Sika Ye Mogya

Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of nature. ...
It continued to play a vital role, it served as the blood in the veins

of the administration of the state. Tarnishing the Golden Stool - F.M. Wächter
Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of

nature. ... It continued to play a vital role, it served as
the blood in the veins of the administration of the
state.
Tarnishing the Golden Stool
Fenna Maximiliane Wächter Page | 1
Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler. At the same time,
the proverb may well suggest that those who have
gold will be elevated to the position of a ruler
themselves.
On Commonwealth –
Gold, The Gods And Guns
SIKA YE
MOGYA
The Clan, The Republic & The Empire
Aggrandizement – The Individual And The State
Modernism, Personal Interest
& Commonwealth
curated by
amma birago
The world capitalist system strongly influenced the
development of the Asante empire for three centuries.
Enid Schildkrout Department of Anthropology,
American Museum of Natural History, New York
… in the early seventeenth century all of Holland

came to depend solely on gold from the Akan mines
in Ghana for its coinage.
Aspects of Precolonial Akan Economy
K. Y. Daaku
… three factors were the main causes that held the Asanteman together: gold, an intricate system of social relations and civic
duty, and sunsum. . Tarnishing the Golden Stool - F.M. Wächter
Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of nature. ... It continued to play a vital role, it served as the blood in the veins
“You cannot cook and eat royalty;

money is what it is all about.”
Asante Proverb
The war correspondent, H.M. Stanley, argued: "King Coffee Page | 2

[Kofi Karari] is too rich a neighbour to be left all alone with his riches,
with his tons of gold dust and accumulations of wealth to himself."
Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire: A Study in Interest Group Relations
Agnes A. Aidoo
The accumulation of wealth was

a crucial civic duty in Asante.
Fenna Maximiliane Wächter
At this level, then, the Golden Stool was the irreducible medium, the
vessel, of human (that is, Asante) identity and culture, and as such its
enabling involvement was deemed to be indispensable to the most
crucial passages of Asante ritual dramaturgy.
Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History
to the Close of the Nineteenth Century.
T. C. McCaskie
The development of Greek society, the unit of value. Still later, when gold came into circulation, its value was based
upon the value of the cow. The psychoanalysts make a connection between the acquisition of money and finding the
security of a mother substitute. The sacred bulls and cows were related to the mother goddess. These animals were
then converted into monetary units. In acquiring money, therefore, one unconsciously gained the protection of the
mother. Origin of Money in the Animal Sacrifice Journal of Hillside Hospital W. H. Desmonde
The systemic monetary reification of gold as substance understood to be of other-worldly provenance; ... It was held
to embody the corporate essence or 'soul' (sunsum) of those beings who were, are and will be Asante, and in direct
and obvious consequence it was revered as a hallowed or sacred object. In this aspect or mode the Golden Stool was
a construct that framed individual and collective identity, and that mediated - through its singularity, its uniqueness-
the basic referents of cultural discourse. It did this by furnishing an vocabulary, by defining essential ontologies; the
distinction between 'us' and 'them' - the notion of a unique 'Asanteness' that united the ancestors, the living and the
unborn in an exclusive and seamless communion; and, in refinement of this, the idea of a bounded and ordered
culture (a legislated cultural space), the people or nation (Asanteman) presided over by the Asantehene as the
juridically sanctioned custodian of the Golden Stool.
T. C. McCaskie

K. Y. Daaku
One of the most significant developments in the trade on the Ghana coast was the concentration of about twenty
European forts and castles along the Akan coastline between Assini and Winneba. The establishment of these forts
brought trade right to the Akan doorstep. On the northern fringes of the forest, the important Mande trading centers Page | 3
of Buna and Begho, which sent gold and kola to Djenne and other northern markets, were set up. Until the beginning
of the seventeenth century, both the coastal and northern markets were basically interested in the gold trade.
Kwame Afosa,
The Accounting Historians Journal
A good understanding of the sources of revenue and financial administration of Ashanti calls for a comment on the
political structure of Ashanti. Ashanti was an empire which flourished in the forest region of present- day Ghana in
the 16th and 17th centuries. Ashanti was a monarchy with a bureaucracy financed through taxes. The system of tax
collection was one of apportionment among the levels of the social strata that were required to bear the tax burden.
Accounting controls over funds which finally reached the coffers of the monarch involved boxes. The operations
and uses of Adaka Kesie (the Big Box) and Apim Adaka (the Box of Thousand) could be likened to a current
account and a petty cash account respectively.
Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s

The testimony of Miles and his fellow slavers to the effect that Fante institutions were as free and just as any in the
world may have been self-serving but is congruent with virtually all other evidence. Despite this, and despite the fact
that the principal economic activities in Fanteland continued to consist of such things as subsistence agriculture and
fishing, the effects of the Fante traffic with the Europeans did permeate the whole of their society. Gold became a
form of wealth in the confederacy itself, (though a secondary one according to Miles), and the Fante economy
became partially monetarized.
George Metcalf – A Microcosm of why Africans Sold Slaves
Africa And The Africans

In The Age Of The Atlantic Slave Trade
In the area called the Gold Coast by the Europeans, the empire of Asante (Ashanti) rose to prominence in the period
of the slave trade. The Asante were members of the Akan people (the major group of modern Ghana) who had
settled in and around Kumasi, a region of gold and kola nut production that lay between the coast and the Hausa and
Mande trading centers to the north. There were at least 20 small states based on the matrilineal clans that were
common to all the Akan peoples, but those of the Oyoko clan predominated. Their cooperation and their access to
firearms after 1650 initiated a period of centralization and expansion. Under the vigorous Osei Tutu (d. 1717) the
title of asantehene was created as supreme civil and religious leader. His golden stool became the symbol of an
Asante union that was created by linking the many Akan clans under the authority of the asantehene but recognizing
the autonomy of subordinate areas. An all-Asante council advised the ruler, and an ideology of unity was used to
overcome the traditional clan divisions. With this new structure and a series of military reforms, conquest of the area
began.
By 1700 the Dutch on the coast realized that a new power had emerged, and they began to deal directly with it. With
control of the gold-producing zones and a constant supply of prisoners to be sold as slaves for more firearms, Asante
maintained its power until the 1820s as the dominant state of the Gold Coast. Although gold continued to be a major
item of export, by the end of the 17th century the value of slaves made up almost two-thirds of Asante's trade.
Africa And The Africans
In The Age Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

Various Edited By: R. A. Guisepi
As a member of a state every citizen had a right to mine gold, with only
minor restrictions. By custom he was expected to, give two-thirds of all Page | 4
gold nuggets and all treasure troves to the chief,
K. Y. Daaku

… three factors were the main causes that held the Asanteman together: gold, an intricate system of social relations
and civic duty, and sunsum. Gold was a means of rewarding civic duty and fostering accountability, and
strengthening relations within the federation and among the Amanhene. It also encouraged people to strive for
working for the good of Asante and increasing its wealth. As long as wealth continued to increase and gold
regulated civic actions, rulers were found to be ruling in accordance with sunsum and their power was thus
legitimized.
Sustainable Trade in Pre-Colonial Asante

Karen Sanders
Throughout the Asante kingdom when a boy reached ‘the age of discretion’ his father would give him a small
amount of gold dust and his own set of gold-weights along with miniature spoons so that he could learn how to
measure the gold, trade with it, and to signify his passage into adulthood. This practice signifies the importance
which the Asante people placed on trade.
The Asante were and are acutely aware that their culture, in the most literal
sense, was hacked out of nature. And this understanding … engendered the
abiding fear that, without unremitting application and effort, the fragile
defensible place called culture would simply be overwhelmed or reclaimed by
an irruptive and anarchic nature.
Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire:
A Study in Interest Group Relations
Agnes A. Aidoo
Gareth Austin, 'No elders were present':

Commoners and private ownership in Asante, 1807-96
'In this vast country, Gold alone is king. If any get that wealth he is king.
We are all free aborigines of this country.'
In the last quarter of the century, the commoner merchants became 'gold-takers', that is,
brokers in the gold trade on the coast, and also turned to rubber production and exchange,
principally in the Brong-Ahafo districts.
Originally, when gold left the country it had brought in another resource crucial for the
functioning of the state – people. But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of Page | 5
luxury goods indicates a shift in priorities. As one crucial state resource was leaving the
country, it was not being replaced by another equally productive one.
Trade, Accumulation and the State in Asante in the Nineteenth Century
Kwame Arhin
He argues that the ethic of "achievement by accumulation" embodied in the hierarchical relationship of the Golden
Stool to the Golden Elephant Tail was transformed in the mid-19th century in part by the appearance of an alternative
model of social and economic development. This was associated with the British occupation of the southern Gold
Coast, but was probably seen in context not as foreign but as another African view having revolutionary
consequences [the subject of the second as yet unpublished part of his analysis.
Colonial Encounters, European Kettles, and the Magic of Mimesis in the Late Sixteenth
and Early Seventeenth Century Indigenous Northeast and Great Lakes
Meghan C. Howey
Peasants in 19th-Century Asante -

