Ashanti was a British

Crown Colony A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony governed by Kingdom of England, England, and then Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain or the United Kingdom within the English overseas possessions, English and later British Empire. There was usua ...

in West Africa from 1902 until its independence as part of the dominion named

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

in 1957. After several prior wars with British troops, Ashanti was once again occupied by British troops in January 1896. In 1900, the Ashanti Uprising took place. The British suppressed the violence and captured the city of

Kumasi Kumasi is a city and the capital of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the Ashanti Region of Ghana. It is the second largest city in the country, with a population of 443,981 as of the 2021 census. Kumasi is located in a rain forest region ...

. Ashanti's traditional king, the Asanthene, and his counselors were deported. The outcome was the annexation of Ashanti by the British so that it became part of His Majesty's dominions and a British Crown Colony with its administration undertaken by a Chief Commissioner under the authority of the Governor of the Gold Coast. Ashanti was classed as a colony by conquest. The legislation by which this annexation was effected and the administration constituted was the Ashanti Order in Council 1901 made on 26 September 1901. The Ashanti lost their sovereignty but not the essential integrity of their socio-political system. In 1935, limited

self-determination Self-determination refers to a people's right to form its own political entity, and internal self-determination is the right to representative government with full suffrage. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international la ...

for the Ashanti was officially regularized in the formal establishment of the Ashanti Confederacy. Ashanti continued to be administered with the greater Gold Coast but remained, nonetheless, a separate Crown Colony until it became united as part of the new dominion named

under the Ghana Independence Act 1957.

References

{{reflist 20th century in Ghana British Empire 1902 establishments in Africa