Britain and the looted African gold

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1:56In the 1870s, British troops invaded the African kingdom of Urshante, raised its capital, prowled its palace, and plundered its exquisite golden treasures. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Barnaby Phillips, author of a new book on the subject, tells Spencer Mizzen about the fate of the Urshante gold, and explores the decades-long campaign to return the treasures to West Africa. Hello, Barnaby. Thank you very much for joining us today. You've written a book called The African Kingdom of Gold, which was out at the beginning of March.

2:33Now, the kingdom to which the title of the book refers is the Kingdom of the Asante. This was an extraordinary cultural, political, and military force that rose to prominence in West Africa in the 17th and 18th century. So just to start, and to give our listeners a bit of context, I wonder if you can introduce us to the Kingdom of the Asante in a bit more detail, kind of give us an overview of

3:04what powered its rise. Sure. So the Asante Kingdom is located, it's still there today, by the way, in what is today Ghana, and it was centred around a city called Kumasi. So it's an inland kingdom about 200 kilometres north of the Atlantic coast. And as you said, Spencer, it rose really at the end of the 17th century. And it was, if you like, an amalgamation of smaller chieftaincies, smaller kingdoms, which coalesced around a central king in

3:36Kumasi. And its initial power came very much from the gold trade. There had been Europeans on what was called the Gold Coast since the 15th century, but they very much stayed on the coast and did not venture into the interior. Ashanti controlled the interior trade and worked through middlemen with the Portuguese, with the Dutch, with the French, with the Brandenburg Germans, with the Danes, and of course, eventually and very much with the British.

4:07But it's important to say as well that over time, trade evolved. And certainly by the 18th century, Ashanti was an important player in the slave trade and selling slaves who were captured through conquest through middlemen to the European powers, and in particular in the 18th century to the British, who are the leading European power in the 18th century involved in the transatlantic slave trade. Can you introduce us to, say, two or three of the most significant Ashanti rulers?

4:41I mean, how powerful were these men? And how much influence did they wield over the kingdom? So I think we should start with the mythical origins of the Ashanti kingdom, which are often attributed to a man called Okonfor Anochwe, who was a sort of a great priest, if you like, and was the mentor and curator to the first Ashanti king. The Ashanti kings are called the Ashantihinis, and that's a dynasty that goes down

5:12today. And the first great king is a man called Osetutu. And the myth is that Okonfor Anochwe, this great priest, summoned a golden stool from the sky to Osetutu and presented it to him in front of all the chiefs in Kumasi. And it was this act, the golden stool contained the soul of the Ashanti people, which launched the beginning of, I guess, what you would call the Ashanti empire. Its power gradually spreads out from Kumasi over a series of

5:45tributary kingdoms. So you might think of it as a bit of, I suppose, of a loose confederation. And the degree of control that Kumasi has over those peripheral kingdoms ebbs and flows with Kumasi's power. But what is evident quite quickly is that it is a very well-organized military kingdom, although it operates, I suppose you might say, rather like a feudal levy, if you like. It's not so much a standing army. Chiefs and princes are ordered to raise forces.

6:19They work with great discipline. They only have muskets, by the way, typically, which is a technology which has come from the Europeans, what they call Dane guns on the West African coast. But they use these to great effect. They use noise. They use their courage, their strength, and they use their mastery of fighting in the forest, because they are inland in the forest, to devastating effect, raiding the kingdoms around, raiding gold, mining gold themselves, alluvial gold, but digging down

6:52a deep, deep way, capturing people, selling captives, and selling gold to the Europeans on the coast. And this is the dynamic that serves Ashanti extremely well throughout the 18th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, other European powers have, I suppose, faded away to a certain extent on the Gold Coast, with the exception of the British. And that is when the British are starting to become more curious, not just satisfied to stay on the coast. And that's when they want to know more about this great

7:29inland kingdom, with whom, up to that point, they've only dealt with through intermediaries. As you kind of alluded to there, at the very heart of this story is the extraordinary golden regalia crafted by the Ashanti, much of which would ultimately be plundered by the British, which obviously we'll come to in a bit. Can you tell us a bit more about these treasures? How impressive were they? Who made them? And why were they regarded as so important to the Ashanti people?

