- 2 months ago
Ghana, in West Africa, where a powerful kingdom once dominated the region. Asante was built on gold and slaves, which ensured its important place in an economy that linked three continents, reveals how this sophisticated kingdom emerged.....
在17世纪末统一阿坎诸邦、建立帝国并创造神圣金凳子（Golden Stool） 传奇的过程，以及后来女王母亲雅·阿散蒂娃（Yaa Asantewaa） 在1900年领导反抗英国殖民统治的英勇事迹......
在17世纪末统一阿坎诸邦、建立帝国并创造神圣金凳子（Golden Stool） 传奇的过程，以及后来女王母亲雅·阿散蒂娃（Yaa Asantewaa） 在1900年领导反抗英国殖民统治的英勇事迹......
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00:04The Kingdom of Asante once ruled supreme in West Africa.
00:09It was a kingdom that became an empire.
00:12It played a pivotal role in commerce linking three continents.
00:17And it was built on slaves and gold.
00:25This is just a selection of the Asante crown jewels.
00:31It gives a real sense of the power and the sophistication of this kingdom.
00:40Africa's history isn't always revealed in written records.
00:44It's found instead in artefacts, culture and the traditions of the people.
00:55We know less about Africa's distant past than almost anywhere else on earth.
01:01But the history of this continent is as important and valuable as any other.
01:06In this series, I'm exploring some of the richest and most vibrant histories in the world.
01:13I've come to Ghana to explore the Kingdom of Asante.
01:19It was one of Africa's most impressive kingdoms.
01:22It was found deep in the tropical forest, which raises some questions.
01:27How did a sophisticated society emerge from some of the toughest conditions on the planet?
01:32How was the Asante Kingdom created?
01:34And what happened to it?
01:46Kumarsi, Ghana's second city.
01:49Today, it's home to one and a half million people.
01:52In the 18th and 19th centuries, Kumarsi was the centre of power of the Asante Kingdom.
02:01A British visitor named Thomas Bowditch came here in 1817.
02:08He wrote a remarkable account of the royal court he encountered.
02:13The king, his tributaries and captains were resplendent in the distance, surrounded by attendants of every description.
02:21At least a hundred umbrellas or canopies, which could shelter 30 persons, were sprung up and down by the bearers
02:27with brilliant effect,
02:29being made of the most showy cloths and silks and crowned on top with crescents, pelicans, elephants, barrels and arms
02:37and swords of gold.
02:39Wow, it sounds quite something.
02:42Yes, and there's a pictorial depiction of this scene in this book itself, so I could show that to you.
02:52Historian Mary Owusu is an expert in the Asante Kingdom.
02:57Here it is.
02:59Luckily, it's in colour, you know.
03:03It's truly spectacular.
03:05And when one talks about kings and courts, you have a kind of certain idea of the extravagance and bright
03:12cloths and everything,
03:13and this fulfills all of that.
03:17And you can see, is this figure here, is that the Asante Kingdom?
03:20That would be the Asante Kingdom, the king, you see.
03:23And he has a lot more gold on him.
03:27And then the people.
03:29But that's also what power is about.
03:31It's about human beings, the number of people you control, as well as having the wealth to go with that
03:39control.
03:39There's a real display of power.
03:41And I guess that the most significant sign of that is just how much gold is in evidence, just everywhere.
03:48And it's pretty obvious, looking at these, Mary, that they're trying to send a message.
03:54The Asante Kingdom is right at the centre.
03:56The British you've come to visit.
03:58All of these different subjects, musicians.
04:01There's something you're seeing but not seeing properly.
04:04What aren't I seeing?
04:05See these people here?
04:06Yes.
04:07They're holding skulls, human skulls, skulls of important individuals who have been overpowered to show how much control the king
04:19had.
04:20This illustration shows a wealthy state with an uncompromising grip on the kingdom.
04:27Fascinating though the account is, Bowditch only really got a snapshot of the Asante.
04:34And it doesn't reflect one of the most remarkable things about this kingdom.
04:39How it came into being in the first place.
04:45Asante emerged a little over 300 years ago in territory now occupied by the Republic of Ghana, in the heart
04:52of West Africa's forest zone.
05:00Dense forest is an unusual place for large civilisations to establish.
05:06The heat and humidity are relentless.
05:11Despite the conditions, a complex and sophisticated kingdom emerged here that dominated a vast area for more than 200 years.
05:21The vegetation seems so impenetrable that the scale of the achievement is hard to comprehend.
05:29Discovering how they did it, and where they started, has preoccupied historians for decades.
05:38In 2010, archaeology carried out by the University of Ghana made some important new discoveries about ancient life in this
05:47part of Africa.
05:55These are fire-clay figurines we recovered from a site in northern Ghana, dating to the 9th and 10th centuries.
