The Yaa Asantewaa War of Independence

The Asante-British war of 1900 capped about 100 years of war between Great Britain and the Asante Empire, which occupied part of what is now Ghana.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Wilson. And so recently we had an episode
about the Treaty of White Tangy, which was the document

(00:23):
that founded New Zealand as a nation, and in a
lot of ways it represented a step forward in relationships
between particularly the British and indigenous people's right. It was
not perfect, but in a lot of ways it was
better than things that had gone on before. Um today's

(00:44):
subject actually happened after that and kind of represents the
idea that the still there were a lot of problems
going on between colonizing governments and indigenous people's like this
was not the magical silver bullet at which point everyone
started operating from a better perspective. All in many cases

(01:07):
that the New Zealand events were really quite singular for
their time. Yes, So what we're going to talk about
today is about a conflict between the British and the
Assanti people from what is now Ghana. At the time
it was known as the Gold Coast Africa, and the
Assanti British War of nineteen hundred is known to the

(01:28):
Assanti people as the yah Assantwa War of Independence. Um
yah Assantwa was a woman leader in this this whole
resistance that became really important to it and to the
whole history of the Assanti people. So the British called
this the Last Assanti Uprising or the Assanti War, and

(01:50):
some people also call it the War of the Golden
Stool for reasons that we'll talk about in just a bit.
It capped about a hundred years of war and conflict
between the British and the Assanti and um the they
had clashed like really officially as wars, not just as
skirmishes in eighteen oh seven, eighteen twenty four, eighteen twenty six,

(02:11):
eighteen seventy three and seventy four. That was one conflict
that spanned two years and eighteen ninety six, bringing us
finally to this conflict we're going to talk about today,
which happened in nineteen hundred. So the Assanti Empire occupied
part of what is now Ghana, and the Assanti Union
was made up of component states, each of which had
its own royalty. The leadership of each component state was matrilineal,

(02:35):
with kings and queens having their own unique roles within
the state, the Assanta Hini was and still is the
supreme monarch over all of them. Europe's interest in the
Gold Coast started out being mostly about the slave trade,
but as European and American nations abolished slavery, the colonial
focus shifted instead to the region's natural resources, including its

(02:59):
gold mines. Britain was just one of the European nations
that was colonizing parts of Africa at this point, and
so it was also looking to protect its interests from
the encroachment of other European countries. The British offered the
Assanti Union the opportunity to become a British protectorate a
couple of times in the late eighteen hundreds. Both of

(03:21):
these times, Assanta Hini Primpa, the first who had become
the supreme monarch after a lengthy civil war, turned the
offers down. He wasn't opposed to the entire idea of
working with the British, though, he arranged a diplomatic mission
to go to England and in the spirit of cooperation
and friendship, and the British didn't really negotiate with the

(03:42):
delegation though, instead, in January of eighteen ninety six, while
the Assanti delegation was still in England, the British invaded
their kingdom. After this invasion, Primp of the First, still
hoping for a peaceful and productive relationship with the British,
did go against his advisor's opinions and agree for the
Assanti to become a protectorate of Great Britain. And at

(04:05):
this point, rather than beginning to work together productively, the
British arrested Print of the First and his family and
other members of the monarchy, and they sent them into exile.
British troops also looted the Royal Palace and desecrated a mausoleum.
Reasons on exactly why the British returned their acceptance of
British rule with this sort of almost savage treatment is

(04:29):
still unclear. Yeah, I could not figure that out, and
all of my research for this like the only reason
I could possibly fathom would be like just to be jerks,
which success worked. In July of that year, the Assante
used money they had raised through attacks to hire lawyers
in attempt to negotiate a peaceful return of their leaders.

(04:52):
The Colonial Office refused, though, and the Assanti, who believed
that this exile was a temporary measure, decided to just
bide their time until the king could come back. So
they were really pretty sure that the Assanta Hini was
gonna at some point be brought back to them, and
and that was inevitable, so they thought, well, we might
as well cooperate while we wait for for our people

(05:15):
to be brought back. However, over the next few years,
the British did some things that were really just intolerable
to the Assanti. First, the British dissolved the Assanti Union
UH and established treaties individually with each of the component
states and had them report to British authorities rather than
to a supreme Assanti leader. The British also gave missionaries

