Michael D. Palmer —The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice K CHAPTER 16 The Role of the Chief in Asante Society Yaw Adu-Gyamfi A sante people are a subset of the Akan, who migrated to present-day Ghana. We can trace the rise of the early Akan centralized states to the thirteenth century, which may be related to the opening of trade routes established to move gold through- out the region. It was not until the end of the seventeenth century, however, that the grand Asante kingdom emerged in the central forest region of Ghana, when several small states united under the chief of Kumase in a move to achieve political freedom from the Denkyira. The name “Asante” is derived from εsa (war) and nti (for the sake of). Thus, for the sake of war, various chiefdoms came together to fight their archenemy, the Denkyira king. After their victory, the people strengthened the loose alliance and became a unified state. Their primary aim of coming together to fight gave them their name, εsanti. Asante chieftaincy has been transformed through various stages from the precolo- nial era through the colonial period (1874–1957 CE) to the present. In the precolonial period, chiefs had considerable influence and exercised great sovereignty within their areas of jurisdiction; their authority in both spiritual and secular matters was almost unlimited. During the colonial period, they became practically subagents of the colonial government in the areas of local government and judicial settlements. Various laws and statutes ratified by the colonial authority prescribed the chief’s political role. In the early phase of the postcolonial era (1957 onward), the role that chiefs played in local govern- ment under the colonial era was modified in the interest of modern democracy. During the period between 1960 and 1966, chiefs were subjected to the control of the central government through the enactment of such legislation as the Chieftaincy Act of 1961 (Act 81). In this essay, I focus attention principally on the traditional role of the chief, by which I mean the genuinely traditional political, religious, and socioeconomic role, uncon- The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religion and Social Justice, First Edition. Edited by Michael D. Palmer, Stanley M. Burgess. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Palmer_5478_c16_main.indd 256 10/28/2011 7:30:09 PM