The British demanded the Asante Golden Stool in 1900 and never obtained it

The Golden Stool is the seat of the Asante kingship. The government anthropologist R. S. Rattray wrote in 1923 that it was the shrine of the nation's sunsum, or soul. In January 1896 the British occupied Kumasi and arrested Asantehene Prempeh I with members of his family and court. They held him at Elmina Castle, moved him to Sierra Leone in January 1897 and to the Seychelles in 1900. The Asante kept the stool. On 28 March 1900 Governor Frederic Hodgson told the assembled chiefs in Kumasi, as his interpreter rendered it: "Where is the Golden Stool?" He asked why he was not sitting on it. Within days the Asante were at war. Yaa Asantewaa, Queen Mother of Edweso (Ejisu), led the fighting from April 1900. She was exiled to the Seychelles and died there in 1921^†. Asante became part of the Gold Coast colony on 1 January 1902. The stool stayed hidden. In 1921 road labourers nearly dug it up. Its custodians moved it to the hut of the chief of Aboabogya, and men who learned the hiding place stripped its gold ornaments piece by piece. An old woman recognised one ornament offered for sale. The accused were tried before Asante chiefs in Kumasi. Prempeh returned in 1924 and was given the stool properties. In 2024 the V&A and British Museum lent 32 pieces of Asante regalia, mostly taken in the 1873-74 war, to the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi for three years, renewable for three.