A Brief History of Manhyia Palace; The Royal Residence of the King (Asantehene).

Manhyia Palace was the royal residence of the King(Asantehene) of the Ashanti/Akan people of West Africa. 

The Ashanti people, like the Fante, Ahanta, Nzeema, Fra-fra, ewe people and so on, occupied the land that in modern times, became the republic of Ghana. It most be noted that this nation differ from the medieval Ghana kingdom, which was in the homelands of the Soninke people of what is modern day Mauritania. 

Modern Ghana took its name from the medieval kingdom, just like Benin(bene) took its name form Benin empire in what’s today Nigeria. The Ashanti people had developed their writing system, that became known as the “adinkra” symbols at about the 12th century CE. These symbols were used for recording events and commerce. They were also used in the king’s court for different forms of records. 

Kumasi the ancestral home of the Ashanti people had contributed gold, beads and other ornaments to the trans – saharan trade that saw west African kingdoms and empires swell to eye – watering riches in the 13th century CE. In the 15 century CE, the Portuguese had arrived west Africa and asked to trade with the Kingdom.

The Portuguese and the British were able to have a foothold on the coastal areas, within the lands of the Fante and Ahanta people. In the 16th century CE, the Asantehene granted the Europeans permission to build a trading Fort at a place called Elmina, which is now in the Cape coast, region of Ghana. This was to keep the Europeans far off. 

By 1568, this Fort had become the largest slave port in the whole of Africa. It was called, the “gate of no return”. Any African that was captured and passed through the gate ends off in European ships like the ship named ‘jesus’ which was given to John Hawkins by Queen Elizabeth I in the 1560s, for the purpose of stealing able-bodied men and women from west Africa to be sold into slavery in the Americas and Europe. 

By early 19th century, The Manhyia Palace was destroyed by the British in order to takeover the land and plunder it, even more.

However the palace was rebuilt in 1925 by the British some time after the Third Anglo-Ashanti War in 1874, when the British had destroyed the original palace built by Asantes. The British were said to have been impressed by the size of the original palace and the scope of its contents, which included “rows of books in many languages”, but due to events in the War of the Golden Stool, the British demolished the royal palace with explosives. The old palace was later converted into a museum in 1995 after the new palace was built.

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