More Colonial Reading

 I have not gamed at all for a while, whether work or home, fantasy or history. But I have been reading a lot, in several different periods. Here's the African colonial books I'm reading, three of them by Stephen Manning:

These are all relatively short but good overviews.

Britain at War With the Asante Nation covers the colonial presence in what is now Ghana from about 1600 on. The British and Dutch both had slaving stations there, and this is where the Asante (pronounced Ashanti) became a warrior nation - by dominating their neighbors. It wasn't until the early 1800s when the British began to actively suppress the slave trade that they came into conflict.

The 1823 war is the one that inspired the Brontes. Unlike their stories, there was never any substantial Western settlement beyond commercial (initially slaving stations), missionary and government elements which, as in India, accidentally grew rather than as part of a deliberate policy. The Asante were encouraged to take slaves from the surrounding tribes and then sell them to the white slavers, which of course led to a problem of the government's own making when it switched to anti-slavery. Treaties also caused trouble, as the Asante thought they were loaning or renting towns and fortresses that the British thought they held permanently. So the first war was a bit of a mess.

The second one was more deliberate, leading to the term "All Sir Garnet" after Wolseley's talent for organization. He gathered a ring of friends and proteges and prepared his expedition like his life depended on it - because it did. Thanks to extensive planning and acclimatization, there was little of the disease that had devastated earlier expeditions in the area (although the transport ships were barely seaworthy). Camps - what might have been called firebases a century later - were built along the road to reduce the load of the fighting troops, filled with food, water, and medical supplies. Even lighter, more comfortable uniforms were procured for the tropics.

Less successful was the attempt to form native regiments; part of the problem was that the locals couldn't protect themselves against the Asante, which is why the British were doing it for them. Against the wishes of the government, Wolseley demanded and got three battalions of British infantry. He took the Asante capital quickly and got out; the campaign lasted mere months and was carried out in the dry season, another cautious nod to the dangers of the tropics.

In the 1890s, they revolted, and their king was exiled. His mother was a strong woman who led the final revolt in 1900, which was entirely justified. The British governor demanded to sit on the Golden Stool of the Asante.

Unfortunately, it wasn't a throne, and he should have known that. It was the center of the Asante religion, and under the Queen Mother they rose. The rebellion was bloodily crushed, but the Golden Stool was never found, and is still kept by the Asante, still displayed on occasion but usually hidden.

The Brontes clearly didn't know this either. A wooden stool is a focal point of Pauline Clarke's The Twelve and the Genii, and the soldiers take it for their own with their kings standing on it. There are unspoken parallels here with the Boxer Rebellion, a war with which I'm completely unfamiliar and need to read up on.

Stephen Manning writes sympathetically, and is careful to quote Ghanaian historians and participants in the battles. A good short, if general, history, with many inspirations for The Sword in Africa.

Evelyn Wood, VC, covers the life of one of Wolseley's proteges, who gained important experience against the Asante. I first encountered him in Byron Farwell's Queen Victoria's Little Wars. There, it is pointed out that he was perhaps the unluckiest sod in the British Army, having been wounded, sickened or injured countless times in his career. These included falling down stairs twice, falling off and being trampled by a giraffe, and in Ashantiland being shot by a nail, and then left on an anthill by the stretcher bearers!

Wood's career stretched fifty years. He earned a VC in the Mutiny, and also served in Asante, India, Egypt and the Crimea. His role at the end of the First Boer War, however, scuttled his combat career. After three humiliating defeats and the death of another Asante veteran, Pomeroy Colley, Wood was sent out to take charge but ended up making peace with the Boers and returning their independence. Wolseley never forgave him, though openly he continued to support and assist Wood, who held several important posts in Britain - Aldershot, Quartermaster General and Adjutant General. These were actually his most far-reaching commands, as he was at the forefront of reorganization, the creation of reserve units, and the use of large-scale maneuvers on Salisbury Plain. So the British role in the First World War is down to him, perhaps as much as Kitchener.

His command in Ashantiland is useful for my hoped-for The Sword in Africa campaign. And while he saw no action in Egypt, he was at the forefront of the Egyptian Army's reorganization under British lines. His command of native units in Ghana was undistinguished, seemingly because he had very little time to train them. But two years in Egypt made his army what it needed to be to face the Mahdi, and provided useful background for his commands in Britain.

Despite his relative lack of combat experience later in his career, he retained an accident-prone tendency to "get out in front." Two instances are quoted of other officers pulling him out of the firing line and getting shot themselves, on the grounds that he wasn't supposed to be out in front. Reminds me of the Bill Mauldin cartoon where a GI asks his officer to get out of the open, "you're drawing enemy fire."

Overall a serviceable pair of books from Pen and Sword. I am working on the third, an overview of weapons improvements during the 19th century, as well as a short series of lectures by a Ghanaian professor on African responses to colonialism, to be discussed in a future post. And of course there are two more volumes of Wargaming in History, two 18th-century rulesets, and several books on Vietnam to be discussed! Gaming is falling well behind, but I am hoping to get in a couple small games in the next couple weeks, including my Picacho Pass scenario. See you then -