06:08Dr. Benjamin Cancpian and his colleagues found some 80 terracotta figures, perhaps 1,000 years old, in savannah north of
06:17the forest, depicting animals and humans.
06:21He believes they were part of a shrine.
06:24What this points to is a very complex culture.
06:28I mean, even if you look at these as depictions of the world that surrounded the people who made them,
06:34that you can see that they're wearing jewellery, body adornment.
06:38Exactly.
06:39That this is obviously a very, very complex culture.
06:43Yeah, for sure.
06:44As far as we know, one of the markers of civilised society are ritual complexity, possibly demarked by these artistic
06:54figures, quality ones as well.
06:58The figurines indicate sophistication among the peoples who lived in this region of West Africa.
07:06But so far, archaeologists haven't proven any link between these objects and Asante.
07:17In fact, conclusive evidence has yet to be found of the precise origins of the Asante people, for good reason.
07:25It's challenging for archaeologists looking for ancient sites in this thick vegetation that thrives in heat and humidity.
07:33They simply don't know where the earlier Asante came from.
07:38The forest has yet to give up the physical evidence that might reveal what happened many centuries ago.
07:55Asante's history isn't as elusive as it might seem, however.
08:00Evidence does exist, but it appears in different forms, which are still incredibly valuable.
08:08Narrative, oral history, stories of the past, they're all important here.
08:13And knowing why is essentially an understanding how the Asante kingdom came about and what held it together.
08:24These people are heading to the most hallowed spot in Asante territory.
08:30This is oral history in action.
08:35Their destination is a sacred site within a forest called Asante Manson,
08:40where a seldom held ceremony is taking place.
08:48It celebrates the seven clans who first established communities in the forest,
08:53and in so doing, laid the foundations of the Asante kingdom.
09:03According to legend, they emerged from holes in the ground within the forest.
09:15Sacrifice emphasizes the significance and rarity of the ritual.
09:35I may find it uncomfortable viewing,
09:38but it's an important part of the ceremony celebrating the origin of the Asante people.
09:44MUSIC PLAYS
09:51It doesn't really matter whether we believe that the Asante came from a hole in the ground or not.
09:57These myths are every bit as important today as they ever were.
10:03Many things decay in the heat and humidity of the forest,
10:07but folk memory lasts.
10:11Archaeologists can't be certain that Asante's ancestors came from exactly this spot,
10:16but the belief in forest origins does chime with what historians have established.
10:24The ancestors of Asante were Akan people whose language is still spoken.
10:30The Akan hunted and foraged for food around 600 years ago.
10:34But 300 years later, a sophisticated kingdom had emerged.
10:40In between, the Akan people and their environment went through a significant and rapid transformation.
10:48Before a community could establish itself in one place,
10:52a major obstacle had to be overcome.
10:55The forest.
10:56The forest.
11:21Oh.
11:21Oh.
11:21Oh.
11:24Just unbelievable.
11:25It's unbelievable.
11:27If you think the original Asante,
11:30that they cleared this forest, trees of that size, by hand.
11:38During the peak of the forest clearance 500 years ago,
11:42the Akan used axes to weaken the trunks
11:44and then pulled the trees down with twine.
11:49Clearing the forest was a vital precondition
11:52for settled society.
11:53Before that, Akan people were part of a hunter-gatherer society.
11:58With the forest cleared, agriculture could happen.
12:03Only with the space to cultivate land and grow food crops
12:07could groups of Akan people expand their populations.
12:13Today, in a forest in the west of Ghana,
12:16machinery makes short work of ancient trees.
12:23Hardwood timber, such as mahogany and teak,
12:26is among Ghana's most important exports.
12:32Licensing regulations attempt to protect the environment,
12:35but there's an understanding among forestry workers
12:39that Ghana's history is worth safeguarding, too.
12:44The forest, it's important to the people, to the Akan.
12:49The forests are important, are they?
12:50Yes, it means something to the people.
12:52We have some areas we don't enter.
12:55We name the place, maybe,
12:57this is the place where Asante people come from.
13:00Yes.
13:01So the forest is very important to us.
13:07For the Akan people, in the 15th and 16th centuries,
13:11forest clearance was mind-boggling work.
13:15Researchers have calculated that for one man to clear one hectare,
13:20it would take him 500 days to remove more than 1,200 tonnes of vegetation.
13:29And since the fertility of the soil deteriorates so quickly,
13:33he would have to rotate his crops,
13:35meaning he would need to clear six hectares to feed his family.
13:42Faced with such an enormous task,
13:44the Akan people needed additional labour.
13:46There weren't enough of their own people to do the job,
13:49so they used slaves.
13:54An expert in the earlier Akan societies
13:57that were the foundation of the Asante Kingdom
13:59is Dr Wilhelmina Donkong.
14:03Yes, I mean, importing people from outside
14:07was a really useful venture for them.
14:11Traders from outside coming in,
14:14at different times they must have brought in people,
14:17even from possibly as far afield as maybe Nigeria,
14:26the Senegambian areas and so on.