(05:37):
free reign to practice in Assante, which means that they
set up schools with the hope of converting their students
to Christianity, and that naturally meant trying to turn the
students away from their tribal beliefs and practices. And the
British also instituted a sort of free trade agreement with
other kingdoms and tribes who flocked to the capital of
Kumasi to trade and look for work UH. And this

(05:59):
may say, like a fairly innocuous thing, but it really
threatened the Assante economic system. On the subject of work,
the British also started mandating that the Assante carry out
compulsory labor on public works projects like helping to build
roads and buildings, and the British also wanted to abolish slavery.
Although the transatlantic slave trade had been declining throughout the

(06:22):
nineteenth century, slavery was still being practiced domestically in many
parts of the world, and that included the Assante Empire.
The Assante objection to ending the practice of slavery was
much like what other parts of the world had seen
Without slavery, There simply wasn't enough labor available in industries
like farming and gold mining, so abolition further threatened the

(06:42):
economic order. Yeah, we're we're not at all trying to
argue in favor of slavery here, but the the Assante
did not want to a botler slavery at this point,
so the fact that the British were forcing them to
did not sit well. So by the time the next
major part of this story takes place, the Assante were
really really unhappy with the British presence in the Gold Coast,

(07:05):
and before we get into why so to get back
to our story. On March Dred, Sir Frederick Hodgson, who
was the who was Britain's governor of the Gold Coast,
called for a meeting of all the Assanti leaders outside
of the British fort in the capital of Kumasi, and
at this meeting he made four pretty big important announcements.

(07:27):
The first announcement was that the exile of Santahini would
not be coming back to Kumasi not ever. The second
had to do with this whole compulsory labor thing. He
was pretty much saying it was not negotiable and the
Assante We're just going to have to do it. The
third was related to an indemnity that the Assante were
to pay according to the Treaty of Femina, which had

(07:50):
ended a previous war with the British in eighteen seventy four,
and Hodgson announced that the Assante were to pay interest
on that indemnity along with paying for the expenses that
the Britain had occurred incurred in their eighteen ninety six
invasion of the Kingdom. And then he produced an itemized
list of which tribes were to pay how much money.
His last announcement was really the straw that broke the

(08:12):
camel's back. He demanded to be brought the golden stool
so that he could sit on it. Now, stools had
been part of the Assanti culture and other cultures in
that part of Africa for centuries. They were symbols of
a tribe's leadership and at the tribal level, they were
also where the monarch would sit when he was ruling.
When the monarch was not there, it would be placed

(08:34):
on its side so that no other person or no
other soul could find a seat there. And the golden
stool was actually a little different. According to the Assanti belief,
a shaman conjured it from the sky and it had
come to rest on the lap of the first Assanta Hini.
But it wasn't a throne. It embodied the soul and
the spirit of the Assanti people. The safety and prosperity

(08:55):
of the Assanti were tied to the safety of the stool,
and it's a deeply sake an object and it is
not for random sitting on. So, in a move that
really could not possibly be more symbolic of most of
the worst aspects of Western colonialism. Hodgson basically said, please
bring me your most sacred, most important, most cherished object

(09:17):
and allow me to put my big white buttocks directly
onto it. Yet conscouse for me like that image of
the bully that kind of grabs the little kid and
just sits on him to be mean, except add to
that the layer of like sacred belief and spirituality on it.
It was blasphemy. Yeah, it was definitely blasphemy. On its own,

(09:41):
this demand already would have been one of the most
offensive things that Hodgson could have possibly said, like this,
bring me your stool. But on top of the inherent
offense and that blasphemy, he also asked for the stool
in a really arrogant and entitled way, quote, where is
the golden stool? Why am I not sitting on the
golden stool at this moment? I am the representative of

(10:02):
the paramount power. Why have you relegated me to this chair?
Why did you not take the opportunity of my coming
to Kumasi to bring the golden stool and give it
to me to sit upon. This was completely shocking to
the Assanti leaders and chiefs who were present They were
completely stunned by this entire business and the idea that
British people would claim the stool and say that they

(10:24):
were to sit on. It was so appalling and shocking
that most of the people just left the meeting without
a word. However, almost immediately they started planning to fight back,
and the war that began almost immediately would go on
for months. So one of the people who had been
present at this meeting was Yah Santoa, and she had

(10:45):
been present on behalf of her grandson, who was one
of the kings who had been exiled. She was about
sixty at this point and she and her family governed
a j Su which was about nineteen miles away from
the capital of Kumasi, so she was sort of like
a queen mother and she immediately, basically on the way out,
started to question and taunt the men about why they