8:03Well, I think gold has multiple meanings to the Ashanti people. In fact, as it does in many parts of the world, it's a monetary store of value. It brings prestige to the kings. The kings are weighed down in gold when they appear in public. They still are today, by the way. I mean, there's still the Santahini and many other Ashanti minor kings. And you'd be amazed at the bracelets, at the badges, at the golden headdresses, at the gold decorated sandals, the

8:37amount of gold and its capacity to dazzle, to impress, to signify wealth, but also with a spiritual dimension to show the Santahini's connection to the gods and the skill of the craftsmen. This is a wider skill shared in parts of West Africa by the wider Akan ethnic group to whom the Ashanti belong. But their ability to cast in gold, whether that is using the very sophisticated lost wax method of casting, or whether it is through hammered gold, thin gold, and then a method known as repoussé, pressing patterns on

9:15sheet gold is extraordinary. And without wanting to leap forward too far, when the Ashanti regalia is looted en masse by the British in 1874, and comes back to London, of course, it's valued by the British army as trophies, as souvenirs. But it also, rather like the Benin bronzes, which is another infamous expedition at the end of the 19th century, it also challenges Victorian assumptions about Africa being a place of barbarity, a place without skilled craftsmen, a

9:46place without history. And it evidently contradicts all those assumptions. So when did the British first arrive on the scene? And what were those initial interactions between the British and the Ashanti like? So really, the British in the 18th century are strong on the Gold Coast itself. They control a place called Cape Coast Castle. They have close links with the people around, the Fanti people on the coast. But any contact with the Ashanti themselves is indirect. And it's only at the beginning of the 19th century that they decide they want to know more about the

10:23inland kingdom. A delegation is sent up some 200 kilometres through the forest to Kumasi in 1817. And it's a man called Thomas Bowditch, who happens to be related to the governor rather conveniently on Cape Coast Castle. But he's a man of humble origins. He's an apprentice hatter from Bristol, but he's a very ambitious man. And he ends up spending several months in Kumasi. And he writes this extraordinary account of his time there, which when it's published in London in 1819, it's called From Cape Coast to Kumasi.

10:58It is met with some scorn and some incredulity, but also a lot of excitement. It fixes the idea in British minds that the Ashanti is a kingdom of gold, a place of vast wealth. And he describes the extraordinary reception, you know, these hundreds and hundreds of soldiers or everybody glistening with gold, the king weighed down in gold. He describes a well laid out city with urban hygiene, with piazzas and arcades. He describes the friendly reception he receives in Kumasi over a period of months, his great feasts he's invited to.

11:33He's not entirely complimentary. It's a contradictory message, if you like, that he paints of the Ashanti. He says that there is human sacrifice and he says that there are practices which he sees as barbarous. But he also says there is much to admire about this kingdom. And at the end of his visit, he gets the Ashanti at the time, Osei Bonsu who's called, to sign a treaty of friendship with the British. And this is, if you like, with the benefit of hindsight, the tragic

12:06honeymoon of Anglo-Ashanti relations, because the treaty, the friendship treaty doesn't last. And indeed, from that point onwards, starting, in fact, in the 1820s, the history of Anglo-Ashanti relations is one of gradual deterioration, and in fact, repeated wars. So why did that relationship deteriorate? And you mentioned there, repeated wars. What did those wars look like? How did they play out? Well, I suppose you would say the relationship deteriorates throughout the 19th century, because Britain's commercial interests get broader, if you like. They want to penetrate directly more into the interior themselves, even if it's

12:43not until the very end of the 19th century that Britain actually wants to acquire and rule territory. That's not really until the 1890s. And all right, that might explain the final two Anglo-Ashanti wars. But until then, their ambitions are expanding, but they are not yet of that scope, if you see what I mean. I think perhaps what really throws the relationship off a cliff, if you like, is at the beginning of the 1870s, when the British have pushed out the Danes, and then they buy out the Dutch, and they buy

13:19this great fortress called Elmina, through which the Ashanti have traditionally traded, a fortress on the coast. And suddenly, the British are the only European power left on the coast. And of course, that access to the coast, that access to the Atlantic trade is very, very important to the Ashanti. And now, from their point of view, it is controlled by a relatively hostile European power. And that leads to a sharpened deterioration. And if you like, the largest war, I would say, which is the

13:52War of 1873, 1874. There are other factors at play as well throughout the 19th century. I would say, if you like, to the British credit, the determination to do away with the slave trade, with which Britain had enthusiastically participated in the 18th century, grows stronger. And Ashanti had and wanted to carry on engaging with the slave trade. The British conviction that Ashanti was a place of human sacrifice grows stronger, a place of Barbara's custom. And I suppose ally to this throughout the late 19th century is a heightened, I would suggest, Victorian sense of

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17:17Visit purina.com slash Beneful to shop now. So as you say, 1873, 1874 is a really significant moment in this story. Can you tell us in a bit more detail what happened during this really important war? And how controversial did Britain's relationship and Britain's growing belligerence towards the Ashanti? I mean, was that at all controversial back in Britain itself? So in 1873, the Ashanti invade what the Gold Coast Protectorate, this rather ill-defined British territory on the coast after the British purchase of Elmina, this fort. And they sweep right down to the coast.