Kwame Arhin
Kumasi was the political, administrative, religious, and cultural capital of the Asante Union and of Greater Asante.
In the 19th century, the culture of Kumasi, with its heterogeneous population including peoples drawn from all over
the territories under the Asantehene, Muslims from as far afield as the Maghreb and Mecca, and European visitors
from the coast, took a shape distinct from that of the surrounding villages (Bowdich 1819, Freeman 1967 [1898]).
The Golden Stool in the 1950s could and did resurrect 'objective'
religiosity; it could not exhume the fiscal system that had existed under
Kwaku Dua Panin. So, in sociohistorical terms the akonkofo
represent the rise of a very confused 'individualism';
Accumulation: Wealth and Belief in Asante History

Part II - the Twentieth Century
T. C. McCaskie
What was left behind after the 1880s was, bluntly, a class without a place society. The great mass of nhenkwaa
without office were simply anomalous without the Asantehene. Hated by most Asante because of the 'nhenkwaa -
ambition, pride, greed, vanity, contemptuousness, criminality under royal tection - this was also a class severely in
danger. Moreover, the Golden Stool, guarantor of riches and power, had failed them; the driving ideology of
accumulation and social achievement no longer possessed rewards to distribute.

Page | 6
the ‘origins’ and the early political developments

of the forests’ dwellers of Ghana.
Basically … the big-bang theory holds that before the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, i.e. before the integration of
southern Ghana into the European bullion market and the opening of the Atlantic trade, the forest dwellers of this
part of forested West Africa were hunters and gatherers. It further stresses that the incorporation of the area into the
world market resulted in drastic changes in the social fabric and in the formation of polities.
The 'Big Bang' Theory Reconsidered:

Framing Early Ghanaian History
Gérard Chouin
… the great abundance of all gold deposits within Western Africa lay directly beneath the territory which the Asante
had come to settle. No other known area in West Africa exists where the gold deposits are so densely concentrated.
The vast abundance of gold in this small region enabled the Asante people to trade this asset with a seemingly
inexhaustible supply line. In contrast to the other main trade items that the Asante utilized to expand their network,
gold is unique in multiple ways.
The most important property of gold which distinguishes it from other trade commodities is that gold is not
necessary to sustain life. There is no human need for gold which could explain its high demand throughout Africa
which allowed the Asante to trade this asset as vigorously as they did. Therefore, the question must be asked: At
such a time in human history when obtaining food and merely surviving captured the majority of a human being’s
time, what would drive a person to waste a good deal of their hunting and gathering time mining, cleaning, and
hoarding an asset which seems to have no direct value to human life? In other words, what is the value of gold in
pre-colonial Africa?
Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History -
Akyeampong and Obeng

Page | 7
state. Tarnishing the Golden Stool
Wealth could consist of gold, nkoa and slaves, and landed property. However, the only accepted currency for state
interactions was gold dust. All taxes were therefore paid in the form of gold dust, and people and land had a value
attached to them, measured in gold. Gold was both the currency of state power and the standard of value.
Bowdich as follows: The King is heir to the gold of every subject,

from the highest to the lowest ... …
Traders in gold or slaves were taxed in gold at the borders.
The seller in the Kumasi market was taxed by the toll collectors.
Gold dust dropped in the course of transactions in the marketplace
had to be left untouched to be gathered and cleansed for the state
at the end of the year through communal labour (Bowdich 1819: 320).
The coastline of Ghana was coined, “The Gold Coast” due to the prominence of
gold trading activities. However, this was by no means the only trade asset
which the Asante possessed. Therefore, what were their other main trade
commodities and with whom did the Asante engage in trade? Also, it is
important to understand why trade was an important force in the establishment
of the Asante’s economic power and how they came to monopolize various
trading networks.
If a man was approved of having accumulated enough wealth to be recognized for it, he was made an abirempon, a
term traditionally applied to the earliest Akan entrepreneurs who had been essential in founding the first Akan
villages and chiefdoms within the forest. The term abirempon literally meant “big man”. The making of an
abirempon was richly symbolic. As part of the custom, a slave would tie a symbolic Elephant’s Tail around his
waist, and the man would have to “hunt” him. He would then be awarded the right to have an Elephant’s Tail (mena)
carried in front of him whenever he walked in public.
… By accumulating a large amount of gold, the abirempon had worked towards the good of Asante society as a
whole, because upon his death, his wealth would flow into the royal chest to be redistributed for the good of the
Asanteman. Just as one man killed the elephant to feed many, it was one man who had accumulated the gold, but
many people who benefitted from it.
Asante Proverbs Page | 8

"Sika peredwan da kurom a ewo amansan"
any capital in a town belongs to all the townsmen
Odehye nhyehye, na sika na ehyehye: "

one becomes famous not by being noble born but by being wealthy"'
… "Sika fre mmogya" ...

"money brings all blood relations together."
If in fact, one left Asante in order to evade taxes, for example,

one was committing a crime. ... If an Asante returned from a journey outside
the kingdom’s borders with tattoos on his body, indicating another identity
or allegiance, he could be executed by the king. … he had stolen himself
from the Asante state, a deeply antisocial act.
legitimized.
Agnes A. Aidoo
Asante's known and unknown wealth acted as a powerful magnet for British commercial speculators and political
agitators. Thus, the African Times of London urged the invasion of Asante in October 1873 because the empire had
"one of the richest goldfields in the world" and the British could reap "thirty or forty millions sterling value of gold
per year, for many, many years to come". The war correspondent, H.M. Stanley, argued: "King Coffee [Kofi Karari]
is too rich a neighbour to be left all alone with his riches, with his tons of gold dust and accumulations of wealth to
himself." He estimated that the loot from Kumase would pay "twenty times over" the cost of Woseley's expedition
(1874: 18).
A great deal of the wealth that fired the imagination of the Englishmen came as a result of the intense and sustained
economic changes in Asante. Travelers' accounts from 1839-1848 and 1869-1874 show that prosperity was general,
and it affected other social groups besides the king and his chiefs. Extensive farms and abundant supplies of yams,
cocoyams, corn, plantains, rice, groundnuts, tomatoes, onions, oranges, bananas, and pineapples were reported
everywhere in Adanse, Bekwae, Kumase, and Dwaben. Weaving, pottery, and goldsmithing were invigorated;
builders improved the quality of houses, towns, roads, and market centers (Freeman, 1868; Ramseyer and Kuhne,
1875). It was the time when wealthy com moners could ask for the king's permission to wear the nyawoho cloth.
The ruling chiefs, however, showed most conspicuously the social effects of all the economic changes. In Kumase,
Adanse, and Dwaben, they imported coastal carpenters to build their houses. In the latter two states the houses were
imposing one and two-storey mansions. This was also the period in the 1840s when Asante hene Kwaku Dua I
hosted splendid state dinners for Reverend Freeman, Governor William Winniet, and other visiting British officials
with a brilliant display of European silverplate and assorted wines. Dressed in European clothes com plemented with Page | 9
the impressive Asante gold regalia, the asantehene and his guests were entertained on these occasions by a special
band of musicians trained by the Dutch at Elmina (Freeman, 1868: 138-43; Western Echo, sup plement). Kwaku
Dua I designed most of his own rich kente and nwontoma cloths at this time; he also created new stools (offices) for
specially skilled goldsmiths who fashioned his impressive gold and silver regalia (Rattray, 1927: 235-49;
Kyerematen, n.d. [1961] : 13; IAS/AS 14: Asomfuo stool history).
Thomas Bowdich, for example, noted in 1817 that when the amanhene attended national assembly meetings in
Kumase, each had "the dignitaries of his own province or establishment to his right and left; and it was truly
'Concilium in Concilio' " (1819: 58). Reverend Thomas Birch Freeman, who visited Asante several times between
1839 and 1848, observed that the chiefs enjoyed "more or less of a kind of feudal independence" and assumed
"almost regal state" in their own capitals. After a visit to Dahomey, he was struck by the contrast between the
submissive attitude of Dahomean chiefs and officials and the "sense of aristocratic independence" of the Asante
chiefs. The majestic bearing of the latter, their "bold and stately step," and their display of a fine array of "rich cloths
of native manufacture" (kente cloths) truly amazed Freeman. He pondered over how the position of the ruling chiefs
in Kumase could be reconciled with what he called "the known despotism of the Ashantee Government .... It
naturally excites the inquiry of the reflecting traveller how such strange contrarieties can exist in apparent harmony
and concord?" (The Western Echo).
Agnes A. Aidoo

