Constitution of the Fante Confederacy

In 1868 a group of chiefs of the Fante people, an ethnic group largely from the coastal region of modern-day Ghana, met at the town of Mankessim and founded the Fante Confederacy, often called the Fante Confederation. Then, in 1871, Fante leaders and members of the nascent educated class in the region wrote the Constitution of the Fante Confederacy, designed to create the framework for Fante self-government; this constitution is sometimes referred to as the Mankessim Constitution. The Fante Confederacy was the product of several closely related factors, notably the growing threat of Europeans on the African coast, the need to check the centrifugal forces that fragmented the Fante states, and the ever-present fear of imperialism from the Ashanti (also spelled Asante) Empire in western Africa.

The period from the 1750s to the early nineteenth century was the great age of Ashanti expansion. The burgeoning Ashanti Empire had incorporated much of the area of modern-day Ghana, including the states of Gonja, Dagomba, Gyaman, Sefwi, and Anlo. The Fante states, however, had held their own in the face of the Ashanti peoples' remarkable war machine. The bone of contention between the two Akan powers (“Akan” referring to the larger ethnic group to which the two peoples belonged) was their relationship with the Europeans on the coast. The Ashanti Empire was landlocked and sought to enhance its economic position by gaining direct access to the coastal markets. The Fante states, in contrast, were unwilling to relinquish their strategic intermediary position in the lucrative trade with the Europeans. Ultimately, the Fante came together and created the Constitution of the Fante Confederacy, which was intended to solidify their resistance to the Ashanti and gain the acceptance of the Europeans on the coast.