17:52And this is a huge shock to the British. It's a huge setback. It's an embarrassment. And there's a man called Sir Garnet Wolseley, not so well known today, who was put in charge of the British military response. And he is a very, very ambitious, very, very capable soldier. And he shapes events to his own end. And he convinces the British government, who a rather half-hearted William Gladstone, the prime minister, doesn't really have his eye on the ball, that three British battalions should be sent out to

18:23the Gold Coast to tackle the Ashanti. And he gets his way. That's an extraordinary moment. More than 2,000 British soldiers, white British soldiers, West Africa seen as the white man's graveyard, being sent out to march into the interior, into the tropics. The British have advantages. They have the Snyder, which is a breech-loading rifle. And they have the Gatling gun, which is not quite the Maxim gun, but it is an early machine gun. And these advantages negate the Ashanti courage, the Ashanti ability to fight in the forest.

18:54It means that any actual battle, and there are two significant battles on their march up to Qumarsi, the British are able to kill extraordinary numbers of Ashanti soldiers and suffer relatively few casualties themselves. But when they get to Qumarsi, Wolseley, and remember, communications with London are very bad. This is important to emphasise. There isn't yet a telegraph. He can shape events on the ground. He must decide. And the Ashantihini, the king, is not there. The king has run away, perhaps rather wisely. And Wolseley is left in Qumarsi. And he is like Napoleon in Moscow because there's nobody to surrender.

19:30And the weather is closing in. Only this time, of course, it isn't the snow. It is the West African rain. And he's very worried. His soldiers are starting to fall sick. He's got all these rivers he has to march back. There's nobody to surrender to. So what can he do? He blows up the palace. But first, he loots it systematically. And he sets Qumarsi on fire as a statement of British control. The British are not yet in the mindset that they will be, by the way, in the 1890s, that they

20:03are going to annex the Ashanti territory and incorporate it into the Gold Coast protectorate, what becomes the Gold Coast colony. They're not yet there, but they do want to show this truculent, troublesome kingdom, as they would see it, on their periphery that you do not mess with the British Empire. So that is Wolseley's message. That is what he tries to achieve. Is it controversial in Britain? Yes, to the extent that if you go through Hansard's, there are dissenting voices. Not as many dissenting voices as there will be in the 1890s.

20:36But by the way, when the British go back to Qumarsi and loot the palace a second time. But there are dissenting voices who start to say, you know, what is the purpose of this? What are we trying to achieve? Are we really showing that we are Christian and civilised? But overall, the consensus is that Sir Garnet Wolseley comes back a complete hero. This is the making of him. He's not, as I say, not a well-known figure today, but he rises to become Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. And this is the making of him.

21:10In fact, there is a well-known phrase in late Victorian times, all Sir Garnet, which means everything very well organised. He's shown he's a master of logistics. He's shown that he is the epitome of a more professional, more meritocratic army in the wake, say, of the embarrassments of the Crimean War. And he represents that. And so the consensus is that the British have done the right thing and they've done it well against a barbarous army. That is the overwhelming view of opinion in Britain in 1874.

21:41A time of hubris, I suppose, and the height of British power. So to stay on Wolseley just for a second, I mean, could it be argued that appropriating the shanty treasure is always at the back of his mind? Was that a sort of motivation for launching this attack on them? I'm not sure about motivation. I think destroying the palace is at the back of his mind or a statement of British supremacy is very much important. Yes. Wolseley's interesting on this issue of, you know, whether you plunder an

22:14opponent's palace because he has seen himself firsthand what we might now see as the two previous to this, the two most notorious incidents of British imperial plunder. I'm talking about Lucknow in India in 1858 in the midst of what was called the Indian mutiny, the Indian uprising, Indian war of independence, whatever we're going to call it. And he was there in Peking in 1860 when the Summer Palace is looted by British and French soldiers. And he writes in his autobiography that he's against looting, not for moral reasons that we might see today, but

22:49because it undermines military discipline. It might bring privates and officers into conflict in each other. But there is, in his point of view, a correct, a legitimate way to seize plunder. And that is to appoint prize agents, which is what happens in the palace. He appoints a group of senior officers and they go through the palace in Kumarsi by candlelight while the royal engineers are waiting to blow it up. And they take off everything of value that they can grab.

