about I68o32), the
whole of the Gold Coast hinterland was in a state of flux. Traditions of the
Brong states speak of migrations from the Akwamu-Denkyera-Adansi-
Kumasi area further south which were responses to power struggles and
had little if anything to do with struggles for passages to European trade
forts.33
On his succession to Osei Tutu, Opoku Ware was presented with the
challenge of Akim and the former tributaries of Denkyera.34 In view of
these imminent wars to the south, his north-western wars in the first decade
of the eighteenth century can be variously interpreted. They were a pursuit
of the unfinished business of both Obiri and Osei Tutu. On the other hand,
the war with Takyiman had a strategic significance when considered in
relation to the Akim war of I742,35 and that with Gyaman (or Abron).36
By the conquest of Takyiman, Ashanti forestalled an attack from the rear
such as was experienced from Sehwi during the Akim war of 1742. Thirdly
Takyiman was in an enviable economic position. Part of the legacy of the
Bono kingdom of which she was the successor was a body of skilled man-
power. She was rich in gold and further controlled passages to the Begho-
Nsoko trade centres. It may even be added that high on the list of Ashanti
war prizes were the services of mallams, or marabouts, who later come to
form the spiritual shield of Ashanti at war.37
There is, therefore, something in Reindorf's suggestion that the attack
on Takyiman was triggered off by Takyiman plundering of Ashanti
traders in the north-west.38 But all this should not be allowed to obscure
the origin of the wars: the struggle for political control of the territory and
for elbow-room for Kumasi-Amakom refugees, Baffo Pim and his adherents
in Nkoranza.39
By I742 Opoku Ware was free to deal with the Akims and their allies.
Even in victory, the Akims should have been exhausted by the previous
war with Akwamu, whilst the Ashantis were strengthened in manpower
(R6mer says that they had gunmen as well as bowmen) and in the means of
purchasing further armaments through the acquisition of war booty. Hence
the Akims and their allies were this time more decisively defeated than ever
before.
The north and north-west apparently haunted Ashanti military planning
towards the south. The north-west had to be secured before the Akims
could be attacked. In i774 a widely expected attack on the Fantis, whom
32 Ward, I 4.
33 Jack Goody's introduction to Goody and Arhin, op. cit.
34 Dupuis, op. cit. 35 R6mer, op. cit.
36 Goody, op. cit.
37 The Ashanti spent great sums on Muslim talismans. Th
role, that of secretaries (Bowdich, op. cit. passim).
38 Reindorf, op. cit. 72. 39 Goody, op. cit.
74 KWAME ARHIN
Opoku 'hated' because 'for many
when they went to Elmina and othe
not take place because Opoku dec
rearmed and told the Akims and th
with all their men. Each of the t
Aquamboes 300. Everyone though
Fantees. But in the beginning of
army to the north-east of Assiantee
and Dagomba, the Atebubu and
Opoku Ware also completed the c
attack on Fanti did not take place
Ward suggests that the Ashan
'accident',42 the result of a Dagomb
Much the same may be said of the a
probable, however, that the atta
achieved-a Dagomba contributi
mutual commercial intercourse.4
cerned with the determination of s
traditions suggest that Ashanti c
concern for that spear-head of Asha
west, Nkoranza, and also for he
security in the rear would suggest t
the northern territories.
Kwasi Bodum, the next Ashanti king, was by all accounts not a fighter,
but he, too, had to suppress the inevitable Akim revolt at a new accession.
The Akim, who were aided by Dahomey, were defeated. Bodum neither
lost nor added to his territorial legacy.
His successor, Osei Kwadwo, was a soldier of note. He quelled what
the Ashantis probably by now recognized as a natural result of new ac-
cessions, a revolt by the Akan provinces. This time Osei Kwado made a more
thorough job of his reconquest of Assin and Wassaw; he subjugated
Akwamu, already bound47 to Ashanti by commercial and political in-
terests, Akwapim, Sehwi and Moinseau (possibly Sekyedumasi, east of
Mampon).
The next two reigns (of Osei Kwame and Osei Poku) were distinguished
by provincial revolts and a presage of still bigger revolts in the next reign.
Osei Tutu Kwame (ca. 1800-24) had to reconquer nearly all the Akan
states and fight Banda, hitherto regarded as an ally.48
From the time of Osei Kwame to 1826, Ashanti wars were those of
reconquest and consolidation. It may already have been noted that non-
40 Romer, op. cit. 41 Dupuis, 233; Reindorf, op. cit. 84.

