18th–19th Centuries: (Asante — A Territorial State Whose Underlying Wealth Lay in Agriculture and Gold, Not Slaves: The Imperialist Party Versus the Peace Pa…

18th–19th Centuries: (Asante — A Territorial State Whose Underlying Wealth Lay in Agriculture and Gold, Not Slaves: The Imperialist Party Versus the Peace Party, the Rise of Legitimate Traders by Mid-Century, the Fante as Troublesome Southern Neighbors, and British Creeping Imperialism Culminating in the 1873–74 Invasion and the Gold Coast Colony): In Asante, a highly centralized administration had taken advantage of commercial opportunities during the eighteenth century, but although expansionist wars produced captives for export, Asante was never as dependent on the slave trade as Dahomey — its underlying wealth lay in agriculture and gold production. In the course of the nineteenth century, two rival groups competed among the political elite: an imperialist party that sought wealth through military aggression, and a peace party that argued for the same goal through commerce. The decline of the slave trade along the Gold Coast by the 1820s propelled the peace party into dominance, and by mid-century wealthy traders engaged in legitimate commerce had become honored by the state. Asante had long sat astride a trade network linking the savannah and desert to the north with the Atlantic system. To the south lay the Fante states, a persistent source of trouble — they instigated rebellion within the Asante empire and blocked its access to European trading forts. The Fante had the British as allies, and Britain adopted toward Asante the same attitude it held toward Dahomey: that it was a savage, tyrannical, slave-dealing empire. The area that would become the British Gold Coast colony provided a textbook example of creeping imperialism — the piecemeal process by which European governments found themselves inextricably caught up in local politics. Britain fought a series of wars with Asante through the century, usually sparked by Asante invasions of coastal districts. After a successful invasion in 1873–1874, Britain formally annexed the Fante states to stabilize trade, establishing the Gold Coast colony, though it withdrew from Asante itself and only returned in the 1890s on a more permanent basis.