Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T09:24:07.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Belief, Legitimacy and the Kpojito: An Institutional History of the ‘Queen Mother’ in Precolonial Dahomey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Edna G. Bay
Edna G. Bay
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This article traces chronologically the rise and fall of the office of the kpojito, the female reign-mate to the kings of Dahomey. The women who became kpojito in the eighteenth century were central to the efforts of the kings to establish legitimacy and assert control over the kingdom's expanding territory. The office reached its zenith in mid-century when Kpojito Hwanjile and King Tegbesu gained office and effectively ruled in tandem, thereby solidifying an ideological model that persisted to the end of the kingdom. The model posited a balance of power between male and female, royal and commoner. Subsequently, powerful women of the king's household worked with ambitious princes to build coalitions to seize power at times of royal succession. When their efforts succeeded, the prince was installed as king and the woman as kpojito. By the nineteenth century, princes began to find alternative sources of support in their struggles for the kingship and alternative sources of guidance once enthroned. The royal family became more central in the state as princes and princesses replaced commoners in high offices. Even though alliances between princes and their fathers' wives continued, non-royal women within the palace were more constrained in their ability to wield power and the influence of the kpojito fell into steep decline.

The institutional history of the kpojito is discerned through an analysis of religious change in Dahomey. Because the hierarchy of the gods was manipulated by the monarchy to reflect its changing conceptions of the nature of power, the history of religion represents an intellectual history of the ruling class. Central among the religious changes and cultural influences that had a probable impact on the office of the kpojito, and more broadly on the ability of women to exercise power in the state, were contacts with Europe and with Yoruba-speaking peoples. Those influences were associated with cultural and religious visions that promoted the individual, the male, and the royal.

Type
Women in Politics
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 I would like to thank Robin Law for sharing a copy of the unpublished De Chenevert and Bulet manuscript, for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper and for providing constant encouragement to me to complete this work. Portions of this article were included in a paper presented at a conference on ‘Queens, queen mothers, priestesses and power’ held at New York University in 04 1991Google Scholar, to be published in Queens, Concubines and Consorts: Case Studies in African Gender (Carbondale, forthcoming in 1995).Google Scholar

2 So far as I can discern, Le Hérissé, A. was the first to use the term in print: L'Ancien Royaume du Dahomey (Paris, 1911), 28.Google Scholar

3 See Law, Robin, ‘Dahomey and the slave trade: reflections on the historiography of the rise of Dahomey’, J. Afr. Hist. XXVII (1986), 237–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a review of the debate on the nature of the state.

4 Obichere, Boniface I., ‘Change and innovation in the administration of the kingdom of Dahomey’, J. Afr. Studies, I (1974), 235–51Google Scholar, notes when several administrative structures were introduced, but does not provide an analysis of reasons for change. Law, Robin, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar, discusses the administrative structures of the kingdoms of Allada, Whydah, Dahomey and other states along the Slave Coast, but regrettably, his analysis of the evolving Dahomean institutions ends in the mid-eighteenth century.

5 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 158–60.Google Scholar

6 Maupoil, Bernard, La Géomancie à l'ancienne Côte des Esclaves (Paris, 1943), 57Google Scholar. Karin Barber has demonstrated in the Yoruba context how conceptions of human power relationships applied to the gods permit believers to create gods yet still be dependent upon them. Her argument is equally applicable to Dahomey: ‘How man makes God in West Africa: Yoruba attitudes towards the Orisa’, Africa, LI (1981), 724–45.Google Scholar

7 The English term Customs is used here for the sake of simplicity. Interestingly, the term was adopted by Dahomeans and became a synonym for ceremony. Gezo, whose kpojito came from the town of Tenji, told Frederick Forbes that ‘that he was going…to Tengee, to make a Custom to the memory of his mother.’ Forbes, F. E., Dahomey and the Dahomans (2 vols.) (London, 1851), ii, 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Glélé, Maurice Ahanhanzo, Le Danxome (Paris, 1974), 80Google Scholar. Certainly virtually all the elements of Customs are visible in some form in the annual ceremonies undertaken up to the present by families in Benin. Though it seems reasonable to assume that such ceremonies took place in similar form in the past, it is not clear from the written record if Customs were an elaboration of common ceremonies or if contemporary ceremonies were inspired by Customs.

