The legend of Benin’s fearless female warriors

http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20180826-the-legend-of-benins-fearless-female-warriors

by MiriamWeiner • 8 years ago

58 40 8 years ago

danielvf3• 8 years ago

The kingdom of Dahomey, modern-day Benin, was the biggest slaving kingdom on the West African coast. Almost 20% of all slaves shipped to the new world from African went through just one port in this tiny kingdom.

When England and France switched to trying to stop the slave trade in the 1800's, Dahomey was the place to go for covert slave purchases. In fact, the last slave ship to US, complete with outrunning warships on the way, was a one way dash from Dahomey.

tptacek3• 8 years ago

1. This has nothing to do with the story.

2. The Kingdom of Dahomey is not modern-day Benin. In fact, Benin was deliberately renamed from Dahomey (the French had used that name for it as a colony).

3. It's probably not productive to single out any one African people in the slave trade. What seems to be the truth is that the slave trade was a vicious cycle driven by demand from outside the continent: great world powers would trade military technology for slaves, meaning that most tribe/states in Africa were essentially locked in an arms race to avoid themselves being enslaved. There was slavery in Africa (like basically everywhere else in the world at one point or another) before the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, but the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history) and it wasn't caused by Benin.

danielvf3• 8 years ago

1) The slave trade is extremely relevant to the article about the “amazons”. In the nation’s annual festival in those days, the Dahomey “amazons” would reenact capturing slaves. The Dahomey military (and the “amazons”) spent most of their fighting time attacking neighboring nations to get slaves to sell.

2) We agree. The place was called Dahomey. The place is now called Benin.

3) The kingdom of Dahomey was less than one third of one percent of the land area of Africa, and yet sold twenty percent of africa’s slaves that went to the new world. If ever there was a nation in Africa that could be discussed in the context of the slave trade, this is it.

BadassFractal4• 8 years ago

Regarding 3, it seems that 70%+ of the African slave trade went to the Middle East, not across the Atlantic.

Also regarding 3, I wonder if, comparatively, the Soviet Union forcefully moved a lot more people (even percentage-wise) through its network of concentration camps. African slaves going over the Atlantic were what.. 2-3M deaths over 300 years, whereas the USSR easily disposed of 10-30M between 1917 and the 50s and later in its various GULAGs.

Much better organized, more ruthless, exterminating its own lawful citizens, thanks to the wonders of ideology. All for the greater good of society and the working class. No ethnic difference necessary to justify unprecedented genocide. Neighbors reporting neighbors to the authorities with almost total certainty of execution, for many decades.

bergoid2• 8 years ago

the Trans-Atlantic Trade was a sui generis world-historical event, at a whole new scale (by percentage perhaps the largest forced movement in human history)

Wrong. The Arab slave trade [1] exceeded the Western one both in scale [2] and in cruelty [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade [2] https://www.quora.com/Who-did-most-of-the-slave-trade-Europe... [3] https://www.quora.com/Was-the-Arabic-slave-trade-more-humane...

hyumin2• 8 years ago

Sources? (Please provide something more credible than a wikipedia link)

The legend of Benin’s fearless female warriors

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