42 Ward, 131. 43 Reindorf, op. cit.
44 Ibid. 45 Bowdich, 233.
46 Goody, op. cit.; Dupuis (1824), 230. 47 Romer, op. cit.
48 Bowdich, 236; also Ashanti Court Records, Institute of African Studies' collections,
AS/CR. 3I.
Akan states with whom Ashantis maintained mainly commercial relations

were not involved in what has here been called the cycle of rebellions or
revolts. It was in the Akan states that the Ashanti presence was mostly
felt. This presence was enforced most of the time by ad hoc armed inter-
vention; it rested on the assumption that the means that had been used to
unite central Ashanti would suffice in these areas, where the people, though
culturally similar to Ashanti,49 regarded themselves as separate and insisted,
through the language of force, on their political sovereignty. Besides
suppressing his share of cyclical revolts, Osei Tutu Kwame became famous
or notorious for his attack on Anomabo following the Fanti refusal to
surrender two Assin chiefs who had defied his authority. Though this
victory won for the Ashantis recognition as the foremost local power and
also opened up possibilities of economic and cultural advantages,50 it
spelled disaster. It concluded the logical series of Ashanti wars, considered
both economically and politically. But all the same, it destroyed the buffer
of the tiny coastal stretch between Ashanti, whose dominion already in-
cluded the northern Fanti provinces,51 and the British traders. Conflicts,
both cultural and political, followed direct contact with growing British
authority. A consequence of the Ashanti triumph and the abolition of the
slave-trade was to break Fanti capacity to resist substantive, if not formal,
British authority.52 Ashanti unwillingness before I806 to attack the tiny
coastal stretch in spite of provocations, was largely due to the desire to
maintain it as a buffer and hold the British, an unknown quantity, at arm's
length. With the conquest of the coastal Fanti, Ashanti southward expansion
came to a logical end; in it, too, were the seeds of destruction.
By the time Joseph Dupuis wrote his Journal in 1824, Ashanti maintained
ties of sorts with a considerable number of territories, her 'power' extend-
ing over most of modern Ghana and parts of Ivory Coast. Indeed G. W.
Robertson, writing in I819, asserts that Ashanti had ties with territories
situated in the neighbourhood of the Cape Palmas.53 It is clear from an
examination of Dupuis's list of territories that either some of the Ashanti
wars have been unrecorded, or that some of the territories were won by
diplomacy or by voluntary submission dictated by fear of Ashanti.
In the north, Ashanti maintained ties with Gonja and Dagomba, and
with north-western Ashanti (modern Brong); in the south, with the
coastal territories stretching from Axim to Ada (inclusive) and with the
territories immediately south of Ashanti, between the eastern and western
boundaries of Ghana.54 The word 'ties' has been used advisedly. It is part
49 Bowdich, 23I. Much of what Bowdich says about Ashanti-Fanti connexions can be
said of all the Akan States.
50 W. Meredith, The Gold Coast of Africa (London, 1812). Meredith was a Britis
official stationed at the various forts. He defended the Anomabo fort in I807 and left an
eye-witness account in this work.
65 Dupuis, 257.
52 W. W. Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti, ii (London, I915),
279-280. 53 G. W. Robertson, Notes on Africa (London, 18I9), ch. o0.
54 Dupuis, xxvi.
76 KWAME ARHIN
of this essay to distinguish between the 'ties' that Ashanti maintained

between herself and the various territories.
Categories of Ashanti subject-states

