The Dahomey Kingdom was already a legend before Hollywood turned them into the fierce heroines of The Woman King.
What is now known as Republic of Benin stood as one of the most powerful and organized empires in precolonial Africa. It was a kingdom of wealth, warriors, and women famed for its discipline, architecture, and the legendary Agojie female fighters, often called the Dahomey Amazons.
The Agojie, the all-female military regiment of Dahomey, embodied the empire’s duality: strength and sorrow, empowerment and exploitation.
They trained harder than men, fought without fear, and protected the king, yet they also took part in slave raids, capturing other Africans for sale.
Their story is not one of simple heroism, it’s one of complexity. They were warriors in a system that both empowered and entrapped them.
Dahomey grew from a small chiefdom into one of Africa’s most formidable empires.
Its kings, including the likes of Agaja and Ghezo were known for their ambition, strategy, and control of the region’s trade routes.
But Dahomey’s strength came not just from unity, it came from warfare.
Neighboring villages were raided, and captives were brought back as slaves. Initially, these captives served as laborers, soldiers, or human sacrifices in royal ceremonies.
However, as European traders began arriving on the West African coast offering guns, alcohol, and wealth in exchange for enslaved people, the nature of Dahomey’s wars began to change.
From the port city of Ouidah, thousands of enslaved Africans were sold and shipped across the Atlantic in exchange for guns, textiles, and liquor. Each new weapon fueled another raid. Each raid produced more captives.
It became a self-sustaining cycle; war to capture, capture to trade, trade to empower and the spiral never ended.
Under King Ghezo (1818–1858), Dahomey reached both its peak and its breaking point.
Ghezo strengthened the army, formalized the slave trade, and made Ouidah one of the busiest slave ports in West Africa.
Yet, he also faced intense pressure from the British, who were actively campaigning to end the slave trade.
“The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and the glory of their wealth.” King Ghezo told the British.
While he later agreed to abolish it publicly, Dahomey continued to trade slaves covertly for decades.
Facing the loss of the slave trade revenue, King Ghezo attempted to shift the economy to the export of agricultural products, primarily palm oil. However, this “legitimate trade” was far less lucrative than the slave trade, leading to an economic decline
Today, the story of Dahomey lives on in modern Benin, where monuments like the Door of No Return in Ouidah stand as haunting reminders of what was lost.
By: Idris Olayinka