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Nana
Yaa Asantewa |
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Queen Mother
Nana Yaa Asantewa
Ghana
[18??-1921?]
She rallied the Asante
against the British in 1900;
the Anglo-Asante war
of that year
is named after her. (continued...)
SOURCE:
Encyclopaedia Africana: Dictionary of African Biography®™ Volume 1: Ethiopia &
Ghana,
Page 204
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Quotation:
"Now I have seen that some of you fear to go
forward to fight for our king.
If it were in the brave days of, Osei Tutu, Okomfo Anokye, and Opolu
Ware,
chiefs would not sit down to see their king taken away without firing a
shot.
No white man could have dared to speak
to chief of the Ashanti in the way the Governor
spoke to you chiefs this morning."
"Is it true that the bravery of the Ashanti is no more?
I cannot believe it.
It cannot be!
I must say this, if you the men of Ashanti will not go forward,
then we will.
We the women will.
I shall call upon my fellow women.
We will fight the white men.
We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields."
-- Yaa Asantewa
Source: African Women of Power: Yaa Asantewa of the Ashanti Empire:
www.rust.net/~khnum/wmanit.htm#yaa
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Yaa Asantewaa (c.1850-c.1920)
Yaa Asantewaa was the queen mother of the Edweso tribe of the Asante
(Ashanti) in what is modern Ghana. At the time, the Gold Coast
(west-central Africa) was under the British protectorate. The British
supported their campaigns against the Asante with taxes levied upon the
local population. In addition, they took over the state-owned gold mines
thus removing considerable income from the Asante government. Missionary
schools were also established and the missionaries began interfering in
local affairs.
When the Asante began rebelling against the British rule, the British
attempted to put down the unrests. Furthermore, the British governor,
Lord Hodgson, demanded that the Asante turn over to them the Golden
Stool, i.e. the throne and a symbol of Asante independence. Capt. C. H.
Armitage was sent out to force the people to tell him where the Golden
Stool was hidden and to bring it back. After going from village to
village with no success, Armitage found at the village of Bare only the
children who said their parents had gone hunting. In response, Armitage
ordered the children to be beaten. When their parents came out of hiding
to defend the children, he had them bound and beaten, too.
This brutality was the instigation for the Yaa Asantewaa War for
Independence which began on March 28, 1900. Yaa Asantewaa mobilized the
Asante troops and for three months laid siege to the British mission at
the fort of Kumasi. The British had to bring in several thousand troops
and artillery to break the siege. Also, in retaliation, the British
troops plundered the villages, killed much of the population,
confiscated their lands and left the remaining population dependent upon
the British for survival. They also captured Queen Yaa Asantewaa whom
they exiled along with her close companions to the Seychelles Islands
off Africa's east coast, while most of the captured chiefs became
prisoners-of-war. Yaa Asantewaa remained in exile until her death twenty
years later.
Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1998.
Source:
http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/yaa-asantewaa.html
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Related Hyperlinks:
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Personal Note:
The last time I was in
Ghana [2000], I was traveling with the Fisk University Study Tour
hosted by
Ray
Winbush. On one particular day of our study tour, we
coincidentally arrived at an unknown village to discover a funeral
procession in which Nana Yaa's bones were being interned after having
been recovered from the Seychelles.
Source:
Prema Qadir
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