Latest / The Atlantic Slave Trade: Empire Built on Human Suffering — Fexingo History / The Dahomey Amazons: West Africa's All-Female Army
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about enslaved people resisting, but today I want to look at something almost paradoxical — a military force of women who fought to defend a kingdom built on the slave trade. The Dahomey Amazons. Luna: Wait, the Amazons — like the Greek myth? They were real in West Africa? Lucas: Very real, though the name 'Amazon' was slapped on by European observers. The Dahomey called them the Agooji — literally 'our mothers' in the Fon language. They were an elite corps of female soldiers that existed for over two centuries in the Kingdom of Dahomey, in what's now Benin. Lucas: They start appearing under King Houegbadja in the mid-1600s — initially as a bodyguard of royal wives armed with muskets. But it's under King Ghezo, who ruled from 1818 to 1858, that they become a full-scale military unit. Luna: How many women are we talking about? Lucas: At their peak under Ghezo, estimates range from four to six thousand — about a third of Dahomey's standing army. They lived in the royal palace at Abomey, and they were forbidden to have children or marry. The king was considered their husband. Lucas: Recruitment was partly voluntary — women who didn't want to marry, or who wanted status — but also coercive. The king could demand daughters from his subjects, and some women were sent as punishment for their families' crimes. Luna: So it's a mix of opportunity and force. Lucas: Exactly. Once in, they trained harder than the men. They went through obstacle courses of thorny acacia branches, they practiced with muzzle-loading muskets until they could reload in under thirty seconds, and they specialized in close combat with long razor-sharp machetes. Lucas: European visitors were stunned. A British trader named John Duncan visited in the 1840s and described them drilling with captured enemy heads. And Sir Richard Burton — yes, that Richard Burton — wrote about them in the 1860s with a mix of admiration and disgust. Luna: Burton the explorer? The one who translated the Kama Sutra? Lucas: The very same. He called them 'hermaphrodites in mind and body' — which is his era's weird way of saying he couldn't categorize them. But he also admitted they were 'superior to the men in discipline and courage.' Lucas: Now here's the uncomfortable part. Dahomey's economy depended entirely on raiding neighboring kingdoms for captives to sell to European slave traders. The Amazons were key to those raids. They'd march for days, surround villages at dawn, and take everyone who couldn't escape. Luna: So they were literally slave catchers. Lucas: Yes. And some of them had been captured themselves as children, raised in the palace, and inducted into the corps. Their loyalty was to the king and to each other — not to the enslaved people they captured. Lucas: But they also fought to defend Dahomey from outside threats. In 1890, the French were pushing inland from the coast, and King Behanzin — Ghezo's son — faced them with his army, including the Amazons. The first conflict was at a place called Cotonou. Luna: I've heard of Cotonou — it's the economic capital of Benin today. Lucas: Right. In 1890, it was just a coastal village with a French fort. The Dahomey attacked, the Amazons leading the charge. French reports describe them advancing through machine-gun fire, climbing over their dead, and forcing the French to retreat. They held the French off for two years. Lucas: But by 1892, the French had brought in reinforcements under Colonel Alfred Dodds — a mixed-race officer from Senegal who understood African warfare. He had modern artillery, and the Amazons had muzzle-loaders and machetes. Luna: It sounds like a slaughter. Lucas: It was. The final battle was at the palace of Abomey itself. Dodds's troops shelled the city, and the Amazons made a last stand in the palace courtyards. Most died. Some survivors fled into the countryside; others were captured and executed or sold into slavery by the French themselves. Lucas: And that's the end of the Agooji as a fighting force. But their legacy survived in oral tradition, and in the 20th century they became a symbol of female empowerment — even though their story is inseparable from the slave trade. Luna: That's such a complicated legacy. They were warriors, but they were also oppressors. Lucas: And they were themselves sometimes coerced. It's a reminder that resistance and collaboration aren't always neat categories. Luna: Speaking of resources — you know, every time we dig into a topic like this, it's because listeners help keep the show ad-free. A couple of dollars a month genuinely makes a difference. If you've gotten something out of these conversations, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo is where you can chip in. Lucas: Yeah, it's that simple. No tiers, no perks — just knowing you're helping the show exist. And it really does keep us free to tackle the stories that aren't in the textbooks. Luna: So back to the Amazons — what happened to the survivors after the French conquest? Lucas: Some were absorbed into French colonial households as servants or concubines. A few lived into old age in villages around Abomey. The last known Amazon, a woman named Nawi, died in 1979 at well over a hundred years old. She was interviewed by a Beninese historian in the 1970s. Luna: She lived to see independence. Lucas: She did. And she told the historian that she had killed men in battle, but that she had also been afraid — that the Amazons were not superhuman, just women who had no other choice. Luna: That's a powerful ending to their story. Lucas: It is. And it's a reminder that even the most celebrated warriors were human, caught in systems larger than themselves.