King Behanzin of Abomey-The king Shark

[Princess Ademide Adinasse]

Said "no more" to slavery in West Africa



We fought to our death...and we never forgot you were gone from us


My great-great Grandfather, Behanzin












Behanzin in 1894
Behanzin (d. December 1906, in Blida, Algeria) is considered (if Adandozan is not counted) eleventh King of Dahomey (now Benin). Upon taking the throne, he changed his name from Kondo. He succeeded his father, Glele, and ruled from 1889 to 1894. Behanzin was Abomey's last independent ruler established through traditional power structures, and considered to be a great ruler.

His symbols are the shark, the egg (a rebus of his name), and a captive hanging from a flagpole (a reference to a boastful and rebellious Nago practitioner of harmful magic from Ketou whom the king hanged from a flagpole as punishment for his pride). But, his most famous symbol is the smoking pipe, seen on the picture to the right. This is because he claimed that there wasn't a minute in his life, even when he was a baby, that he was not smoking.

Behanzin was seen by his people as intelligent and courageous. He saw that the Europeans were gradually encroaching on his kingdom, and as a result attempted a foreign policy of isolating the Europeans and rebuffing them. As price just before Glele's death, Behanzin declined to meet French envoy Jean Bayol, claiming conflicts in his schedule due to ritual and ceremonial obligations. As a result, Bayol returned to Cotonou to prepare to go to war against Behanzin, named king upon Glele's death. Seeing the preparations, the Dahomeans attacked Bayol's forces outside Cotonou in 1890; the French army stood fast due to superior weaponry and a strategically advantageous position. Eventually Behanzin's forces were forced to withdraw. Behanzin returned to Abomey, Bayol to France for a time.

The peace lasted two years, during which time the French continued to occupy Cotonou. Both sides continued to buy arms in preparation for another battle. In 1892, the soldiers of Abomey attacked villages near Grand Popo and Porto-Novo in an effort to reassert the older boundaries of Dahomey. This was seen as an act of war by the French, who claimed interests in both areas. Bayol, by now named Colonial Governor by the French, declared war on Behanzin. The French war machine justified the aggression by characterizing the Dahomeans as savages in need of civilizing, and pointing to what it called the "human sacrifice" of the annual customs and at a king's death, and to the continued practice of slavery, as evidence of this savagery.

Some of this propaganda still exists today: in the Musee de l'Homme in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris, there is a large print, again illustrating the alleged savagery of the Dahomeans, of a battle in the war against Dahomey where a Dahomey Amazon killed a French officer by ripping out his throat with her sharpened teeth. The story is somewhat more complex, however, since the traditional accounts of the event handed down in Benin have the Amazon as a trusted wife of Behanzin who had sworn to avenge members of the royal family who had been executed by Behanzin for treachery after divulging battle plans in return for bribes from French agents. Further, the French officer at issue was allegedly the head of French military intelligence who committed the 'savage' act of corrupting family members to betray their own --an unthinkable evil in Dahomean society; the Amazon was reduced to using her teeth after her ammunition ran out at the battle's peak.

Similarly, the usual European allegations of Dahomean savagery do not take into account the role of the annual customs in Dahomean society, the deepness of traditional belief in the spirit world, the complex social organization seen in the court bureaucracy and policy making process, and the fact that at many of the very points where blood flowed most freely in Dahomean history, it was also flowing freely in Europe, through wars, civil wars, and revolutions. This is not to excuse any of the evils of the Dahomean traditional society, but only to put them in perspective and to point out that the term "savage" when applied to Dahomey by defenders of its European colonization is used more for its propaganda value than for its ability to describe honestly the level of organization or the cultural values of traditional Dahomean society.

Through superior intelligence gathering, superior weaponry, subversion by some members of the royal family who had been corrupted by bribes, and a campaign of psychological warfare that included cutting down most of the sacred trees in the Oueme and Zou, and an unexpected attack strategy, the French succeeded in defeating Dahomey, the last of the traditional African kingdoms to succumb to European colonization. Instead of attacking Abomey directly by marching straight north from Calavi just north of Cotonou, French General Alfred Dodds attacked from Porto-Novo, moving up the Oueme valley until he was within striking distance of Abomey, via Cove and Bohicon.

The French were victorious, and in 1894, Behanzin surrendered his person to Dodds, without signing any instrument of national surrender or treaty. He lived out the remainder of his life in exile in Martinique and Algeria. After his death, his remains were returned to Abomey.

Behzanzin was succeeded by Agoli-agbo, his distant relative and one-time Army Chief of Staff, the only potential ruler which the French were willing to instate.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behanzin"




Behanzin Hossu Bowelle

Who Was Behanzin

BEHANZIN HOSSU BOWELLE "THE KING SHARK" (1841-1906)

Behanzin

[Queen Malaika]

Princess, I have discovered recently that I too am a great-grandaughter of Behanzin, and have just recently returned from Abomey to visit his Palace and the Royal Musuem. I would like to share more information with you, for it was this powerful Kingdom of the Leopard clan and the Amazons women that forceful attempted to dimisih the prosperity of the Slave Trade, and too often is recogniition given to those who trided to subdue the relentless efforts of those evils ones who attempted to dehumanize the societies of Great Mother Africa. Thank you for your information, becuase we need to remember those that truly fought and died for us, and not just those which our oppressors have subjected us with as our heroes! Let us in an attempt to identify who we are bring light to such great heros beyond the diaspora, which give us a direct connection to Africa.