British traveller Thomas Bowdich was dazzled when he visited Kumasi, the capital of the West African kingdom of Asante, in 1817. The streets were as crowded as London’s Cheapside, Bowdich thought, as tens of thousands of soldiers bearing gold-edged weapons gathered for a display organised by the Asante king. Flanked by an array of nobles, the king or Asantehene sat under a sea of silk umbrellas, each broad enough to shield thirty people from the sun. He was resplendent in golden jewellery and basked in the glitter of servants waving gilded elephant tails. 

The spectacle was calculated to impress. But the confidence behind the razzle-dazzle was not without cause. At a time when the British Empire in the region consisted of a few tenuous coastal footholds, Bowdich and his companions glimpsed what Barnaby Phillips describes as ‘a wealthy African kingdom at the height of its powers’.

The prosperity of Asante, in present-day Ghana, was built in part on abundant deposits of precious metal. The British colony that would eventually absorb Asante was named the Gold Coast for a reason. But Asante was also a state – like Britain, ironically – that got very good at fighting