# First Anglo–Ashanti War

The First Anglo–Ashanti War also known as the First Anglo–Asante War was an armed conflict between the Ashanti Empire led by Osei Bonsu, against the United Kingdom led by Sir Charles McCarthy, Fante Confederacy, Denkyira tribes, and Denmark led by Richter Aarestrup. It took place from December 1823 to 27 April 1831, when a peace treaty was signed at the Cape Coast Castle.
The war started due to an incident in May 1822 which eventually led to the execution of Sergeant Otrefo on 2 February 1823. McCarthy resolved the conflict with the Ashanti, beginning by sending a military force to Dunkwa, which ended up as a disaster. McCarthy then reinforced the Gold Coast. The war started when an Ashanti army began their invasion of the Fante Confederacy in December.
The first main engagement was the Battle of Nsamankow which happened on 21 January 1824. McCarthy and his forces numbering only about 500 (along with several thousand natives) suffered a humiliating defeat, with McCarthy and most of his forces being slain by the much larger Ashanti army of about 10,000.
The second main engagement was the Battle of Dodowa which happened on 7 August 1826. The British forces, along with the Danish and Fante numbering around 11,000 in total successfully broke the Ashanti lines, causing a devastating defeat to the Ashanti forces (which also consisted of around 11,000 men). Britain and the Ashanti Empire were willing to make peace, however the Fante delayed this all the way to 1831.
The treaty on 27 April 1831 imposed harsh terms on the Ashanti, causing them to hand over 600 troy ounces (19,000 g) of gold and surrender two members of their royal families as hostages, along with having to recognise three kingdoms (Denkyira, Akyem and Assin) and the newly British gained territory south of the Pra River. This began the decline of the Ashanti Empire.

## Background

The Ashanti Kingdom was formed in the 17th century in the region of modern Ghana, steadily expanding during the 18th century until it came to dominate most neighbouring groups, although the Fante of the coastal region came under British domination. The Ashanti began a push to the coast from 1807, which brought them increasingly into conflict with Britain, which had trading posts and forts there.
In 1817, the British decided to send a peacemaking mission from the coast to the capital of the Ashanti at Kumasi. The officers employed wore full diplomatic uniform, complete with scarlet jackets and swords. They were Frederick James, commander of Fort James at Accra; Thomas Edward Bowdich, a nephew of Cape Coast's governor, John Hope Smith; William Hutchinson; and Henry Tedlie, a surgeon. If all went well, Hutchinson expected to take up residence as the British consul in the Ashanti capital. Bowdich and his colleagues set out on 22 April 1817, with three interpreters, two native soldiers, a number of hammock-men (people carriers) and carriers for their luggage and presents for the king (including a 9 feet (2.7 m) scarlet umbrella that cost more than one hundred guineas, now 9249 pounds). The party totalled about 130. Diplomatically, the mission accomplished very little.
In 1820, Akwamu broke due to the regional power of the Ashanti. The following year, the British government assumed direct control of these posts and forts with a new Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Charles McCarthy. He began to organise the Fante to resist the Ashanti.

