The Asante Empire was governed by an elected monarch with its political power centralised. The entire government was a federation. By the 19th century, the Empire had a total population of 3 million. The Asante society was matrilineal as most families were extended and were headed by a male elder who was assisted by a female elder. Asante Twi was the most common and official language. At its peak from the 18th–19th centuries, the Empire extended from the Komoé River (Ivory Coast) in the West to the Togo Mountains in the East.
The king and the aristocracy were the highest social class in the Asante society. Commoners were below the aristocracy with slaves forming the lowest social order. The Asante celebrated various ceremonies which were compulsory for communal participation. Festivals served as a means of promoting unity, remembering the ancestors and for thanksgiving. There was the belief in a single supreme being who created the universe with a decentralized system of smaller gods below this supreme being. People of all classes believed in witchcraft and magic. The Asante medical system was largely herbal similar to the Traditional African medicine of other pre-colonial African societies.
Society
Thomas Edward, in 1817, identified two classes in the empire. He referred to the upper class as "higher orders". The upper class were referred to as by the locals. Some owned large estates and thousands of slaves. "They were courteous, well-mannered, dignified and proud of their honor to such an extent a social disgrace, including something unintended as public flatulence could drive a man to commit suicide." Men and women of higher orders bathed every morning with soap and warm water. They cleared their teeth several times every day with a brushing stick. The lower orders, known as , were said to be small in stature with a filthy appearance. They were also described as ungrateful, insolent and licentious. In Sick Societies, anthropologist Robert Edgerton describes the wealth of Asante in the mid 19th century, where he states it was not uncommon for members who worked with the royal administration to possess over £100,000 in gold. He recounts that such upper class Asante possessed more money than most upper-class British families.
The Asante state was matrilineal, with all Asante citizens tracing their lineage to a single ancestor in an unbroken female line. The typical Asante family was headed by an Abusua as leader who was supported by a senior woman in the family called the . The was more concerned about the affairs of women and girls in the family. A mother's brother was the legal guardian of her children. The father had fewer legal responsibilities for his children with the exception of ensuring their well-being and to pay for a suitable wife for his son. A husband had some legal rights over his wife, including the right to cut off; her nose for adultery, her lips for betraying a secret or her ears for listening to private conversation. Women had relative equality such as the right to initiate divorce. Menstruation was detested in Asante society. Women were secluded in huts during menses. Momome, a female cleansing ritual, was often performed.
Clothing
Edgerton comments that prominent people in the empire often wore silk as commoners wore cotton whiles slaves dressed in black cloth. Garments indicated the wearer's rank, and their color denoted various meanings. Lighter colors as stated by Edgerton, could express innocence or rejoicing. White for example, was worn by Chiefs after making a sacrifice or by ordinary people after winning a court case. Dark colors were worn for funerals or mourning. Most clothes bore intricate designs that carried out various meanings.
Some women wore Kente cloth dresses made by stitching together numerous handwoven strips of cotton or silk. There were laws that restricted certain Kente designs to various great men and women as exclusive symbols of their mobility and prestige. Some cotton or silk patterns on the Kente were designed solely for the Asantehene or king and could only be worn with his permission. The king and the wealthy wore elegant sandals decorated with gold but Edgerton writes that commoners went barefoot except during the rainy season when they wore wooden clogs to keep their feet out of the mud. The Densinkran was a form of hairstyle introduced in the Asante Empire to mourn the Asante soldiers who perished at the Katamanso War. The hairstyle was later worn by women of royal descent and the elderly. It was also worn during funerals.
Cuisine Plants cultivated by the Asante include plantains, yams, manioc, corn, sweet potatoes, millet, beans, onions, peanuts, tomatoes, and many fruits.Basil, Davidson African Civilization Revisited, Africa World Press: 1991, page 240. Fufu was an important dish in the empire. Women collected snails which formed a major part of Asante cuisine. Cultural exchange with the Europeans at the coast introduced foreign dishes in Asante. The Asantehene or king of Asante enjoyed as part of his breakfast, European biscuits and tea. Maize could be used to prepare porridge or loaf. Fritz Ramseyer accounts for the consumption of maize diet by the Asante army in 1869. Kenkey was documented in the early 19th century by the William Hutton and the emissaries of Joseph Dupuis. Cassava could be used to prepare Kokonte and rice was imported further south in modern Ghana. Rice was the main meal taken by the Asantehene and his officials at 2pm. Scholar Miller writes on the lower consumption of meat by Asante people outside of the royal court. She cites William Hutton in 1820 who observed the presence of poultry, sheep and hogs of which the Asante lower class preferred to sell as they could not afford such diet.