14:30How did this early kind of slavery differ from transatlantic slavery,
14:35which comes slightly later?
14:37The system that operated here was quite different in the sense that
14:44unfree people or people of unfree descent could marry,
14:49have offspring of their own, could accumulate property and all that.
14:55And sometimes they could even marry into the lineages of their,
15:02shall I say, their masters or the people who had initially procured them.
15:08So it wasn't very hostile.
15:11It did not remove the basic humanity of those who had lost their freedom.
15:19But still, it's a loss of freedom in the sense that you were removed from your own kinsmen
15:27to join a different set of people.
15:35With the help of unfree labour, the Akan made clearances in the forest on an unprecedented scale.
15:43For the first time, the forest was a viable place to have organised settled societies.
15:49It was still two or three hundred years before the Asante Kingdom,
15:53but this achievement had a long-lasting effect.
15:58The act of clearing the forest shaped Akan identity.
16:02There was a great sense of pride that this effort against the forest had been successful.
16:07But that only drove the imperative to do more.
16:13Farmers settled in the cleared areas and grew crops needed to support an expanding population.
16:24Today, cultivation still happens among the dense undergrowth.
16:31This is your farm, is it?
16:33This is my farm.
16:34And can you tell me, what sort of produce do you farm here?
16:38Yeah, I do produce this type of food, which is plantain.
16:46I planted this and it takes one year to harvest.
16:51This is called kuku yam. And I planted kuku yam.
16:55It's like a potato, it's a starchy.
16:57Yeah, yeah, it's starchy like potato.
16:59Yeah.
17:03How do you keep back all of the weeds and the big trees that seem to be growing
17:09so voraciously on the edge of your farm?
17:12We use these cutlers. So all of them will come once and weed everything.
17:22We use these cutlers.
17:23Having cleared space for agriculture,
17:26the ancestors of Asante were determined to make the most of it.
17:30The pursuit of abundance quickly became ingrained in the Acan cycle.
17:36The productiveness of the forest required a lot of hard work,
17:40much of it carried out by slaves.
17:42But none of that could have happened without a commodity
17:45that the Acan exchanged for slaves in the first place.
17:55Still found deep within the forest is the precious resource
17:59that paid for labour and transformed the Acan people.
18:05I'm on my way to one of the 10 largest gold mines in the world.
18:17This is the Abwasi gold mine.
18:23Today, gold-bearing rock is extracted from shafts that reach 1,500 metres underground.
18:32A chemical process separates the precious metal from the ore
18:36and smelting results in gold bullion.
18:41The heat is so intense. I've never felt anything like it. It's unbelievable.
18:53Gold worth over £6 billion at today's prices has been extracted from here
18:59since the end of the 19th century.
19:02But it's been mined in this region for a lot longer than that.
19:07No one now knows when the Acan people discovered gold.
19:10But it is clear that they were mining it
19:12when they were clearing the forest in the 15th century.
19:16In those days, the gold was found much nearer the surface,
19:20and it was smelted by the Acan using Iron Age technology.
19:25The precious resource was critical to the transformation of the forest
19:29and to the foundations of the Asante Kingdom.
19:33And gold provided by the forest gave the people a significant place
19:38in a much wider economy.
19:42Acan gold found its way to North Africa and beyond via trans-Saharan trade routes.
19:47And gold paid for not just slaves, but textiles, brass, copper and salt.
19:54From the 1470s, Acan gold had a direct route to Europe
19:58via Portuguese merchants on the coast.
20:01In exchange for gold, they sold guns.
20:07A map made by a merchant in the 16th century
20:10shows who the Portuguese were dealing with.
20:13The most successful Acan were amassing power.
20:23The developing entrepreneurial spirit would have a major impact
20:27on culture in the Kingdom of Asante.
20:31The Can businessmen had accumulated gold, slaves and land.
20:36And they were known as Borempong, big men.
20:39And they shared one thing in common, one ultimate symbol of authority.
20:44It wasn't a crown or even gold regalia.
20:48It was a small wooden stool.
20:53The village of Owia is a centre of stool craftsmanship.
20:59Every stool is carved from a single piece of sese wool.
21:05The finest stools made here are used by senior figures in Ghanaian society.
21:11Less ornate stools are for everyday use and tourist souvenirs.
21:17According to leading Asante scholar, Professor Kwame Ahin,
21:21the stool was more than a seat to the Acan big men.
21:25It is a symbol of situs.
21:29Now, situs in the sense of authority, power,
21:37and standing in society.
21:39And it begins with the earliest village, the family unit.
21:49The elders had to have a symbol of authority over everybody.
21:54So then he had a stool made for it.
21:56And why is the stool the symbol?
21:59I suppose the material used for it was durable,
22:04because he wanted it to last.
22:07It is a way of remembering, or a means of remembering.
