Asante, usually rendered Ashanti in contemporary English accounts, was a major inland kingdom in what is now Ghana. Kumasi stood at the centre of a political and commercial network extending beyond the coastal settlements. Relations with Britain on the Gold Coast involved trade, alliances and rival claims, interrupted by successive wars.
The expedition to Kumasi in 1874 and the advance of 1895–1896 were separate episodes. The latter ended with the detention of Asantehene Prempeh I in January 1896. Baden-Powell's account places that event alongside the arrangements and observations of an officer taking part in the expedition.
These narratives also record the material limits of campaigning: roads through forest, river crossings, illness and the labour of carriers. Historical context makes it possible to distinguish one expedition from another, and to follow changing relations between the coast and the interior. A route described in a memoir then becomes part of a larger political geography, rather than an isolated journey.