9 Polanyi, Karl, Dahomey and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle and London, 1966), 33.Google Scholar

10 Ross, David A., ‘The autonomous kingdom of Dahomey, 1818–94’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1967), 421–4Google Scholar; Yoder, John C., ‘Fly and elephant parties: political polarization in Dahomey, 1840–1870’, J. Afr. Hist. XV (1974), 417–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, ‘La fête des coutumes au Dahomey: historique et essai d'interprétation’, Annales, XIX (1964), 696–716.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 ‘Les Affaires du Dahomey’, France, p. 40Google Scholar. FO 84/1466, Public Record Office, London.

13 Mercier, P. and Lombard, J., Guide du Musée d'Abomey (Porto-Novo, 1959), 9Google Scholar. See also Pires, Vicente Ferreira, Viagem de Africa em o Reino de Dahomé, ed. by de Lessa, Clado Ribeiro (São Paulo, 1957), 73.Google Scholar

14 Guillevin was told in the mid-nineteenth century that two wives of a high-ranking man in Cana were required to take poison on the day of the death of their husband: Guillevin, M., ‘Voyage dans l'intérieur du royaume du Dahomey’, Nouvelles Annales des Voyages [06 1862], II, 284Google Scholar. Herskovits claims nearly constant human sacrifices in Dahomey, some of which would clearly not have been directed to the royal dead, and many of which, such as a sacrifice prior to digging a well, were relatively mundane activities. He wisely seems to doubt his own field data when he comments that ‘…royal Dahomeans…may, of course, have exaggerated figures when speaking of past practices no longer possible of execution…’: Herskovits, Melville J., Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (2 vols.) (New York, 1938), ii, 53Google Scholar. Herskovits may have been referring here to his chief informant, René Aho, a member of the royal family and the younger brother of a powerful canton chief who at the period of Herskovits's field research had been accused of performing human sacrifice to strengthen his own position.

15 Pires, , Viagem, 83Google Scholar. See also Skertchly, J. A., Dahomey as it is (London, 1874), 339, 361.Google Scholar

16 Skertchly, , Dahomey, 352.Google Scholar

17 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 159.Google Scholar

18 M'Leod, John, A Voyage to Africa (London, 1820; repr. 1971), 64.Google Scholar

19 Pires, , Viagem, 75.Google Scholar

20 Ellis, Alfred Burden, The Ewe-Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa (London, 1890), 127.Google Scholar

21 Skertchly, , Dahomey, 446.Google Scholar

22 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 180.Google Scholar

23 Norris, Robert, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahadee, King of Dahomey (London, 1789; repr. 1968), 130.Google Scholar

24 Bay, Edna G., ‘The Royal Women of Abomey’ (Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1977)Google Scholar; ‘Servitude and Worldly Success in the Palace of Dahomey’, in Robertson, Clare C. and Klein, Martin A. (eds.), Women and Slavery in Africa (Madison, 1983), 340–67.Google Scholar

26 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 31.Google Scholar

26 Ibid. 133.

27 Aho, René, Abomey, 3 05 1972Google Scholar. René Aho was a grandson of King Glele. He served as chief informant for Herskovits and later produced several articles on Fon social structures. Aho worked as guide and informant for scholars and film-makers for some 40 years until his death in May 1977.

28 Rattray, R. S., Ashanti (London, 1923), 81–2.Google Scholar

29 Aho, René, Abomey, 23 04 1972Google Scholar. Lists of kpojito provided by twentieth-century Dahomeans typically include women linked to Dakodonu and Wegbaja who appear to have reigned before Adonon. However, in Dahomean tradition names are frequently cited for persons who purportedly held offices prior to the known historical creation of such offices, a practice that helps enshrine the sense of immutability in Dahomean institutional structures.

