In 1817, Bowdich was part of a British trade and diplomatic mission to Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti Empire in modern-day Ghana, where he recorded one of the earliest detailed accounts of this powerful polity. He also produced a series of watercolors of Kumasi, providing us with the earliest such depictions of the capital.
Kumasi was established as the capital of the Ashanti Confederacy in the 17th century, under Osei Tutu I and his chief priest, Okomfo Anokye. They rapidly consolidated power in the region, and ultimately defeated their former overlords, the Denkyira, at the Battle of Feyiase, in 1701, making Ashanti the dominant power in the Akan country.
Over subsequent generations, the kingdom expanded into an empire, at its height in the early 19th century, covering much of modern-day Ghana, parts of Eastern Ivory Coast and Western Togo.
Kumasi grew into one of the most prominent centers of trade and manufacture in West Africa, receiving caravans from Timbuktu, the Hausa country, Bornu and even Tripoli and Cairo.
It’s peak (precolonial) population in the mid 19th century was estimated at around 100.000 inhabitants. Quoting John Leighton Wilson’s period account from 1856, “Western Africa: Its History, Condition, and Prospects”:
“The population of Kumasi, the capital of Ashanti, has been variously estimated , by white men who have been there, from fifteen to two hundred thousand.
M’Queen, in his Geographical Survey of Africa, after bringing together the estimates of Bowdich, Dupuis, and others, comes to the conclusion that the population is probably about 100,000;
and Mr. Beechman, who derives his information from Mr. Freedman, a highly respectable missionary at Cape Coast, and one who has had a better means of forming a correct judgement on the subject than any other man living, adopts the estimate of M’Queen as being the nearest to the true state of the case.”
