Mensa Bonsu

Mensa Bonsu (c. 1840 - 1896, Praso) was the Asantehene (King of the Ashanti) from 1874 until his forced abdication on March 8, 1883.

Mensa Bonsu became Asantehene after his elder brother Kofi Kakari was deposed in September 1874. He tried to restore the fortunes of Kumasi after its destruction in the 1873-4 war.^[1] However, he did not make himself popular with contemporaries: "Chronically short of revenue, and personally avaricious (for women as well as gold), Mensa Bonsu carried punitive exactions to new and insupportable levels."^[2] Attempts were made to depose him in 1877 and 1880, and he was destooled and banished from Kumasi in 1883.^[1] The following five years saw civil war in Asante. Mensa Bonsu died in British captivity in 1896. In 1911 his corpse was disinterred for ceremonial burial at Kumasi.^[2]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Daniel Miles McFarland, Historical Dictionary of Ghana, Scarecrow Press, 1995, 121
2. ^ ^{a b} T. C. McCaskie, State and Society in Pre-Colonial Asante, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 69-70

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Date of death	1896
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