Dupuis divided these territories into three groups-provinces, protectorates
and tributaries-without specifying his criteria of distinction, though it is
obvious that these classes correspond to various degrees of political distance
from Ashanti. He distinguishes the north-eastern frontier towns from
others on the ground that 'in none of these places are Ashantee troops
stationed', but in fact nowhere were troops stationed, so that the placing of
garrisons cannot be used as a means of categorization. It would seem that
to Dupuis, participation in Ashanti wars was the crucial criterion for
distinguishing between 'subject' and 'tributary'.55
Participation in war, narrowly conceived, will be used here as a starting
point for the inquiry. By it is meant the presence of official contingents from
the conquered state, and not the presence in the Ashanti army of its
erstwhile subjects who were war-captives or tribute-slaves (such as were
exacted from Dagomba) and who were practically assimilated Ashantis.
There is no evidence that the northern states, with whom the Ashantis had
ties (Gonja and Dagomba), and southerners like the Aowins, Nzimas and
Adas took part officially in Ashanti wars. Accra did so only once, when she
joined Ashanti in clearing an Akim and Akwapim blockade from the south-
eastern trade route, an action, that is, in the defence of mutual interests.56
On the other hand, most of the Akan states sent, or were expected to send,
financial contributions in lieu of physical presence. In any case the situation
in the coastal area was complicated by the fact that Ashanti had agreed there
to a dual authority as the best guarantee of peaceful trading.57 For a start,
then, provinces, in contradistinction to protectorates or tributaries, may be
described as those subject-states which officially took part in Ashanti wars.
Since the nature of ties with the provinces is the main concern of this
paper, we shall first consider the tributaries and the protectorates. Tribu-
tary states were just what the term implies-states expected to make annual
contributions to the Ashanti economy and manpower. Ties with them were
economic, in most cases commercial, even of mutual benefit. True, the ties
were created by force and maintained by a threat of force. But that Ashanti
had definite objectives in mind is obvious from the arrangements made with
the tributary states: the levying of definite contributions; guaranteed com-
mercial relations with Dagomba and Gonja; no political interference by
Ashanti except on invitation, such as was extended to Ashanti by a faction
in a Daboya succession dispute.58 Ashanti resident agents, for example in
55 Ibid. xxix.
56 See document T. 70/1604/1 in G. E. Metcalfe, Documents of Ghana History (London,
I964).
57 Bowdich's treaty in Bowdich, op. cit., also Dupuis, Journal.
58 Daboya Traditions: copy in Library of Institute of African Studies, University of
Ghana.
THE STRUCTURE OF GREATER ASHANTI (I700-1824) 77
Dagomba,59 had no more function than the collection of tribute. Dagomba

exemplified these states. It definitely formed 'no part of the empire'.60 As
the Ashanti presence was not political and pressed rather lightly on them,
the tributaries were not involved in what has here been called the cycle of
revolts or rebellions; there was no need to 'struggle for independence'.
They were peripheral to Ashanti expansion, and only hovered on the fringes
of Greater Ashanti. They were important only strategically, both in the
economic and political sense. They were culturally and spatially distant
from Ashanti. They sent 'embassies' and not 'petitioners' to Kumasi.61
'Protectorates', unlike tributaries, are difficult to distinguish from pro-
vinces. Using with reservations participation in war as an 'operational'
criterion, the category of protectorates includes Accra, Ada, Aowin,
Elmina and Nzima in the south, and Banda in the north-west. It has been
noted that Accra took part in Ashanti wars only on one occasion, which was
in defence of mutual interests. Elmina rendered moral support to Ashanti,
and appealed to her for military aid in contests with the Fantis. Neither
Ada nor Aowin nor Nzima is on record as having taken part in Ashanti
wars. Though Ashanti fought and defeated Banda of Worasa, the latter
is normally referred to as Ashanti's 'right arm' or 'ally', entitled to shares
in war booty. Another criterion of distinction is possibly the manner in
which these ties were created. Accra was won over indirectly, through the
conquest of Akim and the transference of the 'notes' on the Accra forts to
Ashanti. The connexion with Elmina was similarly created by the conquest
of Denkyera and the capture of a 'note' on the Elmina castle. Nzima was
properly to be considered an ally, a commercial link with Half Assini.62 The
connexion with Ada was tenuous. Banda was from the beginning considered
as an ally. It is worth noting that the coastal towns were all economic
counterpoises to the trade posts in the Fanti coastal stretch, and this ac-
counts for the gentle nature of the pressure that was exerted on them.
Banda was a frontier state, capable of shifting allegiance in the way it did
in the I88o's.63 The Ashanti presence, then, being light, these states were,
like the tributaries, not involved in the unceasing struggles for indepen-
dence. To them the Ashanti connexion was of mutual advantage. Fear of
Ashanti cleared the paths, and this was conducive to the economic in-
terests of the coastal middlemen other than those of Fantiland. The
inveterate hostility between Elmina and the Fantis was a reflection of this
59 A. W. Cardinall, Natives of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (London, 1930),
9.
60 Dupuis, Journal, xxxix.
61 Ibid. 244.
62 Aowin was probably conquered (Cruickshank, op. cit. passim), but the connexions
created had been loose. Bowdich writes of Aowin envoys in Kumasi in I817: ' The Aowins,
to anticipate the ambitious views of the Ashantee government, lately sent an embassy with
offers of service and tribute but the amount of the latter has not yet been decided' (op. cit.
244).
63 See Rupert S. T. Lonsdale, on his report on a visit to Gyaman, in Affairs of the Gold
Coast, C. 3386 (London, I882).
78 KWAME ARHIN
economic situation. So it was that the Dutch supported Ashanti and the
British threw their weight behind the Fantis.
Yet Ashanti relations with the protectorates were not all that clear-cut.
There were Ashanti resident-chiefs in Accra and Elmina, who had judicial
and therefore political, functions; Ashanti roving ambassadors settled
disputes in Accra and Elmina; and there was an attempt to introduce and
enforce the oath of the king of Accra, who also rendered services (such as
preparing lime and sending it to Kumasi) characteristic of the provinces.
In Banda, it appears that there were attempts to 'Akanize', as Dr Goody
puts it; that is, to introduce the material symbolisms of kingship as a pre-
lude to what will below be asserted in relation to the provinces, namely
assimilation into Greater Ashanti.
It is clear, then, that whilst Ashanti considered these protectorates as
having the same political status as the provinces, special considerations
attenuated the implied political and military treatment of them. In the
case of Accra and Elmina, it was clearly their position as alternative trade
posts to Anomabo and Cape Coast, and as potential centres of subversion in
Akim and Akwapim in the east and in Fantiland in the west. Aowin and
Nzima were too far off; and Axim in Nzima had a similar market status
to Accra and Elmina. Banda, it has been noted, was a frontier town and
deserved special treatment. She, like Accra and Ada, differed in culture
from Ashanti and was therefore difficult to assimilate.
The evolution of Greater Ashanti

