Ashanti Bureaucracy: A Study of the Growth of Centralized Administration in Ashanti from the Time of Osei Tutu to the Time of Osei Tutu Kwamina Esibe Bonsu

At the close of the 18th century and in the first decades of the 19th century an increasing differentiation appeared in Ashanti society as between a ‘military aristocracy’ on the one hand and a gradually evolving administrative class on the other. This paper attempts to describe the origins and growth of bureaucracy in the capital of Ashanti using the rich oral traditions available and the limited written sources on the early history of Ashanti. Aim is to show that the creation of a specialized agency for the non-military functions of the state had begun in the reign of Opoku Ware, and that the trend towards the use of patrilineal principle of reckoning and the prerogative of the King of Ashanti to appoint officers to certain stools – these two critical features of what Ivor Wilks called ‘the Kwadwoan revolution’ – cannot have orginated from Osei Kwadwo. Notes, figures.