Dahomey and the Royal Palaces of Abomey

The Royal Palaces of Abomey are a series of earthen palaces in what is now Benin. The complex is culturally and historically important to West Africa, but the source of much of the wealth that built those palaces was the Atlantic slave trade. Read the show notes here.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from works
dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy.
We've talked about a lot of different UNESCO World Heritage
sites on past episode of the podcast. Yeah, they come

(00:22):
up a lot. So for the most part, these sites
have been remarkable and important in ways that come up
as generally positive or at least neutral. So, for example,
there's Poverty Point, which was the largest pre Columbian city
north of Mexico. We had a whole episode on that.
There are parks and civic buildings and crips and other
structures that were part of the work of Antoni Gaudy,

(00:44):
which his work there are seven different UNESCO Heritage sites
in the places that he worked on. Um. We also
talked about Palmyra and our episode on Zenobia and the Romans,
and that was a tremendously important site in ancient Syria
and it's right recently been threatened and in some cases
damaged by the Islamic State. So most of these UNESCO

(01:07):
sites that we've talked about don't have like this tremendous
baggage associated with them, which is not the case today.
Today's subject is also a UNESCO World heritage site, but
its place in world history and cultural heritage has very
different connotations than I think any other site on that
list that we have talked about before. The Royal Palaces

(01:28):
of Aboma are a series of earthen palaces and what's
now beening in West Africa, and they're located and what
was the capital of the Kingdom of dahome A which
Uh it's the kingdom that people may not have heard
of before. Many of these earthen buildings are covered in
bob relief sculptures if you're not familiar with that term.

(01:49):
That is like start with a flat surface, slightly raised
out from that surface is how it's sculpted. Uh. And
these sculptures document the history of the Fawn people, who
did not have any written language at the time. So
this complex is culturally really important to the history of
the Fund people, very historically important to West Africa. But

(02:10):
the source of a lot of the Kingdom of the
Homay's wealth is that these palaces were being built while
the Atlantic slave trade was really thriving, and a lot
of the money and power that that went along with
building these structures came from the slave trade. So that
means that it's also part of the cultural history of
the whole world, basically, not just West Africa, in a

(02:31):
way that I think a lot of people often don't
talk about. So that's what we're going to talk about today.
We're going to talk about the Kingdom of Dahoma and
these palaces and the place that these structures have come
to represent, and basically the cultural history of the world.
The region of Africa that is now the Republic of
Benin is home to more than forty different ethnic groups.

(02:54):
The largest of these is the Phone people. Uh The
Phone are traditionally an agricult trull society, growing crops like cotton, yams,
and millet, and after it was introduced by Europeans also
tobacco and most of Africa, the Phone people recorded their
history using oral or visual methods, but not writing. So
history was passed from generation to generation through dance and

(03:17):
visual arts and songs and stories. Most of the very
official retellings, which were the ones that were repeated over
and over and over and then changed very little from
one storyteller to another. We're commissioned by the monarchy in
the Kingdom of Dahoma, a royal herald or storyteller was
entrusted with both creating the story and relating it accurately.

(03:39):
Every time, you would actually be punished if he got
it wrong or if he told a version that wasn't
the official one, and one of his primary objectives in
telling these stories was to glorify and celebrate the reigning
king or past kings. So while history of Dahoma and
kings stayed pretty much the same from generation to generation,
other facets of the kingdom's history are less documented and

(04:02):
sometimes contradictory depending on who is doing the telling. We
do know that three primary divisions formed among the Phone
people after their ancestors migrated into what's now Benin and Togo,
and this is in the thirteenth century. These were the Alatta,
the Porto Novo, and the Dahoma kingdoms. These kingdoms were
often at war with with one another and with other

(04:25):
neighboring kingdoms whose people were part of other ethnic groups.
Dahoma's kings were central to virtually every single aspect of
Dahoman culture. They were at the heart of political, social, military,
and religious power. Every king was expected to make the
kingdom bigger and greater during his rule, while also revering

(04:46):
the kings that had come before. After his death, each
king had a quasi religious cult who honored and maintained
his memory, and once a new king took the throne,
he would choose names for himself as well as symbol
that would become part of the visual art that would
document his deeds throughout his reign. Each king also had
a motto that represented his rule. The Homies first king,