It is in their relations with the 'provinces' that Ashanti policy becomes
crystallized. The category of provinces included the Akan states, Akim,
Assin, Akwamu, Atebubu, Denkyira, Akwapim, Gyaman (Abron), Fanti,
Krachi, Nkoranza, Takyiman, Twifu, Wassaw and Wenchi. These states
were distinguished broadly by the frequency of their revolts, and the
tenacity with which the Ashantis held on to them; by the enforced presence
of their contingents in Ashanti wars; and by the introduction there of the
institutions by which the Ashantis had forged their own centralized state.
They, together with Ashanti, were culturally homogeneous.
Ashanti had the same clan system as they, though the actual clan names
differed with locality, dialect and the historical experience of the Akan
subgroups. There were traditions of similar origins, common migratory
movements and alternate periods of political domination by one group or
the other. Denkyera dominated the Ashantis, the Akims (whilst they lived
in the Adansi district), the Assins, the Twifus and the Wassaws before the
end of the seventeenth century. The Akwamus were unwilling tributaries
of the Akims after I733, while the former ruled the Akwapims. The view
taken by the supreme shrine of the Fantis towards the imminent Ashanti-
Fanti conflict in I807 could be applied to all Akans. On consultation,
according to Bowdich's information, 'the Fetish Men of the sanctuary near
Sooproorco [Nananom Mpow at Mankessim?]... answered that nothing
could be more offensive to the fetish than the Fantees' preventing the
peaceable intercourse of their inland neighbours with the waterside,
because they were formerly all of one family.64 Blind old Kwaku, according
to the Reverend W. T. Balmer, was more forceful and explicit at the
council of Fanti chiefs at Abura; he urged the chiefs to unite with the
Ashantis under the 'wise' leadership of Tutu Kwame against the Europeans,
who were there first to trade, and then, if allowed, to conquer.65
Though he wrote of Greece and Rome, Sir Henry Maine's theory of the
development of states fits Ashanti and her relations with the Akans:
The history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the assumption that blood is the
sole possible ground of community in political functions; nor is there any of
those subversions of feeling, which we term emphatically revolutions, so startling
and so complete as the change which is accomplished when some other principle-
such as that, for instance, of local contiguity-establishes itself for the first time
as the basis of common political action.66
The Ashantis had peacefully constructed a centralized state on the principle

of kinship affiliation strengthened by local contiguity. Kinship as a political
principle, however, diminishes in efficiency with distance, so that in the case
of certain central Ashantis and the distant Akans, force of arms had to be
used to back the assumption that cultural homogeneity was a possible
foundation for the construction of a greater political structure. By the
nineteenth century Ashanti had abandoned the kinship principle. In his
letters to Hope Smith of Cape Coast Castle, and in conversations with both
Bowdich and Dupuis,67 Osei Tutu Kwame did not mention kinship ties,
real or fictitious, or local contiguity, but emphasized conquest as the basis
of his claims to rule the provinces. Hence his emphasis on the 'Notes' on
the various castles and forts, not for their monetary value, but as a symbolic
language the Europeans could understand-clearly showing his political
supremacy over those lands. Yet his constant contrast of the king of England
and the 'whites' on the one hand, with himself and the 'blacks' on the
other, shows that his ultimate justification of Ashanti conquests was the
ethnic and cultural homogeneity of the Ashanti and the conquered. It was
legitimate to unify such peoples. The other Akans, however, who like the
Ashantis had abandoned the kinship principle, viewed these activities as
revolutionary (indeed they were, since they implied a structural change),
and their 'subversions of feeling' were expressed in their cyclical wars of
resistance, in their 'struggles for independence.'
Ashanti 'administration' of the provinces falls into two phases. The
first phase was based on the kinship principle, on the assumption that the
Akan states, because they were clansmen, could be politically treated in the
same manner as the states of central Ashanti itself. The second phase
64 Bowdich, Mission, 234.
65 Rev. W. T. Balmer, A History of the Akan Peoples (London, I925), 91-92.
66 Sir Henry Maine, Ancient Law (Oxford, 1959), io6.
67 Bowdich, 70; Dupuis, ch. io.
80 KWAME ARHIN
reflects the abandonment of the kinship principle and of Ashanti faith in