### Cause of the war

The war grew out of an incident in May 1822 in which an Ashanti trader verbally abused the governor to a policeman, who in turn abused the Ashanti ruler. The policeman was later kidnapped in November. News of Sergeant Otetfo's (the policeman) capture had brought McCarthy back from Sierra Leone, and he landed at the Cape Coast in December 1822. Futile negotiations for his release followed, until 2 February 1823, when Cape Coast Castle learned that a state executioner had been sent from Kumasi, attended by two hundred or three hundred warriors, and that Sergeant Otetfo had been beheaded. His skull, jawbone, and part of one of his arms were taken back to the Ashanti capital, and put on public display.
As a result, McCarthy resolved on war with the Ashanti, who in turn decided to strike first. As he wrote, he sent "a military force to Dunkwa [to] make prisoners of those Ashanti caboceers (West Africans appointed by their leader to supply European slave traders with slaves) who had been the principal instruments in the whole transaction." According to McCarthy, it was "the first [offensive] enterprise of that nature by British soldiers [and] it has had the happiest effects. It has dispelled the terror of the Fante and other native tribes, who had, for many years, been held under the most abject state of oppression by the Ashanti and, in hopeless despair, considered them as invincible." However, why McCarthy thought his expedition to Dunkwa was a success remains a mystery. One of his officers, Major Henry Ricketts, said it was a disaster.
This was because they never reached Dunkwa, falling back on Anamabo with 6 men dead and 38 wounded. Even after this armed clash, which he had not ordered, King Osei Bonsu sent out another appeal for peace by offering to negotiate all differences between the Asante and the British. His offer was contemptuously rejected. Only then, in June 1823, did the king allow his army to advance toward the British along several routes. For reasons that remain unclear, their progress was unusually slow, and they did not actually threaten the British at Cape Coast until early January 1824. McCarthy understood he needed to reinforce his native companies on the Gold Coast. When he took command, the only regular troops in all of West Africa were five companies of the 2nd West India Regiment, and they were spread out between Sierra Leone and the Gambia River. Reinforcements began arriving in April 1823. They would ultimately go into battle in scarlet jackets and be accompanied by their own brass band.
The British-led force of over eleven thousand men consisted of Africans from several tribes, including a contingent of Fante. Sixty British officers and non-commissioned officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Purdon coordinated the defence. Two years earlier the British government had sent three hundred British soldiers to McCarthy, but their susceptibility to disease proved to be devastating. The first company of one hundred British troops arrived at Cape Coast in April 1823; eight months later only one man was still alive. The second company of one hundred men arrived in November 1823; one year later only eight men were alive.
Most of the third company died within three months. During the same period fifteen white officers also died of disease. Forty-two wives and sixty-seven children accompanied the men, and they died in similar numbers. The British government was reluctant to commit more white soldiers or their families to Gold Coast graves. As a result, Colonel Purdon had to depend on the ability of his British officers to train African militia to defend the coastal populations. One of these officers was the same Major Ricketts who had survived the wounds he suffered in the McCarthy battle to return to the Gold Coast. Throughout the preceding seven months, while the Asante army was rampaging through the coastal countryside, Purdon and his officers were frantically recruiting, arming, and training men from their African allies. By August Purdon had a reasonably well armed force that, for the moment at least, appeared willing to fight. In addition to the African soldiers' muskets and knives, Colonel Purdon had several cannon and an ample supply of the newly invented Congreve rockets. He also had excellent intelligence about the movements of the Asante, who were uncharacteristically open about their intentions.
British power was only effective on the maritime fringe of Africa, where its naval strength could assist; inland its military dominance was not so clear. An Ashanti army began the war with an invasion of the Fante Confederacy in December.

