West Africa and the Rise of Asante: Rivers of Gold, a Short Route to China, and the Globalization of Labor

Abstract

West Africa is a more complex case than Nootka Sound in several ways. While external to the system, the region is in closer proximity to the European continent. Thus, we can presume a certain amount of information diffusion between the Europe and West Africa via intermediary and tertiary actors. Because it is adjacent, the period of interaction is longer than that of Nootka Sound. This case may actually offer a greater ability to track the various changes in the political, social, and economic facets of indigenous life because the process is spread out over a larger temporal cross-section in terms of Afro-European interaction. Additionally, the West African region is part of an extant trans-Saharan system, while Nootka Sound was largely isolated from external contact and a minisystem. In West Africa with the Asante¹ Kingdom, we step up the ladder of social complexity. This provides insight into the variations of regions and peoples incorporated into the expanding European system, allowing greater understanding of the vagaries of transition from the “zone of ignorance” to “within the system.”