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Africa During the Scramble: The Kings of the Golden Stool

Been looking forward to this one. I'm not sure why the Ashanti wars loom so especially large in treatments of this period from a contemporary British perspective (compared to other African colonial wars I mean), but they do. Check out Lloyd George and Joe Chamberlain getting into a verbal slanging match about it here. In my rundown of R. Austin Freeman's Dr Thorndyke stories (which often draw on Freeman's own experience in West Africa) I mentioned how he uses it in the 1927 short story "The Trail of Behemoth" - albeit inventing a fictional more minor kingdom that neighbours the Ashanti and is culturally similar.

"What was Sir Gilbert's special characteristic?" Thorndyke asked.

"Unamiability," was the reply. "He was a most cantankerous, overbearing man, and violent at times. I knew him when I was at the Colonial Office with him, and one of his official acts will show the sort of man he was. You may remember it, Bidwell—the Bekwè affair. There was some trouble in Bekwè, which is one of the minor kingdoms bordering on Ashanti, and Sir Gilbert was sent out as a special commissioner to settle it. And settle it he did with a vengeance. He took up an armed force, deposed the king of Bekwè, seized the royal stool, message stick, state sword, drums, and the other insignia of royalty, and brought them away with him. And what made it worse was that he treated these important things as mere loot kept some of them himself and gave away others as presents to his friends.

"It was an intolerably high-handed proceeding, and it caused a rare outcry. Even the Colonial Governor protested, and in the end the Secretary of State directed the Governor to reinstate the king and restore the stolen insignia, as these things went with the royal title and were necessary for the ceremonies of reinstatement or the accession of a new king."

"And were they restored?" asked Bidwell.

"Most of them were. But just about this time Gilbert died, and as the whereabouts of one or two of them were unknown, it was impossible to collect them then. I don't know if they have been found since."
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Thande said:
I'm not sure why the Ashanti wars loom so especially large in treatments of this period from a contemporary British perspective (compared to other African colonial wars I mean), but they do.
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It's interesting, I don't think they're uniquely big, like the Zulus and Boers have equally big name recognition but certainly they are more remembered than a lot of other wars.

One of @Kimkatya's bits on this forum has been to say we're so English, we're still plotting the death of the Ashanti or whatever and that did strike me that while it's obviously a very history nerd SLP.com bit, she never would have picked the Bapedi or the Temne for that. The Ashanti have endured, which like you say is a consequence of how much they were noted as the big one even at the time, despite the wars being much smaller scale than say the efforts against the Boers or the Mahdists.

But I guess it makes sense, they were probably one of biggest African empires Britain conquered, one of the ones that they interacted with the most (the Xhosa were undoubtedly the polity in Africa the British fought the most but the Ashanti are second and eight wars is still quite a lot) and one of the ones that put up a relatively fierce resistance. They weren't the biggest, that would be Egypt, or the one that fought the hardest, that would be the Boers but they were a notable enemy.

And I think of the fiercest enemies of the British during the Scramble, they're the one whose story is the neatest I guess. The Boers and Mahdists are complicated by the questionable africanness of the Boers and the presence of the Egyptians respectively whereas the Anglo Ashanti wars are pretty much textbook Scramble stuff, a fierce slave selling empire slowly overcome by British aggression aided by superior weapons. It's a much better example of what colonial wars were.
 
Gary Oswald said:
It's interesting, I don't think they're uniquely big, like the Zulus and Boers have equally big name recognition but certainly they are more remembered than a lot of other wars.

One of @Kimkatya's bits on this forum has been to say we're so English, we're still plotting the death of the Ashanti or whatever and that did strike me that while it's obviously a very history nerd SLP.com bit, she never would have picked the Bapedi or the Temne for that. The Ashanti have endured, which like you say is a consequence of how much they were noted as the big one even at the time, despite the wars being much smaller scale than say the efforts against the Boers or the Mahdists.

But I guess it makes sense, they were probably one of biggest African empires Britain conquered, one of the ones that they interacted with the most (the Xhosa were undoubtedly the polity in Africa the British fought the most but the Ashanti are second and eight wars is still quite a lot) and one of the ones that put up a relatively fierce resistance. They weren't the biggest, that would be Egypt, or the one that fought the hardest, that would be the Boers but they were a notable enemy.

And I think of the fiercest enemies of the British during the Scramble, they're the one whose story is the neatest I guess. The Boers and Mahdists are complicated by the questionable africanness of the Boers and the presence of the Egyptians respectively whereas the Anglo Ashanti wars are pretty much textbook Scramble stuff, a fierce slave selling empire slowly overcome by British aggression aided by superior weapons. It's a much better example of what colonial wars were.
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That bit is specifically about how to me, the most ur-british thing possible is to talk to your cousin Muriel about how your lazy son Bertie has finally followed his brother to (Colonial War). I think I took the Anglo-Ashanti wars from a Hbomberguy video that I last watched in 2019 or something.
 
Charles EP M. said:
The Golden Stool and a colonial bigwig sitting on it is also a very memorable image for colonialism: one of our guys literally sat on an African nation's stuff
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That is also very true.

Mind, he never actually did sit on it. Like he started a war over wanting to, but the throne was hidden after the war, so it never actually happened. In fact Britain did try Kwasi Nsenie Agya for damaging it and paid for it be be fixed it up again a bit before giving it to Prempeh and promising to respect it from now on. Which is the definition of a hollow gesture, given everything else, but good for Prempeh, I guess.
 