30 Field notes, Hountondji family, Abomey, 1984. See also Blier, Suzanne, ‘The path of the leopard: myth, history and the question of dynastic origins in Dahomey’, paper presented at the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 1988 (revised version in J. Afr. Hist., forthcoming), 9–13Google Scholar. The Dahomean mythic history recorded by Monserrat Palau-Marti attempts to bridge the two traditions by claiming that a daughter of the king of Sado was married into the clan of the Aligbononvi Wasanu (literally children of Aligbonon at Wassa): Le Roi-dieu au Bénin (Paris, 1964), 115.Google Scholar

31 Blier, , ‘Path’Google Scholar; ‘A Propos de Mythe et Inceste dans l'Ancien Royaume du Danxome’, unpublished paper commissioned by E. Bay and prepared by Tingbe-Azalou, Albert (Cotonou, 1993), 15–16.Google Scholar

32 See Law's, Robin discussion of the Allada myth in ‘History and legitimacy: aspects of the use of the past in precolonial Dahomey’, History in Africa, XV (1988), 448–51.Google Scholar

33 Norris, , Memoirs, xiii–xiv.Google Scholar

34 Burton, Richard F., A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (2 vols.) (London, 1893), ii, 111.Google Scholar

35 Blier, , ‘Path’, 24.Google Scholar

36 Fuglestad, Finn, ‘Quelques réflexions sur l'histoire et les institutions de l'ancien royaume du Dahomey et de ses voisons’, Bulletin de l'IFAN, XXXIX, sér. B, no. 3 (1977), 493–517.Google Scholar

37 Blier, , ‘Path’, 26.Google Scholar

38 Skertchly, , Dahomey, 472Google Scholar; Burton, , Mission, ii, 97.Google Scholar

39 Adonon, Daa, Abomey, 22 12 1972.Google Scholar

40 Tingbe-Azalou, , ‘Mythe’, 18–19Google Scholar; Blier, , ‘Path’, 13, 17.Google Scholar

41 Forbes and Burton, both of whom attended Annual Customs in the mid-nineteenth century, list Adonon as the first ‘king's mother’ honored: Forbes, , Dahomey, ii, 128–74Google Scholar; Burton, , Mission, ii, 270–1Google Scholar. The person enthroned as Adonon in 1972 herself confirmed this, noting that she was enthroned only during the reign of Agaja: Adonon, , Abomey, 13 10 1972.Google Scholar

42 Adonon, , Abomey, 13 10 1972Google Scholar. Burton indicates that a war against Weme Jigbe was waged during the reign of Akaba: Mission, ii, 268.Google Scholar

43 Tingbe-Azalou, , ‘Mythe’, 16–17Google Scholar; Adonon, , Abomey, 16 10 1972.Google Scholar

44 Maupoil, , Géomancie, 47Google Scholar, n. 1. Both Burton and Skertchly confuse the names of the kpojito to Tegbesu and Kpengla, incorrectly linking Tegbesu to Chai and Kpengla to Hwanjile.

45 Maupoil, , Géomancie, 47, n. 1.Google Scholar

46 Glele, Sagbaju, Abomey, 25 07 1972Google Scholar; Verger, Pierre, Notes sur le culte des orisa et vodun (Dakar, 1957), 450.Google Scholar

47 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 303–4.Google Scholar

48 Ibid. 300. Pogla K. Glélé argues that the story of the mother of Agidisu is designed to mask the reality that Tegbesu himself was imposed on Dahomey by Oyo. Since Tegbesu is said to have been sent to Oyo as a hostage in his youth, Glélé hypothesizes that Oyo would have welcomed him as someone known who could be manipulated: ‘Le Royaume du Dan-hô-min: Tradition orale et histoire écrite’ (unpublished paper deposited in Archives Nationales, Paris, 1971), 49.Google Scholar

49 Bosman, William, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea (London, 1705; repr. 1967), 366a.Google Scholar