23:20And then when the British army gets down to Cape Coast, they get out of Kumarsi as quickly as they can and they've blown up the palace. Those treasures are auctioned off in a accountable way, you might say, amongst the British officers, but in fact, also amongst the Cape Coast elite, the local Africans themselves. And officers have to pay for what they can afford. And the proceeds are divided amongst widows and bereaved and injured. And so there is a process. I mean, it may seem hypocritical and self-serving, but there is a process nonetheless.

23:55And also, as part of that process, an added degree of complexity is that while the British are leaving Kumarsi, heading back to the coast, the Ashantahini's envoys catch up with them and do actually surrender and sign the surrender document and hand over large amounts of golden regalia. In fact, more precious regalia than that which the British had looted from the palace because the king had hidden this stuff. And this material is not divided up amongst the soldiers and auctioned in Cape Coast.

24:26It is taken back to London and some of it is presented to Queen Victoria, given to Queen Victoria, but most of it is auctioned in London in a place called Garrard, the Crown Jewelers in Haymarket Piccadilly in the spring of 1874. And all of London society, aristocrats, wealthy businessmen, turn up royalty and buy up what they can. And this helps explain how Ashanti Gold today is in the British Museum, in what was the South Kensington Museum, today the V&A, why it's in the Wallace Collection. For those who know the Wallace Collection, of course, at the

25:02time it was Richard Wallace, an enormously wealthy Victorian aristocrat. He buys up what he can and objects get dispersed amongst other members of the British aristocracy and those who can afford to buy. And that explains why there's Ashanti Gold, for example, in the Royal Collection today in Windsor Castle and other places. Do we know how much was taken in total and how long did this sort of process of plunder go on for? Well, the plunder of the palace itself is really overnight when the prize agents

25:34do their work. When that is sold at Cape Coast Castle, that's sold off for about £3,500 at the time. So the gold, which is taken back to Britain, which is sold at Garrard, Garrard the Jeweler pays £11,000 at the time for it, which is translated into today's money. Of course, it is difficult to translate getting exact value, but that's like £1,500,000 today. It's not an enormous amount of money. And what is sold off in Cape Coast Castle is sold off for

26:05£3,000. So the quantities are not astronomical. Where there's a fascinating discrepancy, I find, is between what the big museums buy up at Garrard's and that which we're able to trace today and the total quantity mentioned in all the different officers' accounts. And I think quite often what happened is that gold just has an intrinsic value. And often people were actually looting gold dust, gold nuggets, gold that was not formed into specific pieces. And that gold, of course, would be melted down or would just be used in all sorts of other ways

26:41and, if you like, is lost forever. Nonetheless, to the Ashanti themselves, there are certain key symbolic pieces of regalia, certain famous golden face masks. There's an amazing mask in the Wallace collection, which is the single most expensive item from the 1874 loot, which Richard Wallace bought. And some people say that that gold face mask is perhaps the largest single item of worked gold to have come out of Africa, with the exception of ancient Egypt itself. There's an incredible, absolutely beautiful golden ram's head, cast head, which is taken by officers of the Royal Artillery from

27:17the palace. And Wolseley gives them special permission, in fact, to keep that head, that they have to buy it, as it were, but they don't have to participate in the auction. And that head is kept very privately today by the Royal Artillery in their officer's mess in a place called Lark Hill in Wiltshire. In fact, I asked permission of them to go and see it there, and they refused me permission to see it, but we know it's there.

27:48And what impact did these interactions with the British, losing these wars of the British, what long-term impact did that have on the Ashanti Kingdom? Well, that's a really interesting question. So 1874 is a stunning defeat, but it is not the end of the Ashanti Kingdom. The British come back in the mid-1890s. And by that time, they want to annex the Kingdom, incorporate it into the British Empire. And this time, they march into Qumarsi again, and they are not resisted.

