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British colonial destruction of the Asante capital of Kumasi, Ghana-including the Asantehene's palace, rebuilt as a military fort on the site of a ceremonial gathering ground-profoundly altered the city's spatial organization, as well as the Asante social and political order. In the century that followed the colonial occupation of Kumasi, however, the reconfiguration of the fort as a museum of military and cultural history, and the transformation of other structures within the architectural order of the redesigned capital, shifted the city's architectural focus from colonial authority to the Asante legacy of regional hegemony. This article situates the Kumasi Fort Museum and the "treasure storehouses" of the Ghana National Cultural Center and Manhiya Palace Museum within the architectural history of Kumasi, and examines how the capital displays distinctive constructions of Asante imperial hierarchy.
Introduction
In 1874, British troops dispatched to Kumasi to negotiate over the incursion of military forces of the Asante empire into the eastern and southern districts of the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) detonated the royal compound of the Asante king (Asantehene) and burned the remainder of the city to the ground (Brown 1972:22; Tordoff 1965:18). The buildings destroyed in the expedition included a fort that had emulated colonial fortresses on the coast. Although Kumasi was repopulated in succeeding decades, its opulence and hierarchy did not return. A colonial official passing through the area in 1888 stated that it
was nothing more than a large clearing in the forest, over which were scattered, somewhat irregularly, groups of houses. The paths were dirty and ill-kept, and between the groups of houses large patches of waste ground intervened, and on these, amidst the tall coarse grass that covered them, were to be seen the remains of houses that had once occupied them. (Freeman 1967:110, 124-125).
In the wake of an Asante uprising in 1896, the British imposed a protectorate on the region and began a reorganization of Kumasi. Extensive stretches of Kumasi's residential district were destroyed to "clear and ventilate" the town, and on the site of the old ceremonial gathering ground and military assembly point, a fort was constructed. Located approximately halfway along the road from the newly established mission to the old "fetish grove," the fort-later to be reestablished as a museum, or...