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Women That Left Their Mark Throughout History

Khalid Elhassan August 4, 2020 34 min

27. Provoking War

Governor Hodgson’s speech did not go down well with the Ashanti, to say the least. It was like an extraterrestrial arriving in Mecca, addressing a throng of Muslim religious leaders and other faithful, and requesting that they take him to the Kaaba so he could defecate atop it.

It was unfortunate that Hodgson was so ignorant about his audience and what made them tick. For generations, the Ashanti had been West Africa’s most badass tribe. Pride alone would have kept them from knuckling under without a fight. A less oblivious governor would have known that the Ashanti would never willingly produce the Golden Stool – symbol of their state and people, past, present, and future – for a foreigner to sit upon and defile.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.