22:14So in a way that these, that the stools actually became symbols of the history.
22:19Yes, sir. And also, at the same time, of...
22:21The symbols of office, symbols of authority, symbols of power,
22:26and also reminders of their particular achievements.
22:32The experience of literally hacking their culture out of the forest.
22:37was bound up in a canned stools.
22:39They helped to emphasise the roots of their organised society.
22:44And much more.
22:46It's not just about rootedness.
22:48It's also about power, about lineage, about family.
22:53They actually have, in the centre of them, an empty space,
22:57where people could put things that they treasured,
23:00that brought this object to life, made it more than just a seat.
23:05It became, in a way, a vessel that carried history.
23:10The stool's authority translated into political power for its chief.
23:15As the communities around each stool grew,
23:18they became less a collection of farmers and workers,
23:21and more like highly centralised states.
23:26By the mid-1600s, dozens of independent village communities
23:31had turned into a patchwork of a canned states.
23:34The most powerful was Denchira.
23:37It controlled some of the richest gold mines in the forest.
23:42For decades, its neighbours sent tribute by way of slaves and other gifts,
23:47to keep the peace.
23:49But Denchira's position, as the most powerful of the Akan states, was not to last.
23:56I'm on my way to the birthplace of the man who challenged Denchira,
24:01and in the process, founded the Asante Kingdom.
24:11Denchira's demands on its neighbours left it with few friends and many enemies.
24:17In 1701, an alliance of states defeated Denchira in battle.
24:24The leader of the alliance was Osai Tutu,
24:27the first Asantehine, or King of Asante.
24:33According to legend, the village of Aninam is where it all started.
24:38This is a beautiful place.
24:40I've been offered a guided tour by the chief of the nearby town.
24:45This place is particularly special though, isn't it?
24:48Yes, the speciality came as a sort of the birth of Osai Tutu, which happened here.
24:53So Osai Tutu was born here?
24:55Yes.
24:56Let us go to the house.
24:58Osai Tutu is thought to have been born sometime during the 1640s.
25:03There are very few certainties known about him,
25:06but I find it peculiar that there aren't even many artistic impressions of what he might have looked like.
25:12The chief is taking me to see one of the very few.
25:17And this is where the woman was always sitting down to take care of the child after washing the child.
25:28This little shrine shows an infant Osai Tutu in his mother's arms.
25:34It doesn't give much of an idea of what the man was like.
25:40What kind of person was he?
25:43He was a mysterious man, a warrior, a builder, who was able to establish a kingdom.
25:50In fact, if he would not be blaspheming, he was our Christ, who gave us the freedom, gave us the
26:00art of kingship.
26:03And he managed to put us together.
26:08The sculpture is strikingly western in its appearance.
26:11And I think the use of Christian iconography is deliberate.
26:16If Osai Tutu is to be remembered as a messiah, it makes sense in this now very Christian country
26:23to remind people of Mary and Jesus.
26:25I was keen to see the place where, according to legend, Osai Tutu's mother gave birth.
26:32Those who are qualified to go there are going to go barefooted.
26:37It's in a wooded area, just outside the village.
26:42These are good to the spot.
26:43I would love to.
26:46So that is a place.
26:48But before, as soon as we get to this point...
26:50I have to take my shoes off.
26:52Yeah, I'm not sure we shall go there.
26:55No, no, no, no.
27:00Unfortunately, the side is regarded as so sacred,
27:03not even the chief has the authority to cross its boundary.
27:07There's genuine reverence for the stories of the past, whether provable or not.
27:14Can I ask you about the importance of history to the Asante people?
27:19People who don't know their history just move about like ordinary chaff which is being blown by the wind.
27:29But those who know their history try to keep the pride that the great ancestors created for them.
27:35If we want to maintain our status, maintain our stature, we need to have a background of what happened in
27:41the past
27:42and try not to go away from it, maintain it, and maybe modify it to suit the conditions as prevailing
27:51presently.
27:53The notion of modifying history to suit the present is an intriguing idea, but not a new one.
28:00It's exactly what happened when the Asante Kingdom was created over 300 years ago,
28:06an event commemorated in its capital, Kumasi.
28:19This was the seat of Osai Tutu's power, and it's where a particular reading of the history is displayed.
28:31This modern statue commemorates the most significant and legendary moment in the creation of Asante.
28:39The figure isn't Osai Tutu, but his advisor, a confo anoche.
28:44He's seen summoning a golden stool down from the heavens.
28:50According to folklore, the golden stool is the spirit of the Asante nation.
28:55When a confo anoche summoned it from the sky, it settled gently on Osai Tutu's knees,
29:01anointing him the great leader of the Asante Kingdom.
29:07The confo anoche was Merlin to Osai Tutu's King Arthur.
29:12Historians aren't even certain that he ever existed.
29:15But by promoting the myth, the Asante state deliberately mixed belief with fact.
