Dahomey Women Warriors

The Dahomey Kingdom of West Africa (Benin) was organized around 1620 and fell to French colonization in 1892. Located in the Oueme River Valley, it eventually spread from Porto Novo, Cotonou, and Ouidah Port on the Atlantic Ocean, toward the Niger River in the north. It was one of the major slave-exporting states along the Bight of Benin during the Atlantic slave trade, supplying the Portuguese, English, French, Oyo, Brazilians, and other wholesalers with humans as commodities. The Dahomey Kingdom was originally established by the Fon people, one of several ethnic groups in the region, such as the Akan and Igbo, whose precolonial beliefs included the formal sharing of power between genders, even among its warrior society.

Several European merchants, soldiers, military officers, and others with ...