31. A Track Record of Antagonism
In 1840, Nana Yaa Asantewaa was born into the royal line of the Edweso clan of the Ashanti Confederacy. The Confederacy was an African state founded in 1701 by a badass chieftain named Osei Tutu. The new state’s foundation myth revolved around the Golden Stool – a mystical seat that was supposedly summoned from the sky by Osei Tutu’s chief priest. It fell into the lap of the Ashanti Confederacy’s founder, thus confirming his right to rule. The Golden Stool became the Ashanti state’s most sacred object, and its chief unifying symbol.
A century later, Britain’s African Company of Merchants began supporting rivals of the Ashanti. That created friction, which Britain inherited when it dissolved the African Company and took over its holdings in 1821. Continued British support for Ashanti tribal enemies eventually led to a war that lasted from 1823 to 1831. That conflict, the First Anglo-Ashanti War, was followed by steady skirmishing, which flared into open warfare four more times in subsequent generations.