29:21The golden stool gave Osai Tutu's spiritual power to bolster the military leadership he'd already shown.
29:30The golden stool was displayed periodically to reinforce the legend.
29:34The rarity of its public appearances adds to its mystique.
29:40The faith in the stool's supernatural origins gave its own authority.
29:46And gave the Asante people a strong sense of belonging.
29:51Nothing lasts forever in the forest, even kings.
29:54But if the golden stool contained the spirit of the Asante nation, then the kingdom could last forever.
30:06Asante royalty followed the ancient Akan tradition of succession on the mother's line.
30:12With the spiritual authority of the golden stool and with the help of European firearms,
30:18Osai Tutu and his successors embarked on campaigns of expansion.
30:24Drums were vital to the kingdom's ambitions.
30:28Long distance communication meant Asante's imperialism could be fast and effective.
30:34Long distance communication meant Asante.
30:40These are the atom pan drums, the talking drums of Asante.
30:44They're a means of communication, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine.
30:54These drums don't just beat out a rhythm, they speak.
31:02And if you know the language, you can hear words and phrases.
31:09That was great.
31:11Thank you so much.
31:13That was, it's just amazing.
31:14And just to hear, you don't just hear it, you feel it.
31:17It's absolutely wonderful.
31:19So each one of these drums, they have a different sound, a different function.
31:22Is that right?
31:22Yes.
31:32To get an idea of drum language, I've come to speak to drum maker James Chompong.
31:38And these drums speak, is that right?
31:41Yes.
31:42How do they actually communicate? I'm fascinated by that.
31:46They are certain basic drum language, which is very familiar to anybody within
31:53the community.
31:55Such like, maybe we are going to war.
31:58Some one have lost at the forest.
32:02And yeah, we are going to come in our labour.
32:05The king is calling everyone, have to come report at the palace.
32:09That's the basic thing.
32:12Everyone within the community knows that.
32:17Drum language is possible because it doesn't simply
32:20imitate the syllables of spoken words, but their tone as well.
32:25Thanks to the combinations of sounds the drums can produce.
32:30I see.
32:30So together, yes, that they make a full sound.
32:33You should see the sound.
32:39If you're reading, I can call you.
32:41You can call me?
32:42Yeah.
32:42What is your name?
32:43My name?
32:44My name is Gus.
32:45How would you do that?
32:46How would you call me?
32:47I should call you.
32:49Amata.
32:51Amata.
32:54I'm not, I don't, I apologize for my stupidity, but I can't see the relationship.
33:00Do Gus again.
33:01No, no, no, no.
33:02Do Gus again, please.
33:04Do Gus, Gus.
33:18The talking drum in the old days was the only means to communicate from a village to other village.
33:25So there was no telephone then. So normally, the community used the talking drum to send messages from village to
33:39other village.
33:43When you kill Tarjan, Tarjan will come.
33:45Asante Kotoko.
33:46So that's the great Asante saying, isn't it?
33:50Yes.
33:50Asante Kotoko.
33:51Asante Kotoko.
33:56So that one saying, when you kill a thousand, a thousand will come.
34:04The common language of the region made this form of communication extremely effective.
34:12Asante had no standing army.
34:14Instead, every village was expected to contribute soldiers to campaigns ordered by the Asante.
34:21The reservists responded to the drummers' call to war.
34:25And the kingdom expanded rapidly in the first half of the 18th century.
34:31Asante soon dominated territory that stretched beyond the borders of modern Ghana.
34:37Previously independent states were coerced into a federation that power centralised in Kumasi.
34:45States were either forcibly conquered or submitted to Asante's power.
34:52They became provinces of the kingdom.
34:54Their chiefs became vassals of the Asante king, the Asantahini.
35:06As the kingdom expanded, Asante grew rich from the proceeds of warfare.
35:15The wars of expansion resulted in the accumulation of vast numbers of slaves, far more than they could
35:21possibly use.
35:22But this also raised an opportunity.
35:28110 miles south of Kumasi is Ghana's coast.
35:34And a poignant reminder of African history.
35:41After the Portuguese began trading in the 1470s, other Europeans followed to what became known as the Gold Coast.
35:52Cape Coast Castle was originally a base for Swedish merchants, but by the mid-1660s, it had been taken over
35:59by the British.
36:02As Asante rose to prominence, the white men were less interested in gold than in another valuable commodity, labour.
36:12The Asante captured slaves in the interior and sold them to the British and other European powers.
36:19Gold had once connected the Akan to the economies of Europe.
36:23Now slavery entwined West Africa in a system that linked it to Europe and the Americas.
36:30More than a million Africans were sold off of this coast to a life of slavery in the New World.
36:38And they were captured and sold by their fellow Africans.
36:44The institution of slavery had been part of the economic normality of West Africa for hundreds of years.
36:53And they were sold by the US.
