![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowI just finished my hundredth book of the year, Robert Edgerton's The Fall of the Asante Empire. It's an interesting book, but it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. The Asante have interested me for a while now; some time back, I read something which suggested that, had they evaded British conquest, the Asante empire might have had a good shot at modernizing, a la Meiji Japan. There are obvious differences between the two empires, such as the degree of literacy, but still, it makes for an interesting what-if.
Unfortunately, Edgerton's book is primarily concerned with the military aspects of nineteenth-century Asante history, and what I'd really like to get is economic and cultural information. There is some of that here, but it serves only to tantalize. I'll have to browse the bibliography to see if there's anything there which would fill the bill better.
Edgerton's account of the wars between Britain and the Asante is, as I said, interesting; at the beginning of the 1800s, the two armies fought at near-parity, and even in the final battles, late in the century, the Asante had opportunities to seriously damage the British forces. (Given that the British were also heavily embroiled in South Africa and in China, this might have been enough to dissuade them from continuing the fight.) He mentions, more or less in passing, the slow disintegration of the Asante polity over this time period, but doesn't give enough detail about the causes of that disintegration - unless it is to be attributed entirely to repeated defeats by the British and economic strangulation by their (British-supported) Fante rivals.
I want to know more.
Unfortunately, Edgerton's book is primarily concerned with the military aspects of nineteenth-century Asante history, and what I'd really like to get is economic and cultural information. There is some of that here, but it serves only to tantalize. I'll have to browse the bibliography to see if there's anything there which would fill the bill better.
Edgerton's account of the wars between Britain and the Asante is, as I said, interesting; at the beginning of the 1800s, the two armies fought at near-parity, and even in the final battles, late in the century, the Asante had opportunities to seriously damage the British forces. (Given that the British were also heavily embroiled in South Africa and in China, this might have been enough to dissuade them from continuing the fight.) He mentions, more or less in passing, the slow disintegration of the Asante polity over this time period, but doesn't give enough detail about the causes of that disintegration - unless it is to be attributed entirely to repeated defeats by the British and economic strangulation by their (British-supported) Fante rivals.
I want to know more.
