Goscinny and Uderzo send their regards — The Ashanti Kingdom
When I browsed through the history of modern day Ghana out of interest, I was fascinated by the power and pertinacity of the Ashanti people. I felt immediately reminded of the ever-indomitable small village in Gaul in René Goscinny’s and Albert Uderzo’s “Adventures of Asterix” resisting Roman conquest. Over decades, the Ashanti people offered strong resistance against the European (especially British) colonisers. Allowedly, their kingdom was slightly bigger than that aforementioned village defended by the Gauls…and very probably the Ashanti didn’t have a nice magic potion (which makes their strength maybe even more fascinating), but you get the idea…
But who was this people that gave the British invaders such a hard time?
The Ashanti, or Asante/Asanti, are a nation and an ethnic group living in what is now Ghana, who in 1670 founded the Ashanti Empire and 10 years later its capital, Kumasi (which is where e.g. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan was born). They were very wealthy due to rich gold deposits and the (slave) trade they practiced with several other African and European nations (e.g. Portugal). Apart from that, they upheld an elaborate political structure and are said to have been very skilled in warfare.
Having annexed pretty much all neighbouring areas in the then Gold Coast region, the British had to fight five wars (eight if you count the earlier wars where the British were drawn into Gold Coast wars) over almost 80 years against the Ashanti before the British could finally defeat them and declare the Ashanti Confederacy a British protectorate. For detailed information on the wars, how they came about, who fought why and so on there are very good Wikipedia entries:
All in all, although they were arguably less well armed (the British already used canons and guns) they thus gave the oh-so-powerful and so much much more civilised British colonisers a very hard time. In my opinion, the Ashanti are a good example for a nation not simply accepting the rule of the British Empire, but fighting for their land, culture and political strings.
Today, the ethnic group of the Ashanti makes 47.5 per cent of Ghana’s population and their monarchy still exists as a sub-nation state within Ghana.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana)