(11:07):
were submitting so peacefully to the British when the British
were obviously being so horrible and offensive. Queen Assantoa and
other leaders arranged to have a meeting at the home
of a man named Opoku Mensa. In this meeting, they
had two orders of business, and first and foremost was
to ensure the safety of the Golden Stool. The British

(11:27):
had actually already started trying to find it prior to
this whole meeting in front of the fort, and hearing
that the British were looking for the stool, had already
gotten some of the chiefs talking about mounting a resistance. Uh.
The stool actually remained hidden away for more than twenty years,
and the next order of business in this meeting was
plotting a war against the British. The War Council selected

(11:51):
yah A Santoa to lead their resistance and she accepted.
So it's not completely clear why they chose a woman
for this role. This was really within the norms of
gender roles among the assanti at this time. There had
been some female diplomats before. Like we said earlier, queens
had specific roles that they were responsible for within the

(12:13):
governing of their community, but not usually as a straight
up war leader. It's possible that part of this was
just strategic. The British wouldn't expect a woman to be
taking charge in that way, and it's also possible that
she had a tactical advantage by living in a gesus
that she was close enough to the capital to be

(12:33):
able to do things, but they wouldn't be under as
much careful scrutiny as if they stayed in the capital
itself to try to mount their resistance. So, regardless of
what their logic was for choosing her uh yeah, Assantua
basically became a military commander. She was responsible for strategizing, planning,
and executing all of it. She was the one making

(12:56):
all the calls and finding all the resources behind the scenes.
The fighting started in Earnest a few days later on
April second, when British forces were in bare trying to
find the Golden Stool. Assante fighters, who had been tipped
off that the British were going to be there, surrounded
them and opened fire, and the Assante continued to harry

(13:16):
the British for the next several weeks, and the next
major battle took place on April Tyre, when the Assante
slowly encircled a column of British soldiers before opening fire.
This uh surround the enemy maneuver was an ongoing theme
in their resistance. The Assante were armed with an assortment
of firearms and knives. Some of these were Dane guns.

(13:38):
These were very long barreled muzzle loading firearms that had
originally been made in Europe and were introduced to in
Africa by the Dutch. At this point, though, they were
being made locally and the term Dane gun eventually came
to be applied, so pretty much any firearm that was
locally being made in Western Africa. The Assanti's weapons paled
in comparison to the British troops military firearms, so they

(14:01):
really had to rely on something other than direct confrontation.
So they would cut a path through the bush parallel
to the British troops movement and then come out of
the jungle to surround them. They also made really have
a use of scouting, laying ambushes, sniping from trees, and
using blockades and stock aides to black British movements and

(14:22):
and provide their own defense. These structures that they were
building could be huge. They would be made of really
enormous jungle logs. They were approximately ten to twelve feet high.
Sometimes the Assante would also make smaller blockades that were
hidden in the bush parallel to the roads that the
British traveled on, so that they could take cover from
behind them and then shoot the troops as they passed by.

(14:45):
On April, the resistance fighters had another meeting at the
home of Apoca Mensa. They decided to try to expand
the fight for Assante independence by calling in the leaders
of the Assante states who hadn't yet taken a side.
They did get some support, but it wasn't completely effective.
Some of the states had been on opposite sides during

(15:05):
the civil war that had started in eighteen eighty five,
after which Prempay the First had become the leader. Because
the British had established treaties with all of the different
component states independently, dissolving the union that had held them
together before, some tribes decided to side with the British
rather than with the troops that were fighting for independence.

(15:28):
The following day, the Assante lay siege to the fort
at Kumasi. Missionaries, traders and others took refuge inside the fort,
and they were besieged until July fifteenth. The Assante also
cut the telegraph wires and freed the prisoners from the
jail inside the capitol. So the siege was possibly the
most dramatic part of the war because, as is always

(15:51):
the case with sieges, conditions inside the fort got just
progressively worse and worse and more disgusting and horrifying the
longer the siege went on. But the blockades and the
stockades were really the most effective part of the Assanti strategy.
The Assanti fighters made very efficient use of them, and
they found ways to position them that would provide both

(16:12):
cover and advantage. Point British guns could not penetrate them,
and it was only at the very end of the
fighting that they figured out a combination of weapon AMMO
and firing distance that would actually allow their cannons to
break through. The siege of the capital city was lifted
in July after British reinforcements arrived from the coast, and