As indicated, during his lifetime the individual accumulator of wealth received
public or social acknowledgement of his achievement on behalf of society -
ultimately and at the highest level by being invested with the title of
obiremopon.
Asantes who in numbers in the 1880s and 1890s repudiated the authority Golden
Stool because of the fiscal exactions and illicit brutalities of the state fled as
refugees into the Gold Coast Colony. Much has been recorded concerning these
refugees. … their entrepreneurial individualism, a development typically fuelled
their removal of gold from Asante. ... Such men were one of the 'leading edges'
in nineteenth-century transformation of attitudes towards accumulation, wealth
belief.
Accumulation: Wealth and Belief in Asante History
Part II - the Twentieth Century

T. C. McCaskie
.
Page | 10
Originally, when gold left the country it had brought in another resource crucial for the functioning of the state –
people. But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of luxury goods indicates a shift in priorities. As one crucial
state resource was leaving the country, it was not being replaced by another equally productive one.
McCaskie, on the other hand, does not conceive of the state as an agent of 'economic development' but of structured
accumulation, and hence of the differentiation of the rich men, asikafoo, from poor men, ahiafoo (McCaskie, 1980:
92; 1983). I have stated elsewhere (Arhin, 1983b) that before colonial rule, the asikafoo were actually the power-
holders and authority-holders, that is, the chief executives of the state and their appointed subordinates, who were
permitted to accumulate and exhibit wealth within the framework of the Asante economy, and that the aim of the
management of the economy was not the spread of wealth among the generality of the Asante people but the
maintenance of the political order. This political order was based on a regulated ranking system which, so the
power- and authority-holders held, might be subverted by the spread of wealth: wealth, like power, was regarded as
the privilege of the well-born and those they favoured and, therefore, the spread of wealth must be controlled.
Kwame Arhin

Kwame Arhin
First, there was the Kumasi state, administered like any other Asante state by the Asantehene and his council
members. Second, Kumasi, together with the neighbouring Asante-Twi-speaking states, formed the Asante Union,
with a council consisting of the Asantehene, some members of the Kumasi state council, and the heads of the other
Asante states. Third, there were the "provinces," consisting of the other Twi-speaking peoples north and south of
Asante. Fourth, there were the non-Twi-speaking protectorate and tributary states southeast and north of the Twi-
speaking peoples. The provincial, protectorate, and tributary states were either conquered or in some other way
brought into subordination to the Asantehene between about 1700 and 1807.
Captives from the wars of conquest were sold into slavery, and the conquered were made to pay war indemnities and
tribute in cash (gold nuggets or gold dust) or in natural or craft products such as human beings, livestock, gold,
cotton, threads, and lime. The distinction between provinces and tributaries, from the fiscal point of view, was that
the former were subject to taxes and levies similar to those paid by the peoples of the Asante Union, while the
protectorates and tributaries were subject to set annual payments (Bowdich 1819: 319-21; Arhin 1967b; Wilks 1975:
64-71; Terray 1975: 1 19).
Throughout the 18th century and the early 19th, conquered peoples revolted and thus invited punitive expeditions,
the victims of which were sold to European slavers, but it is a mistake to state, as Howard does, that the subjects of
the empire were periodically raided and the captives sold into slavery. The provinces, protectorates, and tributaries
contributed a good deal towards the maintenance of the court and of Asante military domination of the region. Their
contributions were paralleled, however, by those of the producers within the union, who paid funeral, installation,
ritual, and war taxes and levies on game and on gold. Visitors to the Asantehene and his officials passing through
the villages of the union were billeted on the village heads, who demanded contributions from the villagers for their
upkeep (Bowdich 1819, Dupuis 1824, Freeman 1844, Ramseyer and Kuhne 1874). …Traders in gold or slaves were
taxed in gold at the borders. The seller in the Kumasi market was taxed by the toll collectors (dwa beresofo). Gold
dust dropped in the course of transactions in the marketplace had to be left untouched to be gathered and cleansed
for the state at the end of the year through communal labour (Bowdich 1819: 320). The king's palace attendants
(nhenkwa) were permitted raids on the market goods for their upkeep (Bowdich 1819: 291). Finally, the state seized
part of the movable property of deceased entrepreneurs, mainly sub ordinate power holders who had collected
commissions on tributes and been permitted to trade on their own behalf and that of the state (Bowdich 1819: 319;
Rattray 1929: 107-9).
Page | 11
In sum, the state heavily extracted surpluses from all producers for its upkeep and for the purpose of military and
political expansion (Arhin 1982). It is clear that in this framework one can indeed speak of a "peasantry," unless one
insists on distinguishing between the extraction of surpluses by the state and that by "international capitalism."
Kwame Arhin
juridically sanctioned custodian of the Golden Stool.
T. C. McCaskie

'In this vast country, Gold alone is king. If any get that wealth he is king.
We are all free aborigines of this country.'
model of social and economic development. This was associated with the British occupation of the southern Gold
Coast, but was probably seen in context not as foreign but as another African view having revolutionary
consequences [the subject of the second as yet unpublished part of his analysis.
Meghan C. Howey
Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History to the Close of the Nineteenth Century
T. C. McCaskie
… how Akan-Asante society and polity came
into being between the 15th and 17th centuries
In 'Wangara, Akan, and Portuguese in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries' Wilks explores the inter-national
competition for the trade of the Akan goldfields between Western Sudanic and European merchants. This suggestive Page | 12
reconstruction is followed by the superb 'Land, Labor, Gold, and the Forest Kingdom of Asante', a piece in which
Wilks' forensic skill draws explanations of the embedding of matriliny, the rise of the accumulating 'big man'
[obirempon] and the mythico-historical origins of the Kumase dynasty from the most implacable of source
materials. Lastly in 'Founding the Political Kingdom: The Nature of the Akan State' he provides a chronological
framework for and a detailed account of the founding of the Asanteman by Osei Tutu and Komfo Anokye in the
later 17th century. The next four essays deal with wealth, with the spatial and temporal dimensions of Asante history
and with the vexed issue of 'human sacrifice'.
The earliest mention of the metal, gold; is in stories which state that Neolithic man discovered nuggets of gold in
riverbeds around the 6th millennium B.C.E.; however, they didn’t find the metal to be strong enough to be useful for
any of their present needs and therefore, didn’t develop methods of utilization for this metal. It has been estimated
that the majority of a person’s working hours were spent finding, collecting or hunting, and preparing food; before
hierarchical structures were formed in societies.
After hierarchical structures were formed in societies, the few people at the top now had a large portion of their day
free from food-related activities. The Egyptian civilization is a good example of the first well documented
hierarchical structured society. It was therefore, not until the time of the ancient Egyptian civilization that gold
became a commodity to be regarded as valuable by mankind. By the time of the Egyptians, people within the
society had divided themselves into different economic classes. Some, like the ruling families of Egypt were so
wealthy compared to the rest of society that they were able to hire people to take care of all their needs. This
‘freeing up’ of their time allowed them to focus on more trivial matters. This is when objects of beauty became
valuable to the world because, the wealthy were willing to pay money to obtain them and the poor needed the money
to purchase food so that they too could extract themselves from the daily activity of food procurement.
After the fall of the Egyptian empire many smaller scaled civilizations came into existence throughout the continent.
A number of these traded with the Asante for their gold deposits and were instrumental in building up the Asante’s
wealth and reputation.
Here, the emergence of the aman - the Akan polities - is presented as a chain
reaction like process where those who controlled gold production and
commercialization were also able to buy slaves. Using slave labour, they could
clear large tracts of forest, which they then claimed as property. They formed a
new class of “entrepreneurs” who quickly built states from their original estates.
Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History to the Close of the
Nineteenth Century
T. C. McCaskie
In fact, Wilks does not draw on a body of evidence strong enough to argue that, prior to the fifteenth century, forest
subsistence strategies consisted of hunting and foraging. Subsequently, the proposed transformation to agricultural
production during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, coupled with extensive social change arising from the
import of slaves, integrated into the society through matriclans, and the position of the forest economy in the world
bullion market, needs further exploration and testing.
The third article in Forest of Gold about the genesis of the Akan order is entitled “Founding the Political Kingdom:
The Nature of the Akan State”. It is in this article, which deals mainly with the early history of the Asante, that
Wilks enunciates his ‘big bang’ theory: “I advance, contrary to his [Rattray’s] evolutionary view, a “big bang”
theory of Akan history. It comprises several theses. First, in the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in
the forest country between the Ofin and the Pra, a foraging mode of production gave way to an agricultural
one...Second, that in the course of this transformation the forest people reorganized themselves in a way such that
the bands appropriate to the older mode of production were replaced by the matriclans appropriate to the newer...But Page | 13
third, that the transformation also engendered the emergence of political structures of a new kind: the aman.”
Here, the emergence of the aman - the Akan polities - is presented as a chain reaction like process where those who
controlled gold production and commercialization were also able to buy slaves. Using slave labour, they could clear
large tracts of forest, which they then claimed as property. They formed a new class of “entrepreneurs” who quickly
built states from their original estates.
The ‘big bang’ theory incorporates the most substantive historical facts known for the late fifteenth- and early
sixteenth century Akan forest and shapes them into interpretive hypotheses: the existence of the world bullion
market, the importation of slaves from Benin, and the possible emergence of matriclans. Drawing mainly on Asante
oral traditions, Wilks proposes an appealing model in which small territories developed into complex polities. In so
doing, he tries to fill the gap between an alleged society of hunter-gatherers and a kingship - based society already
attested in European sources of the sixteenth century. Once again, however, his theory is constrained by limited
source material, and by retro-diction, that is writing history by glossing later sources to reconstitute the history of
earlier, undocumented periods.

