‘The Days of their Heedless Power Were Over and Done’: Dynamics of Power in the Military Structures of the Precolonial Asante State, 1874–1900
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Date
2021
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Cambridge university press
Abstract
The British surprisingly faced no military resistance when they captured Asante in 1896. Previous works
have focused on the agency of actors like Prempe and Frederick Hodgson to explain why. This paper, in
contrast, approaches this epoch in Asante history from the context of the sociopolitical power structure
within which the precolonial Asante state operated. It asserts that Asante’s independence was contingent
on having a strong military. But since it had no standing army, the state used Asante’s ‘social contract’ to
coerce its subjects into ad hoc armies to meet military threats. Starting from the 1874 Sagrenti War,
however, the state disregarded the social contract. This unleashed a series of events that undermined
the state’s power to coerce Asantes into military service. The article posits further that this erosion of
the state’s coercive power ultimately prevented it from countering the British with armed resistance in
1896 to maintain independence.
Description
Research article
Keywords
Ghana, West Africa, colonialism, military, precolonial, state, war