## Conflict

The First Anglo–Ashanti War broke out in the Akan interior of the Gold Coast between the native Ashanti tribe and the British colonisers following a breakdown in relations with British officials at Cape Coast Castle, the largest British post in the region, an Ashanti army had descended toward the coast to enforce its claims. The exotic location of the conflict captured the attention of the British public and tapped into contemporary British attitudes towards race. An army composed of warriors of the Fante people, who were local British allies, and a small detachment of British troops under the command of Brigadier-General Sir Charles McCarthy, had sallied forth to meet them in January 1824.
The Ashanti advanced on the coast in 12 columns. McCarthy's forces were poorly deployed and he unexpectedly encountered the main Ashanti army with only 500 of his own men, at Bonsaaso. Along with this, McCarthy commanded several thousand non-Ashanti natives. These native allies included Denkyira, with their brave chief, Kwadwo Tibo, and the queen of the Akyim, Dokuwa. The Dutch at Elmina promised they would remain neutral, and some of the Danes at Accra joined McCarthy's army. Heading his way was a vast army of ten thousand or more highly disciplined Ashanti most of them carrying their six-foot-long "Long Dane" muskets, manufactured — cheaply and badly — in Birmingham and purchased over the years with Ashanti gold.
Before marching off to battle, the Ashanti army assembled in Kumasi, "where gunpowder and shot from the king’s apparently huge armoury [no European is known actually to have seen it], located three miles outside the city, were distributed to the men," according to the anthropologist Robert B. Edgerton. The powder was often inferior and, instead of real bullets, the Ashanti generally rammed nails or metal slugs down the barrels. On the march, the ordinary soldiers went barefoot, and wore a simple cotton cloth tied around the waist. They carried gunpowder and shot in gourds and slung a skin bag filled with dried beans, cassava, ground nuts, and other provisions over their shoulders. Edgerton wrote that when close to the Ashantis, "they ate only maize meal mixed with water and ground nuts in order not to reveal their positions by lighting fires." In battle, said Edgerton, Ashanti troops "marched in perfect order, their guns carried at exactly the same angle, before they turned toward the Ashantis and fired volleys on command, the only African army that was known to do so." The commanding general usually took up a position in the rear of his army, in a hammock under a great umbrella, and waited for his troops to bring him the heads of his vanquished foes, which he used as footrests.
But on 9 January 1824, on receiving news that the Ashanti had crossed into western Wassa, McCarthy set off to meet them at the head of 80 Fantis, just recently enrolled in the Royal African Colonial Corps, 170 men from the Cape Coast Militia, and about 240 other Fantis under their own chiefs. He was accompanied by Major Ricketts, the brigade major, Ensign Wetherell, Williams, his private secretary, and Surgeon Tedlie, the same man who had accompanied Bowdich to Kumasi. "With only 20 rounds of ammunition for each man and some loose powder and slugs, most of which was soon spoiled by rain or in fording streams, Sir Charles, falling into the too common error of underrating his enemy and deaf to the remonstrances and advice of the king of Dukowa and other chiefs, now purposed defeating the advance of an Ashanti army of unknown strength, composed of men who were not only inured to bush fighting, but were also confident of success," William Walton Claridge (writer) wrote.
Not only had McCarthy split up his available force into several divisions, Claridge wrote that "he must needs select the weakest of these with which to meet the enemy." Claridge concluded that "nothing more foolhardy can well be imagined." McCarthy's "miserable little handful" crossed the Pra in eight small canoes on January 13. They reached a village called Insamankow on the 14th, where they halted for five days to allow local tribesmen to rally around and to permit Mr. Brandon, McCarthy's immensely incompetent storekeeper, to come forward with provisions and more ammunition. On the 17th he sent a messenger ordering Major Chisholm to join him with the main body of his army, "but by some extraordinary blunder the letter was entrusted to a man who knew nothing of this part of the country, and who was so long in finding his way to [Chisholm] that it was not until the 22nd that it was delivered." The Ashanti continued their advance, with the Denkyira and Wassaw tribesmen falling back in full retreat. McCarthy sent Williams forward in an effort to rally them, and he managed to bring them to a halt and make camp on the banks of the Adamansu, a small tributary of the Pra, where he was soon joined by McCarthy and the rest of the force. Tibo, the Denkyira chief, took a look around him, and concluded there weren't near enough men to resist the Ashanti army. He said his soldiers would stand, but he said he was "quite sure that the Fantis cannot stand; that the whole charge will fall upon the Governor and his small force, and the consequence will be the ruin of Denkyira!"
McCarthy barely had time to inspect his positions — Wassaws on the right, Tibo and his Denkyiras on the left, and the regulars and the Fantis in the centre — when the Ashanti began their attack. Up to that moment, according to Colonel Ellis, "he seems to have been of opinion that there was but a small force of Ashanti at hand, and that the main body was at the distance of two or three days’ march," refusing to credit reports from his own scouts that the entire Ashanti army, probably ten thousand men, were on top of him. Chisholm, with six hundred regulars and militia and three thousand unorganized natives, was still twenty-five miles away, and Captains Laing and Blenkarne, with four hundred more regulars among them, were too far away as well.