As indicated, during his lifetime the individual accumulator of wealth received public or social acknowledgement of
his achievement on behalf of society - ultimately and at the highest level by being invested with the title of
obiremopon.
… the process of accumulation, principally from trading, in Asante before colonial rule. ... In the last quarter of the
nineteenth century, long-distance traders who operated on the coast and had obtained a different view of what would
today be called political economy rejected the Asante tradition of communalism, and welcomed those aspects of
colonial rule that removed the constraints placed by the Asante state on the pursuit of wealth.
… Wilks showed that in the last decade of Asante independence, a group of wealthy Asante exiles based at Cape
Coast tried to persuade the British administration to intervene in Asante to depose the new Asantehene Agyeman
Prempe I and establish British overrule. This, they believed, would provide a liberal tax regime presenting no
obstacle to the private accumulation of wealth. In petitions to the governor of the Gold Coast in 1894 they took what
might in French Revolution terms be described as a bourgeois as opposed to an aristocratic stance:
'In this vast country, Gold alone is king. If any get that wealth he is king. We are all free aborigines of this country.'

Agnes A. Aidoo
Page | 14
"Sika peredwan da kurom a ewo amansan"
any capital in a town belongs to all the townsmen
K. Y. Daaku
functioning of the state – people. But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of
Kwame Arhin

Karen Sanders
Before, examining who traded with the Asante let’s first consider how the Asante discovered their gold deposits and
how they mined the gold from these sources. The Asante first discovered their territory contained gold deposits in
the 14th century near the Bono Manso area of Ghana. … The gold discovery in this region encouraged local trade
and small trading towns began to emerge and take root around the area. … trade towns such as Begho and Wenchi
as examples of towns which were able to emerge from the economic boost which the local gold trade brought to the
region. … as the gold trade developed the trade routes developed simultaneously. The mining of gold was open to
every common citizen within the Asante Empire.
H. Hymer has suggested that the egalitarian nature of the Akan land tenure militated against the emergence of a
landowning class, which would have capitalized on the land and turned the states into modern capitalist societies.
In-deed, most of the trade which was carried on between the Akans and the Europeans throughout the precolonial
era seems to have depended on the efforts of individuals. What made such a development possible was the nature of
the system of land tenure. Like many West African, systems, the Akan system was egalitarian and prevented any
artificial shortage of land,"
The individual had absolute right to all that accrued to him as a result of his labor on the land, but all that was
beneath the 'land belonged to the community. As a member of a state every citizen had a right to mine gold, with
only minor restrictions. By custom he was expected to, give two-thirds of all gold nuggets and all treasure troves to
the chief, who was also entitled to, part of the ivory captured.
This egalitarian system of land tenure opened up trade for all. The individual in his trading efforts was unlimited and
completely responsible, and rulers were at best to provide a peaceful framework within which trade could operate.

K. Y. Daaku
Intellectually and in terms of belief, the 1880s and 1890s were a period when the
tensions engendered by cognitive dissonance became insupportable. And in this
context it is highly significant that the majority of Asante who forged a new Page | 15
intellectual framework and belief structure for their lives did so as refugees in
the Gold Coast Colony. The future in fact lay with such people.
T. C. McCaskie
As a member of a state every citizen had a right to mine gold, with only
minor restrictions. By custom he was expected to, give two-thirds of all
gold nuggets and all treasure troves to the chief,
K. Y. Daaku

Karen Sanders
which the Asante people placed on trade. These weights were passed down in a matrilineal line of descent through
the family. The family set of gold-weights was highly valued and kept carefully wrapped in leather or cloth when
not being used. In some instances the gold-weights would be buried alongside the owner.
Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler. At the same time, the proverb may
well suggest that those who have gold will be elevated to the position
of a ruler themselves. Other proverbs support that argument: “the rich
man is the elder” is one example, suggesting in addition to the fact that
wealth comes with power and it also comes with wisdom.
The Sacred Stools of Ashanti.

Peter Kwasi Sarpong
On the higher national or clan levels, the gods assume proportionate responsibilities and play an important part in
the welfare of the nation or the clan. … The whole of Ashanti is composed of seven or eight clans. Each clan may
have members, headed by an elder, in the various towns and villages. Every genuine Ashanti man or woman must Page | 16
belong to one of these. The vernacular word for a clan is abusua. Each clan may have members, headed by an elder,
in the various towns and villages. Every genuine Ashanti man or woman must belong to one of these. The
vernacular word for a clan is abusua. In a village or town where two or more clans are found, only one of them is, by
virtue of first occupation or otherwise, the permanent ruling lineage there. This is not necessarily that from which
the rulers of the district are chosen. Thus the chief of our village is chosen from the shoona-clan, those of the
division (Offinso State) are selected from the asona-group while the oyokoo-lineage has the honour and duty to
provide the Ashanti nation with its kings. In a given area, the deceased members of a lineage who satisfy the above
conditions are ancestors of that group. In the event of the lineage being the ruling one of the place, its ancestors are
automatically the ancestors of the whole place. Therefore the national ancestors are those of the oyokoo-clan. The
head of each clan represents it in giving due veneration to the lineage ancestral spirits.
“Thus it is for religion not just to embellish, but to shape all essential forms of
community. The definition of membership is participation in a cult. This begins
with the family, for which Greek has no special word: one speaks of house and
hearth, thus consciously designating the domestic sacrificial site.”

attached to them, measured in gold. Gold was both the currency of state power and the standard of value. It was also
in and of itself a status symbol as those who had reached a certain threshold of wealth were allowed to adorn
themselves and their wives with elaborate gold ornaments. Those men who were particularly successful in
accumulating wealth could choose to make a public display of all their wealth – parading through Kumasi their
wives and their slaves, as well as chests filled with their gold dust, themselves being covered in gold ornaments.
Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of nature. It allowed for the purchase of slaves, to provide labor
for the Asante state. The importance of gold did not diminish as Asante had established itself and a labor surplus
was secured, however. It continued to play a vital role, it served as the blood in the veins of the administration of the
state.
The coastline of Ghana was coined, “The Gold Coast” due to the prominence of gold trading activities. However,
this was by no means the only trade asset which the Asante possessed. Therefore, what were their other main trade
commodities and with whom did the Asante engage in trade? Also, it is important to understand why trade was an
important force in the establishment of the Asante’s economic power and how they came to monopolize various
trading networks.
the ending of the Atlantic slave trade to the subsequent

emergence of what he saw as a bourgeois challenge to the Page | 17
established political order.
'No Elders Were Present':

Commoners And Private Ownership In Asante, 1807-96
Gareth Austin
Taking these points together, the conclusion that follows from most of the literature is that, as Agnes A. Aidoo
maintained, 'Wealth in Asante was incidental to political power': or, to borrow a phrase from T. C. McCaskie writing
in a slightly different context, behind the respective fates of rich and poor 'there, ineluctably, stood the state'.
According to Wilks this state dominance over the material life of society came to be challenged from within. Wilks
linked the ending of the Atlantic slave trade to the subsequent emergence of what he saw as a bourgeois challenge to
the established political order. The starting point was that the demise of that trade reduced the economic returns on
warfare. This inspired the emergence of a 'peace party' within the Asante government. Within the state promotion
and enrichment came to be awarded less often for military and more often for commercial success. The personal
fortunes made by state traders resulted in them reinforcing the class of wealthy men (asikafoo) with unprecedented
numbers, riches and collective self-assertiveness.
These practising monopolists became 'progressively alienated from the very system which they worked', 'frustrated'
at not being allowed to enter private trade in fair competition with the Bata Fekuo, the Company of State Traders,
and prevented by death duties from transmitting 'their estates even relatively intact to their heirs'. They moved from
individual evasion of death duties to the collective (if informal) application of political pressure to achieve their
abolition. This transition seems to have been occasioned by anger at the exceptionally high taxes and arbitrary fines
imposed by Asantehene Mensa Bonsu (1874-83). In Wilks' words an 'organized middle-class opposition' emerged in
the 1880s, as a major constituent of the coalition which overthrew Mensa Bonsu in 1883, and went on to be a major
force in the violent power struggle that followed.
'No Elders Were Present':

Commoners And Private Ownership In Asante, 1807-96
Gareth Austin
In the case of gold, which was by far the larger of the two in terms of the value
of output, he conceded that the private sector was 'probably' the 'major' part of
the industry. However, he maintained that the state share was large, while
private production was limited in unit size because it used only family labour.
Wilks went on to argue that 'no significant accumulation of wealth occurred' at
the level of the village or the ordinary lineage. Rather, the value produced by
that family labour was 'appropriated through a system of unequal exchange'.