(05:10):
for example, was Gardnahssu, who came into power around His
symbols were a male bird that was later named after him,
a drum, and a hunting stick, and his motto was
I am the biggest bird and the loudest drum. You
can't keep the bird from singing and you can't keep
the drum from beating. Perhaps because the Homies second king, Daco,

(05:31):
came to power after usurping his older brother, it's third king,
who Jabaja, set down a specific process for naming a successor.
Although the title of king was inherited, it wasn't as
simple as going from father to eldest son. Each king
selected the male heir he thought would be the best
candidate to follow him on the throne. Royal ministers and

(05:54):
diviners would have to approve this choice before a new
king could ascend. Who Jabaja was also the king who
established Dahoma's capital at Aboma. This is about sixty five
miles or a hundred and four kilometers inland. If you're
imagining the coast of Africa where it makes that sharp
kind of east west turn. Uh Benin what's now Benin

(06:17):
is part way down that flatter area, So it was
basically north in from the coast, rather than east or
west as you might imagine in other parts of Africa.
So King Hujabaja also instituted a lot of the traditions
that would become hallmarks of Dahomy and culture. One of
these was a month long annual customs ceremony, which was

(06:39):
for the entire kingdom to participate in, as well as
any visiting dignitaries from other kingdoms or other parts of
the world. The annual custom ceremony was basically a big,
colorful festival with military parades and religious observances that were
tied to Voodoo beliefs and practices that were part of
Dahoman culture. The Voodoo tradition into Homa included belief in

(07:02):
the spirit world, possession of ancestral spirits and reverence of
the spirits of deceased ancestors. It also involved animal and
human sacrifices. The person sacrificed were typically prisoners who were
executed in honor of prior kings. Some wives of deceased
kings would also sacrifice themselves as part of funeral rituals

(07:23):
to go with the king into the afterlife, while others
would continue to live in his palace and maintain the
king's memory. In addition to establishing the capital and instituting
the annual customs festivals, King Hujabaja built the first royal
palace and aboma. This is a collection of courtyards and
their surrounding buildings, all of them contained within a cobb wall.

(07:46):
This was in part a defensive maneuver. King Hujabaja knew
that since the kingdom's goal was to expand and get bigger,
doing so was going to involve conquering neighboring kingdoms, and
so he needed to be able to defend himself and
a royal family from any kind of retribution or counter attack.
So he built a defensible palace and settled his relatives

(08:06):
in the surrounding area so that he could provide sort
of a bigger buffer between himself and any potential attackers.
So King Hujabaja is also believed to have started to
Homey's first all female fighting force, who Europeans would later
refer to as Amazon's. If that piques your curiosity, I
actually already have a book on them, and unless something

(08:28):
goes catastrophically wrong and I figure out it won't work somehow,
these women will be an episode later on, and then
we can talk about wonder Woman. Uh. The Domian Amazon's
became an elite fighting force and a traditional part of
the king's guard. Hujabaja ruled from about sixteen forty five
until sixteen eighty six. His successor was his son Akada,

(08:51):
who held the throne until seventeen o eight. Acaba's brother
a Gaja was the next in line, and he conquered
a number of neighboring tribes and kingdoms, including ones that
had larger armies than the Kingdom of the Homemade did.
One of A Godda's conquests was the port town of Ouida.
Da was already an important player in the Atlantic slave

(09:14):
trade at this point, and conquering the port at Wida
meant that the the Homeade kingdom soon had its first
contact with Europeans, more than two hundred years after they
first arrived in that part of Africa and well into
the establishment of the slave trade. But before its peak,
the Kingdom of the Homa had already shown itself to
be eager to expand and conquer its neighbors. And now

(09:35):
with the direct contact with Europeans and the opportunity to
sell their prisoners of war as slaves, the kingdom basically
had access to a huge pool of resources to be
able to continue its expansion. So we're going to talk
about exactly how that played out after a brief word
from a sponsor, so to return to the peak of

(09:57):
the Homies history and the peak of its its power
and luments. Once it had control of the port at Wida,
the Homemade began selling slaves directly to Europeans, who at
that point we're buying about six thousand slaves a year
from that part of Africa. By the time the Atlantic
slave trade was abolished, roughly two million slaves would leave