the efficiency of those measures that had proved so successful in Ashanti.
The second phase, therefore, saw a tightening of the controls over the
various states.
Apart from Bowdich and Dupuis, nineteenth-century English writers
were unable to understand the development of Ashanti because they could
not comprehend the cultural idiom in which political policies were expres-
sed. They spoke of tribute and fines for breaches of oaths as mere instru-
ments of economic exploitation. They saw the king's demands for contribu-
tions to help him celebrate his military triumphs as no more than economic
trespass on the states concerned. The political significance of these demands
and requests was lost on them. On the other hand, occasional flashes of
insight were lost in the cloud of preconceived ideas, that have lived even
unto this day, about Ashanti: bloody, savage, bellicose, the arch-practitioner
of human sacrifice, incapable of any more statecraft than the construction of
a slave-raiding organization. The interplay of attempts at understanding and
prejudice comes out best in Brodie Cruickshank's inconsistent statements
about Ashanti relations with the provinces. He says of the Ashanti conquests:
Nor was their ambition content with conquest alone. The enterprise of the
warrior was nobly seconded by the policy of the statesman. Wise regulations were
adopted for the purposes of maintaining them in subjection. These measures
which were had recourse to, were not such as would be suitable to states advanced
to any high degree of civil policy, or even the social advancement of barbarous
states; but they were well adapted to control a rude and lawless people tenacious
of their own peculiar customs.
As if any conqueror could have any other aim, he writes tendentiously,
'They had for their sole object the maintenance of Ashantee superiority,
without any attempt to assimilate the conquered tribes with them.'68 It
would be interesting to know the criteria by which Cruickshank adjudged
the Ashanti regulations to be 'wise'. The 'wisdom' of the Ashantis seems
to have deserted them somewhere along the line. Of the events leading to
the Ashanti war (I823) against MacCarthy, Cruickshank writes: 'In the
meantime, the king's captains in different parts of the country were carry-
ing on a system of confiscation and spoliation, the aggressiveness of which had
no doubt much influence with the governor in inducing him to believe the
country ripe for revolt.'69
The claim that the Ashantis did not 'assimilate' with the provinces has
been echoed down the years. George Ekem Ferguson, the Fanti civil
servant in the colonial administration towards the end of the last century,
wrote in I893: 'We know that Ashanti was Master of Gonja, Dagomba,
Krepi and the Tchi-speaking tribes until recently though it did not assimi-
late with the conquered tribes.'70 And Ward has written in his revised
68 Cruickshank, 59. 69 Ibid. 69.
70 Correspondence Relating to the Mission of Mr G. E. Ferguson
Gold Coast Colony (Colonial Office, I894).
(1958) edition of his History of Ghana: 'These states bordering on Ashanti

