Asante at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Setting the Record Straight

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Periodical article

Title:	Asante at the End of the Nineteenth Century: Setting the Record Straight
Author:	Wilks, Ivor
Year:	2000
Periodical:	Ghana Studies
Volume:	3
Pages:	13-59
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Ghana Great Britain
Subjects:	colonization Ashanti polity History and Exploration Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Abstract:	This article probes the constitutional and legal basis for the British annexation of Asante (Ghana). Was British annexation by conquest or cession? What was the nature of the Anglo-Asante confrontations of 1896 and 1900? Using records from the Colonial Office, the article argues - in agreement with the Asante lawyer, Osafroadu Amankwatia, in 1940 - that the constitutional basis of British rule in Asante was 'all something of a fraud'. There was no military confrontation or cession in 1896, so British rule in Asante cannot be dated, technically, to this period. Moreover, the war of 1900-1901 was an Anglo-Kumase war, and certainly did not give the British the legal foundation to annex 'Ashanti'. Yet the 'Ashanti Order in Council', given at the Court of St. James on September 29, 1901, declared Asante as British territory based on military conquest. Notes, ref.