(10:18):
West Africa from the coast of what's now beneath. The
cycle played out like this, Dahoma would conquer one of
its neighbors and take its citizens as prisoners of war.
It would then sell those people to European slave traders,
most of which would be sent to plantations in the
America's Dahoma would accept payment in the form of, among

(10:39):
other things, weapons, which it used to strengthen its army
and conquer new territory and defend itself from neighbors. Eventually,
this cycle meant that Dahoma was one of the largest
and most powerful kingdoms in all of Africa, and it
had a near monopoly on the West African slave trade,
had a military force that was armed with weapons that

(10:59):
were acquired through the slave trade, and at this point
about twelve thousand soldiers served in its army, along with
about four thousand of the so called amazons. However, the
peak of Dahomey's power didn't actually last terribly long. As
Dahoma was at the height of its influence, the abolition
movement was thriving in many parts of the world, and

(11:19):
several nations had already stopped participating in the Atlantic slave trade,
even if they still had slavery within their borders. This
also meant that while Dahomey was selling fewer slaves, those
slaves that it did sell went at a much higher price. Basically,
once the cultural thought turned against slavery, they were able

(11:41):
to be like, well, everyone hates you for this, now
we're going to charge you more money. As the Atlantic
slave trade declined, European powers turned their attentions in Africa
away from acquiring slaves and toward Africa's not natural resources.
Many European powers began establishing colonies in Africa in search
of plants and minerals and the like. The reason we're

(12:03):
not really talking about America here is that while America
had become an independent nation at this point, wasn't really
to the point of sending colonists to Africa yet that
America was or the United States was really just colonizing
North American territory at this point, So and Dahoma. The

(12:23):
resource that European colonists were looking for was mostly the
palm nut, which could be used to produce an oil
that could be applied to anything from lubricating machines to
making soap. Kinguizo established a palm oil industry in the
Homeade while continuing to also trade in slaves. When King

(12:44):
Guizo's successor, Glele took the throne, Dahoma was under huge
diplomatic pressure from various European powers to end both the
slave trade and their practice of human sacrifice, which was
still taking place at annual customs. Glare resisted this, and
Sir Richard Burton, after visiting from Great Britain, wrote of

(13:04):
the diplomatic efforts, quote, to abolish human sacrifice here is
to abolish to homemade. The practice originates from filial piety,
it is sanctioned by long use and custom, and it
is strenuously upheld by a powerful and interested priesthood. When
the trans Atlantic slave trade was finally abolished in the
mid nineteenth century, the Homemade power really did start to

(13:26):
wane pretty quickly. After a series of confrontations with the
Eggbuck Kingdom, the homades declining army could no longer stave
off incursions from the French. The Homemade fought back against
France the early eighteen nineties, and then in two after
a series of battles in which the Homemade continually lost
ground to the French, the Dahomayan army retreated to the

(13:49):
capital at Abome. That's when King Behanzon, who was the
penultimate king of Dahoma ordered the army to torch the city.
Rather than allowing the kingdom's relics in the same sacred
tombs of its ancestors and past kings and other important
cultural sites to fall into Frinch hands. King Behanson surrendered

(14:09):
to France on January eighteen four and he went into exile.
Dahoma became a French protectorate, and the French installed Behnson's
half brother, agli Agbo, the first to the monarchy, before
they deposed him and installed their own provincial government. Even
though the royal lineage has continued to today, a Goalie

(14:30):
Agbo is regarded as the last reigning king of the
Dahoma Kingdom. Similarly to the British view of Rhodesia that
we talked about in our recent podcast on that subject,
France did not view the people of Dahoma as quote
mature enough to govern themselves, so the people of Dahoma
were both heavily taxed by the French and highly restricted

(14:51):
in what they were allowed to do. Most traditional customs
and observances were banned, not just the human sacrifices, things
that would be viewed as much more innocuous were also outlawed.
French missionary schools were instituted to try to move children
away from their cultural heritage and onto a European Christian worldview.
It seemed like at this point the history and the

(15:13):
culture of Dahoma was likely going to disappear, especially since
the primary visual record, those Ba relief sculptures that were
on many of the palaces, had been damaged or destroyed
by fire. However, the oral traditions of songs and storytelling
were entrenched enough in the Phone people that Dahomeyan history
was kept alive through them. In Nive, the Historic Museum