50 Dalzel, Archibald, The History of Dahomey (London, 1793; repr. 1967), 222Google Scholar; Norris, , Memoirs, 130.Google Scholar

51 Melville, J. and Herskovits, Frances S., An Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief (Menasha, WI, 1933), 36.Google Scholar

52 Ibid. 35.

53 Herskovits, , Dahomey, ii, 104.Google Scholar

54 Law, Robin, ‘Ideologies of royal power: the dissolution and reconstruction of political authority on the “slave coast”, 1680–1750’, Africa, LVII (1987), 323.Google Scholar

55 Herskovits records a tradition that claims the following as vodun imported by Hwanjile: Mawu, Lisa, Sakpata, Heviosso, Gu, Dan Aidowhedo, Nesuhwe, Tovodun, Fa, Menona, Boko-Legba (Dahomey, ii, 104Google Scholar). Le Hérissé credits to Hwanjile or Tegbesu the following: Mawu, Lisa, Heviosso, H'lan, and the Tohosou (Royaume, 102, 112–13, 121–2Google Scholar). Most other sources list only Mawu, Lisa and the hunter deity, Age. These three latter vodun remain under the direction of Hwanjile in a sanctuary located adjacent to the palace of Akaba and facing the central palace of the kings. It is clear that both Mawu and Lisa were known in Dahomey before their elevation by Hwanjile. The distinction being claimed may be the specific shrines brought from Aja or the joining of the two as chief deities.

56 Yai, Olabiyi, ‘From Vodun to Mawu: monotheism and history in the Fon cultural area’, Sapino newsletter, IV, 2–3 (1992), 10–29Google Scholar; Verger, , Notes, 438, 504–6.Google Scholar

57 Herskovits, and Herskovits, , Outline, 11, 14Google Scholar; Mercier, P., ‘The Fon of Dahomey’, in Forde, Daryll (ed.), African Worlds (Oxford, 1954), 219.Google Scholar

58 Glélé, , Danxome, 100Google Scholar. See also Palau-Marti, , Roi-dieu, 215Google Scholar, and Mercier, Paul, Civilisations du Benin (Paris, 1962), 284.Google Scholar

59 Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave-Trade (London, 1734; repr. 1971), 34Google Scholar. Both d'Almeida-Topor, Hélène, Les Amazones (Paris, 1984), 36Google Scholar, and Law, Robin, ‘The “Amazons” of Dahomey’, Paideuma, XXIX (1993), 247Google Scholar, note the Snelgrave evidence. Neither, however, comments on the significance of arming women with firearms, which sets Dahomean woman apart from female fighters documented elsewhere in West Africa.

60 Pires, , Viagem, 71.Google Scholar

61 Norris, , Memoirs, 128–30.Google Scholar

62 Dalzel, , History, 204–5.Google Scholar

63 Pires, , Viagem, 71, 79.Google Scholar

64 Burton, , Mission, ii, 13Google Scholar, n.1; Ross, , ‘Autonomous’, 17.Google Scholar

65 ‘Réflexions sur Juda par les Sieurs de Chenevert et abbé Bulet’ (Archives d'Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Province, ms. 111), 72.Google Scholar

66 Dalzel, , History, 224.Google Scholar

67 Pires, , Viagem, 84.Google Scholar

68 Blier, , ‘Path’, 27–8.Google Scholar

69 d'Oliveira, Th. Constant-Ernest, La Visite du musée d'histoire d'Abomey (Porto-Novo, n.d.).Google Scholar

70 Adouonou, B., Jalons pour une théologie africaine: essai d'une herméneutique chrétienne du Vodun dahoméen (Paris, 1979), 95.Google Scholar

71 Pires, , Viagem, 70–80Google Scholar; Verger, Pierre, Flux et Reflux de la Traite des Nègres entre le Golfe de Bénin et Bahia de Todos os Santos (Paris, 1968), 249, n. 72.Google Scholar

