Ashanti
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| Conventional short name: | |
| Local: | Asanti |
| English: | Ashanti |
| [[Image:|200px|Flag of Ashanti]] | |
| National motto: Determination! Victory! Liberation! | |
| Languages: | |
| Official: | [[ ]] ([[ ]]) |
| Others: | Dalmatian (banned) |
| Cities: | |
| Capital: | Azikiwe (Lagos) |
| Largest: | Accre |
| Emperor: | Olusegun Azikiwe |
| Independence: | from Danubian Confederation |
| Declared: | 1942 |
| Recognized: | Never |
| Ceased to exist: | 1948 |
| Currency: | Asha |
| Organizations: | African Alliance |
Ashanti was the name of two different African states established in the similar area at different times - Empire of Ashanti was a state that existed in southern coast of the Western Africa during the years 1942-1948. Confederacy of Ashanti was an African state that existed until the nineteeth century, when it was colonised by Dalmatia.
Contents |
Empire of Ashanti
Establishment of the Empire
When the Danubian Confederation was occupied by the Holy Roman Empire in 1941 (in the Second Great War), the influence of the separatist movment, led by Olusegun Azikiwe (which was active since mid 30s), grew significantly in its Gold Coast colony. With the loss of the support from the Confederation, Gold Coast dwindled into anarchy in several weeks as various militant groups taken control of large portions of the countryside. Dalmatian expatriates (and frequently fellow Africans as well) were being murdered in the cities by the crowds of Africans, mass looting from the sate institutions started in some cities. In the capital Lagos and surrounding areas the order still was kept by the Danubian 4th division, but the rest of country became very unstable.
The Azikiwe's movement was relatively well organised and, unlike other groups, understood that anarchy and looting leads nowhere. Azikiwe's goals were largely political and he was a visionary of the African liberation. Before the occupation of the Danubian Confederation, the movement was mainly based in the western Gold Coast. These were the territories that were captured by the movement at first in the 1941. Accra fell in the November of 1941 and was declared a temporary capital, but the Gold Coast's colonial government's suggestion for truce was denounced by Azikiwe as he said that Gold Coast will only be free when every city and village will be liberated and there can be no truce with the colonialists.
As such, Azikiwe's armies continued to advance eastwards and westwards. Anarchy had left its scars on the cities and towns - many people had been killed or lost everything they had, many women were raped by various local gangs and militias - and thus most people welcomed Azikiwe without resistance, except for those warlords who enjoyed the state of anarchy, but they were quickly defeated. Azikiwe promised to give free land to everybody who would take part in the struggle, and thus many men, especially ones who had lost their wealth, have joined the Azikiwe's forces. The war, despite of being promoted in modern African historiography as an anti-colonialist war, was actually more or less fought between Azikiwe and various local rulers, with the Danubian forces playing a relatively minor role.
Under such circumstances, most of the country's southern coast was under Azikiwe's rule by the early 1942 and Lagos fell in the June. The government evacuated the inhabittants of the European origin from the city prior to the capture and evacuated itself.
Active warfare in the south, however, prevented Azikiwe to capture the northern parts of the Gold Coast colony, and those lands were occupied by the advancing Ethiopian forces (in the Ethiopian Liberation War which was part of the Second Great War). As the Ethiopians regarded the Danubian colonies to be terra nulius after the colonising power fell, and thus eligible to occupy, they considered the northern Gold Coast which was captured before Azikiwe could do that, to be legally theirs. This have raised a diplomatic conflict between Ashanti and Ethiopia. Ethiopia, was, however, not keen on invading another African state as that would have went against its official goals of the liberation fo Africa and, as well, it would have been hard to fight the popular Azikiwe's regime at the same time fighting the French in the French Kongo. Azikiwe on the other hand understood the Ethiopian might, and thus did not enter the northern Gold Coast.