36:53Selling slaves to Europeans for use in the Americas was a lucrative new business.
36:59Not exclusive to the Asante, but used by them for their own advantage.
37:04Dr. Kwabina Adebwaini is an expert on the Asante and the slave trade.
37:11After it had been established as a kingdom, you know, for economic reasons and for other reasons,
37:16Asante began to expand beyond the boundaries of the core kingdom.
37:21And that is where the issue of acquiring slaves for sale came in.
37:26Under normal circumstances, when you are fighting, you kill your enemies, you see.
37:31But the slave trade had already emerged as an economic system.
37:35So as Asante was expanding, it was getting a lot of war captives.
37:41And constant warfare meant constant production of war captives.
37:45And once there was a market existing on the coast, you know, logically and rationally,
37:51these had to be disposed and that was going to make them rich.
37:54So it's a formidable model that they expand, they capture more people.
37:58They capture more people.
37:59Those people are then sold as slaves, which then feeds the economy, allows them to expand even more.
38:05Expand even more, acquire the instruments for the expansion, that is firearms.
38:09And can I ask you a very 21st century question?
38:12How did the Asante deal with the morality of slavery, of selling human beings?
38:18We, in the 21st century, look back and look at it from the moral perspective.
38:25But then morality was not too important. It was business.
38:30It was business of the day.
38:33And the resources were organised, you know, and invested in that business.
38:39So, yes, in our time, it was immoral.
38:43It was a terrible kind of situation in our thinking and in our estimation.
38:48But at that time, I don't think morality was a factor at all. It didn't work.
38:55For many years in Africa and Europe, slavery was simply a means to an end.
39:03Just as there are Khan ancestors, but used unfree labour to make clearings in the forest,
39:09the Asante kings used the proceeds of slavery to create a powerful kingdom.
39:15But having created an empire of provinces, the Asante kings all faced a major challenge.
39:22How to keep them together?
39:28The Asante kings recognised the value of a traditional culture of storytelling.
39:34They understood that the old ways of recording history could be made to work for them.
39:40In the heart of the historic kingdom is evidence to show how the Asante state deliberately created
39:47a sense of nationalism.
39:51Surrounding Kumasi, communities developed a range of skills and crafts, places like this,
39:57Bonwiri. They may not have been big or powerful, but they played a crucial role in binding the kingdom
40:02of Asante together.
40:09I've come here to see kente, Ghana's famous patterned cloth.
40:15To many people, this is simply brightly coloured material used to make clothes.
40:21But there's a lot more to it than that.
40:27What's amazing about kente cloth is every single one of these patterns
40:32has a different meaning.
40:33And these are meanings that are used to weave the Asante community together.
40:39Even the textile itself is symbolic, made by joining individual strips of material.
40:45The word kente means whatever happens to it, it will not tear.
40:51And each pattern represents a proverb.
40:56We call this my heart's desire.
40:57My heart's desire?
40:58Yeah, my heart's desire.
41:00Isaac, one of the weavers of the workshop, is showing me how messages can be found in the material.
41:06Many of them reinforcing a single basic idea, we're better together than apart.
41:12Holy heart, the black is our colour.
41:14This is a feminist unity.
41:17You know the Asante people, the king said that we should unite together.
41:20He said that we united, we stand divided with four.
41:22So he named this particular club that feminist unity.
41:25So there's a kind of a sense of narrative that you...
41:28Yes.
41:28That's the Asante people, we should unite together so that we can fight with our enemies.
41:32Yes.
41:32Yeah.
41:33And is there a particular reason, do the colours,
41:36because they have particular meanings and particular configurations?
41:40The yellow, you see Africa, we have gold.
41:44So the yellow colour over here represents the gold that we have, the natural resources.
41:48Yes, we have gold.
41:49And the black is our colour, you see, yes.
41:53And then the green over here, the forestry that we have, we have a big forestry, yes.
41:58And then the blue is the sky, so all the colours also mean something.
42:02I see.
42:02I mean, I can understand how those tones, that they weave together a sense of community,
42:08but also, as you say, that each one of these, they represent something within the environment.
42:14It's wonderful.
42:17Kente, rich with symbolism, was promoted by the Asante Hines.
42:22By wearing the cloth of Bonwire, the monarch recognised the contribution of Bonwire's craftsmen
42:28to the Asante Kingdom, while also advertising the Kingdom's benefits.
42:34I know these objects, but only from a distance, really.
42:38But to see them up close, you can see why the Asante Hines wanted to invest in them.
42:42He wanted them to be a metaphor for the Asante Nation.
42:46And he chose alongside them, drums, he chose gold.
42:50He chose a variety of different kinds of crafts that would bind the Asante together.
42:57The people were proud to see their traditions being used by the king.
43:01But the state's appropriation of local customs revealed how determined it was to shape the Kingdom
43:07as it saw fit.
