Slave Trade Blame Game: Give Asante Empire Credit

It is just sad and academic falasy to read from a renowned fellow academician of no small measure than Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I sympathize with the Prof. who was demeaned by the community where he lives because of the color of his skin. His anger of this maltreatment by the neighbors who did not recognize his academic credentials may have been a contributing factor for his anger to blme his ancestors and slave trade.

Blame game is not solution to Black African problem in USA or any part of the world. Let us enjoy the success of Black American climaxed by the victory through President Obama, the first Black President of USA.

To get facts straight, when the Portuguese built Elimina Castle in 1482 to promote Atlantic Trade, there were other products besides slaves. It is a fact that by early 18th century Ashanti Kingdom had expanded to wide area over the present Ghana and beyond the eastern and western neighboring countries.

It is true Asante Empire wanted to participate in the coastal trade. Their primary objective was not slavery. The Asante Empire has control within its empire vast element of gold, ivory, diamond etc. The Empire skillful workers had produced beads, textiles (kente) guns, machetes and other metal products that they needed to trade in the south with the European who heather to had been fighting among themselves to get control of the coastal Trans Atlantic Trade.

Later Asante wars with the Europeans and their coastal allies was to get access to the southern trade and also to prevent the British (the final European victor) to colonize the Asante and later Gold Coast at large.

The strategy of Asante Empire after defeat of neighbors was annexation and expansion of the Empire. The chief of the defeated tribe paid allegiance to Asantehene for protection and the Empire provided equal treatment. If Asante Empire was sorely interested in selling the tribes they captured as slaves before the trade ended the then Gold Coast would have been a barren land.

Yes, Asante Empire participated in the slave trade but only on selected basis, the ransom of war and the people who disobeyed the culture and tradition.

Asante Empire did not wage war just to acquire slaves. They did not sell slaves to import gold as Prof. Gates claims but rather the Empire wanted access to export gold and other industrial products from the ingenuity of the Empire people.

Yes, there were wars against British but only to prevent British territorial acquisition. Asante at its central location of present Ghana was needed to be defeated by the British wars to penetrate to the northern Ghana where French were penetrating for colonizing.

In a few Asante British wars where Asante were defeated eg The battle of Dodowa in 1826 the Asante warriors that were captured and exported as slaves gave the slave traders a hell of resistant from the ship and even to the new American lands.

The learned Prof. Gates Jr. is right to be frustrated and angry on how his people of African ancestry were violently taken by Europeans for the greedy financial exploitation during the industrial revolution and discovery of America.

Definatly the slaves captured were through wars the Europeans initiated through the tribes they divided and incited to fight each other and it was Asante Empire that resisted that exploration and domination. Asante Empire resistance was as current as 1900 through Yaa Asantwaa War. It was the Asante Empire’s resistance that was disincentive for the colonizers to permanently usurper Ghana’s land.

Asante Empire resistance was the savior of Ghana from being a Rhodesia or apartheid South Africa. The Empire also provided alternative lucrative trade to slave trade. Asante gold, diamond, beads, textiles (Kente and Adinkra) and iron product were collection items for colonizers.

I will support Prof. Gates Jr. if his anger is vented on the fact that the Black Africans did not resist the Europeans hard enough to prevent slave trade. If this is his anger then he may have to give credit to Asante Empire, which continuously resisted the European colonizers with comparatively inferior military equipment.

James Nkatia-Kumi Management Consultant,Ghana

nkatiakumi@hotmail.com