The Ashanti Defeat the British at Esamankow

The British had taken a commercial interest in the West African territory of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, since the seventeenth century. At Cape Coast Castle a private operation, the Royal African Company, had been set up in 1672, with a charter from King Charles II. Its purpose was to make money from the purchase and transport of black men and women to other parts of the world, from where they were sold. After trading for more than 150 years, the Company had sold out to the British state in 1821, after the collapse of its business in the wake of the slave trade’s abolition in 1807.

Among its legacies was the Royal African Corps, a military unit traditionally recruited from the criminal element in the British army who had been banished from classier regiments. Colonel Sir Charles McCarthy, the military governor at Freetown, had reformed the Corps into what became the Royal African Colonial Corps of Light Infantry, reinforced with a smattering of additional troops brought out from England.1 Among his responsibilities, extending along the West African coast, was the suppression of the slave trade.2

Cape Coast and other small forts along the West African shore had been brought under the control of the British authorities in Sierra Leone, and Cape Coast Castle was guarded with the support of a coastal people, the Fantis. The Ashanti territory inland, ruled from Kumasi, had remained free and independent; but in the early 1820s, as a result of the changing status of the Royal Africa Company, the boundaries between areas of Ashanti and British influence became a subject of contention.

Osei Bonsu - the Ashanti ruler, sometimes called Osai Tutu Quamina - had been the Asantehene, or ruler, of the Ashanti kingdom since the turn of the century. As with Kandy, Nepal and Burma, this large inland empire, with its formidable military power, posed a permanent threat to the expansionist ambitions of the British, and Ashanti resistance would continue throughout the nineteenth century. Fighting frequently broke out between the Ashantis and the British-backed Fantis, and Osei Bonsu now believed the time had come to drive the British into the sea. The Ashanti had taken note of the British capacity to mobilise the coastal groups into a coalition force that could be used against them, and they prepared their own resistance plans.

In January 1824, paying his regular annual visit to Cape Coast, Colonel McCarthy decided to lead a small force inland to Kumasi, the Ashanti capital, to curb their power. Martial law was proclaimed and, with 500 local troops

And twelve European officers, McCarthy crossed the River Prah and marched towards the Ashanti capital. Only the previous year he had claimed that he ‘did not entertain a very exalted idea of the skill or bravery of the Ashantees’.3

Underestimating the Ashanti proved a mistake; with 10,000 soldiers, they hugely outnumbered McCarthy’s troops. They attacked the British column, with much singing and beating of drums, as was their custom. McCarthy ordered his own military band to strike up with ‘God Save the King’, but to no effect.4 Soon his soldiers had run out of ammunition, their ordnance supplier being apparently to blame; one keg of powder was found to contain vermicelli. Colonel McCarthy was wounded during what became known as the battle of Esamankow, and then killed himself to avoid capture; his troop was almost entirely wiped out. The triumphant Ashanti cut off the colonel’s head, as well as those of eight officers, and carried them in triumph to Kumasi. ‘They are even to this day held in high honour’, wrote the American explorer Henry Stanley, visiting the city fifty years later, ‘being decorated with gold bands and jewels.’ The colonel’s skull was used as a royal drinking-cup.

After the battle, the victorious Ashanti marched south to the coast at Accra. They were only prevented from capturing the town by the ‘newly introduced war-rockets’ of the British. The Asantehene Osei Bonsu did not live long to enjoy his victory; he died on the same day as Colonel McCarthy, and was succeeded by Osei Okoto.

A second battle against the British took place two years later, in August 1826, at Akantamasu, or Dodowa, outside Accra. On this occasion the Ashanti were defeated and a peace treaty was signed. Under its terms, the Ashanti agreed to remain to the north of the River Prah, and the British retained their coastal strip.