Ashanti Empire
The Ashanti (or Asante) Empire (or Confederacy), also Asanteman (1701–1896) was a West Africa state of the Ashanti, the Akan people of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. The Ashanti (or Asante) are a sub-group of the Akans, a powerful, militaristic and highly disciplined people of West Africa inhabiting an area known as 'Akanland'. Their military power, which came from effective strategy and an early adoption of European Firearms, created an empire that stretched from central Ghana to present day Benin and Ivory Coast, bordered by the Dagomba kingdom to the north and Dahomey to the east. Due to the empire's military prowess, sophisticated hierarchy, social stratification and culture, the Ashanti empire had one of the largest historiographies of any indigenous Sub-Saharan African political entity.
Today the Ashanti monarchy continues as a constitutionally protected, sub-national traditional state in Ghana. The current chief is Otumfuo Osei Tutu II Asantehene.
Read more about Ashanti Empire: Origins, Founding of The Kingdom, Independence, Asanteman Under Osei Tutu, Geography, Economy, Daily Life, Government, Communication in Asanteman, Legal System, The Ashanti Armies, European Contact, Wars of The Asante, Fall of Asanteman, Ashanti Uprising of 1900
Famous quotes containing the word empire:
“Our ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)