CHAPTER TWO

DANXOM—A NARRATIVE OF PRIDE AND SUSPICION

Beware and take care in the Bight of , One came out where a thousand went in. (Anon)

Composing a state—the historical origins of the Republic of Benin

The modern Republic of Benin is an amalgam of several very distinct historical entities. These entities continue to subsist within the modern state and have meaning both for their subjects and for those to whom they represent the socio-cultural and political other. Long after they have ceased to exist as independent polities, they continue to play a role in shaping modern Benin, or, perhaps more accurately, in the dif culties that modern Benin has in taking on a stable political shape. The north-eastern Borgou department, largely co-extensive with the politically loose, feudal, Bariba kingdom, lies along the old caravan routes, stretching across the border into present-day and to the sahelian north. A northern kingdom, it has been in uenced by its position on the northern trade routes and a signi cant Fulani population. The north-western brings together several small, acephelous groups. No single entity here has emerged with any strength. But since the development of modern political activity in Benin, following the 1944 Brazzaville Conference, the Atakora has aligned itself with the Borgou in a well-documented northern alliance,1 which endures to the present day. The south-east of the country is mainly composed of Yoruba speaking peoples. They have traditionally looked to the Bariba in the north or to the Ouémé, and to the Kingdom of Porto Novo, which has its origins in the seventeenth-century kingdom of Aladà, with a strong in uence from Nigeria. These areas have lined up consistently behind their own

1 Martin Staniland, “The three party system in Dahomey: I, 1946–56”, Journal of African History, XIV, 2, 1973, 306–308. DANXOM—A NARRATIVE OF PRIDE AND SUSPICION 33 regional candidates in all modern political activity down to the present day, driving deals of political expediency with the other two entities at various times. The remaining departments of the Mono and the Atlantique and the Plateaux cover much of the small kingdoms of Xwedá, Aladà, and what was eventually to become, from the early part of the eighteenth century, the hegemonic kingdom of Danxom, with its centre in Agbm. All have, however, retained their very distinctive and separate character and presence in the political eld. Of all of these polities, however, the traditional kingdom of Danxom (literally, in the belly of the Vodn Dàn), with its centre at Agbm (literally, inside the rampart), was, and remains, of central importance in the modern state. Colonial Dahomey was dated from the defeat of the traditional kingdom, under Gbhanzn, by General Dodds in 1892. The choice of Dahomey as the name for the new colony was in itself signi cant. Le Hérissé, setting it apart in almost biblical terms, noted that it was indeed “worthy of holding the rst place among the tribes, its neighbours, henceforth brought together under the civilising authority of France”.2 In the eyes of the colonial power, the vanquished Danxom took on something of an almost mythical quality, and Agbm was to be ‘the heart’ of the new colony. The political organisation, Le Hérissé says, was “really extraordinary for a black country”. The kings were not just brutal despots but had also given the country a “strongly hierarchical administration, a permanent army and embryonic judicial and customs services”. This was almost modernity in comparison with Porto-Novo and Borgou, and certainly far beyond the stateless societies of the Atakora, the disparaged Somba. Le Hérissé saw in Danxom both a glorious victory for France and the cornerstone upon which the colonial edi ce could be built. The transatlantic slave trade brought tremendous pressure to bear on the societies of the Guinea coast. The the European traders vied among themselves and sought monopolies with the local powers and by the early seventeenth century the evidence suggests a Hobbesian scenario of a ‘war of all against all’ in the attempt to satisfy demand of the slave factories on the coast. Danxom, like Asante, emerged early in the eighteenth century as a response to the growing chaos, having

2 A. Le Hérissé, L’Ancien Royaume du Dahomey, Paris, 1911, 1.