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CONTINUITY, REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION ON THE SLAVE COAST OF WEST AFRICA? ROYAL ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICAL ORDER IN PRECOLONIAL DAHOMEY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2007

J. CAMERON MONROE
J. CAMERON MONROE
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
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Abstract

The Kingdom of Dahomey has played a central role in our understanding of political organization in West Africa in the era of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Research has focused on two major questions: whether or not Dahomey possessed revolutionary qualities that allowed it to maintain order in this turbulent era, and the role of militarism in fostering stability. Mounting archaeological evidence from the Republic of Bénin can contribute to our understanding of Dahomean political dynamics over time. Spatial patterns in royal palace construction, materialized regionally and architecturally, are examined in this essay. These data suggest that Dahomey achieved real administrative advances in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the expansion of regional control and the successful integration of a complex administrative hierarchy.1

Keywords

West Africaarchaeologyarchitecturepoliticalslave trade
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 349 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 I would like to thank the editors of JAH and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this essay. I must also express my sincere gratitude to Merrick Posnansky, Alexis Adande, Joseph Adande, Elisée Soumonni, Zephiran Daavo, Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, Da Nondichao Kpengla and Christian Médard Assogba for providing invaluable assistance in shaping and implementing this research.

2 For a comprehensive discussion of early Dahomean history see R. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1550–1750: The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on an African Society (Oxford, 1991).

3 For competing perspectives, see A. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours, 1708–1818 (Cambridge, 1967), and Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa.

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8 Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey, 55.

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10 Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours.

11 Akinjogbin called the underlying ideology of this political order the ‘Ebi social theory’ (ibid. 16).

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29 T. Earle, How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory (Stanford, 1997); M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power (2 vols.) (Cambridge, 1986), i.

30 N. Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge, 2005), 38.

31 Archaeologists are increasingly cognizant of non-hierarchical strategies for avoiding political fission, and African examples have played a prominent role in this debate. This discussion is beyond the limits of this study, yet for notable examples see chapters in S. McIntosh (ed.), Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa (Cambridge, 1999).

32 Flannery, K., ‘The cultural evolution of civilizations’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 3 (1972), 399–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Haas, ‘Cultural evolution and political centralization’, in J. Haas (ed.), From Leaders to Rulers (New York, 2001), 3–18. African cases have also been successfully harnessed to dismiss the long-standing argument that the processes of state formation described here are ‘universal’ cultural phenomena. For a notable example, see I. Kopytoff, ‘The internal African frontier: the making of African political culture’, in I. Kopytoff (ed.), The African Frontier: The Reproduction of Traditional African Societies (Bloomington, 1987), 3–84. See also contributions to McIntosh, Beyond Chiefdoms.

33 Aidoo, ‘Order and conflict in the Asante Empire’; Brumfiel, E., ‘Distinguished Lecture in Archeology: breaking and entering the ecosystem – gender, class, and faction steal the show’, American Anthropologist, 94 (1992), 551–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lloyd, ‘Conflict theory and Yoruba Kingdoms’.

34 R. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey: moeurs, religion, histoire (Paris, 1911), 343–4.

35 Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, xii.

36 R. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London, 1864), i, 64–5, 157, 309–10; F. E. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans; Being the Journals of Two Missions to the King of Dahomey and Residence at His Capital in the Years 1849 and 1850 (London, 1851), i, 73–4; J. A. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is: Being a Narrative of Eight Months’ Residence in that Country (London, 1874), 45, 89.

37 J. M'Leod, A Voyage To Africa: With some Account of the Manners and Customs of the Dahomian People (London, 1820), 47.

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42 Ibid.

43 For a recent discussion of these bas-reliefs and an update on efforts towards their conservation, see F. Pique and L. Rainer, Palace Sculptures of Abomey: History Told on Walls (Los Angeles, 1999).

44 Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xi; Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 27–31.

45 Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 27.

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47 J. Fakambi, Routes des esclaves au Bénin (ex-Dahomey) dans une approche régionale (Ouidah, 1993).

48 Of the 14 nineteenth-century palaces represented in Fig. 1, 8 were attributed to King Glele. This suggests a phase of major regional expansion during Glele's reign.

49 Dr. Akinwumi Ogundiran, personal communication, Sept. 2005; Dr. Aribidesi Usman, personal communication, Sept. 2005.

50 Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 184–5.

51 Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 248–9.

52 Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 154.

53 Da Amousou Folly, 21 July 2005, Agbanhizoun, Bénin.

54 Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xxii, 215–16; Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, ii, 183–4; Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 26, 396.