Asantehene Kwaku Dua Panin reportedly explained to the missionary Freeman, “If I were to abolish human
sacrifices, I should deprive myself of one of the most effectual means of keeping the people in subjection”. This
raises the question of whether he was mistranslated by Freeman, and really was referring to the need of capital
punishment in order to maintain order in Asante and to confirm his power over life and death.
If in fact, one left Asante in order to evade taxes, for example,

one was committing a crime. ... If an Asante returned from a journey outside
the kingdom’s borders with tattoos on his body, indicating another identity Page | 18
or allegiance, he could be executed by the king. … he had stolen himself
from the Asante state, a deeply antisocial act.

Despite the importance placed on people, a small group of slaves was viewed as consumables. These slaves were
referred to as nkyere (sg.akyere). They were destined to be sacrificed for ritual purposes. Whole villages in Asante
served as homes to these nkyere where they could live for years before being summoned to be sacrificed at an event
such as Odwira, to provide servants in the afterlife.
Nkoa and slaves alike belonged to a particular stool or stool holder, who in turn belonged to the highest stool, the
Golden Stool, or the highest office holder, the Asantehene. The importance assigned to all groups of people within
Asante and the obligations put on them also had implications for their freedom to leave the state. If in fact, one left
Asante in order to evade taxes, for example, one was committing a crime. The high value placed on people in Asante
meant that they were assets of the state. If an Asante returned from a journey outside the kingdom’s borders with
tattoos on his body, indicating another identity or allegiance, he could be executed by the king. By changing his
identity and choosing not to be Asante any longer, he had stolen himself from the Asante state, a deeply antisocial
act.
Despite the importance placed on people, a small group of slaves was viewed as consumables.
These slaves were referred to as nkyere (sg.akyere). They were destined to be sacrificed for ritual
purposes. Whole villages in Asante served as homes to these nkyere where they could live for
years before being summoned to be sacrificed at an event such as Odwira, to provide servants in
the afterlife.
Gun Culture In Kumasi

T. C. McCaskie
Guns literally made Asante, and magical guns are features of many traditions.
Guns, originally muskets, have long been a potent icon of manhood status in Asante. They were mythologically
charged, for they were instrumental in the creation of Asante. Authoritative tradition associates Komfo Anokye with
the magical power of Asante weapons and with the occult enfeeblement of enemy guns. At the epochal battle of
Feyiase (1701) he is said to have made a tree swell itself to receive all the musket fire of the Denkyira, and then
resume its normal size so that the Asante volleys found their mark.
Guns literally made Asante, and magical guns are features of many traditions. Throughout Asante history guns were
also politically charged, for they were the irreducible tools of force and power. Nineteenth-century Asantehenes
stored the latest model guns in royal arsenals so as to offset any challenge to their own authority. Then, during the
chaotic dynastic wars of the 1880s, Kumasi 'youngmen' or non-office holders (nkwankwad) forced access to the
rapidly evolving industrial products of European gunmakers - weapons with rifling, breech-loading magazines, ever
higher rates of fire and killing power - and used them to compensate for their lack of a political voice as
marginalized commoners (Wilks 1989: 530-43, 549-56).
The gun has been salient as an icon of power throughout Asante history. Its cultural politics are suffused with Page | 19
signifiers. Like other key components of Asante identity its intentional status is complex, but also ambiguous. It has
served both to assert and to challenge received socio? political hierarchy and order in, it should not be forgotten, a
culture marked by violence and bloodletting.
It is a metonym for sanctioned power, as when the Asantehene is characterized as 'he who sits amidst a thousand
guns'. But its quiddity, as a thing in itself, is neutral. It is possession, purpose and use that make the gun speak for its
user by quite literally speaking for itself. Guns, proclaim and impose an order beyond themselves. Their use asserts
the user's nature and view of the world. This, he said, was why Asante people were prepared to condone the use of
guns if sympathetic to the user's intention, and this was an identification that might be extended to bandits as well as
office holders. Regard was often bound up with an estimate of what using a gun said about someone's decisiveness
about their own life, in the senses of 'taking a stand' (gyinae) and the willed execution of that stand (atembu).
T. C. McCaskie
Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler.

At the same time, the proverb may well suggest that
those who have gold will be elevated to the position
of a ruler themselves.
the ‘origins’ and the early political developments

of the forests’ dwellers of Ghana.
Basically … the big-bang theory holds that before the fourteenth/fifteenth centuries, i.e. before the integration of
southern Ghana into the European bullion market and the opening of the Atlantic trade, the forest dwellers of this
part of forested West Africa were hunters and gatherers. It further stresses that the incorporation of the area into the
world market resulted in drastic changes in the social fabric and in the formation of polities.
The 'Big Bang' Theory Reconsidered:

Framing Early Ghanaian History
Gérard Chouin
… the great abundance of all gold deposits within Western Africa lay directly beneath the territory which the Asante
had come to settle. No other known area in West Africa exists where the gold deposits are so densely concentrated.
The vast abundance of gold in this small region enabled the Asante people to trade this asset with a seemingly
inexhaustible supply line. In contrast to the other main trade items that the Asante utilized to expand their network,
gold is unique in multiple ways.
The most important property of gold which distinguishes it from other trade commodities is that gold is not Page | 20
necessary to sustain life. There is no human need for gold which could explain its high demand throughout Africa
which allowed the Asante to trade this asset as vigorously as they did. Therefore, the question must be asked: At
such a time in human history when obtaining food and merely surviving captured the majority of a human being’s
time, what would drive a person to waste a good deal of their hunting and gathering time mining, cleaning, and
hoarding an asset which seems to have no direct value to human life? In other words, what is the value of gold in
pre-colonial Africa?

Karen Sanders
which the Asante people placed on trade. These weights were passed down in a matrilineal line of descent through
the family. The family set of gold-weights was highly valued and kept carefully wrapped in leather or cloth when
not being used. In some instances the gold-weights would be buried alongside the owner.

of a ruler themselves. Other proverbs support that
argument: “the rich man is the elder” is one example,
suggesting in addition to the fact that wealth comes
with power and it also comes with wisdom.
.
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History

Possession of the Golden Stool was a weapon, an enabling tool; it assisted to the
commanding heights of authority and it helped deliver into the outstretched hand
the reins of power and government. If it could elicit an objective obedience, then
it might also command an enforced allegiance.
The Golden Stool was "a shrine" embodying "the soul of the Ashanti people." … the survival of the Golden Stool
pointed the contrast between the noble Asante, "clinging tenaciously to an ideal," and "a somewhat materially-
minded" (and by implication, spiritually impoverished) "Western world." … Certainly, the Golden Stool was (and
is) a sacred object, but its sacrality is part of a dualism, an ambiguity. If the sacrality of the Golden Stool encouraged Page | 21
and coaxed an adoring, passive consensuality, then the historical record reveals that it also propagated and fertilized
dreams of power. Possession of the Golden Stool was a weapon, an enabling tool; it assisted to the commanding
heights of authority and it helped deliver into the outstretched hand the reins of power and government. If it could
elicit an objective obedience, then it might also command an enforced allegiance. In point of fact, the Golden Stool
is positively crusted with the mud of power politics.
R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History
T. C. McCaskie
In Asanteman ("Asante nation") the Asantehene managed the Kumase central

government of key officeholders and main constituents of the polity. …
Euro-African Commerce And Social Chaos:
Akan Societies In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries
Kwasi Konadu
The majestic bearing of the latter, their "bold and stately step," and their display
of a fine array of "rich cloths of native manufacture" (kente cloths) truly amazed
Freeman. He pondered over how the position of the ruling chiefs in Kumase
could be reconciled with what he called "the known despotism of the Ashantee
Government ... It naturally excites the inquiry of the reflecting traveller how
such strange contrarieties can exist in apparent harmony and concord?" (The
Western Echo).