(15:38):
of Abomy was established in the palaces, which was the
first national museum in West Africa. The Republic of Dahoma
became independent again, first as an independent French state in
ninety eight and then fully independent in nineteen sixty. The
government of Dahomey sought UNESCO's advice on how to preserve
the remaining structures and the Bob relief sculptures and Aboma

(16:02):
in nineteen seventy seven. UNESCO offered advice and assistance and
placed the entire compound on its list of endangered sites.
In nineteen eighty five, in the palace of King Leile
was entirely rebuilt because of damage. By then, it was
one of the last intact buildings still standing on the site.
Before the existing structure was demolished, the fifty six bo

(16:25):
relief sculptures that were on it were cut out of
its walls to preserve them. Most of these were badly
damaged and only fifty could be saved. The Getty Conservation
Institute visited the site in nineteen ninety one and determined
that all of the remaining BA relief sculptures on the site,
including those fifty that had been cut out of the
walls of King Lailes Palace, were critically endangered. So from

(16:48):
ninete to ninety seven the Republic of Benin's Ministry of
Culture worked together with the Getty Conservation Institute to conserve
as many of the reliefs as possible. This started is
studying exactly what factors could cause the sculptures to deteriorate,
preventing further damage and rebuilding the palace they had originally

(17:08):
been removed from. Local artists assisted with the project as
well and made replicas of the original bar reliefs which
would be installed into the rebuilt palace. The original bar
relief still exists, but they are part of museum exhibitions,
while the replicas adorned the replica palace walls. The Republic
of Nahma was renamed Benin after a new constitution was

(17:31):
adopted in and we're really just glossing over a ton
of instability and turbulence, a couple of other fires that
have further damaged the palaces. But very very long story,
very short. Benin is still a republic and its government
has become a pretty stable democracy, and conservation and repair
work are still ongoing in Aboma on these palaces. We're

(17:54):
going to talk about the palaces specifically in the sculptures
and why they are so culturally important. After another brief
word from a sponsor, back into a Beaumain. Once the
capital was established at a Beaumain, each king of Dahomy
built his own palace, following the same general layout, architectural style,

(18:14):
and building materials as the previous kings. By law, only
royalty could build structures taller than one floor, so the
palaces at Abouma were much taller than the homes that
surrounded them. This made the whole compound look imposing and powerful.
The word palace here is also kind of misleading. We
alluded to this earlier in the show. Each king's palace

(18:37):
was really a compound of earthen buildings with thatched roofs
that were arranged around multiple courtyards. Each courtyard and its
buildings had specific functions and a design that was related
to governance, to religious observances, or to some other activity.
One of these was the Podoge Courtyard. We're guessing at
the pronunciation there, and that is where the king held court.

(19:00):
Adjacent to that courtyard were the council meeting in the
guards quarters, along with other administrative buildings. To allude to
what's Holly's talking about, this is a case where we
found multiple contradictory pronunciations for everything from reputable sources not
saying random things on the Internet like there would be
a Unesco video and Miriam Webster with totally different pronunciations

(19:23):
of everything or no pronunciation. Another was the Agillalla Hanu Courtyard,
which was for more religious significance. The buildings around it
were for ancestral worship. They held altars. Also, formal receptions
would be held there. Adjacent to the Agilalla Henu Courtyard
was the Agillilla building, which was this huge reception hall

(19:45):
with many many doors in a bedroom on either end.
The back doors, which faced away from the courtyard, led
to the king's private residences. So by the time the
last palace as we're using that word today was built,
the overall royal compound at a Boma was enormous. Today
the World Heritage Site incorporates one and ninety acres that's

(20:06):
roughly forty four hectares of land. When the compound was burned,
rather than having it fall into the hands of the French,
many of the thatched roofs were what was completely destroyed.
So even though the earthen walls of the palaces themselves
were fire resistant and probably survived the initial fire, their
lack of roofs meant that the structures themselves were exposed

(20:27):
to the elements, and because this part of Africa has
two rainy seasons a year the weather. The wet weather
caused the walls themselves to deteriorate. In the nineteen thirties,
many of the thatched roofs were replaced with corrugated tin,
which removed the overhang that had protected many of the
bar relief sculptures. So while the structures themselves were more protected.

