The defeat of Asante in the Asante-British war of 1874 presaged the unraveling of the Asante Empire. Vassal states seceded and sought protection from the British Gold Coast Colony declared in the south in 1874, and instability and civil wars plagued metropolitan Asante itself. Though Salaga was an economic beneficiary of Asante hegemony and trade, Kpembe, the Gonja division within which Salaga is located,
chafed under Asante overrule. Asante’s defeat in 1874 was the signal for Kpembe to rebel, and they massacred Asante traders and officials resident in Salaga. In retaliation Asante set up Kintampo as the new Asante market town just south of the Volta River and made it the
center of their kola trade. Mossi and Hausa traders that frequented Salaga now made for Kintampo and Salaga went into an economic slump. Kete Krachi, one of the border provinces of the Asante Empire, was another beneficiary of Salaga’s decline. In the precolonial era, Krachi people had been largely farmers and hunters and they possessed a famous shrine, Dente,consulted even by kings of Asante. Krachi rebelled against Asante unsuccessfully in 1830 and successfully in 1874, and then embarked on a phase of state-building under the leadership of the Dente
priest of
bosomfo (Maier, 1983). New Hausa and other Muslim entrepreneurs and Asante traders moved to Kete-Krachi after 1874 and the town witnessed a commercial boom. Like Salaga, Kete-Krachi was also strategically located, and valued salt from the Volta estuary at Ada was brought up in canoes to Kete-Krachi, unloaded due to the presence of rapids, and then taken over land to Salaga in the period before 1874. Krachi Dente acquired a reputation as a war oracle, and was consulted often by the Asante state in this capacity in the 19
th century, though Krachi was an Asante vassal.