Agnes A. Aidoo

Bonnat, who lived in Kumasi as a prisoner for a while, recalled: The tremendous importance of the king of Achanty
draws to Coomassie a large number of young men, belonging to the best families of the kingdom … they are drawn
above all by the hope of coming to the attention of the king, and they neglect no opportunity of pleasing him … one
sees them continually following in his footsteps, soliciting his favours and his smiles.
Kumasi did not produce its own food or goods and its small marketplace was dominated by luxury goods imported
from Europe. The officials residing in Kumasi sent followers to farms surrounding the capital in order to produce
food, but also so that they would not have to provide for their costly upkeep within the town. Allman argues that the
culture of Kumasi was not simply “Asante culture”, particularly because several different ethnic groups came
together there to do business. Kumasi culture “differed from the purely indigenous culture but progressively
influenced it”.
Page | 22
The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)

Kwame Arhin
Dupuis described the Ashanti empire as a 'great political association of kingdoms'. 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.
Between the years 1700 and 1820 the Ashantis of central Ghana fought a number of wars in nearly all the territories
now comprising modern Ghana. Most interpretations of these wars have linked them with the European trade posts
on 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
1700, 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.
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.
The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)
Kwame Arhin
functioning of the state – people. But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of
Kwame Arhin
McCaskie, on the other hand, does not conceive of the state as an agent of 'economic development' but of structured
Page | 23
accumulation, and hence of the differentiation of the rich men, asikafoo, from poor men, ahiafoo (McCaskie, 1980:
92; 1983). I have stated elsewhere (Arhin, 1983b) that before colonial rule, the asikafoo were actually the power-
holders and authority-holders, that is, the chief executives of the state and their appointed subordinates, who were
permitted to accumulate and exhibit wealth within the framework of the Asante economy, and that the aim of the
management of the economy was not the spread of wealth among the generality of the Asante people but the
maintenance of the political order. This political order was based on a regulated ranking system which, so the
power- and authority-holders held, might be subverted by the spread of wealth: wealth, like power, was regarded as
the privilege of the well-born and those they favoured and, therefore, the spread of wealth must be controlled.
Kwame Arhin
Greene on McCaskie, 'State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante'

T. C. McCaskie - Reviewed by Sandra E. Greene
But nowhere does McCaskie give any evidence that the Asante state was really so
exploitative and onerous. Instead, he continually emphasizes throughout the text the
extent to which the state apparatus, located in the capital of Kumase, operated largely in
isolation from the rest of the society. Accordingly, his use of the Gramscian model--
which is of great value in itself, in helping one understand how the Asante state operated-
-attempts to resolve a problem for the existence of which there is no evidence. We never
see beyond the boundaries of Kumase.

Kwame Arhin
There was, indeed, differentiation within Asante on the basis of proximity to Kumasi and the corresponding
presumed relative participation in its culture. The people of Kwabere and Atwima, within 8-12 miles of Kumasi,
who were the main suppliers of the Kumasi markets and were in daily touch with it, were supposed to be more
"civilized" (womo ani ate) than the peoples of Amansee, Mponua, Asante Akyem, Sekyere, Ahafo, and Brong, who
lived farther off and came to Kumasi annually to the Odwira festival or on summons to the court. In other words, the
culture of Kumasi, which was becoming increasingly urbanised, was seen as drawing within its orbit the peoples of
Asante in degrees determined by their spatial distance from Kumasi. In Asante, then, there was an awareness of a
Kumasi culture, moulded out of courtly practices, the intermingling of various ethnic groups, and encounters with
representatives of foreign cultures, that differed from the purely indigenous culture but progressively influenced it. It
may be difficult, as Fallers points out in the case of Buganda, to estimate the extent and scope of the difference
between the two "cultures" and the degree of mutual awareness of their differences in culture between the Kumasifo
and nkurasefo. However, all of the 19th-century travellers to Kumasi commented on the elaborate culture of urban
Kumasi in contrast to the simplicity of the villages, and the shouting of "kuraseni" as a term of abuse at an
antagonist clearly antedated colonial rule, just as it had long been known that Kumasifo ani ate (lit. "the eyes of
Kumasi dwellers are open," i.e., "they know the ways of the world").
Page | 24
Kwame Arhin

Slaves became an important pillar to the kingdom of Asante in two ways: they
helped in the creation of culture within the ever-encroaching forest, and they
were the basis of wealth for many powerful men in Asante, in addition to the
gold resources within the country.
Agnes A. Aidoo

The unremitting effort which McCaskie talks of required large numbers of working hands, more than Asante itself
could provide. As a result, slaves were acquired, either through trading at the European ports, or through northward
military expansion. Slaves became an important pillar to the kingdom of Asante in two ways: they helped in the
creation of culture within the ever-encroaching forest, and they were the basis of wealth for many powerful men in
Asante, in addition to the gold resources within the country.
The successes achieved in the battle to hack culture out of nature are mirrored in reports by European travelers who
visited Asante. They discovered a country with an elaborate infrastructure and a sophisticated bureaucratic system.
Asante's capital Kumasi, which had expanded throughout the eighteenth century, was well connected with other
towns within the federation by means of wide roads. Checkpoints along them allowed for the collection of taxes on
trade goods that were carried throughout the kingdom and along two major trade routes: one leading north, and the
other south. Eight major roads led from Kumasi into all corners of the Asanteman and to important trading centers
outside its borders, along the coast as well as in the northern hinterland. This road system served as a spatial grid of
federal authority. Keeping the roads clear in itself took effort and central planning and was a very visible
demonstration of the power and the reach of the state.

Kwame Arhin
Kumasi was the political, administrative, religious, and cultural capital of the Asante Union and of Greater Asante.
In the 19th century, the culture of Kumasi, with its heterogeneous population including peoples drawn from all over
the territories under the Asantehene, Muslims from as far afield as the Maghreb and Mecca, and European visitors Page | 25
from the coast, took a shape distinct from that of the surrounding villages (Bowdich 1819, Freeman 1967 [1898]).

Kumasi was the center of the federation, and despite the similarities of the political structure, it was different from
other towns. While other towns in Asante served as large trading centers or centers of production, Kumasi was a
“government town” and McCaskie has suggested that it was filled with office holders and those who were hoping to
become office holders themselves one day. Bonnat, who lived in Kumasi as a prisoner for a while, recalled:
The tremendous importance of the king of Achanty draws to Coomassie a large number of young men, belonging to
the best families of the kingdom … they are drawn above all by the hope of coming to the attention of the king, and
they neglect no opportunity of pleasing him … one sees them continually following in his footsteps, soliciting his
favours and his smiles.
Kumasi did not produce its own food or goods and its small marketplace was dominated by luxury goods imported
from Europe. The officials residing in Kumasi sent followers to farms surrounding the capital in order to produce
food, but also so that they would not have to provide for their costly upkeep within the town.37 Allman argues that
the culture of Kumasi was not simply “Asante culture”, particularly because several different ethnic groups came
together there to do business. Kumasi culture “differed from the purely indigenous culture but progressively
influenced it”.
Gun Culture In Kumasi - T.C. McCaskie

… during the chaotic dynastic wars of the 1880s, Kumasi 'youngmen' or non-office holders (nkwankwaa) forced
access to the rapidly evolving industrial products of European gunmakers - weapons with rifling, breech-loading
magazines, ever higher rates of fire and killing power - and used them to compensate for their lack of a political
voice as marginalized commoners.
Guns literally made Asante, and magical guns are features of many traditions. Throughout Asante history guns were
also politically charged, for they were the irreducible tools of force and power. Nineteenth-century Asantehenes
stored the latest model guns in royal arsenals so as to offset any challenge to their own authority. Then, during the
chaotic dynastic wars of the 1880s, Kumasi 'youngmen' or non-office holders (nkwankwad) forced access to the
rapidly evolving industrial products of European gunmakers - weapons with rifling, breech-loading magazines, ever
higher rates of fire and killing power - and used them to compensate for their lack of a political voice as
marginalized commoners.
Like other key components of Asante identity its intentional status is complex, but also ambiguous. It has served
both to assert and to challenge received socio? political hierarchy and order in, it should not be forgotten, a culture
marked by violence and bloodletting.
T.C. McCaskie
Page | 26
… three factors were the main causes that held the Asanteman together: gold, an
intricate system of social relations and civic duty, and sunsum. Gold was a
means of rewarding civic duty and fostering accountability, and strengthening
relations within the federation and among the Amanhene.
If a man was approved of having accumulated enough wealth to be recognized for it, he was made an abirempon, a
term traditionally applied to the earliest Akan entrepreneurs who had been essential in founding the first Akan
villages and chiefdoms within the forest. The term abirempon literally meant “big man”. The making of an
abirempon was richly symbolic. As part of the custom, a slave would tie a symbolic Elephant’s Tail around his
waist, and the man would have to “hunt” him. He would then be awarded the right to have an Elephant’s Tail (mena)
carried in front of him whenever he walked in public.
… By accumulating a large amount of gold, the abirempon had worked towards the good of Asante society as a
whole, because upon his death, his wealth would flow into the royal chest to be redistributed for the good of the
Asanteman. Just as one man killed the elephant to feed many, it was one man who had accumulated the gold, but
many people who benefitted from it.
Also, at the end of the ceremony, the new abirempon would plant a spear in the market place and challenge others to
do what he had just done, thereby encouraging emulation of his achievement. … The custom of vying for the honor
of receiving an Elephant’s Tail provided a controlled form of competition among Asante men. It can be seen as an
arena in which men could challenge each other to excel under the auspices of the state. Through this established
system of the Elephant’s Tail, the state served as the fount of honor achieved through the fulfillment of civic
obligations. Honor in Asante was enjoyed in the form of advancing in rank in the social hierarchy. Honorable
actions such as the accumulation of wealth were not rewarded by receiving more gold but rather by a public
acknowledgment of one’s achievements.
legitimized.