were regarded as belonging at least to its sphere of influence if not actually
in its empire.' Where was the Ashanti 'empire' without these Akan states?
The myth that the Ashantis did not seriously try to 'assimilate with' these
states was a convenient suggestion, since it reduces the Ashanti wars to
mere raids; if the Ashanti state was itself no more than a slave-raiding co-
operative movement, as Fage believed, then its dissolution needs no
further justification; it was part of the British humanitarian movement to
abolish the slave-trade; it was part of the civilizing movement of the colonial
administration.
If by assimilation is meant cultural indoctrination, a sort of 'Ashantiza-
tion', then there was no need for this since, as has been shown and is
generally known, the Ashantis and the Akans were already united by one
culture. If by assimilation is meant political integration, these statements
convey an incorrect impression: it is the burden of this paper to show that
this integration, in various forms, was going on from the conquest of
Denkyera at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. If by
assimilation is meant pacification by the imposition of garrisons, there is
some truth in the statements. Ashanti had no standing armies and no
professional soldiering, so that garrisoning was not possible. Even so, when
it was necessary, armies were kept in the field for periods of two years.
Above all, Ashanti experiments in the unification of the Akans were nipped
in the bud by the British traders and later by the British government. We
have thus no means of knowing what shape the structure of Greater Ashanti
would have finally taken. But we can discern the outlines in both the first
and second phases of the 'administration' of the provinces.
In the period between I700 and I8oo the Ashantis not only made
symbolic statements emphasizing the superordinate-subordinate relation-
ship between the Ashanti king and a conquered chief, but also adopted
measures calculated to reduce the conquered chief to the same status as a
central Ashanti chief vis-d-vis the Ashanti king. The provincial chiefs
themselves understood the meaning of these statements and measures;
hence their resistance. Osei Tutu placed 'Ohuagyewa, a lame princess, on
the Denkyera stool',71 and made the conquered pay apeatoo war tax, paid
by all Ashantis after a war. Opoku Ware forbade the Akims to make war
on others without the permission of the king of Ashanti :72 thus the foreign
relations of the provinces, as of Ashanti divisions, were to be controlled
by the king. There was manoeuvring to put 'tools of the [Ashanti] court' on
the Gyaman,73 Akwamu,74 Akim, and Akwapin stools.75 These states were
connected officially with the king of Ashanti by the adamfo76 link by which,
71 Reindorf, op. cit. 59. 72 Romer, op. cit.; Bowdich, 236.
73 Dupuis, 249. 74 R6mer, op. cit.
75 Bowdich, 244.
76 Rattray fully discussed the role of the Adamfo on pp.
informants confirmed the existence of these links at leas
some areas the Akyempimhene of Kumasi, and for some t
6 AH VII I
82 KWAME ARHIN
in Ashanti, lesser chiefs were given intermediaries with the king. The
political significance of this linkage has been lost in the fact that the link-
man was also a tribute-collector. Yet a chief was expected to visit the
territory for which he was adamfo, to attend important funeral celebrations
and settle succession disputes.77 There was enforced attendance of pro-
vincial chiefs at the Ashanti annual Odwira (yam) festival at Kumasi, where
opportunity was taken to 'arrange differences, to encourage obedience, to
punish disaffection and sometimes to remove an obnoxious opponent'.78
The point of these festivals in their rituals, drama and pageant was to re-
enact, reinterpret and transmit Ashanti history; to renew communion
between dead and living Ashantis; and to emphasize the unity of Greater
Ashanti. Those who took part in them were theoretically united in their
allegiance to the occupant of the Golden Stool, the centre of the festivals.79
Measures of integration, however, often took rigorous forms. Peoples like
the Akims80 were pushed from the southern border districts to remote
areas where Ashanti could deal with them when they felt ready to do so.
Takyiman was divided, and some of her people, like the inhabitants of
Sakyedumasi,81 settled in central Ashanti. Osei Kwadwo removed two
Wassaw groups to the Atebubu district and Kwahu, 'either to supply a
deficiency of the population in those parts, or to secure their future al-
legiance'.82 And most of these states took part in the Ashanti wars.
It will be objected that these measures were no more than modes of
exploitation. It may be so, but in that case it was not only the provinces
that were exploited, but also the central Ashantis themselves. Those who
are disposed to regard these measures negatively as modes of exploitation
will so regard the rules that 'the tributary state which distinguished itself
in suppressing the revolt of another is rewarded by privileges [perhaps
land rights] at the expense of the offending power', or that 'if the subjects
of any tributary do not like the decision of the ruler, according to the laws
of their own country, they may appeal to the king, and claim decision by
the law of Ashantee'.83 By this is meant that in the provinces, as in central
Ashanti itself, the Ashanti king's court was to be the highest court of appeal.
Prospects of economic gain were held out to some of the provincial states.
The kings of Gyaman, Wassaw and Asikuma who, according to Robertson,
organized the regional collections of tribute, would have their commisions
of 20 %,84 and provincial participants in Ashanti wars had their share in
the loot. Since the Ashantis were not in a position to enjoy 'welfare'
services and offer them to others, it is difficult to see which other avenues
77 Reindorf, op. cit. 78 Cruickshank, 61.

