Great Kingdom of Benin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdVIoaTq-5Q One thing to point out again the article from Robin Law again Page 21 http://www.fiu.edu/~ogundira/Law_Historiography_of_the_Rise_of_Dahomey.pdf "W.E.B. Dub Bois asserted that the evidence showed the supersession in West Africa of early coastal cultures characterized by city democracy and developed craft industries, by despotic militaristic empires such as Dahomey, and also Asante.)" Dahomey Economy http://stmarys.ca/~wmills/course316/7Dahomey.html "- Dahomey had a monetary system: cowry shells were the basic currency, but trade goods were used also—guns, bolts of cloth etc. - Europeans tried to take advantage of this currency; they brought so many cowry shells that the shells lost value (inflation). As a result, European trade goods became the basic currency used in the purchase of slaves.... - all trade with Europeans was a royal monopoly and guarded jealously by successive kings; kings never allowed Europeans to bypass and trade directly with people in the kingdom. As a military, predatory state, the costs of government and the military were high; thus,the king needed all the revenue from taxes and the profits of trade that he could get. - Europeans and their influence were confined to one port on the coast—Whydah." Wonders of the African World by Henry Louis Gates page 217 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375709487/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=304485901&pf;_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf;_rd_t=201&pf;_rd_i=B0000DG013&pf;_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf;_rd_r=0YH0JQ8VJ4CT28F7TKN9 The damaging effects of the slave trade were seen in the paralysis of courtly politics. Until 1670, King Tefizon of Allada opposed the unrestricted European trade in slaves. He had warned both the Dutch and the French that he wanted neither their ships nor their merchandise at his ports. At the same time, however, he faced opposition from sections of his court, and rebellion smoldered in his provinces. Jakin, a major port, had already broken away, hoping to monopolize trade with the Europeans. No sooner had it been brought back into the fold than Ouidah asserted its independence. The English arrived in Ouidah in 1681; the Dutch in 1682; and the Brandenburgers in 1684. There were numerous Portuguese and Brazilians living there. In 1704, the mélange of resident Europeans unilaterally declared Ouidah a free port and in 1708 enthroned King Huffon, then only a thirteen year old boy. The growing commerce in slaves rested in the hands of a few hereditary groups that themselves continually split into competing lawless factions. This chaos seemed to be spreading to Abomey The African Slave Trade by Basil Davidson page 235-236 http://www.amazon.com/African-Slave-Trade-Basil-Davidson/dp/0316174386/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid;=1249864609&sr;=1-1 The Dutch accounts show that these wars were generally to Benins advantage up to the middle of the seventeenth century. But after that a steep decline set in. Earlier wars of conquest were now giving way to wars for slaves, and the fabric of Benin society seems also to have suffered from this. In 1700 the well-informed Dutch agent at Elmina, William Bosman, was writing home to Holland that Benin no longer deserved the name of city. Formerly this village was very thick and close-built, he told his employers in Amsterdam, but now the Houses stand like poor mens corn, widely distant from each other. By this time, Fage adds in a modern comment, the continual warfare was destroying the prosperity and even the structure of the state. Large areas of the country had become depopulated and uncultivated. The armies returned with fewer and fewer slaves and sometimes destroyed each other in conflicts for what little booty there was to be found. The decay in Bini state power in any case continued, and fresh ways of manipulating or using that power at the center evidently failed to reverse the trend. The Atlantic trade could do nothing to help, but it seems that it did less to harm them in some other regions. War-captives were sold to the maritime traders who continued to visit the Benin rive, and possibly others were obtained by purchase from neighbors. But there is no evidence, Ryder tells us, that Benin ever organized a great slave-trading network similar to that which supplied the eastern delta of the Niger river, or indeed that Benin ever engaged in systematic raiding for captives. Ryder quotes an evidently characteristic case for 1798, when English ships bid for a total of nearly 20,000 captives in the eastern delta as against a mere thousand in the Benin river. Benin either could not or would not become a slave-trading state on the grand scale. If Benin continued to decay, it was from failure to carry through those modernizing adjustments which could have released new energies. Instead, a local priesthood acquired the power of something like a theocratic tyranny, and, with this, progress turned back upon itself.

• published: 10 Aug 2009
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