### Battle of Nsamankow

At about 2 p.m. on 21 January, the Ashanti army, blowing their horns and beating their drums, advanced to about a half-mile of the river bank. McCarthy called his brass band, from the Royal African Corps, forward, and told them to strike up "God Save the King." The buglers were told to add to the din, the whole idea being that McCarthy was convinced, "from some strange source of information," that the Ashanti only wanted an opportunity to come over to him.
The Ashanti played in return, "and this musical defiance was kept up for some time, after which a dead silence ensued," Colonel Ellis reported. A few moments later, the drums began beating again, and the Ashanti advanced and lined up on their side of the river, which was about sixty feet wide. "This movement," said Colonel Ellis, "was executed with the greatest regularity, the Ashanti advancing in a number of different divisions under their respective leaders, whose horns sounded their calls; and upon hearing them, a native who had been in Kumasi was able to name nearly every Ashanti chief with the army."
"The action now commenced on both sides with determined vigour, and lasted till nearly dark," wrote Major Ricketts, who was there. "It was reported about four o’clock that our troops had expended all their ammunition, consisting of twenty rounds of ball cartridges ..." Application was made to Mr. Brandon, who had arrived in the middle of the action, to supply more, "he having received his excellency’s orders to have forty rounds of ball cartridges packed in kegs for each man ready to be issued ..." But Mr. Brandon said they had not yet arrived, "and that he had only a barrel of powder and one of ball with him, which were immediately issued."
Brandon had left his base with about forty native carriers, but had gone ahead of them to join McCarthy. The unsupervised carriers, seeing the Wassaws, their countrymen, hurrying to the rear, threw down the kegs they were carrying, and joined the retreat. "On this circumstance being reported to Sir Charles," Major Ricketts wrote, "he [McCarthy] desired to see Mr. Brandon, with whom he was exceedingly angry, and if he had not suddenly disappeared either into the woods or to look after the ammunition, it is probable that if Sir Charles had had the means at the moment he would have put his threat into execution of suspending him to a tree."
The Ashanti had tried several times to cross the rain-swollen river, but had been driven back by gunfire. Now, "the enemy perceiving our fire had slackened," Ricketts noted, had succeeded. They "rushed in all directions on our gallant little force, who still defended themselves with their bayonets." The Ashanti "instantly beheaded nearly every one of those who unfortunately fell into their remorseless hands." McCarthy, already wounded, worked his way to the side of Tibo, the Denkyira chief, who, surrounded by his people, was still fighting bravely. McCarthy wanted a bugler to sound the retreat, but none was to be seen; they were all dead or wounded, or had joined the rest of their unit at the river's side. A small brass cannon was wheeled into place, still lashed with ropes to the poles on which it had been brought on men's shoulders, and aimed through the dense underbrush at the Ashantis. Mr. DeGraft, "a man of colour, linguist at Cape Coast and lieutenant in the militia, went round and obtained some power from the King of Denkyira, [along] with some loose musket balls that had been left in a keg . . . and fired, in hopes to impede, in some measure, their advance. But they immediately rushed forward, and killed and wounded two men of the 2nd Royal West Indian regiment."
Ricketts himself wounded, tried to follow McCarthy, who had left the side of the king, and was making his way through heavy woods. All Ricketts could see were the feathers in his plumed helmet. "Soon after," he said, "there was a general rush back of those who were with him, after which no more was seen of him." Major Ricketts and Mr. DeGraft then seized a Wassaw tribesman, bribing him with a silver whistle and chain on the promise he would guide them to safety. When it became too dark to go on, they halted, and hid themselves in the woods. "The rejoicing of the Ashanti on their success, and their attempt to sound some of the instruments of the band which they had taken, was distinctly heard, not being distant half a mile." An exhausted and bedraggled Ricketts finally crossed to the friendly side of the Pra River, encountering two of his own European soldiers. He asked if they knew him, "to which they answered in the negative."
McCarthy's forces along with his allies were defeated and McCarthy was wounded, then shooting himself to avoid capture (his skull later being made into a royal drinking cup for the Ashanti ruler). The British defeat was hastened when the ordnance keeper mistakenly delivered vermicelli instead of more ammunition. Nine British officers and 178 men were killed, along with another 3 other officers and 89 men wounded. Some further skirmishes followed, but no significant action took place between May 1824 and July 1826. The Ashanti force withdrew from the coast after being dissipated by dysentery and smallpox.

#### Aftermath of the battle

McCarthy's fate remained a mystery until late in March, when Williams, who had been captured by the Ashanti, was released. "He explained that he had left the field of battle with the Governor [McCarthy], a Mr. Buckle, and Ensign Wetherell and retreated along the path towards Insamankow," according to Claridge. "They had not gone far, however, when they were attacked by a party of the enemy. One of Sir Charles’ arms was broken at the first volley and he almost immediately afterwards fell with a second wound in the chest. He was carried to one side and laid at the foot of a tree," which Claridge said was "reverenced by the people of the district for many years thereafter."
Williams remembered seeing Ensign Wetherell "cutting with his sword at some of the enemy who were trying to tear off Sir Charles’ uniform, when he himself received a wound in the thigh and lost consciousness. He was brought to his senses by the clumsy attempts of one of the Ashanti to cut off his head. He had already received one gash in the back of the neck when an Ashanti captain, to whom he had once done some kindness on the coast, recognized him and ordered his life to be spared. Lying near him he saw the headless trunks of his three companions." Williams was taken to an Ashanti village, and "shut up each night in a hut with the heads of Sir Charles and the other officers. These heads had been so well preserved that the features of the governor especially presented almost the same appearance as they had done in life." Williams also reported that the principal Ashanti chiefs "ate Sir Charles’ heart in the belief they would thus derive a portion of his indomitable courage, and that pieces of his flesh were smoke-dried and carried on their persons as talismans to protect them in battle." After two months of sharing his hut with the heads of his three companions, living on a twice-daily serving of as much snail soup as he could hold in one hand, Williams was released, and made his way back to Cape Coast Castle.
In a later engagement, British troops recaptured what they thought was Sir Charles's much-travelled head, which they sent to England. But it was all a mistake; the head, it turned out, had once belonged to a native chief. McCarthy's real head was taken to Kumasi, where — now a well-polished skull — it was brought out each year, in early September, as a highlight of the Yam Festival.