Games The Oware is an abstract strategy game widely believed to be of Asante origin. People sat under the shade provided by huge trees along the street where they played the board game.
Chess was also played, where the King would have the move of a bishop, or a move similar to the bishops diagonal move. They also played Drafts (which is likely where the Dame Dame Adinkra symbol came from) similar to the Polish style
Also, according to Bowdich: "They have another game, for which a board is perforated like a cribbage board, but in numerous oblique lines, traversing each other in all directions, and each composed of three holes for pegs; the players begin at the same instant, with an equal number of pegs, and he who inserts or completes a line first, in spite of the baulks of his adversary, takes a peg from him, until the stock of either is exhausted"It is unclear what specific game this was, apart from guessing it is a variant of cribbage.
Slavery Slaves were typically taken as captives from enemies in warfare. The welfare of Asante slaves varied from being able to acquire wealth and intermarry with the master's family to being sacrificed in funeral ceremonies. The Asante sacrificed slaves upon the death of their masters. The Asante believed that slaves would follow their masters into the afterlife. Slaves could sometimes own other slaves, and could also request a new master for severe mistreatment.Slavery in the Asante Empire of West Africa, Mises InstituteAlfred Burdon Ellis, , The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast of West Africa , 1887. p. 290Rodriguez, Junius P. The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, Volume 1, 1997. p. 53.
The modern-day Asante claim that slaves were seldom abused,Johann Gottlieb Christaller, Ashanti Proverbs: (the primitive ethics of a savage people), 1916, pp. 119–20. and that a person who abused a slave was held in high contempt by society.History of the Ashanti Empire. In addition to slaves, there were pawns; these were individuals of free status sold into servitude as a means of paying a debt. Kwaku Dua I banned this practice of pawnship around 1838.
Art
Architecture
The Asante traditional buildings are the only surviving buildings of Asante architecture. The construction and design of most Asante houses consisted of a timber framework filled up with clay which were thatched with sheaves of leaves. The surviving designated sites are shrines, but there have been many other buildings in the past with the same architectural style. These buildings served as palaces and shrines as well as houses for the affluent. The Asante Empire also built mausoleums which housed the tombs of several Asante leaders.
Generally, houses whether designed for human habitation or for the deities, consisted of four separate rectangular single-room buildings set around an open courtyard; the inner corners of adjacent buildings were linked by means of splayed screen walls, whose sides and angles could be adapted to allow for any inaccuracy in the initial layout. Typically, three of the buildings were completely open to the courtyard, while the fourth was partially enclosed, either by the door and windows, or by open-work screens flanking an opening. The walls of temples and that of important buildings were designed with reliefs and sculptures. Incised patterns, low reliefs and perforated fretwork are listed among the types of reliefs employed in Asante architecture by Livingstone.
Bowdich gave a description for the construction process for the large town houses of Kumasi in the early 19th century.
Dampan In Kumasi, were loggias opened on to the streets of the city. Such structures were unoccupied, and inhabited rooms were built behind them. Behind the dampan, 30–40 rooms could be hosted within an open yard with about 50–250 occupants. These rooms were invisible from the main streets and they could be accessed through a small door beside the dampan. In the mid-19th century, William Winniett referred to the dampan as public rooms. Bowdich in the early 19th century, wrote that this feature was limited to the captains. In 1824, Dupuis described the dampans as "designed for the dispatch of public business." Wilks adds that the dampan were offices or bureau for officials. McCasakie criticizes Wilk's take on the dampan as a gloss of the Asante architectural feature. He argues the dampan was an unstructured forum to raise household matters in public, to exchange information or to promote social interaction.
Sumpene These were elevated mounds built out of sun-baked clay that served as a platform for the Asantehene to sit and preside over public rituals in Kumasi. The earliest description of the sumpene comes from Bowdich's journal in 1819 where he observed circular elevations of two steps, "the lower about 20 feet in circumference, like the bases of the old market crosses in England." These were raised in the middle of several streets and the King's chair was placed on this platform to sit. From which he would drink palm wine with his attendance encircling him. Freeman also observed that the sumpene were polished with red ochre and they stood between 6–8 feet tall and around 10 feet in diameter at the apex. He adds that "they are ascended by pyramidal ledges, or steps running all around and rising above one another, about a foot in depth, and 18 inches in width. Around these ledges the officers of the Household, with attendant domestics take their seats and thus a group is formed of from fifty to a hundred persons all distinctively seen."
The palace complex