79 See Bowdich on 'customs' in The Mission....
80 Reindorf, 60.
s' AS/CR 3I in the series of the Institute of African Studies Collection of As
Court Records.
82 Dupuis, 241. 83 Bowdich, 255.
84 Robertson, 182-5. I have explored this idea in a draft pape
in Ashanti to the End of the Nineteenth Century.
for integration and pacification could have been explored. They lacked the
means to offer 'colonialist' bribes. In Ashanti itself the main material
consequence of union had been the creation of a larger, more stable and
more peaceful political unit in which there was greater economic exchange,
and therefore greater development in skills, for example those of the crafts-
man.85 It was not beyond the imagination of Ashanti kings to try to extend
this framework of economic development.
By I812 when William Meredith offered the first relevant evidence, the
Ashantis had realized that more intense personal contact was needed if
these integrative measures were to succeed and the Ashanti political
presence was to be given a physical emphasis. We find resident-chiefs
posted to the key and more difficult provinces: to Akim,86 later to Akwa-
pim,87 to Abura,88 to Cape Coast and Elmina,89 the chief here having
jurisdiction for Wassaw. In addition to these, there were officials who may
be referred to as roving 'commissioners', like Tando,90who were given
specific briefs in various territories. It would be plainly incorrect to regard
these officials as instruments of economic exploitation. They often had
nothing to do with tribute collection.They were concerned with 'palavers'.
They settled disputes arising from swearing or breaking the king's oath, and
which therefore fell outside the jurisdiction of the local chief's court.
They called periodic district meetings91 at which chiefs were asked to
renew allegiance to the king. The so-called 'fines and confiscations'
which so agitated British interventionists were, of course, inevitable and
universal concomitants of the enforcement of the law.
These officials have to be distinguished from the tribute-collectors in
Yendi and Salaga. To see this difference one may contrast the toll collectors
in the Kintampo and Salaga markets. In Kintampo the toll-collector had
both economic and political functions: he not only collected the tolls, he
also settled disputes by the Ashanti king's oath. In Salaga the toll collector
did nothing else but collect tolls.
One may then conclude that the provinces were conceived and treated as
part of Ashanti itself. Greater Ashanti was a political structure erected on a
cultural foundation, the first intimation of later Ghana: the Akans, after all,
are the nucleus of Ghana, and before colonial rule it was Ashanti that
provided her peoples with the greatest opportunity for that population
mobility that eased the passage to our fuller nationalism.
Conclusion
The point of this paper has not been to confront the prevalent monistic
economic theory of the Ashanti wars with an alternative one. It has been to
show and suggest that there are as many possibilities of interpretation here
86 Meredith, 169. 87 Reindorf, I69.
88 J. J. Crooks, Records Relating to the Gold Coast Settlements, 175
1923) i61. 89 Dupuis, Introduction to the Journal.
90 Bowdich, The Mission.... 91 Crooks, 163.
6-2
84 KWAME ARHIN
as in European history; clearly the Ashanti as well as the European may be

born with an exaggerated impulse to power and may, if he sees the possi-
bility, enlarge the sphere in which he may exercise that power. For the
Ashanti, the possibilities of creating a greater political community lay in the
cultural Akan community, in the facilities that were offered by a more
rigorous political and military control of a fairly compact group, and in the
arms brought by the European slave trader.
A subsidiary point of this exercise has been to explore the potentialities
of the sociological approach to the tiny corpus of facts relating to our past,
when we do not see our people as responding always to the European
economic stimulus. How far is it possible to read Ashanti intentions in the
political and judicial institutions which they extended from central Ashanti
to the provinces, and in the fact that they limited themselves to the Akan
groups who could understand their implications since they themselves
already had these institutions? This approach is worth consideration since,
lacking writing, pre-colonial Ghanaians were forced to express their thoughts,
theories and policies in social, economic and political institutions. If
modern Ghanaians wish to re-enact their 'past experience' and to engage
in a 'dialogue' with their ancestors, they must examine and analyse their
institutions. Our examination here shows that whatever may have been the
origins, in the sense of reasons, of the Ashanti wars, there was developed
the notion of uniting principally the Akans in political subjection to the
Ashanti king. Whether one believes that this notion sprang from economic
motives or from the fairly universal human desire to create larger political
aggregates, especially in locally contiguous areas with cultural homogeneity,
depends on one's own view of human nature or of history in general; or in
some cases, on whether or not one believes that the African was different
from others from the point of view of the considerations that shaped his
history. After all, to a man like Hugh Clifford, Governor of the Gold
Coast early in this century, the Ashantis' wars were no more than a 'bar-
baric display', a mere 'romantic thing', of interest only to the antiquarian.92
It was easier to extend Ashanti rule over the Akans than over the tribu-
taries. The latter could only gradually begin to appreciate Akan political
and judicial institutions; they were too far from Ashanti in a period when
communications were undeveloped. It was militarily difficult; the Ashanti
kingdom would not have lasted for as long as it did if it had been obliged to
combat resistance in the four corners of Ghana. Here, clearly, even allow-
ing for the possibility that they wanted more than this, the Ashantis had to
be content with contributions to their economy and manpower. Thus the
tributary relationship also reflected cultural heterogeneity.
From the Kumasi standpoint, then, political ties with subject states
weakened with spatial and cultural distance. Provinces, more rigidly
controlled, were seen as distant parts of Ashanti, of Greater Ashanti, and
the peoples as subjects of the Golden Stool. Tributaries, more loosely
92 Introduction to the first edition of Claridge, op. cit.
controlled, were regarded as an economic support for the creation of

