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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash miss and history, or Twitter at miss in history or tumbler is missing history dot com, laer dot com. We're also on pandriss at pinterest dot com slash miss in history. Our spreadshirt store, miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com has t shirts and phone cases and other good stuff like that. If you would like to learn more about what we have talked about today, you can't go to 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 about it. You can also come to our website, which is missed in history dot com, where we have show notes and an archive of every episode we've ever done. 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 other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com

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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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. We're also on Facebook at facebook dot com, slash miss and history, or Twitter at miss in history or tumbler is missing history dot com, laer dot com. We're also on pandriss at pinterest dot com slash miss in history. Our spreadshirt store, miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com has t shirts and phone cases and other good stuff like that. If you would like to learn more about what we have talked about today, you can't go to 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 about it. You can also come to our website, which is missed in history dot com, where we have show notes and an archive of every episode we've ever done. 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 other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com