### Battle of Dodowa

In January 1826 a new Ashanti army invaded the Fante territories before making a bid to take Accra, concentrating their forces at Dodowa 20 miles to the north. An allied army of local tribes (such as the Akwamu) defended the town together with a British force of about 60 men. Each side numbered approximately 11,000.
At the end of July 1826, the Ashanti advanced towards Danish territory with an army of 11,000 men. The English, fearing the common enemy, took the opportunity to kill the Akvambo chief, and offered all they could do to help. In the beginning of August, the Governor met at Cape Coast Castle, then up at Christiansborg with some officers, a troop of soldiers, 4 field guns and a considerable quantity of ammunition and congreve rockets; and c. 6,500 warriors from the English area, including 2,000 Fante. The Danish force numbered about 5,000 men. Richter Aarestrup (commander of the Danish army) had again trooped up with a well-disciplined detachment of 150 uniformly armed men. Each fort had provided what could be dispensed with to all combatants, and the 4 field guns from Christiansborg came back into use. The combined army assembled around their main fort, and the English proposed that the Ashantis should be received under the guns of the fort, but the Danish Government could not procure food for the large number of men-at-arms. The "mountain negroes" also wanted to receive the battle beyond their plantations on the southern slope of the mountains, so that the algrove would not be destroyed, causing famine to become the Ashanti's ally. When the Ashanti's reached the eastern Akwapim mountains with their vanguard, the Akyem, Akwapim and Akwamu immediately set in motion and marched north, and the Europeans then went along, followed by the rest of the army.
The Ashanti faced a massive uprising by its conquered provinces, leading to the Battle of Dodowa (Akantamasu/Katamanso) on 7 August 1826 which proved to be the most important engagement in the region's history. The British force made effective use of rockets, which helped break the Ashanti lines. The Wusuta (an ally of theirs) was not among those who assisted the Ashanti. This caused the Ashanti to lose effective control over the coast before palm oil exports had climbed to substantial levels. When Gold Coast palm oil exports began to take off, from the 1830s, the Ashanti took indirect advantage by selling slaves and other commodities to the Fante in return for European goods which the Fante had purchased with the proceeds of palm oil. The Ashanti army also lost 5,000–6,000 warriors, some killed and some captured, along with 37 generals and chiefs. Both Britain and the Ashanti were now willing to make peace, but the Fante proved difficult, with the result that no settlement was reached until 1831.

### Peace agreement

On 27 April, a peace treaty was signed in the Great Hall of the Cape Coast Castle, by which the Ashanti were to hand over 600 troy ounces (19,000 g) of gold and to surrender two members of their royal family as hostages. These securities were to be returned after six years. The Ashanti recognised the kingdoms of Denkyira, Akyim and Assin as independent. A border was also agreed, with the area south of the Pra River being recognized as British. From this point onwards Ashanti power began to decline.

## Aftermath

When Gold Coast palm oil exports began to do well, from the 1830s, the Ashanti took indirect advantage by selling slaves and other commodities to the Fante, in return for European goods which the Fante had purchased with the proceeds of palm oil. The Ashanti were the main supplier of ivory as well as slaves to the Gold Coast. Most gold exports came from Ashanti and its tributaries, although that share was diminished after the Battle of Dodowa (but still probably "over half, perhaps three-quarters" of the Gold Coast total). In 1836, the Wusuta went beyond their position of neutrality to join with the polity of Peki to attack Ashanti's ally east of the Volta, Akwamu.
Forty years after this war, by which time the British government had declared a protectorate over the land in the proximity of its trading posts on the Gold Coast, another British-led army had advanced against the Ashanti, only to be caught in the rainy season and forced to withdraw when disease put half of its troops out of action.