The African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Treasure

First edition, first impression.  xxvi, 378pp, with black and white illustrations in text and a section of colour plate illustrations.  8vo.  Crimson cloth boards, gilt-stamped lettering to spine.  Volume is neat, bright, clean and tight throughout.  In its original glossy dust wrapper, a little bumped on extreme edges, not price clipped.  

Adapted from the blurb of the book on the inner front flap of the dust jacket: “Kumasi is burning. British soldiers prowl the streets, stoking the fires. The royal palace is filled with explosives and razed, but not before its most precious occupants are looted.  There’s gold, a peace pipe almost a metre long, numerous meticulously made rings and amulets, finials, shaped as swooping eagles, and a mpomponsou – a sacred sword –  its sheath, from which a coiled leopard hangs,  and pommel wrapped in leopard skin. They are destined for Britain’s most prominent museums – the V&A, the Wallace Collection, the British Museum. Tracing the course of Britain’s wars with the Asante Empire alongside the course of its plundered relics, Barnaby Phillips weaves a thrilling tale of colonial expansion, resistance and stolen treasure. Travelling from the Gold Coast to the heart of Empire, The African Kingdom of Gold reveals the surprising connections between Britain today and its nineteenth-century exploits. Gold, greed, empire the hidden history of Britain’s stolen West African treasure.”