(16:32):
the breakthrough and how to get past the Assanti stockades
followed about a month later, so the tide of the
battle really turned against the Assante in the late summer
of nineteen hundred. They had been able to inflict heavy
damages while taking on few casualties of their own, but
once the siege was broken, freeing up the British from

(16:53):
having to worry about it, and they had the capability
to knock down all the stockades and barricades. The British
British fighting effort became both effective and punitive. The British
really shifted at that point from defending themselves to putting
down a rebellion, and as the war progressed in to September,
the British turned to just burning down crops and villages

(17:13):
to the ground. At various points the two sides attempted
to negotiate, but the negotiations never really panned out. They
always fell through, or someone would break the armistice and
the fighting would resume. The last battle in this war
took place on September, and in this fight, about a
hundred and fifty of the Assanti's fighting force of six

(17:36):
hundred remaining men were killed. From there, the British just
rounded up and arrested the resistance leaders who were still alive,
and those who were not executed joined the previously exiled
Assanti leadership in the Indian Ocean archipelago of the Steychelles,
and this included yah A Santoa. Although the fighting had
mostly ended the previous fall, the war wasn't officially over

(17:59):
until March of nineteen o one. Assanti became a British
colony that September, and a Crown colony that fell under
the Gold Coast Colonies in nineteen o two. Yeah Assantoa
died in exile in nineteen twenty one, when she was
about ninety. In nineteen twenty four, Primpy, the first and
others of yah Assantoa's kin were repatriated, and they later

(18:21):
negotiated the Exhamation in return of the bodies of people
who had died in exile so they could be returned
home and buried there. He also secured the Golden Stool.
With Premple the first repatriation, the Assante Confederation of States
was re established. The British officially recognized this confederacy in
nineteen thirty five, and the Assante continued to be one

(18:43):
of Ghana's ethnic groups, with the Assanta Hinis lineage continuing
until today. Although Ghana itself is a republic and not
a monarchy, and also um maybe coincidentally, maybe not, Ghana
was the first African nation to declare itself independent from
British colonialism. More recently, yah Assantoa has appeared on Ghana's

(19:07):
postage stamps and also as a watermark on currency. She
was really unique in Assante history. Sometimes, as we said,
there could be a woman who was occupying a stool
that was normally held by a man, and when this happened,
that woman might have a more military presence in the
duties that she was responsible for. But yeah, Assantoa was

(19:29):
really an outlier. A woman's role in war in this
culture was normally about being supportive and like supporting the men,
inspiring the mental fight, plus ceremonial war songs and dances.
On the other hand, yeah, Assantoa really led the entire war.
Um so, she became the first female war leader of

(19:49):
the Assante. And it's important to note that while the
Assante did not win this war, uh, it was an
entire movement of resistance that sparked a lot of pride
in in the culture. Um so, it was sort of
a moral victory, even though it was not a literal victory.
And Queen Assantoir, you know, as part of her leadership

(20:11):
really roused the men and inspired them with passionate speeches
both before and during the war. She was essentially the
commander in chief of the Assante army. She took an
active part in negotiations with the British throughout the whole event.
In two thousand, Ghana observed the centennial of the war,
and in part to try to bring in tourist trade

(20:31):
to help the economy. They opened a yah As Santoine
Museum that year um in Edwizo. Although I found one
article that said that it had later burned down. I
had trouble confirming that before we got into the studio.
Do you have some listener mail to cap off the story?
I do, and our listener mail is actually somewhat related

(20:52):
because it ties back into the Treaty of Whiteagy episode
that we started talking about at the beginning of this podcast.
I didn't realize until we were really sitting down in
the studio that that wait, this thing that we talked
about today happened after that, Yeah, which, like that raises

(21:14):
a number of implications. UM So, I actually have a
couple of pieces of mail. One uh is from Ryan
and Ryan forwarded on a note um actually from the
White Tangy Tribunal. I had posed the question at the
end of the episode of how many claims there are

(21:35):
before the White Tangy Tribunal because I hadn't been able
to find that out before coming into the studio. So
Ryan did what any awesome person should do, which is
that he asked a librarian, specifically asked to the librarian
at the White Tangy Tribunal, who said that as of
that day's date, which was due ninth, there are two thousand,

