Ashanti Empire

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

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