43:11The Asante Nation wasn't just about weaving peoples together.
43:15Whilst there was consent, there was also control.
43:22In 100 years, the Kingdom had grown significantly.
43:27At its largest extent in the early 1800s,
43:31it included outlying provinces as far as 16 days' journey from Kumasi.
43:38Its population was over 2 million, 20 times more than South Africa in the same period.
43:45A kingdom of this size required careful government.
43:50I've been given permission to enter the Royal Palace in Kumasi
43:53and to see some of the instruments of control used by the state at the height of its power.
44:01The original palace was the centre of Asante government.
44:05From Kumasi, civil servants were sent all over the kingdom
44:08to implement its policies and to apply its laws.
44:16I've arrived just as the palace gun bearers have come to remove historic weapons from the museum.
44:24So you carry the guns during ceremonies?
44:27Yeah, and during the sitting of the king, any time the king sits,
44:35the guns and the sword have to come out to signify that they are just the king.
44:41So who did that belong to?
44:42That is the first king of Asante, Othunfo Ocetutu the first.
44:47Oh really?
44:48This is Osai Tutu's gun.
44:52What amazing.
44:56European firearms had been instrumental in creating and expanding the Asante kingdom
45:02during the 1700s.
45:07Threat of force was one way the kingdom maintained control,
45:11but other methods were just as effective.
45:16The Royal Palace once housed the most important part of the kingdom's bureaucracy,
45:20the treasury.
45:22Since gold was first mined in the forest,
45:25the currency of this area of West Africa was gold dust.
45:31Scales and counterweights were used for precise measurements.
45:35Even gold nuggets and ingots were smelted down and turned into gold dust,
45:40so they could be accurately measured.
45:43Every transaction was in gold dust, including taxation.
45:50Look at that exquisite little object, tiny little stool.
45:54It's actually a gold weight.
45:55You can imagine them weighing gold against something like this.
45:59It's an indication of just how important taxation and financial control actually was.
46:08And the treasury, it was a mechanism for administering all of the Asante bureaucracy.
46:14It's just another one of those institutions that was called to consolidating Asante power.
46:25Taxation didn't simply fund the government.
46:28It ensured that no individual could become significantly wealthy.
46:35Gold was not just money.
46:37It was power.
46:39It was vital that power was held by the state.
46:43The regalia of the Asantehini had to be the very best.
46:48And the quality is just mind-blowing.
46:52Exquisite work.
46:58Ostentatious demonstrations of wealth by the king reminded everyone of their history,
47:03of how the gold found in the forest had been instrumental in creating the kingdom.
47:09The Asante people had long accepted that the kingdom was safeguarded if the state was rich.
47:15But those assumptions were to be severely challenged.
47:29Asante had become wealthy and powerful in part because of the trade in slaves with
47:33Europeans on the coast, a trade controlled by the state.
47:38But in 1807, the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire with far-reaching consequences
47:44for the Asante.
47:47The economy shifted and the state's control over it weakened.
47:51People began to trade in new things with the British on the coast and with traders from
47:55across the desert.
48:00The people of Asante had always believed in the state's control over wealth.
48:05But now they were increasingly in contact with people from beyond the kingdom who were making
48:11money for themselves.
48:12Many abandoned Kumasi and migrated to the southern provinces for a piece of the action.
48:18Their ancestral entrepreneurial spirit reawakened.
48:22At the same time, the sudden drop in European demand for slaves meant that all goods had to be paid
48:29for in gold dust.
48:31It rapidly became scarce.
48:34These new influences had a profound effect.
48:37People started hoarding gold.
48:39They buried it to avoid paying tax.
48:42This was a direct assault on the power of the Asante state.
48:48These internal problems plagued the kingdom in the first half of the 19th century.
48:54And they were made worse by a fractious relationship with an international trading partner.
49:03The military museum in Kumasi was built as a fort by the British.
49:09This collection of photographs is testament to British involvement here from the late 19th century.
49:17But the British influence on the coast had been growing steadily for many decades before then.
49:24There were disagreements and outbreaks of hostilities between the British and Asante.
49:29But for the most part, relations between them were of two cooperative trading states.
49:35But then, in the late 1860s, everything changed.
49:41Asante wanted to restore its domination over its southern provinces to tighten its grip on coastal trade.
49:50But some of those provinces had turned to the British for protection.
49:54And an Asante trade monopoly was not in British commercial interests.
50:00The two powers were on a collision course.
50:04As tempers flared, the Asante took a number of Europeans as prisoners.
50:08An act that the British would cite as a justification for war.
50:12A war that would allow the British to consolidate their trading position on the coast.
50:19In February 1874, British forces marched into Kumasi, the first foreign troops to do so.
50:32They burned it to the ground, then returned to their base on the coast.
50:38The destruction of Kumasi was a shock to this previously undefeated kingdom.
50:44But the impact was more than psychological.
