Continuity, revolution or evolution on the slave coast of West Africa? Royal architecture and political order in precolonial Dahomey

Journal of African History

Volumn 48, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 349-373

  Monroe, J Cameron ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Archaeology; Architecture; Political; Slave trade; West Africa

Indexed keywords

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE; COLONIZATION; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; POLITICAL HISTORY; SLAVERY; SOVEREIGNTY;

AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WEST AFRICA;

EID: 37149048837     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853707002800     Document Type: Article

References (159)

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),
4. and Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa.
5. A. Adande, 'Togodu-Awute, capitale de l'ancien royaume d'Allada, étude d'une cité précoloniale d'après les sources orales, écrites et les données de l'archéologie' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, 3e Cycle, Université de Paris I, 1984);
6. A. Adande, 'Recherches à Togudu-Awute: Le Grand Ardres retrouvé', Cahiers des Archives du Sol, 1 (1987), 13-56;
7. A. Adande, 'Recherche sur la capitale de l'ancien royaume d'Allada', in D. A. Kuevi and D. Aguigah (eds.), Actes de la Quinzaine de l'Archéologie Togolaise 10 Janvier - 4 Féevrier (Lome, 1989), 103-16;
8. P. Brunach, 'West African landscapes and material culture: An archaeological investigation of intra-site variability at Savi, Bénin' (unpublished MA thesis, University of South Carolina, 2001)
9. K. Kelly, 'Transformation and continuity in Savi, a West African trade town: An archaeological investigation of culture change on the coast of Bénin during the 17th and 18th centuries' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1995);
10. K. Kelly, 'The archaeology of African-European interaction: investigating the social roles of trade, traders, and the use of space in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hueda kingdom, Republic of Bénin', World Archaeology, 28 (1997), 351-69;
11. K. Kelly, 'Using historically informed archaeology: Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hueda-Europe interaction on the coast of Bénin', Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 4 (1997), 353-66;
12. K. Kelly, 'Change and continuity in coastal Bénin', in C. DeCorse (ed.), West Africa During the Atlantic Slave Trade: Archaeological Perspectives (New York, 2001), 81-100;
13. N. Norman and K. Kelly, 'Landscape politics: The serpent ditch and the rainbow in West Africa', American Anthropologist, 106 (2004), 98-110.
14. For a review of American contributions, see J. C. Monroe, 'American archaeology in the Republic of Bénin: Recent achievements and future prospects', Antiquity, 79 (2005), http://antiquity.ac.uk/ projgall/monroe.
15. J. C. Monroe, 'The dynamics of state formation: The ethnohistory and archaeology of pre-colonial Dahomey' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 2003);
16. J. C. Monroe, 'The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project: Preliminary results of the 2000, 2001, and 2002 seasons', Nyame Akuma, 62 (2004), 2-10.
17. For a full discussion of existing sources, see Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 1-13.
18. W. J. Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey: A History and Ethnography of the Old Kingdom (Oxford, 1966);
19. M. Palau-Marti, Le roi-dieu an Bénin (Paris, 1964);
20. for similar perspectives see K. Polanyi, Dahomey and the Slave Trade: An Analysis of an Archaic Economy (Seattle, 1966),
21. and D. Ronen, 'Traditional Dahomey: A search for the "state" in precolonial Dahomey' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1975).
22. Argyle, The Fon of Dahomey, 55.
23. For comprehensive historiographical discussions, see Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa,
24. and E. Bay, Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey (Charlottesville, 1998).
25. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours.
26. Akinjogbin called the underlying ideology of this political order the 'Ebi social theory' (ibid. 16).
27. Ibid. 15.
28. Ibid. 205.
29. D. Ross, 'The anti-slave trade theme in Dahoman history: An examination of the evidence', History in Africa, 9 (1982), 263-71;
30. D. Ross, 'European models and West African history: Further comments on the recent historiography of Dahomey', History in Africa, 10 (1983), 293-305.
31. Ross, 'The anti-slave trade theme', 269.
32. A. Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, an Inland Kingdom of Africa (London, 1793);
33. R. Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, King of Dahomy (London, 1789).
34. For example, see Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa,
35. and R. Law, The Kingdom of Allada (Leiden, 1997).
36. R. Law, 'Ideologies of royal power: The dissolution and reconstruction of political authority on the "Slave Coast", 1680-1750', Africa, 57 (1987), 321-44.
37. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 349-50.
38. Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, 3.
39. J. C. Miller (ed.), The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History (Folkestone, 1980);
40. J. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, 1985).
41. Bay, Wives of the Leopard.
42. Ibid. 130.
43. P. Robertshaw, 'Sibling rivalry? The intersection of archaeology and history', History in Africa, 27 (2000), 261-86;
44. J. Vansina, 'Historians, are archeologists your siblings ?' History in Africa, 22 (1995), 369-408.
45. R. Carneiro, 'A theory of the origin of the state', Science, 169 (1970), 733-8;
46. E. Service, 'Classical and modern theories of the origins of government', in R. Cohen and E. Service (eds.), Origins of the State: The Anthropology of Political Evolution (Philadelphia, 1978), 21-34.
47. For a contrasting view on the evolutionary relationship between 'chiefdoms' and 'states', see N. Yoffee, 'Too many chiefs ? (or, Safe texts for the '90s)', in N. Yoffee and A. Sherratt (eds.), Archaeological Theory: Who Sets the Agenda? (Cambridge, 1993), 60-78. It is worth noting a semantic difference between the definition of the 'state' used here, and that used by contemporary Africanist historians, which tends to include all hierarchical societies with hereditary leaders. The anthropological definition in use here distinguishes socially stratified societies in which power is lineage-based (chiefdoms), from those in which power is largely class-based and in which leaders monopolize the use of coercive force (states). It is also important to acknowledge that this distinction is largely heuristic, and that 'complex societies' often fall somewhere between these extremes.
48. J. Blitz, 'Mississippian chiefdoms and the fission-fusion process', American Antiquity, 64 (1999), 577-92;
49. T. Earle, 'Chiefdoms in archaeological and ethnohistorical perspective', Annual Review of Anthropology, 16 (1987), 279-308.
50. A. Aidoo, 'Order and conflict in the Asante Empire: A study in interest group relations', African Studies Review, 20 (1977), 1-36;
51. R. Cohen: 'Evolution, fission, and the early state', in H. Claessen and P. Skalnik (eds.), The Study of the State (New York, 1981), 87-115;
52. P. Lloyd, 'Conflict theory and Yoruba Kingdoms', in I. M. Lewis (ed.), History and Social Anthropology (London, 1968), 25-58.
53. Carneiro, 'Theory'.
54. T. Earle, How Chiefs Come to Power: The Political Economy in Prehistory (Stanford, 1997);
55. M. Mann, The Sources of Social Power (2 vols.) (Cambridge, 1986), 1.
56. N. Yoffee, Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations (Cambridge, 2005), 38.
57. 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).
58. K. Flannery, 'The cultural evolution of civilizations', Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 3 (1972), 399-426;
59. 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.
60. 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.
61. See also contributions to McIntosh, Beyond Chiefdoms.
62. Aidoo, 'Order and conflict in the Asante Empire';
63. E. Brumfiel, 'Distinguished Lecture in Archeology: Breaking and entering the ecosystem - gender, class, and faction steal the show', American Anthropologist, 94 (1992), 551-67;
64. Lloyd, 'Conflict theory and Yoruba Kingdoms'.
65. R. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey: Moeurs, religion, histoire (Paris, 1911), 343-4.
66. Norris, Memoirs of the Reign of Bossa Ahádee, xii.
67. R. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome (London, 1864), 1, 64-5, 157, 309-10;
68. 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), 1, 73-4;
69. J. A. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is: Being a Narrative of Eight Months' Residence in that Country (London, 1874), 45, 89.
70. J. M'Leod, A Voyage To Africa: With some Account of the Manners and Customs of the Dahomian People (London, 1820), 47.
71. J. Parsons, 'Archaeological settlement patterns', Annual Review of Anthropology, 1 (1972), 127-50.
72. Ibid.
73. K. Schreiber, 'Conquest and consolidation: A comparison of the Wari and Inka occupations of a highland Peruvian valley', American Antiquity 52 (1987), 110-24;
74. C. Stanish, 'Nonmarket imperialism in a prehispanic context: The Inca occupation of the Titicaca Basin', Latin American Antiquity, 8 (1997), 1-18.
75. S. P. Blier, 'Razing the roof: The imperative of building destruction in Danhomè (Dahomey)', in T. Atkin and J. Rykwert (eds.), Structure and Meaning in Human Settlements (Philadelphia, 2005), 165-84.
76. Ibid.
77. For a recent discussion or these Das-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).
78. Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xi;
79. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 27-31.
80. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 27.
81. R. Law, 'Further light on Bulfinche Lambe and the "Emperor of Pawpaw": King Agaja of Dahomey's Letter to King George I of England, 1726', History in Africa, 17 (1990), 8.
82. J. Fakambi, Routes des esclaves au Bénin (ex-Dahomey) dans une approche régionale (Ouidah, 1993).
83. 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.