Thande said:
Been looking forward to this one. I'm not sure why the Ashanti wars loom so especially large in treatments of this period from a contemporary British perspective (compared to other African colonial wars I mean), but they do. Check out Lloyd George and Joe Chamberlain getting into a verbal slanging match about it here.
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Here's how the (Conservative, or rather Unionist, supporting) Glasgow Herald covered that debate at the time - NB it came on March 19th 1900, early on. As part of the scan is barely legible I'll transcribe it:

How much of admiration for King Prempeh, and how much of detestation of Mr Chamberlain, actuated those members who yesterday supported Mr Lough's motion in the House of Commons can hardly be said. Nominally the motion was one disapproving of the Ashanti war, but actually denouncing Mr Chamberlain. According to the lurid picture drawn by some of the speakers, the Secretary for the Colonies is a sort of Imperial War Lord who caries fire and sword through all the British dominions and contiguous territories. The rebellion of the Ashantis, we are to understand, was a sort of "put-up" thing, inevitably resulting, and intended to result, from the demands made by Sir Frederick Hodgson.

Mr Chamberlain wished the Golden Stool, and would not be happy till he got it. He has not got it, but he has put an end to slavery and human sacrifices, and to the odious cruelty and tyranny whom certain members of Parliament seem to love closer than a brother - at all events, they profess to prefer him and his iniquities to Mr Chamberlain and his administrative labours. They manage these things so much better in France, thinks Mr Scott - doubtless with due remembrance of the affaire Chanoine and the peaceful and philanthropic management of Dahomey. The sufferings of the British garrison in Kumasi are as nothing to the indignity inflicted on King Prempeh, which Mr William Redmond denounces as "scandalous" - and surely he should know.

Though to most eyes Prempeh appears to be a blood-thirsty ruffian who does not deserve to live, he is, in the eyes of the Irish Nationalists, Mr Lloyd George, and all others who are "agin the Government" and down on Mr Chamberlain, a hero and a martyr. Alas! the pity of it!

Sir William Harcourt was not ashamed to associate himself with this worthy band of Little Englanders merely for the sake of assailing the Colonial Secretary. Of course he detests slavery as much as anyone, and would have had no mercy on King Prempeh himself had he been in Mr Chamberlain's shoes, but the chance of throwing a stone was too good to be lost. And the chance was found in somebody's discovery that Mr Chamberlain had once boasted of the number of wars he had made since he went to the Colonial Office. Mr Chamberlain, of course, never made such a boast, but that is a detail. Somebody attributed it to him, and then the pack howled.

This gave Sir William Harcourt an opportunity to vote for the motion, not as the protest of a friend of King Prempeh, but as a mark of his disapproval of any Government that take credit for the number of wars they have provoked or waged. It is a moving apostasis, that of Irish and Radical members shedding crocodile tears over the slaughter of savages in Ashanti, with not a word of pity or of peni[...?] for the sufferings and the heroism of the supporters of the British flag. One knows not which to lament more in the incident - the degradation of party or the meanness of Little Englandism.
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Can't tell an election was due a few months down the line, can you? Also note the original definition of 'Little Englander' as anti-war, anti-imperialism and insularist, as occasionally discussed on here.
 
Also re the previous article: I had forgotten that if you've ever wondered what they did instead of the -gate scandal suffix before Watergate happened, everything was L'affaire [subject, usually name of a person], even in English, due to French still being the language of diplomacy and sophistication.

Sadly I can't find a reference to the French using that terminology for Watergate to bring it full circle, but I did find an earlier Nixon scandal from March 1969 (Le Monde diplomatique):

Quoi qu’il en soit, si la note chinoise annonçant la suppression de la rencontre du 20 février met directement en cause M. Nixon, dont l’administration aurait révélé ses « traits hideux » dans l’affaire de La Haye, elle s’en prend aussi nommément à la C.I.A., accusée d’être à l’origine de l’incident en ayant « invité M. Liao Ho-hsu à trahir son pays ».
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(This is to do with Sino-American talks being delayed due to the defection of the Chinese charge d'affaires in The Hague, apparently)
 
You know its real shades of black when the independent African power asserting itself involves multiple attempts to conquer other african nations and fighting for their right to take slaves with most of all soldiers on all sides being African and all armies preying on civilians. I think when this really struck me was the war sparked over refusing to return an escaped slave and the response being to burn down as many villages as possible presumably filled with black people rather than British colonizers.

Similar to the previous article on the Dahomey where the somewhat famed and idealized Amazons actually come off quite poorly both in context of the system they represented and their rather inept tactics.

I think these articles are generally pretty good at not falling into the trap of idealizing the colonized without justifying their colonization.
 
Death's Companion said:
I think these articles are generally pretty good at not falling into the trap of idealizing the colonized without justifying their colonization.
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Thanks, Death, I almost certainly slip one way or the other at times but I do try to walk that line.

And yeah, no the Dahomey and Ashanti were not heroes at all. I'm going to enjoy 'the Woman King' a shit lot when it comes out but I'm also going to remember the first hand reports of five year old children being beaten to death in front of cheering crowds as part of the ritual ceremonies of the people portrayed in the trailer as peace and freedom loving.

I maintain that the end result of no French conquest of Dahomey is a peasants revolution.
 
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