Films

African history told as drama rather than lecture — in the voices of the people who lived it, with English subtitles throughout so it carries to anyone, anywhere.

Full film · Five parts

Yaa Asantewaa: The War of the Golden Stool

Kumasi, the twenty-eighth of March 1900. The Asante had already lost their king to exile. The British governor came for the one thing left — the Golden Stool, which holds the soul of the nation and which no person, not even a king, may sit upon. He asked for it in open assembly. The hall went silent. Then a queen mother of Ejisu stood up.

9 min 18 sec · Twi and English with English subtitles

Part One

The Demand

The chiefs are summoned. The Governor asks why he is not sitting on the Golden Stool.

Part Two

The Stool

An elder explains by firelight what the stool is, where it came from, and why no one sits on it.

Part Three

The Council

The war council argues itself into despair. A woman rises and shames it into war.

Part Four

The War

Seven months of siege. Inside the fort the Governor works out what it has cost him.

Part Five

What They Never Found

Britain took the territory. It never took the stool. It is in Asante hands to this day.

How this was made, and what is not certain

The speech Yaa Asantewaa is remembered for survives as oral tradition. It was first written down by Agnes Aidoo in 1977 — seventy-seven years after the event — and circulates in several different versions. The dialogue in this film is dramatised. Where the record is firm we have kept to it: she was Ohemaa of the Ejisu division rather than of all Asante; the stool is carved wood covered in beaten gold, not solid gold; Governor Hodgson made his demand on 28 March 1900; she died in exile in the Seychelles on 17 October 1921.

The Twi spoken here has not yet been checked by a first-language speaker. If you speak Twi and want to correct it, tell us — corrections will be made and credited.