Badu Bonsu II.

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Badu Bonsu II, drawing by a Dutch lieutenant, 1838

Badu Bonsu II. († 1838 ) was a king of the Ahanta family on what was then the Gold Coast (now Ghana ) in West Africa in the first half of the 19th century . In 1838 he was executed by the Dutch , who at that time had several fortified bases there and partial control over the western coastal strip of what is now Ghana. Badu Bonsu II was charged with beheading two Dutch ambassadors. The betrayal of a member of the Ahanta people had enabled the Dutch to capture the king. The dead ruler was then beheaded by Dutch soldiers and the head was transferred to the Netherlands. Nothing is known about the whereabouts of the rest of the body.

The background to the killing of the two ambassadors, including the then Dutch governor general Tonneboeijer , was the rebellion Bonsu against the suzerainty claimed by the Dutch over the Ahanta area. The Dutch based their claims on the Treaty of Butre , which was signed in 1656 as a friendship treaty between them and the Ahanta. The Dutch later saw this treaty as a submission of the Ahanta area. The result of Bonsu's execution was extensive control of the Ahanta area by the Netherlands, which then reorganized the Ahanta states and appointed the Chief von Butre as regent. In Butre they had Fort Batensteyn, one of their fortresses on the Gold Coast, until then the neighboring Busua had been the main town of the Ahanta.

In 2005, the head in formaldehyde was discovered by a Dutch author, Arthur Japin , while researching a novel at the Medical University of Leiden . Ghana, as the legal successor to the Ahanta Empire, officially applied for the head to be repatriated in order to enable an appropriate burial. On July 23, 2009, a ceremony took place in The Hague , at which the Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen officially handed over the head to Ahanta King Nana Etsin Kofi II .

swell

  1. ↑ Bring us the head of King Badu Bonsu, said Ghana - and the Dutch said yes. The Independent
  2. ↑ Doortmont / Smit: Sources for the mutual history of Ghana and the Netherlands, 279, 282-283
  3. ↑ news.yahoo.com
  4. ↑ Netherlands give head back, n-tv.de. Warning: Here, as in other sources, Badu Bonsu II is incorrectly referred to as the Ashanti king
personal data
SURNAME Badu Bonsu II.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION King of the Ahanta
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century or 19th century
DATE OF DEATH 1838