Tarnishing the Golden Stool Page | 27
Gold and Accumulation of Wealth

The importance of gold in Asante is evidenced by a great number of proverbs dealing with its role in society. One of
them establishes that “gold is king”. This can be interpreted on two levels: the first and obvious one is referring to
gold and its position in society; just as the king and the paramount chiefs it had a considerable amount of influence
and judicial power.


attached to them, measured in gold. Gold was both the currency of state power and the standard of value. It was also
in and of itself a status symbol as those who had reached a certain threshold of wealth were allowed to adorn
themselves and their wives with elaborate gold ornaments. Those men who were particularly successful in
accumulating wealth could choose to make a public display of all their wealth – parading through Kumasi their
wives and their slaves, as well as chests filled with their gold dust, themselves being covered in gold ornaments.
Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of nature. It allowed for the purchase of slaves, to provide labor
for the Asante state. The importance of gold did not diminish as Asante had established itself and a labor surplus
was secured, however. It continued to play a vital role, it served as the blood in the veins of the administration of the
state.
Page | 28

Asante Proverb

K. Y. Daaku
The egalitarian system of land tenure and the open door trade policy were measures designed to enable the people to
enrich themselves and indirectly to enrich the state. In the light of this it is difficult to reconcile the popular assertion
first put forward by T. E. Bowdich that the Asante adopted measures to inhibit the development of a mercantile class
because they feared that any open encouragement of a merchant class would upset the neatly balanced socio-
political system.
Interestingly, the statement is inferential rather than a fact Bowdich collected from the Asante he interviewed. Such
an argument ignores the highly interesting Akan concept of society. A people who openly assert that Sika ne Panin,
or "money is the elder," meaning that the rich person has most influence in councils, must have reconciled the
dichotomy between those who became rich by their own efforts and those, with the wealth of the traditional
aristocracy. As Ivor Wilks has adequately demonstrated, Asante high office was available to commoners as well as
nobles, to non Asante as well as to Asante. The system of social mobility through economic means was not a
peculiar feature of Asante social organization, for "the Asante nation was but an Akan state writ large."
The early seventeenth and eighteenth-century writers like Pieter de Marees, W. J. Muller, and William Bosman had
seen powerful traders integrated into the traditional order and given political offices in addition to their trading
activities. Admittedly, on the cast the presence of the European forts and personnel in larger numbers and the fact
that some powerful traders were supported by the foreigners against the traditional rulers made the process of
integration difficult and led to what has been described as diffused authority. But in the inland states the corrosive
effects of trade and foreign culture on the people could only have been minimal, if present at all. There are too many
instances in local traditions of successful traders integrated into the Akan states for a merchant class to have been a
threat to the socio-political order.
Huge quantities of firearms were poured into West Africa during the major period of the slave trade. While Africans Page | 29
deplored the ever-growing demand of Europeans for captives, Europeans were disturbed by the increasing African
demand for guns. Bosman (1704) explained to the citizens of Amsterdam in 1700 that Africans were sold
"incredible quantities of muskets and carbines, in the management of which they are wonderful dexterous." He
feared that the sale of these weapons was giving the Africans "a knife to cut our throats," but realized that any
European trader "who stopped supplying firearms would quickly find himself displaced by a rival."
Unlike many other states, however, the Akan, whose political organization was but an enlargement of the nuclear
family, saw in the state the fulfillment of the aspirations of all its members. From the fifteenth century trade had
proved the best source of wealth. It was therefore open to all. Through trade rather than con-quest the states were
able to regularly incorporate other sources of capital, such as goods and slaves, to sustain their economy. The
openness of the society in which outsiders were so easily integrated enabled the Akan polities to survive.
Prior to British colonisation of the Gold Coast it was inhabited by various tribes, and civilisation flourished in the
forest and savannah regions. States like Ashanti, Akwamu, Denkyira, Akim, Kwahu, Fanti (known collectively as
Akans) developed in the forest region, and Mossi and Tallensi in the savannah region.
Each of these ethnic groups developed a monarchical and civilised form of government, with the modern facets of
administration, completely independent of any European influence. What is relevant with respect to the government
of these nation-states is their finance, and more specifically their taxation - the raising of revenue to carry on the
numerous activities of government. They never developed a complex system of taxation by modern standards;
however, they established systems that served their needs.
As indicated, during his lifetime the individual accumulator of wealth received public or social acknowledgement of
his achievement on behalf of society - ultimately and at the highest level by being invested with the title of
obiremopon. However, at his death, his accumulated wealth – the evidence of his capacity for and his skill at
increase, the benchmark of his social responsibility - passed from his individual purview into culture; it belonged to
the nation (Asanteman) in the symbolic personage of the Asantehene, the custodian of the Golden Stool - which, in
turn, was the quintessential embodiment of the continuity of historic culture (sunsum).

Thus, at its most fundamental, the accumulation of wealth was basically about the
amplification of cultural space over historical time.
And, at the level of the state's reification of this world view, the rationalisations and
mechanisms involved are extensively documented …
In the event of the lineage being the ruling one of the place, its ancestors are automatically the ancestors of the
whole place. Therefore the national ancestors are those of the oyokoo-clan. The head of each clan represents it in
giving due veneration to the lineage ancestral spirits.
… Firstly, the individual accumulator of surplus or 'big man' (Obiremon; pl., Abirenpon); secondly, the phenomenon
of aggrandised and territorially competitive petty chiefships (the consolidation and institutionalization through ritual
of the most successful abirenpon); and thirdly, the unitary state presided over by the Asantehene (construed in this
aspect as the superordinate Obironmon). The developments summarised above spanned some two hundred years -
from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries - and in their gestation they imparted to the Asante social
formation some of its most basic ethical imperatives, its most enduring grundnorms.
Page | 30
Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History to the Close of the Nineteenth Century.
T. C. McCaskie
H. Hymer has suggested that the egalitarian nature of the Akan land tenure militated against the emergence of a
landowning class, which would have capitalized on the land and turned the
states into modern capitalist societies.
K. Y. Daaku
… Firstly, the individual accumulator of surplus or 'big man' (Obiremon; pl., Abirenpon); secondly, the phenomenon
of aggrandised and territorially competitive petty chiefships (the consolidation and institutionalisation through ritual
of the most successful abirenpon); and thirdly, the unitary state presided over by the Asantehene (construed in this
aspect as the superordinate Obironmon). The developments summarised above spanned some two hundred years -
from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries - and in their gestation they imparted to the Asante social
formation some of its most basic ethical imperatives, its most enduring grundnorms.
These are, firstly, the Asante construction of the nature process (the indivisibility of the continuum of ancestors-
living-unborn). Within the foregoing intellectualist framework, the ultimate meaning of accumulation and of wealth
was construed as being social rather than individual. That is, all accumulation constituted an act of societal rather
than individual increase - an obligatory aggrandizement or enlargement of the stock of human (Asante) capital,
undertaken in conscious discharge of duties towards the achievement of the ancestors and of responsibilities towards
the 'historic' future represented by the unborn. Thus, at its most fundamental, the accumulation of wealth was
basically about the amplification of cultural space over historical time. And, at the level of the state's reification of
this world view, the rationalisations and mechanisms involved are extensively documented, and the general
operational principles are becoming understood. As indicated, during his lifetime the individual accumulator of
wealth received public or social acknowledgement of his achievement on behalf of society - ultimately and at the
highest level by being invested with the title of obiremopon.
However, at his death, his accumulated wealth- the evidence of his capacity for and his skill at increase, the
benchmark of his social responsibility - passed from his individual purview into culture; it belonged to the nation
(Asanteman) in the symbolic personage of the Asantehene, the custodian of the Golden Stool - which, in turn, was
the quintessential embodiment of the continuity of historic culture (sunsum).
T. C. McCaskie

T. C. McCaskie
… in line with Asante practice, the agents of the state were the principal beneficiaries of these developments; but, at
this time, large numbers of lesser functionaries and a host of private individuals had their horizons lifted to the
vision of the man of wealth. Thus, at the very moment when the state was applying the death penalty in order to
practise and to facilitate quite illegitimate levels of appropriation, there were rapidly increasing numbers of people in
Asante with something significant to lose.

