The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located where the Republic of Benin current exists. Dahomey developed amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by conquering key cities on the Atlantic coast. It existed from around 1600 to 1904.
The Dahomey Amazons (N’Nonmiton). A sub-saharan band of female warriors who left their European colonisers shaking in their boots.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was a key power in the west African region and had an organized domestic economy build across several pillars including an organised military, international trade, and diplomatic relations, and a taxation system.
N’Nonmiton - The Dahomey Amazons
From daughters to soldiers, from wives to weapons, there warriors were a group of women who left the European colonisers with great fear. The observers at the time named them the Dahomey Amazons, but they were know locally as N’Nonmiton, which meant “our mothers”.
The last N’Nonmiton died in 1979 at the age of 100 – she was Nawi.
In addition to the N’Nonmito; the kingdom had significant artwork and the elaborate religious practices of Vodun.
"Uhun ekpen ighi wi ye oha" - The head of the leopard does not get lost in the forest"
Vodun - The Ancient West African Religion
Vodun means “Spirit” in the in the Fon, Gun and Ewe languages. Vodun centers around the vodun spirits and other elements of divine essence that control the Earth. Involvement in the West African Vodun emphasize ancestor worship and holds that the spirits of the dead live side by side with the world of the living. Each family of spirits are believed to have its own female priesthood.
The individual deities of vodun have all the character of the gods of ancient Greece — some capricious, some seductive, some full of wrath.
Vodun is practiced by around 30 million people in the West African nations of Benin, Togo and Ghana. With its countless deities, animal sacrifice and spirit possession, voodoo — as it’s known to the rest of the world — is one of the most misunderstood religions on the globe.
The Decline of the Kingdom
After the 1840s the Kingdom began to loosen some of it’s ties. It’s during this time period that the Kingdom was additionally weakened by military defeat from Abeokuta, a Yoruba city-state which was founded as a safe haven for refugees escaping slave raids from Dahomey. Dahomey later began experiencing territorial pressures as France looked to assert it’s dominance and influence in the region. This led to the First Franco-Dahomean War in 1890 which ended in in French victory.
The kingdom finally fell in 1894 when the last king, Béhanzin, was defeated by France in the Second Franco-Dahomean War, leading to the country being annexed into French West Africa as the colony of French Dahomey.
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