In June 12th of 1942 the Empire of Ashanti was proclaimed in Lagos (named after the Confederation of Ashanti, the state that existed in the western Gold Coast until the 19th century). Olusegun Azikiwe was crowned as emperor. I is assumed that he done so attempting to immitate the Empire of Ethiopia, as Azikiwe, despite of the diplomatic conflicts, admired the power and wealth of Ethiopia and its emperor. Ashanti became one of the very few states of Africa that liberated themselves during the Second Great War rather than were liberated by Ethiopia. This prevented annexation or the installation of puppet government, and Ashanti remained an independent power. In the modern Gold Coast Ashanti is frequently reffered to as "The second African empire". In European historiography (with the exception of Danubian, Scandinavian and Portuguese ones) however Ashanti is said to have played a relatively minor role in the Second Great War and the studies of the Second Great War in Africa primarilly explains the actions of Ethiopia and China.
Politics during 1942-1945
The first goals of the Emperor were to reestabilish order and to promote economy, which was heavily damaged by the warfare and anarchy; many villages and enitire towns were burnt down, cities became surrounded by shantytowns of displaced people. The Land Reform distributed the land among the soldiers of the 1941-1942 war who fought on the Azikiwe's side. Chinese and Ethiopian enterpreneurs helped them to develop the businesses and to rebuild country, Ethiopian financial aid was also important. Therefore Ashanti largely dropped the issue of the northern Gold Coast off its political goals and largely recognised it as a part of Ethiopia (although officially the claim remained, probably not wanting to enrage people).
The Purification campaign officially started in the December of 1942. This campaign, regarded as a crime against humanity by many, was aimed at the purification of the Ashanti nation by removing the supposed European pollution of its culture. Basicially the purification law that was passed by the Emperor in December 6th of 1942 just legalised what was going on for much time already, but the later acts of the campaign went much further. Dalmatian language, which was spoken not only by the European expatriates, but as well by the native elite, was completely banned. The remaining Europeans were arrested or killed and had their property nationalised as "stolen property". There were not many Europeans left however and the regime targetted the former black elite as well. These people, who did well with the Danubian government once and were influential, usually managed to protect their property from the gang attacks during the period of anarchy by hiring mercenaries and other means. As such, most of their property was left intact during the war. They were now declared collaborators, had much propaganda used against them and their property was nationalised, usually either giving it to the key military leaders or turning it into public institutions, such as schools and hospitals. The latter was more advertised. In early 1943, mass murders of these political prisoners started. Whole families used to be killed in this way. In later 1943, various smaller servants of the former Danubian rule, such as former policement or soldiers, various local warlords who did not support the Akiziwe's ideas and sometimes simply people who just happened to have Dalmatian names, were also being murdered, although some managed to leave Ashanti. Due to reprisals of the rich and redistribution campaigns some consider the government of Ashanti to have been communist. Further actions of the purification campaign included the banning of giving non-local names to the children (and due to the pressure against people with non-local names many adults changed their names as well), renaming of many cities and other locations (Lagos became known as Azikiwe), heavy propaganda of "African pride", pressure towards the Christianity and Islam.
Other developments that happened in Ashanti in 1943-1944 includes the campaigns of providing homes and other security measures. Ashanti was also heavily miliarised. Ethiopia turned a blind eye to all this, seeing Azikiwe as a possible ally, however, as it turned out later when the allies captured the Ethiopian archives in Addis Abeba in 1947, the Ethiopians did not ruled out a possibility of assasination of Azikiwe or invasion into Ashanti.
Ashanti was largely rebuilt by the 1945 (although it stayed poor in comparement to Ethiopia) and the political opponents were either killed or forced to emmigrate. Azikiwe became the sole and uncontested ruler of whole country; most of Ashanti's towns and cities had his statues, a similar stellae to that in Addis Abeba was built in the Azikiwe City as the symbol of the empire. The construction of new Imperial Palace, which was to be one of the largest buildings in the world, started in 1944, but was never completed. Azikiwe had many fanatical supporters and those who opposed him did not dare to speak loudly; military and the secret services did their job.
