The War of the Golden Stool broke out in 1900 between the British Empire and the Ashanti Empire of modern day Ghana. In March 1900, the representative of the British Empire in the Gold Coast colony, Sir Frederick Mitchell Hodgson, arrived at the Ashanti capital of Kumasi and said:

The Queen [Victoria] is entitled to the stool; she must receive it.

This enraged the Ashanti people as the Golden Stool wasn't just a royal throne, as the British thought it was, but the object that the Ashanti believed held the spirit of their people, and the souls of the dead, living and yet to be born.

Thousands of Ashanti warriors besieged the British and their Ashanti collaborators in their headquarters in Kumasi until they could be a relieved by a British force assembled from all over West Africa. The British defeated the Ashanti in several skirmishes and a peace was agreed in September 1900 that brought the Ashanti into the Gold Coast crown colony but kept them largely independent.

But the British never got their hands on the Golden Stool and withdrew their claims on it, so the most important object in the Ashanti Empire ultimately kept its sanctity.