28:18King Prempe, the Ashanti of the time, tells the people of Qumarsi not to fight. Prempe is sent off into exile for 28 years, the vast majority of that time in the Seychelles, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But the Ashanti never stopped thinking about their king over the water. And perhaps crucially, they retained the golden stool, which had been hidden from the British, which is this object which to them contains the soul of their people. In fact, the final war with the British is in 1900, and

28:52it's sometimes called the War of the Golden Stool, when another British governor marches to Qumarsi and says, give me the golden stool, I want to sit on it. And this is complete sacrilege to the Ashanti, because nobody can sit on the golden stool, even the Ashantihini, even their own king does not sit on the golden stool. And this sets off the last and final, in fact, the longest of the Anglo-Ashanti wars. In Ghana and Ashanti today, it's often called the Ya-Asantawa War, who was a great queen who took up the

29:27cause in the absence of the exiled King Prempe. But to cut a long story short, when Prempe is allowed to return in the mid-1920s. Although in theory, the British are only allowing him to return as a private citizen, who, by the way, now calls himself Edward and is converted to Christianity in his long period in the Indian Ocean. The Ashanti themselves are in no doubt that their king has returned. And in the 1930s, the British allow the Ashantihini Confederacy to reform, if you like, under Prempe II.

30:01And today, there is a man called Osei Tutu II, who is in the palace in Kumasi. And ultimately, of course, the British are very adept, perhaps particularly in West Africa, at indirect rule, and at working through the authority of kings. And by the 1920s, they realised that actually having this extraordinary reverence with which the Ashantihini is treated by his own people, as it were, co-opted into the British cause is more productive and more helpful for the British than trying to fight it. And that, of course, that leaves the independent country of Ghana,

30:37which emerges in 1957, with a rather complicated legacy, if you like, because you have the Ashantihini, this very, very powerful figure within the country. And in the initial years of Ghanaian independence, or maybe even the initial decades, there is quite a tension between the Ashantihini and the government, which is in the capital of Ghana, which is Accra down on the coast. But in more recent decades, I think it's fair to say that Ghana as a country has navigated those tensions pretty successfully, actually, and in more recent decades held very well contested, keenly contested, competitive elections

31:14in which power transfers back and forth, and in which obviously the Ashanti people participate very eagerly and recognise the legitimacy of, even as they still revere their king. As you've kind of alluded to now, this is a story with sort of a long and ongoing afterlife, isn't it? And you've written a feature for the April issue of History, Extra magazine, in which you describe a ceremony held in Kumasi in Ghana in 2024 to mark the return on a long-term loan of 32 pieces of the golden

31:47regalia that we've been talking about. But before we get to that, I wonder if you could sort of explain to us, when did the people of Ghana begin to campaign for the return of these treasures? And what kind of reaction did those initial calls elicit from Britain? So I think it's fair to say, from the Ashanti point of view, that when Prempe returns from his exile in the 1920s, there's correspondence with British officials in the late 1920s and early 30s asking for the return of

32:20key bits of sacred regalia, you know, such and such a sacred sword, such and such a sacred head, and so on. And it's not really addressed by the British. There is a concerted appeal in the 1970s, which is the centenary of Sir Garnet Wolseley's sacking of the palace. There are years of correspondence, in fact, in the Foreign Office and in the British Museum correspondence. And they actually do come close to a deal. It falls apart. It doesn't happen. If you like the Ashanti ghetto sort of, you might call a consolation prize, which is an

32:57extraordinary exhibition of Ashanti gold regalia in London and in New York, which had a big cultural impact at the beginning of the 1980s and sort of raised Ashanti's profile across the world, if you like. But ultimately, they were thwarted in their ambition for their treasures to be returned. The whole argument around restitution and museums and colonial looted objects then became turbocharged. If I could leap forward to 2017, and that was when the French president, Emmanuel Macron, made this extraordinary speech

33:28in Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso, neighbouring Ghana, in fact. And he said, I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said, it's unacceptable that so much African heritage is in European museums. This has to change. And he commissioned this report. It's called the Savoir Report, which ended up, I think, being much more radical probably than President Macron had anticipated. And that report had a kind of ripple effect through museums across Europe. And it impacted, obviously, objects like the Benin bronzes very, very much.