K. Y. Daaku
Huge quantities of firearms were poured into West Africa during the major period of the slave trade. While Africans Page | 31
deplored the ever growing demand of Europeans for captives, Europeans were disturbed by the increasing African
demand for guns. Bosman (1704) explained to the citizens of Amsterdam in 1700 that Africans were sold
"incredible quantities of muskets and carbines, in the management of which they are wonderful dexterous." He
feared that the sale of these weapons was giving the Africans "a knife to cut our throats," but realized that any
European trader "who stopped supplying firearms would quickly find himself displaced by arrival."
De Marees reported that the Portuguese sold guns to the Elminas, who knew how to use them, and who understood
that a long musket had a greater range than a short one. The Dutch began trading on the Gold Coast in 159I or 1592,
and firearms formed a part of their ships' cargoes. In I594 the ship De Goede Hoop conveyed an unspecified number
of muskets to the Gold Coast, and the following year another ship carried inter alia ' musketten ende roers'. Between
1593 and 1607 more than 200 Dutch ships visited the Gold Coast, and many of them probably carried guns. De
Marees stated that in 16o1 the Dutch were not only selling guns at various places on the Gold Coast, but were also
teaching the local people how to use them. A few firearms may have reached the Gold Coast interior at this time.
K. Y. Daaku

T. C. McCaskie
… the primary answer to this question can be located only in the realms of thought, philosophy and psychology, and
by historic extension in the context of an evolved and formalised world view. It is to be traced to the matrix of
beliefs, values and social ethics that was first crystallised in the creation of the social order; Ashanti was a
confederacy and had a decentralised bureaucracy. The head was Asantehene (King of Ashanti), and below him were
Divisional Chiefs. The state was composed of tiers of authority, and its lowest and most characteristic unit was the
village. The villages are normally composed of clans. Within any village the clan contained a number of families,
traditionally the descendants of one female ancestress; each clan recognized a head.
Ashanti had a well-organised government; it was, therefore, necessary that they develop a good fiscal system to
finance the government. The main sources of revenue were tributes from conquered tribes, death duties, land taxes
in the form of food-stuffs and game, trading, dues paid by traders, proceeds from stool farms, and special
contributions.
juridically sanctioned custodian of the Golden Stool. At this level, then, the Golden Stool was the irreducible
medium, the vessel, of human (that is, Asante) identity and culture, and as such its enabling involvement was
deemed to be indispensable to the most crucial passages of Asante ritual dramaturgy.
Accumulation, Wealth and Belief in Asante History Page | 32
T. C. McCaskie

Asante Proverb
Issues in Divine Kingship

Gillian Feeley-Harnik
He analyzes the concept of money (identified in part with gold) and its relationship to office and social status in
Asante thought and practice since the 18th century. Death duties, said to have been instituted in ca. 1720-1750, were
the most powerful means of appropriating wealth into the royal coffers and an important issue as late as 1930.
McCaskie (109), in the first of a two-part analysis of Asante ideas about wealth and accumulation, expands on these
topics by arguing that the ideology of power embodied in gold must be analyzed in relation to religion as well as
politics (109, p. 29). He argues that the ethic of "achievement by accumulation" embodied in the hierarchical
relationship of the Golden Stool to the Golden Elephant Tail was transformed in the mid-19th century in part by the
appearance of an alternative model of social and economic development.
model of social and economic development.
This was associated with the British occupation of the southern Gold Coast, but was probably seen in context not as
foreign but as another African view having revolutionary consequences [the subject of the second as yet unpublished
part of his analysis; see also (12)].
Meghan C. Howey

T. C. McCaskie
Intellectually and in terms of belief, the 1880s and 1890s were a period when the tensions engendered by cognitive
dissonance became insupportable. And in this context it is highly significant that the majority of Asante who forged
a new intellectual framework and belief structure for their lives did so as refugees in the Gold Coast Colony. The
future in fact lay with such people, …
A significant consequence of this development is that, in retrospect, the politicians and policies of the 1880s and
early 1890s seem curiously irrelevant at both the social and intellectual levels. The 'conservatives' - most notably the
Akyempemhene Oheneba Owusu Koko - were attempting (ultimately and desperately through violence) to turn the
clock back to a world that was fatally compromised and beyond restitution. By contrast, the 'modernisers' - notably
the English-educated Oheneba Owusu Ansa and his two sons - were trying to build a brave new world from a
European blueprint that, being eclectic and makeshift, commanded only the most limited understanding and support
throughout Asante society.
Page | 33
Thus, at the very moment when the state was applying the death
penalty in order to practise and to facilitate quite illegitimate levels of
appropriation, there were rapidly increasing numbers of people in
Asante with something significant to lose.

... In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, long-distance traders who operated on the coast and had obtained a
different view of what would today be called political economy rejected the Asante tradition of communalism, and
welcomed those aspects of colonial rule that removed the constraints placed by the Asante state on the pursuit of
wealth.

Kwame Arhin
Originally, when gold left the country it had brought in another resource crucial for the functioning of the state –
people. But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of luxury goods indicates a shift in priorities. As one crucial
state resource was leaving the country, it was not being replaced by another equally productive one.
Asante’s Southern trade was dominated by exchanges with the Europeans, and had rested mostly on slaves up to the
nineteenth century. With the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade and the gradual change to legitimate trade, its main
commodity became gold. It is interesting to note the way in which the trade in people and gold shifted over time in
Asante. At first, gold was exported in order to acquire slaves to build the Asante state, strengthen its matrilineages,
and create civilization out of wilderness. At the second stage, as Asante no longer relied on the constant influx of
labor, slaves were exported in order to obtain European goods: arms and luxury items for the rich and powerful.
After the transatlantic slave trade came to an end, gold was again exported, this time to continue the import of
European goods. This shift is crucial and deserves more attention.
… But gold leaving the country for the acquisition of luxury goods indicates a
shift in priorities. As one crucial state resource was leaving the country, it was
not being replaced by another equally productive one.
What, I think, is of paramount importance is that Page | 34

it was in this period that Asante became massively exposed to novel options,
to different (and even contradictory) ways of looking at the world.
K. Y. Daaku
To this day Asante is a notably hierarchical society, avid for money and everything else that supports status. It is an
unequal, striving, noisy, and even bombastic culture with strong investments in its own sense of virtue. I have lost
count of all the times I have been told what a misfortune it is for me that I was not born Asante.
A piece I wrote in 1986 on Komfo Anokye drew an unusually
large (in those days) postbag. I was praised for attempting to “open up”
African history, and condemned for doing the same thing.
McCaskie, Asante History

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Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of nature. ...

It continued to play a vital role, it served as the blood in the veins

Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of

… in the early seventeenth century all of Holland

“You cannot cook and eat royalty;

The war correspondent, H.M. Stanley, argued: "King Coffee Page | 2

The accumulation of wealth was

Aspects of Precolonial Akan Economy

Akan Consumption Patterns in the 1770s

Africa And The Africans

In The Age Of The Atlantic Slave Trade

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Sustainable Trade in Pre-Colonial Asante

Gareth Austin, 'No elders were present':

Peasants in 19th-Century Asante -

Accumulation: Wealth and Belief in Asante History

The world capitalist system strongly influenced the

the ‘origins’ and the early political developments

The 'Big Bang' Theory Reconsidered:

Gold dust also proved vital in hacking culture out of

Bowdich as follows: The King is heir to the gold of every subject,

Asante Proverbs Page | 8

Odehye nhyehye, na sika na ehyehye: "

… "Sika fre mmogya" ...

If in fact, one left Asante in order to evade taxes, for example,

Gareth Austin, 'No elders were present':

Part II - the Twentieth Century

Peasants in 19th-Century Asante -

Gareth Austin, 'No elders were present':

Gareth Austin, 'No elders were present':

Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire:

Sustainable Trade in Pre-Colonial Asante

Aspects of Precolonial Akan Economy

Sustainable Trade in Pre-Colonial Asante

The Sacred Stools of Ashanti.

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

the ending of the Atlantic slave trade to the subsequent

'No Elders Were Present':

'No Elders Were Present':

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

If in fact, one left Asante in order to evade taxes, for example,

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Gun Culture In Kumasi

Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler.

the ‘origins’ and the early political developments

The 'Big Bang' Theory Reconsidered:

Sustainable Trade in Pre-Colonial Asante

Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler.

R.S. Rattray and the Construction of Asante History

In Asanteman ("Asante nation") the Asantehene managed the Kumase central

Order and Conflict in the Asante Empire:

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

The Structure of Greater Ashanti (1700-1824)

Greene on McCaskie, 'State and Society in Pre-colonial Asante'

Peasants in 19th-Century Asante -

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Peasants in 19th-Century Asante -

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Gun Culture In Kumasi - T.C. McCaskie

Tarnishing the Golden Stool

Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler.

those who have gold will be elevated to the position

Gold and Accumulation of Wealth

Gold is the king, Gold is the ruler.

The accumulation of wealth was