Asante Expand Under Osei Kwadwo

1752

The Asante king in Kumasi, enriched by gold and the slave trade running south to coastal European forts, reorganized provincial administration and pushed northern conquests. The empire's golden stool - said to hold the soul of the nation - ruled a bureaucracy that would astonish nineteenth-century British envoys. Osei Kwadwo's reforms created a merit-based civil service that rivaled any contemporary European administration in its efficiency.