Benin

Earlier today I took to Twitter to join the brotherly people of the great nation of #Benin as they celebrated 60 years fo freedom from #French colonialism.

According to the Government of the Republic of Benin Website, present-day Benin (see Map) was occupied by several kingdoms. The most prominent were Danhomé (Abomey), Xogbonou (Porto-Novo), Allada, Nikki, Kouandé, Kandi…. The first rulers of Abomey and Porto-Novo came from the Adja-Fon migration, from neighbouring Togo (Tado). The other peoples come from present-day Nigeria, Niger or Burkina Faso. Thus, the country was once a hotbed of ancient and brilliant civilizations, built around these kingdoms: city-states. These well structured political entities had functional urban centres. They had developed a local trade, based from the 17th century slave trade, then on oil palm after the abolition of  slave trade in 1807.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Peoples Republic of Benin consists of a narrow wedge of territory extending northward for about 420 miles (675 kilometres) from the Gulf of Guinea on  which it has a 75-mile seacoast, to the Niger River, which forms part of Benin’s northern border with Niger. Benin is bordered to the northwest by Burkina Faso, to the east by Nigeria, and to the west by Togo. The official capital is Porto-Novo, but Cotonou is Benin’s largest city, its chief port, and its de facto administrative capital.

Writing in African Studies Review (Volume 17, No. 3: December 1974), Augustus A. Adeyinka[1] provides a rich historical account of the Dahomey Kingdom focusing on the exploits of King Gezo (1818-1858). Renowned for being ‘war like’, the Kingdom was founded in the first half of the seventeenth century, circa 1620. Dogbagri Genu (Dako) is recognised as its founder. Like most other Kingdoms, Dahomey had its ups and downs. At the height of its power in the eighteenth century, Dahomey demonstrated expansionist tendencies particularly as it needed a direct route to the coast for purposes of trade.

Advent of Colonial Subjugation

The expansion to the coastline not only brought the inland kingdom face to face with English, Danish, Portuguese and French slave traders and merchants opening up trading relationships. It also had far-reaching if more nefarious consequences, for example, with initial encounters giving way to power dynamics that forced local power elite to gravitate towards the soon-to-become colonial masters. France was the first to extract some concession from Dahomey when they were granted authority to build a port at Ouidah in 1704. But the vulnerability of the local fiefdoms was to be laid bear as the following  examples demonstrate. In 1863, the French protectorate was established with King Toffa of Porto-Novo who sought help in the face of claims of the King of Abomey and attacks by the English living in Lagos. The same year, Glèlè, King of Abomey authorised the French to settle in Cotonou.

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[1] Adeyinka, A.A., 1974. King Gezo of Dahomey, 1818-1858: A Reassessment of a West African Monarch in the Nineteenth Century. African Studies Review, 17(3), pp.541-548