Osei Kofi Tutu I

Osei Tutu turned a cluster of small Akan chiefdoms in the forests of what is now Ghana into the Asante Empire, one of the most powerful states of West Africa for the next two centuries. Working with his priest and adviser Okomfo Anokye, he founded Kumasi as its capital, threw off the rule of Denkyira at the battle of Feyiase in 1701, and became the first Asantehene, king of Asante.

He was born around 1660 at Kokofu Anyinam. The Akan traced royal descent through the mother's line, so as the son of the sister of the rulers of the small state of Kwaman, he was heir to its throne. Tradition holds that his mother had long been childless and named him after the shrine of Otutu, where she had sought a blessing. As a young man he was sent to the court of Denkyira, then the dominant power in the region, which kept the heirs of its subject rulers as hostages but also trained them in war and government. He served as a shield-bearer to the king. According to oral histories, an affair with a woman of the Denkyira royal house forced him to flee east to Akwamu, whose army, with its many musketeers, was the most advanced of any Akan state.

When his uncle Obiri Yeboa was killed fighting the Dormaa, perhaps around 1677, Kwaman's nobles called Osei Tutu home to take the throne, and the king of Akwamu sent 300 warriors with him. He reorganised his small kingdom on the model of its neighbours, creating new offices for the treasury, the royal household and the craft guilds, and an army divided into wings and guards whose commanders owed loyalty to the king rather than to their clans. He then defeated Dormaa and, through the 1680s, absorbed several nearby towns, offering full membership of the state to newcomers whatever their origin.

Denkyira's harsh rule and its control of trade with the coast angered its tributaries. When its king, Ntim Gyakari, demanded tribute and hostages from Kwaman, the chiefs of the related Oyoko towns refused and joined together under Osei Tutu. Asante tradition tells that Okomfo Anokye called down from the sky a stool partly covered in gold, which came to rest on Osei Tutu's knees and was said to hold the soul of the nation. The Golden Stool became the symbol of the Asante union and of the king's authority. Osei Tutu built Kumasi as the new capital and created the yearly Odwira festival, at which the chiefs came to the capital to honour the king and settle disputes.

Many Denkyira subjects, servants and nobles defected to Kumasi before the war. Open fighting had begun by November 1698, with Denkyira supported by the Dutch. After early setbacks, the Asante crushed the Denkyira army at Feyiase in 1701, captured six Dutch cannon, and took Ntim Gyakari, who was killed, by some accounts on the field and by others after a trial. Abankeseso, the Denkyira capital, was plundered for fifteen days. Osei Tutu installed a subordinate ruler in Denkyira and shared out the conquered lands among his supporters.

Resistance continued, with Akyem and Denkyira remnants defeating the Asante in 1702 and a Denkyira revolt in 1706. Osei Tutu went on to subdue Assin, Sehwi and Twifo, struck north against Wenchi in 1711 to control trade routes to the interior, and conquered Wassa and Aowin between 1713 and 1715. In 1716 or 1717, campaigning against Akyem, his army was trapped in the forest and struck by smallpox. In October 1717, while being carried across the river Pra, he was shot and killed; his body was never found. By then his kingdom had roughly tripled in size.

Our 1700 and 1715 maps show West Africa in the years of his wars; the Asante state he founded appears at its greatest extent on our 1815 map.