Greater Ashanti.
There is no doubt that Ashanti relations with the subject-states were in a
state of flux, and Dupuis's remark about the Ashanti 'empire' was apt:
'Powerful as the monarchy of Ashantee certainly is, collectively estimated,
it may be considered as a fabric whose foundation is subject to periodical
decay, and therefore requires unremitting attention.' 93Dupuis described
the Ashanti empire as a 'great political association of kingdoms'.94 What I
have tried to do is to distinguish the categories of ties, though these
fluctuated with time and circumstance, within the 'association'. It seems to
me to be clear that 'Greater Ashanti' described as conceived to embrace the
cultural and contignous group-the Akans-is distinguishable within the
'empire' or the totality of Ashanti subject-states.
SUMMARY
Between the years I700 and I820 the Ashantis of central

number of wars in nearly all the territories now comprising mo
interpretations of these wars have linked them with the Europ
the southern coast and the Muslim trade settlements in the north. The Ashanti
wars were therefore either raids or attempts to open trade-routes to the trade-
posts. These interpretations have been possible because writers have ignored the
Ashanti expansionary movement before I700, and have also been unable to
interpret correctly the political significance of the institutions by which the
Ashanti attempted to extend their rule into some of the conquered territories,
and to integrate them into what the Ashanti conceived as 'Greater Ashanti'-a
political community incorporating the conquered Akan states under the rule of
the Golden Stool, the supreme stool of Ashanti.
When, then, the pre-I7oo Ashanti tradition and the introduction of Ashanti
judicial, political and politico-religious institutions into some of the conquered
territories are carefully considered, it becomes clear, in the writer's view, that the
so-called Ashanti 'empire' should be divided into three categories of states:
provinces, 'protectorates' and tributaries, on the basis of their political distance
from Ashanti. The provinces-like the Ashantis mainly Akan-speaking peoples-
were considered and treated as part of a Greater Ashanti 'political structure'.
The 'protectorates' were treated as allies or protected peoples according as
economic or political circumstance dictated. The tributaries formed the economic
and manpower base of the Ashanti expansion. But it must be noted that these
relationships were fluid, and fluctuated with Ashanti military and political
fortunes. Finally, the Ashanti political experiment was halted by the British and
was therefore inconclusive. The student can, therefore, hardly reach rigid
conclusions.
Lastly it appears that, pre-literate in areas where the history student is faced
with an absence of the historian's usual materials, the analysis of institutions is
probably one of the most fruitful approaches.
93 Dupuis, 236-7.
94 Ibid. xxviI.

The Structure of Greater Ashanti

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The Structure of Greater Ashanti

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The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)

Author(s): Kwame Arhin

THE STRUCTURE OF GREATER ASHANTI

'If my messengers go to Cape Coast fort, and if the

SINCE T. H. Bowdich and

The defeat of Denkyera had b

This, of course, is no more th

1 T. E. Bowdich, A Mission fro

Fage accordingly thought of the Ashanti state as a vast 'organization for

Weber shows that economic and political causes of expansion may be

6 J. D. Fage, op. cit. 97.

Denkyera state, south of Ashanti, which according to the chief spokesman

15 Collected by the writer.

Ashantis. The European presence in part explains the Ashanti delay in

The chronicle of the Ashanti Wars

obscured by activities incidental to the European economic presence, is their

40 Romer, op. cit. 41 Dupuis, 233; Reindorf, op. cit. 84.

Akan states with whom Ashantis maintained mainly commercial relations

of this essay to distinguish between the 'ties' that Ashanti maintained

Categories of Ashanti subject-states

Dagomba,59 had no more function than the collection of tribute. Dagomba

The evolution of Greater Ashanti

The Ashantis had peacefully constructed a centralized state on the principle

reflects the abandonment of the kinship principle and of Ashanti faith in

(1958) edition of his History of Ghana: 'These states bordering on Ashanti

77 Reindorf, op. cit. 78 Cruickshank, 61.

as in European history; clearly the Ashanti as well as the European may be

controlled, were regarded as an economic support for the creation of

Between the years I700 and I820 the Ashantis of central

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