War of the Golden Stool
| War of the Golden Stool | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
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 Ashanti Empire
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| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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Frederick Mitchell Hodgson Major James Willcocks |
Yaa Asantewaa | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 1,007 casualties | 2,000 casualties | ||||||
British victory
The War of the Golden Stool, also known as the Yaa Asantewaa War, the Third Ashanti Expedition, the Ashanti Uprising, or variations thereof, was the final war in a series of conflicts between the British Imperial government of the Gold Coast (later Ashanti Region) and the Empire of Ashanti, an autonomous state in West Africa that fractiously co-existed with the British and its vassal coastal tribes.
When the Ashanti began rebelling against British rule, the British attempted to put down the unrest. Furthermore, the British governor, Sir Frederick Mitchell Hodgson, demanded that the Asante turn over to the British the Golden Stool, i.e. the throne and a symbol of Asante sovereignty.
The war ended with the Ashanti maintaining its de facto independence. Even though the Ashanti were annexed into the British Empire, they ruled themselves with little reference to the colonial power. However, when the British colony of the Gold Coast became the first independent, sub-Saharan African country in 1957, Ashanti was subsumed into the newly created Ghana.
Hodgson advanced toward Kumasi with a small force of British soldiers and local levies, arriving on the 25 March 1900. Hodgson, as representative of a powerful nation himself, was accorded traditional honors upon entering the city with children singing "God Save the Queen" to Lady Hodgson. After ascending a platform, he made a speech to the assembled Ashanti leaders. The speech, or the closest surviving account that comes through an Ashanti translator, reportedly read:
Not understanding the significance of the stool, Hodgson clearly had no inkling of the storm his words would produce; the suggestion that he, a foreigner, should sit upon and defile the Golden Stool, the very embodiment of the Ashanti state, and very symbol of the Ashanti peoples, living, dead, and yet to be born, was far too insufferable for the crowd. Almost immediately, the queen mother of the Ejisu dominion within the Ashanti kingdom, Yaa Asantewaa, collected men to form a force with which to attack the British and retrieve the exiled king. The enraged populace produced a large number of volunteers. As Hodgson's deputy, Captain Cecil Armitage, searched for the stool in a nearby brush, his force was surrounded and ambushed, only a sudden rainstorm allowing the survivors to retreat to the British offices in Kumasi. The offices were then fortified into a small stockade, 50 yards (46 m) square with 12 feet (3.7 m) loopholed high stone walls and firing turrets at each corner, that housed 18 Europeans, dozens of mixed-race colonial administrators, and 500 Nigerian Hausas with six small field guns and four Maxim guns. The British detained several high ranking leaders in the fort. The Ashanti, aware that they were unprepared for storming the fort settled into a long siege, only making one assault on the position on 29 April that was unsuccessful. The Ashanti then continued to snipe at the defenders, cut the telegraph wires, blockade food supplies, and attack relief columns. Blocking all roads leading to the town with 21 log barricades six foot high with loopholes to fire through, hundreds of yards long and so solid they would be impervious to artillery fire.
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