72 Verger, Pierre, ‘Le Culte des Vodoun d'Abomey aurait-il été apporté à Saint-Louis de Maranhon par la mère du roi Ghézo?’, Etudes Dahoméennes, VIII (1952), 19–24Google Scholar; Herskovits, , Dahomey, ii, 64Google Scholar. Verger notes that the commander of the Portuguese fort in Whydah claimed that one of the expeditions was sent to the court of King Don João VI. An elder of the Dosso Yovo family, whose ancestor was head of the delegation, said that the Dahomeans also recruited Bahian families to settle in Dahomey (Whydah, , 9 11 1972).Google Scholar

73 Bay, Edna G., ‘On the trail of the bush king: a Dahomean lesson in the use of evidence’, History in Africa, VI (1979), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

74 Laffitte, Abbé, Le Dahomé (Tours, 1873), 73.Google Scholar

75 Aguessy, Honorat, ‘Du mode d'existence de l'Etat sous Ghezo’ (unpublished thesis, troisième cycle, University of Paris, 1970), 230.Google Scholar

76 Le Hérissé, , Royaume, 120–23Google Scholar; Herskovits, and Herskovits, , Outline, 31.Google Scholar

77 Houseman, Michael, Legonou, Blandine, Massy, Christiane and Crepin, Xavier, ‘Note sur la structure évolutive d'une ville historique’, Cah. Ét. afr. XXVI (1986), 542–4.Google Scholar

78 Herskovits, , Dahomey, i, 230–1.Google Scholar

79 Maupoil, , Géomancie, 65.Google Scholar

80 Herskovits, and Herskovits, , Outline, 35Google Scholar; Maupoil, , Géomancie, 47.Google Scholar

81 Maupoil, , Géomancie, 48.Google Scholar

82 Maupoil (ibid. 153–4) was able to cite only two women during the entire history of the kingdom who became bokonon or diviners of Fa. As princesses, both were socially male.

83 Ibid. 86–91, 99–100.

84 Ibid. 66.

85 Ibid. 68–9, 136.

86 Chaudoin, E., Trois Mois de Captivité au Dahomey (Paris, 1891), 269.Google Scholar

87 Maupoil, , Géomancie, 162.Google Scholar

88 Burton, , Mission, i, 152.Google Scholar

89 Glele, Sagbaju, Abomey, 1972.Google Scholar

90 d'Almeida, , ‘Dahomey,’ ii, 335, n. 1.Google Scholar

91 Glele, Agbalu, Abomey, 1972.Google Scholar

92 ‘Rapport addessé par l'interprète X. Béraud à Monsieur le Résident de France aux Etablissements du Golfe de Bénin’, 12 03 1891Google Scholar. Dossier 1E3, Register X, National Archives of Benin.

93 Peines Disciplinaires, 21 02 1906, 16 12 1906Google Scholar. Unclassified archives of the souspréfecture of Abomey.

94 d'Albeca, Alexandre L., La France au Dahomey (Paris, 1895), 185, 188, 193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

95 d'Albeca (ibid. 94) quotes the messenger as saying ‘Je suis chargé de te dire que tu ne fais plus partie de la maison d'Alada. Tu as empoisonné ton frère Sassé, tu as empoisonné ton père. Les dieux t'abandonnent. Ton règne a été plus mauvais que celui d'Adandozan. Tu as perdu le Dahomey. Tu n'es plus rien pour nous.’

96 Carnets du Général Tahon: Avec les bâtisseurs de l'Empire (Paris, 1949), 65–6Google Scholar. Three other sources acknowledge the death of the kpojito by Behanzin's hand: Moulero, Abbé Th., ‘Conquête de Kétou par Glele et conquête d'Abomey par la France’, Etudes Dahoméennes, n.s. IV (1965), 67Google Scholar; Glélé, , ‘Dan-hô-min’, 73Google Scholar; and Leprince, Jules, Mes Deux Premiers Voyages (Coulommiers, 1897), 185.Google Scholar

97 The author is currently preparing a book-length study that explores these trends more fully.