Ashanti in the Second Great War
In the May of 1945 Ashanti joined the newly established Ethiopian-led organisation African Alliance, but with some reservations. In the same year Ashanti joined the Second Great War by attacking and overtaking Gadangmeland. This was done quickly after the German invasion of Rygen and only a day after the Ethiopian invasion of Meregh. Although some of the Gadangmelanders, expecting the danger, fled the country before the invasion, most have remained. Many of these were massacred during the invasion. It is alleged that Azikiwe himself gave orders for the army to "be ruthless towards the Scandinavian colonialists". After the occupation, Gadangmeland was completely evacuated by the government of Ashanti with all its inhabittants being deported to other places of Ashanti; it was done in such a way that nowhere the concentration of Gadangmelanders would be large so that they would quickly assimilate to the local cultures (and mostly they were forced to live in shacks in villages). It is assumed that during and afterwards this invasion about 27% of Gadangmeland's citizens perished. The property in Gadangmeland was given to the soldiers who fought in the war and the poor people of Ashanti and thus the area was repopulated. Azikiwe said that "The southern Ashanti is now reunified after its last portion was finally reattached".
Such success in the war stired up the nationalist feelings of Ashanti people and made Azikiwe to believe that he could capture even more lands. Ashanti was believed to launch an attack agaist another Scandinavian dependancy of the Pepper Coast, where Scandinavians quickly attempted to build defenses and to evacuate people from the border regions to the west of the colony (but serious actions were hardly possible due to the war in Europe). However, in the Ethiopian style of the surprise attacks, Azikiwe instead launched a surpirse attack against the Portuguese colony of Came Rao in the September of 1945. Ethiopia supported the invasion with its own invasion to the northern part of colony and air force bombings; it is assumed that this attack was launched under some secret not yet discovered Ethiopian-Ashantian treaty. As Came Rao was close to Ethiopia, most likely Ethiopia asked Ashanti to invade it instead of the Pepper Coast and offered Azikiwe help in case he would invade Came Rao.
The war in Came Rao proved to be harder than expected for Azikiwe however. After hearing of Ashantian attrocities, the people of Came Rao fought hardly. The Came Rao was fully occupied in the December of 1945, but the war did not stop - Portuguese and to a lesser extent Scandinavian bombings of Ashanti cities were doing great damage to the country and Ashanti did not have any air force and little air defense force to defend itself from such attacks. Some anti-air weaponry was aquired from China and Ethiopia, but, however, frequent air raids created discontent and fear in Ashanti. Maybe due to the Ethiopian pressure or due to the fact that Came Rao was larger than Gadangmeland, Azikiwe did not repeated the mass exodus or mass killings; some people indeed were killed, but, however, many Portuguese officials and rich locals managed to leave in time.
The level of bombings increased in the early 1946 and the Portuguese, Scandinavians and other allies were bombing the targets of the Pepper Coast/Ashanti border. This emptied the way for Scandinavian invasion that took place in mid-1946, by the time when the allies were invading Ethiopia from Egypt. Ashanti at the time had other troubles as well, as the discontent with Azikiwe's regime grew, partisan war continued in the Ashanti-occupied part of the Came Rao, several assasinations of key officials were carried out probably by foreign agents. Still however, Scandinavian invasion failed and Ashanti retook the lands briefly occupied by the Scandinavians despite of taking heavy looses. It reached the heavily fortified Ashanti/Pepper Coast border, where the front stopped. Attempted invasion of the Pepper Coast was badly organised and failed.
When the allied advances in Ethiopia made that country very weak, Ashanti used the oppurtunity to capture the northern parts of former Gold Coast colony. This was however the last territorial gain of the Ashanti. The situation detarioriated to that close to civil war and the Scandinavians invaded again, with the support of the Portuguese. Danubians later launched an invasion from sea to the area as well, wanting to retake the colony and turn it into a communist state. Azikiwe city fell in the early 1948 and whole Ashanti was occupied by the middle of that year. The Scandinavian and Portuguese occupied lands after the war became the independant country of the Gold Coast (but the Pepper Coast was expanded as well and Accre city became a condominium of the Gold Coast and the Scandinavian Realm), while the Danubian-occupied areas - Togo. Some areas were ceded to Mali. Emperor Azikiwe was captured attempting to leave the country eastwards, probably to the Native States, and tried for war crimes. The displaced people were permitted to return. In both Gold Coast and Togo the Azikiwe's policies were reversed and Dalmatian language was permitted again. Most of the people, tired of Azikiwe's regime, accepted the changes, especially as they were followed by heavy investment, but, however, Azikiwianist partisans continued the guerilla warfare in parts of the Gold Coast and Togo.
This page was created by Abdul-aziz. |
