In the broad belt of rugged country between the northern boundaries
of the Muslim-influenced states of Gonja, Mamprusi, and Dagomba
and the southernmost outposts of the Mossi Kingdoms, lived a number
of peoples who were not incorporated into these entities. Among
these peoples were the Sisala, Kasena, Kusase, and Talensi, agriculturalists
closely related to the Mossi. Rather than establishing centralised
states themselves, they lived in so-called segmented societies,
bound together by kinship ties and ruled by the heads of their clans.
Trade between the Akan states to the south and the Mossi Kingdoms
to the north flowed through their homelands, subjecting them to
Islamic influence and to the depredations of these more powerful
neighbours.
Of the components that would later make up Ghana, the state of Asante
was to have the most cohesive history and would exercise the greatest
influence. The Asante are members of the Twi-speaking branch of
the Akan people. The groups that came to constitute the core of
the Asante confederacy moved north to settle in the vicinity of
Lake Bosumtwe. Before the mid-17th Century, the Asante
began an expansion under a series of militant leaders that led to
the domination of surrounding peoples and to the formation of the
most powerful of the states of the central forest zone.
Under Chief Oti Akenten a series of successful military operations
against neighbouring Akan states brought a larger surrounding territory
into alliance with Asante. At the end of the 17th Century,
Osei Tutu became Asantehene (King of Asante). Under Osei Tutu's
rule, the confederacy of Asante states was transformed into an empire
with its capital at Kumasi. Political and military consolidation
ensued, resulting in firmly established centralised authority. Osei
Tutu was strongly influenced by the high priest, Anokye, who, tradition
asserts, caused a stool of gold to descend from the sky to seal
the union of Asante states. Stools already functioned as traditional
symbols of chieftainship, but the Golden Stool of Asante represented
the united spirit of all the allied states and established a dual
allegiance that superimposed the confederacy over the individual
component states. The Golden Stool remains a respected national
symbol of the traditional past and figures extensively in Asante
ritual.
Osei Tutu permitted newly conquered territories that joined the
confederation to retain their own customs and Chiefs, who were given
seats on the Asante state council. Osei Tutu's gesture made the
process relatively easy and non-disruptive, because most of the
earlier conquests had subjugated other Akan peoples. Within the
Asante portions of the confederacy, each minor state continued to
exercise internal self-rule, and its Chief jealously guarded the
state's prerogatives against encroachment by the central authority.
A strong unity developed, however, as the various communities subordinated
their individual interests to central authority in matters of national
concern.
By the mid-18th Century, Asante was a highly organised
state. The wars of expansion that brought the northern states of
Mamprusi, Dagomba, and Gonja under Asante influence were won during
the reign of Asantehene Opoku Ware I successor to Osei Tutu. By
the 1820s, successive rulers had extended Asante boundaries southward.
Although the northern expansions linked Asante with trade networks
across the desert and in Hausaland to the east, movements into the
south brought the Asante into contact, sometimes antagonistic, with
the coastal Fante, Ga-Adangbe, and Ewe people, as well as with the
various European merchants whose fortresses dotted the Gold Coast