50:48As Kumasi lay in ruins, Asante was forced to accept the loss of its southern provinces.
50:54In August 1874, they became the British Gold Coast.
51:02A hundred years after Asante's empire building, the Europeans were gaining foreign lands.
51:10The authority of the Asante Kingdom had failed to withstand the challenges of the British,
51:16or the changing economic realities affecting its people.
51:19The Kingdom's other provinces began asserting their power.
51:24And in the 1880s, civil war threatened to tear Asante apart.
51:29The violence ended in 1888, when the factions agreed to a newer Santahini,
51:35a 16-year-old named Prempe I.
51:40Professor Irene Adote has explored his effect on a Kingdom on the verge of destruction.
51:46So here was this young man, having come to power, the question was, how was he going to manage?
51:54Manage to bring all these forces, the insiders who defected and all these other people,
52:01bringing them together to build a strong Asante nation once more.
52:07That was his challenge, peaceful Asante nation.
52:10So what he did was to re-establish the importance of the Golden Stool as a unifying factor for the
52:18Asantes.
52:19So the Golden Stool, it's the rallying point for the whole nation.
52:23Yes, but at that time, we're talking about the British too, also saying,
52:30hey, wait a minute, if this man succeeds in reuniting Asante to make a strong Asante nation,
52:37we will be in trouble, because that's the last thing we want.
52:39Because the British were determined now to get hold of Asante and make Asante a colony.
52:46So the governor comes to Kumasi, and when he came to Kumasi, he made demands on Prempe I.
52:55I think by the time the British came to make their demands, he had decided that,
52:59I'm not going to fight any more wars. Let me see if I can compromise. If I compromise, one,
53:06I will save my nation, my nation, and also probably I will save myself. So that was the thing.
53:13But the British were so determined, so in spite of all that, they decided that, hey, we are taking you
53:20and your mother and some of the chiefs, and then send them to Surallon for three years. And from there,
53:28send them to the Seychelles Island. The enforced exile of Prempe in 1896
53:35stopped the kingdom's resurgence in its tracks. Six years later, Asante was formally incorporated
53:43into the British Gold Coast Colony.
53:51The Asante Kingdom had been the result of centuries of a Cannes state building in the forest.
53:58Asante's pivotal position in an international economy had brought it wealth and power.
54:05In the final years of the 19th century, weakness and instability had allowed Britain to add Asante
54:12to its African possessions.
54:16The Asante Kingdom was crushed. The British sought out the last symbols of independence
54:22to be destroyed. But something, something subtle, survived.
54:31The British had failed to destroy the spirit of the Asante nation,
54:36or its physical embodiment, the golden stool.
54:39It was a significant error, as palace historian Osai Kwadwo explained.
54:46Our spirit, our everything, is in the golden stool. So that when even the British tried to take the
54:53golden stool away, we did our best to hide it, and they never saw it. So they later found that
55:00it was
55:01not the occupant of the stool who mattered. Because we fought so that they could not take the golden stool
55:07away, and they never saw the golden stool. So to us, I say we were victorious.
55:19In 1924, Prempe was allowed to return from exile. The golden stool reappeared at the royal palace.
55:28The kingdom was restored after Ghana gained independence in 1957. And Asante's traditional festivals were revived.
55:38The Akwesidae festivals held every 42 days.
55:42It remembers the ancestors and celebrates the history of the kingdom.
55:57The gold that was once mined deep in the forest. The drums that beat out the proverbs of Asante.
56:05The kente cloth that carries the slogans of unity. All in stunning display.
56:12You understand why they chose gold. In this life, with the kente. It just looks extraordinary.
56:21All these symbols of power. Suddenly you understand that they're just dazzling in this life.
56:29Provincial chiefs gather to pay homage to the current of Santahini, Osai Tutu II.
56:36He may not command an army or wield the power of his ancestors. There's no doubt about his importance to
56:43the Asante people.
56:45Just amazing to get this close to the king of Asante, wearing all of that gold, that kente,
56:51the story that we try to tell alive and well in this land, the embodiment of our story.
56:59This is a celebration of history. But it's history with a purpose.
57:05We dwell upon our history to improve upon our future. That's why our history is very important for us.
57:14And so for the future, do you feel that the kingdom is in good health?
57:19Yes. One thing I see is that our people are proud to keep the culture.
57:27And we are Asantis because of our culture.
57:34The Asante state once used mythology and traditions to assert its origins, reinterpret history and forge a kingdom.
57:42Now, these festivals use history to maintain Asante's identity and its people's sense of belonging within the Republic of Ghana.
57:53I came in search of a lost kingdom, but I found a kingdom which is very much alive,
57:59which still finds a coherence around those central core themes that were set up by Osai Tutu with the foundation
58:07of this empire.
58:07Asante, gold, kente, drumming, the stool, they still work for the Asante people as much today as they ever did.