33:59And people suddenly felt, oh, my God, it's embarrassing. We've got these Benin bronzes. We ought to give them back. Or no, we shouldn't. But, you know, we feel we feel very awkward about it all. The Ashanti Hini, Ossetutu II, watched this resurgence of this issue. And his own approach was very diplomatic and not very confrontational. He is an Anglophile, a rather conservative king. He's a friend of the king, King Charles. He used to go and have tea with Queen Elizabeth. And he opted for a compromise because, rather controversially, the major British national institutions, the British Museum above all, but

34:34also the V&A, are prevented from permanently returning objects in their collection, deaccessioning, as museum people call it. They can only return objects on loan. Now, we could discuss these laws for another hour and their legitimacy. But nonetheless, those are the laws. And his approach was essentially, OK, I'm not going to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. I don't like these loan laws. But if I can get my stuff back for three years, initially, then it might be six or nine. It can be renewed. I'll do that. I'll show my people the wonderful objects we made in the 19th century,

35:10or indeed, the objects. Some might be older than that. I have my own museum in my palace in Kumasi. And there, it's true, the Mancha Palace Museum. And we'll get the material back and we can rotate it through with the British Museum if the laws haven't changed. So that was his approach, rather pragmatic approach. So I went to this extraordinary event, the homecoming event in Kumasi in 2024. It was incredible, actually. I mean, even the British Museum curators who worked on it, there was a woman there

35:41who said it was the most meaningful thing she'd ever been involved in professionally. I mean, there were a lot of tears, basically, that when these treasures were returned. And I had the immense privilege of returning to the palace a few months later, and watching because I was curious to see, OK, the ceremony was very moving. But what happened six months later, and to be in the palace museum six months later, and seeing groups of, sure, Ghanaian schoolchildren, but Ghanaians from all over the country, but

36:11actually also visitors from all sorts of places, the United States, the north of England, South Korea, coming through and asking all these questions and seeing all the regalia on display. Really fascinating. Not without controversy, I should say. Is there any pushback among the Asante people? Yes. Well, the king is very revered. And so the king has made his decision that these objects are coming back on loan. So that wisdom is unlikely to be challenged overtly in public. But I think when it was first broken that the objects were coming back on loan, there was a huge

36:45uproar on Ghanaian social media, on Ghanaian radio, on Ghanaian television, as you would expect. And some people saying, well, you know, let's just keep them. The British aren't going to send an army again to come and get them. Let's just not accept the terms of the agreement. But actually, the king's envoy, the man called Ivor Acherman Duo, who I've got to know quite well, who's a very interesting character, very, very pragmatic, very ideological. He's like, no, no, of course, we're going to accept the terms.

37:15You know, we want to show that we're serious people who can be trusted internationally. We will do what we've signed up to do. What's really interesting as well is that they've accepted the British terms that these objects have become museum pieces. They've returned to glass boxes. They're in vitrines, air conditioned, with alarm systems around them, if you like. And that's controversial because they've, in that sense, they've accepted, perhaps, that their spiritual meaning has, if not gone, has been greatly reduced. It was at the same time that the British returned these objects, a much smaller museum in

37:49America. It's called the Fowler Museum. It's in Los Angeles. It returned seven objects, which it had been able to determine they'd come via Britain, of course, had also been looted by Sir Garnett Woolsey in 1874. And their approach was different to the British approach, one might argue more progressive. They said, we're giving back these objects. You do with them what you want. How can we possibly give them back in any way except unconditionally? If you want to put them in the palace museum in glass boxes, that's fine.

38:20But if you want to wave them around in festivals and re-engage in all their spiritual meaning, that too is fine. So I suppose in the whole, the way to look at it, I think, is that this is not a zero-sum game. It doesn't have to be one way or the other. There are different solutions that that can work. I've also, for example, I've seen individual stools. I mean, a stool is a very sacred object in Ashanti culture and in wider Akan culture that have been

38:50returned to places in Ashanti. And they might have been, say, in British stately home for a hundred years. And they've returned to a minor, and the one I'm thinking of has returned to a minor Queen's Palace. It has a British plaque on it saying, you know, seized in 1900 by Reginald, blah, blah, Colonel, blah, blah, blah. And she just engages with it as if it never went away. She speaks to her ancestors through it. She puts food and spirit drinks all over it. And its original meaning has completely reverted, if you like.

39:23So there are different solutions that can work in different ways. Thanks for that, Barnaby. If you'd like to learn more about this subject, then why not check out Barnaby's article on the British plunder of the Ashanti gold, which appears in the April issue of History Extra magazine. You'll also find plenty more on the history of Africa, including Zainab Badawi discussing the challenges of writing the entire continent's history on the History Extra website. You'll find the link to that article on the podcast description. That was Barnaby Phillips speaking to Spencer Mism. Barnaby is a historian and conservationist and TV and radio correspondent, and his latest book is The African Kingdom of Gold, Britain and the Ashanti Treasure.