Read e-book online The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War For PDF

For the 1st time, anthropologist Robert Edgerton tells the tale of the Hundred-Year War—from 1807 to 1900, among the British Empire and the Asante Kingdom—from the Asante aspect of view.

In 1817, the 1st British envoy to fulfill the king of the Asante of West Africa used to be dazzled via his reception. a bunch of 5,000 Asante infantrymen, many donning significant caps crowned with 3 foot eagle feathers and gold ram's horns, engulfed him with a "zeal bordering on phrensy," taking pictures muskets into the air. The envoy was once escorted, as no fewer than a hundred bands performed, to the Asante king's palace and greeted through a massive throng of 30,000 noblemen and squaddies, bedecked with quite a bit gold that his celebration needed to stay away from their eyes to prevent the blinding glare. a few Asante elders wore gold embellishes so great that they had to be supported via attendants. yet a legal being result in his execution - fingers tied, ears severed, knives thrust via his cheeks and shoulder blades - used to be additionally paraded earlier than them as a caution of what may befall malefactors. this primary come upon set the degree for one of many longest and fiercest wars in the entire eu conquest of Africa. At its top, the Asante empire, at the Gold Coast of Africa in present-day Ghana, comprised 3 million humans and had its personal hugely subtle social, political, and armed forces associations. Armed with eu firearms, the tenacious and disciplined Asante military inflicted heavy casualties on advancing British troops, every so often defeating them. They received the consideration and admiration of British commanders, and displayed a distinct willingness to conform their conventional army strategies to counter improved British know-how. Even good after a British fortress have been verified in Kumase, the Asante capital, the indigenous tradition stubbornly resisted Europeanization, so long as the "golden stool," the sacred repository of royal energy, remained in Asante palms. It used to be simply after a complete century of battling that resistance finally ceased.