Behanzin

The prince who would rule as Behanzin was born on September 7, 1844, in the kingdom of Dahomey, a powerful state centered on the royal city of Abomey in present-day Benin ^[1]. His birth name was Kondo. He was a son of King Glele, who reigned from 1858 to 1889, and a member of the ruling dynasty that traced its origins to the seventeenth century ^[2].

Dahomey in the mid nineteenth century was one of the most centralized and militarized kingdoms in West Africa. Its economy had long depended on the Atlantic slave trade, and as European powers suppressed that commerce the kingdom shifted toward exports of palm oil grown and processed along the coast ^[2]. The royal court at Abomey maintained an elaborate ceremonial calendar, a professional army that included the famous corps of women soldiers Europeans called Amazons, and a dense administrative system that collected taxes and tribute ^[3].

As a prince, Kondo received the training expected of a potential heir: instruction in the history of the dynasty, participation in the annual customs that honored royal ancestors, and experience in military and diplomatic affairs. By the 1880s he had emerged as his father's designated successor and was already involved in negotiations with the French, who were pressing claims to the coastal port of Cotonou ^[1].

Glele died at the end of December 1889, at a moment of acute tension with France. French officials asserted that treaties signed in 1868 and 1878 had ceded Cotonou to them, a claim the Dahomean court rejected as a misrepresentation of agreements that had granted only limited trading rights ^[4]. Kondo had taken a hard line in talks with the French envoy Jean Bayol shortly before his father's death, and he came to power committed to defending the kingdom's control over its coast ^[1].

On taking the throne he assumed the name Behanzin, and adopted the shark as his royal symbol, an image that appears on the carved thrones, banners, and appliqué cloths produced by the palace workshops of Abomey ^[3]. Like every Dahomean king he was expected to expand or at least preserve the domain inherited from his predecessors, an obligation that made concessions to France politically dangerous at home ^[2].

The confrontation came quickly. In early 1890 French forces occupied Cotonou and fighting broke out between the colonial garrison and Dahomean troops, including women soldiers, at Cotonou and near Porto-Novo, a rival coastal state under French protection ^[4]. The first Franco-Dahomean war ended in October 1890 with a treaty signed at Whydah: Dahomey recognized the French position at Cotonou and the protectorate over Porto-Novo, and in exchange received an annual payment ^[1]. Both sides treated the settlement as a truce rather than a resolution.

For anyone asking who was Behanzin, the answer lies mostly in what happened next. Between 1890 and 1892 the king rebuilt and rearmed his forces, purchasing thousands of modern rifles and a number of artillery pieces, largely through German merchants operating at Whydah ^[5]. Dahomean raids continued along the Ouémé River valley, and in March 1892 an incident involving a French gunboat on the river gave Paris the pretext for a full invasion ^[4].

The second Franco-Dahomean war of 1892 was one of the hardest colonial campaigns France fought in West Africa. Colonel (later General) Alfred Dodds, a Senegalese-born officer, led a column of roughly two thousand troops, including French marines, Foreign Legionnaires, and Senegalese and Gabonese tirailleurs, up the Ouémé toward Abomey ^[5]. Behanzin's army contested the advance in a series of pitched battles over about seven weeks, most intensely around the villages of Dogba, Poguessa, and Cotopa, with the women's regiments repeatedly engaging at close quarters ^[5].

Dahomean losses were severe. Superior French firepower, particularly artillery and repeating rifles used with disciplined volley fire, wore down an army that fought with courage but could not replace its casualties ^[5]. After a final stand near Cana in early November 1892, Behanzin ordered Abomey evacuated and set fire to the royal palaces rather than surrender them intact. Dodds entered the burning capital on November 17, 1892 ^[4].

Behanzin did not capitulate when his capital fell. He withdrew north with a remnant of his followers and kept up a diplomatic and low-level military resistance for more than a year, sending emissaries to seek terms while refusing to place himself in French hands ^[1]. France meanwhile declared him deposed and in 1894 installed his kinsman Agoli-Agbo as a subordinate ruler over a reduced Abomey, an arrangement that lasted only until 1900, when the French abolished the monarchy outright ^[2].

In late January 1894 Behanzin finally surrendered to Dodds. The French refused to allow him to remain in the country and deported him with several wives, children, and attendants, first to the harbor of Cotonou and then across the Atlantic to Martinique, where the party was held at Fort Tartenson near Fort-de-France ^[6]. He repeatedly petitioned the French government to be allowed to return home, and in 1906 he was transferred instead to Algeria ^[1].

He died at Blida, Algeria, on December 10, 1906, without ever seeing Dahomey again ^[1]. His remains stayed in North Africa for more than two decades. In 1928 his son Ouanilo, who had become a lawyer in France, secured the return of the king's body to Abomey, where it was buried with royal honors ^[6].

Behanzin ruled within an institution in which power was shared among a large royal lineage, ministers, and influential palace women. Dahomean kingship paired every male official with a female counterpart inside the palace, and the king's mother, wives, and the women officers of the army formed part of the machinery of government rather than a private household ^[2]. His court also patronized the arts: the silver and wood sculptures, carved doors, and royal statues associated with his reign, including a celebrated half-man, half-shark figure, are among the best known works of nineteenth century West African art ^[3].

He fathered numerous children. The best documented is Ouanilo Behanzin, who accompanied his father into exile as a boy, was educated in Martinique and France, and was called to the Paris bar, becoming one of the first lawyers from French West Africa. Ouanilo spent years lobbying for his father's repatriation and died in 1928, shortly after escorting the king's remains home ^[6].

Contemporary French accounts painted Behanzin as a bloodthirsty tyrant, a portrayal that served to justify the invasion, while later historians have emphasized instead a ruler making calculated decisions under impossible pressure, modernizing his army and exploring every diplomatic channel before and during the wars ^[5]. Among the striking Behanzin facts recorded from his exile is his persistence: from Martinique he continued to write to French presidents and ministers asserting his rights and asking for justice ^[6].

Any honest account of Behanzin achievements must acknowledge that he lost his war, yet the manner of his resistance secured his reputation. He fought one of Europe's great powers for the better part of five years, refused personal surrender until his people's position was hopeless, and destroyed his own palaces rather than hand them over. In independent Benin he became a national hero: a large statue of the king stands in Abomey, raising a hand in a gesture read locally as a refusal to submit ^[7].

His afterlife is also bound up with the modern debate over colonial-era plunder. In the days after Abomey fell, French forces removed royal thrones, carved doors, statues of Kings Ghezo, Glele, and Behanzin, and other treasures, most of which entered the collections that became the Musée du quai Branly in Paris ^[7]. In November 2021, after years of campaigning by Benin and a 2018 report commissioned by the French government, France formally returned twenty-six of these works to Benin, one of the most significant restitutions of African heritage yet undertaken by a former colonial power ^[7].

Historians of West Africa treat his reign as a case study in the mechanics of the Scramble for Africa: a sophisticated state, aware of the danger, arming and reforming itself, and still overwhelmed by the industrial military resources of a European empire ^[5]. For readers seeking a fuller Behanzin biography, the scholarly literature on Dahomey by Edna Bay, Robin Law, and Stanley Alpern situates his choices within two centuries of the kingdom's political and military history ^[2].