84. Dr. Akinwumi Ogundiran, personal communication, Sept. 2005; Dr. Aribidesi Usman, personal communication, Sept. 2005.
85. Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 184-5.
86. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 248-9.
87. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 154.
88. Da Amousou Folly, 21 July 2005, Agbanhizoun, Bénin.
89. Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xxii, 215-16;
90. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 11, 183-4;
91. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 26, 396.
92. Monroe, 'The dynamics of state formation', 274.
93. 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.
94. B. W. Hodder and U. I. Ukwu, Markets in West Africa: Studies of Markets and Trade among the Yoruba and Ibo (Ibadan, 1969), 57.
95. I. Hodder and C. Orton, Spatial Analysis in Archaeology (Cambridge, 1976).
96. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, 1, 226;
97. 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).
98. Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 248-9.
99. 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), 1: 282-3.
100. M. Herskovits, Dahomey: An Ancient West African Kingdom (Evanston IL, 1938), 30.
101. For a discussion of the concept of materialization, see E. DeMarrais, L. J. Castillo and T. Earle, 'Ideology, materialization and power strategies', Current Anthropology, 37 (1996), 15-31.
102. For an account of the role of officials in palace maintenance, see Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, II, 132.
103. Herskovits, Dahomey, 63-77.
104. B. Trigger, 'Monumental architecture: A thermodynamic explanation of symbolic behaviour', World Archaeology, 22 (1990), 119-32.
105. Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 119-28.
106. It is also possible that Agonglo, Adandozan's predecessor, was murdered (Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 155).
107. Adandozan is purported to have maintained a palace as a prince in Abomey (Suzanne Blier, personal communication, 13 April 2006).
108. 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.
109. Akinjogbin, Dahomey and its Neighbours, 200.
110. Da Nondichao Kpengla, 22 JUly 2005, Abomey, Bénin.
111. Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 172-3;
112. Soumonni, 'Compatibility', 80-1.
113. Manning, Slavery, 332.
114. 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;
115. J. Moore, 'Pattern and meaning in prehistoric Peruvian architecture: The architecture of social control in the Chimu state', Latin American Antiquity, 3 (1992), 95-113;
116. A. Smith, The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities (Berkeley, 2003).
117. Smith, The Political Landscape.
118. T. Antongini and T. G. Spini, Les palais royaux d'Abomey: Espace, architecture, dynamique socio-anthropologique (Paris, 1995), after Plan 3.
119. Ibid.
120. DeMarrais et al., 'Ideology, materialization and power strategies', 15-31.
121. 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'.
122. Monroe, 'The dynamics of state formation', 300;
123. Monroe, 'The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project', 7-8.
124. Blier, 'Razing the roof'.
125. Dalzel, The History of Dahomey, xx.
126. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, 1, 188.
127. Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 1, 64;
128. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 28 Mar. 2002, Cana, Bénin.
129. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 1, 18.
130. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin;
131. Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin.
132. Law, The Slave Coast of West Africa, 326.
133. B. Lambe in Forbes, Dahomey and the Dahomans, 1, 188.
134. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000.
135. For a description of temples with similar ground plans, see Le Herissé, L'ancien royaume du Dahomey, 359.
136. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000;
137. Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.
138. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000;
139. Da Bokpe 2002, 31 Mar., Cana, Bénin.
140. Monroe, 'The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project', 8.
141. Law, The Slave Coast and its Rulers, 334-40.
142. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000;
143. Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.
144. Da Glodji, 20 Mar. 2002, Cana, Bénin;
145. Da Soufe, 31 Mar. 2001, Cana, Bénin;
146. Djessou Aligbonon-non, 20 Aug. 2000, Cana, Bénin.
147. Da Glodji, 30 Mar. 2002.
148. Ibid.
149. 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.
150. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 13 Aug. 2000, 19 Jan. 2002;
151. Langanfin Ahonovi, 13 Aug. 2000.
152. Burton, A Mission to Gelele, 1, 216-49.
153. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 137-8.
154. Monroe, 'The Abomey Plateau Archaeological Project', 8.
155. Da Langanfin Glélé Aïhotogbé, 19 Jan. 2002.
156. Monroe, 'The dynamics of state formation', 334-7.
157. Bay, Wives of the Leopard.
158. Skertchly, Dahomey as it is, 454.
159. Bay, Wives of the Leopard, 130.