(20:51):
With this set up, the bar relief sculptures were more
vulnerable and were consequently damaged by the elements. King Agaja,
who was the fifth king of the home A, was
the first one to adorn the walls of his palace
with these sculptures. They were made by moistening the earth
from termite mounds and adding in fibers and other materials
to strengthen that kind of mud, and then sculpting it

(21:12):
and allowing it to dry. The finished relief sculpture would
be painted with dyes and pigments that were made from
plants and minerals. Although many other arts and crafts of
the Phone people were traditionally done by women only, men
carved the by relief sculptures that were used in the
royal palaces. Similar sculptures did also exist elsewhere in the

(21:33):
kingdom and in other parts of the Phone culture, but
in the palaces they became an integral part of documenting
the kingdom's history. In addition to historical events, myths, and legends,
they also depicted animals and plants native to the area,
geometric symbols, and other visual elements. The narrative sculptures are

(21:53):
presented as pictograms that represent battles or achievements of the king,
and their tone is overall pretty celibate sell obratory of
the Phone people and of the dynasty of the kings.
Some of them do depict real events, while others record
myths and legends of the Phone people. As we alluded
to previously, by relief sculpture continues to be part of
artwork among the Phone people today. Today. There is actually

(22:17):
a slave trade memorial at the port of Uta which
uses bar relief sculpture to depict chained slaves being led
to a boat, seemingly disappearing into the distance. It's called
the Gate of No Return and it sits at the
end of the Road of No Return and is meant
to commemorate both the slaves who left from the coast
of dahome A and their descendants who lived today. The

(22:38):
site at Abom, in addition to being you know, a
historical site that is preserved because slavery is an enormous
thing that happened in the past that we should talk
about rather than ignore, it's an active cultural site for
the Phone people today. King a Goalie Agbo Dajilangi, which
is h He's also known as a Goalie. Agbo the

(22:59):
third has been king since nine although another king was
a rival for the throne from two thousand until his death.
King a Goalie Agbo the third continues to carry out
rituals and ceremonies at the site. A UNESCO video shows
him meeting descendants of enslaved Africans, explaining that he thinks

(23:19):
that both Westerners and Africans were both responsible for the
slave trade, and then apologizing for what happened. Benin formally
apologized for its role in the trans trans atlantic slave
trade in n President Matteu Karakoi followed his apology, which
was addressed to the enslaved Africans their descendants in the world,

(23:41):
with a tour in which he and other government officials
traveled to other nations to apologize for their ancestors role
in the slave trade and to ask for forgiveness. So
I came at this subject today from kind of a
weird angle. I read a very interesting but also critically

(24:02):
missing important details tumbler post about these palaces and how
cool they are and the sculptures and all this stuff,
and I was like that sounds really interesting, and it
did not really mention Benine or the slave trade or
anything like that. And because I was not really familiar
with the history of the Homay, I've had no real

(24:23):
thought that would play into it until after I got
a book and started researching it. And that's kind of way, okay,
how did that entire post have all that stuff in
it and not this critically important detail. Uh? And so
for a while I thought about not doing this episode,
and then when I got to the part about, uh,

(24:43):
the people today whose ancestors were an active part of
the slave trade trying to document this and actively talk
about it, and then going on a world apology tour
changed my thought a little bit. Um. One of the
transisee on our Facebook page when we will post podcasts

(25:05):
or articles or whatever about slavery is that people will
come and make this content this these comments that are like, well,
the people in Africa's old slaves, how come nobody ever
talked about that? Right? Number one? That's like a the
fact that one person was selling slaves does not make
it okay for people to have been buying the slaves.

(25:27):
The first thing, and the second thing is, as I
was researching this. I kept finding over and over governments
in Africa who have like made these massive monuments to
the slave trade and have formally apologized to the slave trade.
And there's a whole separate debate about whether government should

(25:48):
apologize or not. But it seems to me that a
lot of people do in fact talk about this, especially
from the African perspective. So the better question would not
be why does nobody talk about this, but more like
why are by people now listening? Yeah, it's definitely not
something that comes up much in the US for sure.

