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African History 4: Dahomey 41 Views


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Description:

Despite the name, the Kingdom of Dahomey was not full of friendly people. Unless you were a slave trader...in which case, yes, they could have been your homies.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:04

The African kingdom of Dahomey was a major player in the slave trade.

00:08

By that we mean it was a Walmart-sized superstore for slaves. [People outside Walmart]

00:12

It was a great example of the kind of state the slave trade encouraged.

00:17

Turns out, in a dog-eat-dog world, you have to become a person-capturing-person state. [Dogs at a park and man catches another man in a net]

00:23

Some might ask…

00:25

How could Africans do that to other Africans?

00:27

Well, for one thing, during the Age of Exploration, there was no such thing as a pan-African identity. [Ship travels through age of exploration]

00:33

Meaning that people didn’t necessarily think of themselves as African.

00:37

There was a ginormous number of people living in Africa, with many different races, ethnicities,

00:43

and huge cultural differences.

00:45

Europeans might’ve seen people from Africa as one big lump of mashed potatoes. [European man looking at African man]

00:49

But people from the continent saw themselves as part of a complex casserole made of lots

00:53

of different ingredients.

00:55

Anyway, this is one of the reasons some kings in Africa didn't see anything too ethically

00:59

wrong with attacking different ethnic groups and nations and selling their people into [King Dahomey appears on pier]

01:03

slavery.

01:04

Totally different people.

01:05

So NBD, they thought.

01:07

That’s definitely how the rulers of the kingdom of Dahomey felt.

01:10

See, Dahomey had a… rough childhood. [Abomey kid appears]

01:14

It started as a small and weak city-state called Abomey.

01:17

The nearby Oyo Empire had beat up on it for a while. [Oyo empire hand hits abomey]

01:21

So Abomey absolutely hated Oyo and the whole Yoruba ethnic group to which the Oyo rulers

01:27

belonged.

01:28

But Oyo was powerful, and Abomey couldn’t do much about the abuse, except maybe write

01:33

mean things in its diary… [Abomey writing in his diary]

01:36

In the mid-17th century, however, a brutal absolute monarchy rose to power in Abomey.

01:40

The kingdom got organized with a rigid hierarchy of bureaucrats and an ever-expanding army. [Soldiers of Dahomey appear on cliff]

01:46

And by 1722, Abomey started to get even by conquering nearby Yoruba cities.

01:53

Gotta hand it them: they had a solid plan.

01:55

Capture towns with European slave-trading posts…

01:58

…then use those posts to export the Yoruba people to the Europeans for superior weapons… [Man hands over slaves]

02:03

…and finally, use those weapons to capture more Yoruba towns to get more weapons.

02:07

It worked like a charm.

02:09

Still, we don’t think the King of Dahomey would’ve been invited to do a Ted Talk… [King Dahomey on stage and security guard appears]

02:14

Next thing anybody knew, Abomey was renamed the Kingdom of Dahomey.

02:18

Over the next century, it became a bigger and bigger player in the human-selling game.

02:23

They could only keep control of their empire through superior weapons. [Dahomey with stockpile of weapons]

02:26

They could only get superior weapons by expanding their empire.

02:29

It was a vicious cycle that caused them to ship thousands of people out of their slave

02:34

ports.

02:35

One might almost feel bad for Dahomey. [Slave trade on a ship]

02:37

In a way, it was a… slave to its own slaving racket….

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