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Abstract
In 1814, Thomas Edward Bowdich, a naturalist by education, acquired a new career as a diplomat and travelled to Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Empire. Eventually, he published an account of his journey, Journey from Cape Coast, including detailed records of Ashanti art, material culture, economics, social organisation infrastructure, politics, military organisation, and architecture, as well as numerous illustrations of these varying elements of Ashanti life. While Bowdich’s writings demonstrate his commitment to ideologies of racialism and Christian chauvinism, his background as a naturalist introduces a degree of objectivity into his work that clashes with these ideologies, creating a contradictory perception of Ashanti history and culture in his account. As a result, Journey from Cape Coast remains a remarkably valuable historical resource, highlighting the conflict between European ideologies of Africa and their observed reality when traveling to Africa.
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