(26:10):
I can't speak to other countries about it, but yeah,
it's not like this is mystery information that's being with health.
These are pretty public and publicized tours of apology and
discussion that are going on. So people are talking about it. Yeah,
granted a lot of them were at this point ten
or fifteen or more years ago. Uh. And I it's

(26:34):
still baffling to be that I've read this whole post
on Tumbler that just managed to never mention this leave
for at all. Ah, But yeah, that's uh. I'm gonna
link to some pictures of the Gate of No Return
monument because it's kind of stunning to look at souh.
This has been a pretty heavy episode today, so I

(26:54):
have some listener mail. Is it lighter in tone? Much
lighter in tone? It is about basely nothing of consequence.
It is from dance, Dan says, First, let me tell
me tell you how much I enjoy your podcast. I
have both an undergraduate degree and master's degree in history
and always find your show enlightening and enjoyable. When I
enjoy about your podcast is that you discuss things outside
my field of study. You give me a little bit

(27:15):
of history in areas that I don't know much about.
I have to chuckle about all the people who complain
about your pronunciation of different not so easy to pronounce
names you're talking about. It reminds me of two experiences
humorous to me that I had while living in Italy.
I had to take a train from northern Italy to
southern Italy, and my best practiced Italian, which wasn't that good,
I asked the gentleman at the ticket counter for a

(27:37):
ticket to the small town of Pescachi. You would have
thought that I was speaking absolute gibberish. His questions and
reply immediately exceeded my Italian skills. Only with the help
of the person in line behind me. Could they find
my destination by searching through a book of stations? Then,
in a tone slightly filled with contempt, the man and

(27:58):
the ticket office said, or something to that point, oh
you mean pest keech Chi. Boy? Did I not feel
so bright? Wishing I spoke better Italian? Fast forward eight
hours when I arrived in southern Italy. Since pest Keetche
is such a small station, I had to switch trains
to a small train car and the front end of

(28:19):
the very last platform. Not wanting to take the wrong
train and armed with my new pronunciation, I asked the
conductor is this the train to pass Keechchi? He responded,
while shaking his head to the side, No, Pescochi. All
I could do was chuckle. I couldn't win the pronunciation game.
I'm going to skip the second part of his letter

(28:39):
because it goes into how to pronounce his surname, and
we don't usually get that deep into being able to
identify people in our listener mail. I wanted to read
this for two reasons. When it's funny and to it
reminds me of a story that I have told the
Holly before, and was going to tell on a previous
episode and then didn't do. When I was in college,
I had a two day comprehensive exam that I had
to pass us to graduate, and I had a study

(29:01):
group of folks who mostly were also Writing Center peer
tutors with me, and we were all on a trip
to present uh a talk about Writing Center peer tutoring
at a conference, and we ran into a prior colleague
of ours and her brand new PhD advisor, and we
were all kind of swapping stories about studying for this
as an exam, and we talked about our favorite literary term,

(29:25):
which was him Martia, and her instructor did not know
what we were talking about, and we were like, oh,
you know, it's like the fatal flaw in a in
a hero of a story that causes the downfall of
the hero. And her PhD advisor went, oh, Marcia, and

(29:45):
we were all mortified because we had learned the wrong
pronunciation from our you know, bona fide PhD and English instructor.
Years and years and years. Almost twenty years later, I
was telling Holly the story and I went to the
dictionary to look up the word, and what was there?
Ham Rtia as the pronunciation. So that is our nothing

(30:10):
of consequence listener mail to cap off our very heavy
episode about the spoils of the Atlantic slave trade. So
thank you Dan for writing us something a little lighter
to end this episode on it. If you would like
to write to ask about history or anything else, we
are a history podcast at how stiff works dot com.

(30:31):
We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash miss
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like that. If you would like to learn more about
what we have talked about today, you can't go to

(30:53):
our parent company's website, that's how stuff works dot com.
But the words human trafficking into the search bar. The
trafficking of human beings is not something that has gone away.
It still existing. To read that article to learn more
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(31:13):
I'll put in some links to two pictures of these
houses and of the monument to the slave trade that's
at Weeta, And you can do all that a whole
lot more how stuff works dot com or missed in
History dot com for more on this and thousands of
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