55 Monroe, ‘The dynamics of state formation’, 274.

56 For a summary of domestic economic growth in nineteenth-century Dahomey, see P. Manning, Slavery, Colonialism and Economic Growth in Dahomey, 1640–1960 (Cambridge, 1982), 22–56.

57 B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, Markets in West Africa: Studies of Markets and Trade among the Yoruba and Ibo (Ibadan, 1969), 57.

58 I. Hodder and C. Orton, Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Cambridge, 1976).

59 Burton, A Mission to Gelele, i, 226; For a detailed analysis of Dahomean administration at Whydah, see R. Law, Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slaving ‘Port’ 1727–1892 (Athens OH, 2004).

60 Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 248–9.

61 For customs houses, or denun, in Dahomey, see J. Duncan, Travels in Western Africa, in 1845 & 1846, Comprising a Journey from Whydah, Through the Kingdom of Dahomey, to Adofoodia, in the Interior (2 vols.) (London, 1847), i: 282–3.

62 M. Herskovits, Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (Evanston IL, 1938), 30.

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68 It is also possible that Agonglo, Adandozan's predecessor, was murdered (Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 155).

69 Adandozan is purported to have maintained a palace as a prince in Abomey (Suzanne Blier, personal communication, 13 April 2006).

70 E. Soumonni, ‘The compatibility of the slave and palm oil trades in Dahomey, 1818–1858’, in R. Law (ed.), From Slave Trade To ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: The Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa (Cambridge, 1995), 79.

71 Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours, 200.

72 Da Nondichao Kpengla, 22 July 2005, Abomey, Bénin.

73 Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 172–3; Soumonni, ‘Compatibility’, 80–1.

74 Manning, Slavery, 332.

75 See, for example, S. Kent, ‘A cross-cultural study of segmentation, architecture, and the use of space’, in S. Kent (ed.), Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space: An Interdisciplinary Cross-Cultural Study (Cambridge, 1990), 127–52; Moore, J., ‘Pattern and meaning in prehistoric Peruvian architecture: the architecture of social control in the Chimu state’, Latin American Antiquity, 3 (1992), 95–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Smith, The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities (Berkeley, 2003).

76 Smith, The Political Landscape.

76 T. Antongini and T. G. Spini, Les palais royaux d'Abomey: espace, architecture, dynamique socio-anthropologique (Paris, 1995), after Plan 3.

78 Ibid.

79 DeMarrais et al., ‘Ideology, materialization and power strategies’, 15–31.

80 A total of six royal constructions were identified and mapped at Cana. Two of these have been excluded from this discussion. I have argued elsewhere that the first of these, built at Cana-Kpohon (Fig. 6c), was not a palace at all but rather a facility for housing slaves en route to the coast. The second, built at Cana-Mignonhi (Fig. 6f), was not finished and probably never occupied to any great extent, limiting its usefulness for this analysis. Descriptions of these structures can be found in Monroe, ‘The dynamics of state formation’, and Monroe, ‘The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project’.

81 Monroe, ‘The dynamics of state formation’, 300; Monroe, ‘The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project’, 7–8.

82 Blier, ‘Razing the roof’.

83 Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xx.

84 Burton, A Mission to Gelele, i, 188.

85 Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, i, 64; Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 28 Mar. 2002, Cana, Bénin.

86 Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, i, 18.

87 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin; Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin.

88 Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 326.

89 B. Lambe in Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, i, 188.

90 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000.

91 For a description of temples with similar ground plans, see Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 359.

92 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000; Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.

93 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000; Da Bokpe 2002, 31 Mar., Cana, Bénin.

94 Monroe, ‘The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project’, 8.

95 Law, The Slave Coast and its Rulers, 334–40.

96 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000; Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.

97 Da Glodji, 20 Mar. 2002, Cana, Bénin; Da Soufe, 31 Mar. 2001, Cana, Bénin; Djessou Aligbonon-non, 20 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin.

98 Da Glodji, 30 Mar. 2002.

99 Ibid.

100 Monroe, ‘The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project’, 8. These dates indicate only that this particular refuse mound was deposited quickly, and should not be read as a measure of the entire period of occupation for this palace.

101 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000, 19 Jan. 2002; Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.

102 Burton, A Mission to Gelele, i, 216–49.

103 Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 137–8.

104 Monroe, ‘The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project’, 8.

105 Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 19 Jan. 2002.

106 Monroe, ‘The dynamics of state formation’, 334–7.

107 Bay, Wives of the Leopard.

108 Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 454.

109 Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 130.