(21:58):
four hundred twenty for registered claims on records. So that's
two thousand, four d four claims of a law or
an act that has gone against the spirit of the tribunal. UM.
That does not include the ones that are unregistered or
the ones where the registration was declined. So that is

(22:19):
the number. Thank you Ryan for asking a librarian, and
thank you librarians for being awesome. Librarians have the power
they do. UM. The other note that I got is
from Sue, and Sue says, thank you very much for
another brilliant podcast. I thought I would give you a
little insight into how the Treaty continues to be a

(22:39):
living document and guide the lives of New Zealanders today.
As a preschool teacher, I am regarded as an agent
of the Crown and therefore obligated and proud to uphold
the principles of the Treaty, participation, protection and partnership of
the Maori and their education. The New Zealand education system
has not always been geared toward the best interests of

(23:02):
the Maori. Early colonial school separated Maori from European and
also restricted the curriculum for Maori so they were only
taught the skills needed for laboring jobs. In later years,
Tario Maori, which is the Marie language, was forbidden from
being spoken at schools, forcing Maory youngsters to assimilate into

(23:23):
the European culture. It was it was feared to Real
Maori would disappear. Uh, and I apologized. I tried so
hard to be able to say this, and there's like
a role in the r that I cannot write replicate
with my American English tongue, so UH to get back
to the letter. It was feared tar Reel Maori would disappear,

(23:44):
which led to the efforts to revive the language. The
Treaty Ta Tribunal heard a claim to make to Real
Mary a treasure, which they found in favor of and
Tario was made an official language in seven in the education,
Asian system took another significant step forward with the release
of Uh Tafari K, the first bicultural early childhood curriculum

(24:08):
in the world. The document is written in both Tarreo
and English, and incorporates the Maori world view into the
education of all our young This is the curriculum that
guides my teaching practices today. Although not yet fluent Intarrio,
I use it daily with the children at my preschool
and respect the values of the Maori world view. Furthermore,

(24:30):
the Ministry of Education funds many full Maori immersion education centers,
bilingual and immersion Maory units in primary schools and college.
You are now even able to take university exams and
submit assignments into real Maori. Hopefully our positive steps forward
can help ease some of the not so wise decisions

(24:51):
of the past. Um and then she says, just for
a little fun quirk to end with, Maori and New
Zealand Sign language are the only official languages of New Zealand.
English has never been given official status, but is the
de facto official language of the country by virtue of
the fact that it is used in government departments and sessions,
and that a very large majority of the population speaks

(25:12):
it and nothing else. This always appears in pub quizzes here.
Thanks again, yes, thank you very much, Sue. I was
very glad to get this letter because we mentioned in
that episode that like, while the spirit of the treaty
overall seems to be coming from a good place, definitely,
a lot of things that happened after the treaty was signed,

(25:33):
we're not from a good place. Um. But I didn't
want to go into a litany of examples about why
because that would have, I think, distracted from the core
part of the podcast. So I was glad to get
uh this note. I also got a series of contradictory
corrections on how to pronounce why tangy. Uh. We're so

(26:00):
doing our hardest, hardest best with pronouncing words. Yeah, I
mean we've talked about it so many times. You know,
the horse should be deceased at this point. But again,
we grew up speaking English. Are tongues can't always cluck
the same ways as other languages? No, And I sort
of like, I want everyone who listens to the podcast

(26:22):
to remember how hard it was the first time they
tried to learn another language other than their native language
for the first time. Unless they were extremely small children,
it was probably pretty difficult. So now imagine trying to
do that for every language on Earth, once a week,
once a week. Uh, We're so, we're seriously, seriously trying

(26:46):
our best, so uh so thank you to to those
of you who um who send us helpful things and
and not mean things on that score. If you would
like to write to us about this or any other subject,
we're at history Podcasts at how stuffworks dot com. Our
Facebook is Facebook dot com slash missed in History, and
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(27:09):
in History dot tumbler dot com. And we're on Pinterest
at pinterest dot com slash missed in history. If you
would like to learn a little bit more about one
of the reasons why the British even cared about what
was going on in Ghana at this point in history,
come to our website and put the word gold in
the search bar. You will find how gold works, because

(27:29):
that was super important at this point. You could learn
about that and a whole lot more at our website,
which is how Stuffworks dot com. And you can find
show notes in an archive of every episode and lots
of other cool stuff at our other website, which is
missed in History dot com. Go more on this and

(27:50):
thousands of other topics because it how stuff Works dot com.