1st & 2nd Ashanti Wars

(1873-4 and 1900)

The First Ashanti War began after the Dutch ceded the port of Elmina to the British in April 1872. The Ashanti Asantehene Kofi Karikari, partly in response to a loss of revenue from the surpressed slave trade, demanded that the British continue to pay the tribute agreed with the Dutch for the rights to use the port. The British refused to pay and he marched to war. Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed to sort the situation out and, after he had driven the Ashanti from Elmina’s immediate environs with a token force of 100 marines, and had his terms for peace rejected, led a force of some 2,200 men (about 1,500 Europeans) into the interior. After actions at Amoafu (31 January 1874) and Odasu (4 February 1874) he arrived at and burnt the undefended Ashanti capital of Kumasi. British honour having thus been satisfied, he withdrew back to the coast.

Following British interference in the various civil wars that followed Kofi Karikari’s removal from power, an small expedition in late 1895 under Colonel Sir Francis Scott occupied Kumasi and imposed a British Resident on the Ashanti. All was relatively peaceful until 1900, when the British Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Frederick Hodgson, demanded that the Ashanti hand over the famous Golden Stool, symbol of Ashanti authority and the embodiment of the spirit of the Ashanti peoples. The Ashanti rose in revolt, Hodgson and the other Europeans in Kumasi taking refuge in the British-built fort there, until forced by disease and imminent starvation to break out: leaving a small holding force behind. A relief force organised by Colonel James Willcocks (all local troops, as no European troops were available because of the South African War) rescued this holding force, and went on to defeat the Ashanti at Obassa. Ashanti was annexed formally in 1901.

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