Glele, or Badohou (died December 29, 1889), was the tenth King of Dahomey, ruling from 1858 until his suicide in 1889.
Glele, or Badohou (died December 29, 1889), was the tenth King of Dahomey, ruling from 1858 until his suicide in 1889.
Badohou, who took the throne name Glele, is considered (if Adandozan is not counted) to be the tenth King of the Aja kingdom of Dahomey (part of modern-day Benin). [1] He succeeded his father, Ghezo, and ruled from 1858 to 1889. [1]
Glele continued his father's successful war campaigns, in part to avenge his father's death, and to capture slaves. During his rule he sustained Dahomey's renaissance as a center of palm oil sales and slave trade. [1] Glele also signed treaties with the French, who had previously acquired a concession in Porto-Novo from its king. The French were successful in negotiating with Glele and receiving a grant for a customs and commerce concession in Cotonou during his reign. Glele resisted British diplomatic overtures, however, distrusting their manners and noting that they were much more activist in their opposition to the slave trade: though revolutionary France itself had outlawed slavery at the end of the 18th century it allowed the trade to continue elsewhere; Britain outlawed slavery in the United Kingdom and its overseas possessions in 1833, [2] and had its navy make raids against slavers along the West African coast [2] starting in 1840.
Glele's symbols are the lion and the ritual knife of the adepts of Gu (Vodou of fire, iron, war, and cutting edges). His favorite wife was Visesegan. [3] Another wife was the Yoruba-speaking high official Miagbe, with whom he had three sets of twin offspring, the eldest of whom was Yaya Migansi; Miagbe was rewarded by being honoured with an independent household, land and servants. [4]
Glele, despite the formal end of the slave trade and its interdiction by the Europeans, and New World powers, continued slavery as a domestic institution: his fields were primarily cared for by slaves, and slaves became a major source of 'messengers to the ancestors' (sacrificial victims) in ceremonies. [5] In 1860, he met with William Foster, captain of the Clotilda , the final ship to (illegally) take slaves to the United States, presumably to approve the sale. [6]
Near the end of Glele's reign, relations with France deteriorated due to Cotonou's growing commercial influence and differences of interpretation between Dahomey and France over the extent and terms of the Cotonou concession grant. Glele died suddenly just before the French arrived for negotiations, possibly by suicide. [1] [7] Glele's son Prince Kondo handled negotiations with the French.
Glele died on December 29, 1889, to be succeeded by his son Kondo, who took the name Béhanzin.
The Kingdom of Dahomey was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic Slave Trade.
Cotonou is the largest city in Benin. Its official population count was 679,012 inhabitants in 2012; however, over two million people live in the larger urban area.
Agonglo was a King of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1789 until 1797. Agonglo took over from his father King Kpengla in 1789 and inherited many of the economic problems that developed during Kpengla's reign. Because of the poor economy, Agonglo was often constrained by domestic opposition. As a response, he reformed many of the economic policies and did military expeditions to try to increase the supply for the Atlantic slave trade. Many of these efforts were unsuccessful and European traders became less active in the ports of the kingdom. As a final effort, Agonglo accepted two Portuguese Catholic missionaries which resulted in a large outcry in royal circles and resulted in his assassination on May 1, 1797. Adandozan, his second oldest son, was named the new king.
Adandozan was a king of the Kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, from 1797 until 1818. His rule ended with a coup by his brother Ghezo who then erased Adandozan from the official history resulting in high uncertainty about many aspects of his life. Adandozan took over from his father Agonglo in 1797 but was quite young at the time and so there was a regent in charge of the kingdom until 1804. Dealing with the economic depression that had defined the administrations of his father Agonglo and grandfather Kpengla, Adandozan tried to reduce slavery to decrease European trade, and when these failed reform the economy to focus on agriculture. Unfortunately, these efforts did not end domestic dissent and in 1818 at the Annual Customs of Dahomey, Ghezo and Francisco Félix de Sousa, a powerful Brazilian slave trader, organized a coup d'état and replaced Adandozan. He was left alive and lived until the 1860s hidden in the palaces while he was largely erased from official royal history.
Ghezo, also spelled Gezo, was King of Dahomey from 1818 until 1858. Ghezo replaced his brother Adandozan as king through a coup with the assistance of the Brazilian slave trader Francisco Félix de Sousa. He ruled over the kingdom during a tumultuous period, punctuated by the British blockade of the ports of Dahomey in order to stop the Atlantic slave trade.
Gbehanzin also known as Béhanzin is considered the eleventh King of Dahomey, modern-day Republic of Benin. Upon taking the throne, he changed his name from Kondo.
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not automatically emancipate those enslaved at the time, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.
The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu or Agadja are a Gbe ethnic group. They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest Nigeria and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the Fon language, a member of the Gbe languages.
The Catholic Church in Benin is part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope in Rome.
The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.
Ouidah or Whydah, and known locally as Glexwe, formerly the chief port of the Kingdom of Whydah, is a city on the coast of the Republic of Benin. The commune covers an area of 364 km2 (141 sq mi) and as of 2002 had a population of 76,555 people.
Wanderer was the penultimate documented ship to bring an illegal cargo of enslaved people from Africa to the United States, landing at Jekyll Island, Georgia, on November 28, 1858. It was the last to carry a large cargo, arriving with some 400 people. Clotilda, which transported 110 people from Dahomey in 1860, is the last known ship to bring enslaved people from Africa to the US.
The First Franco-Dahomean War was fought in 1890 between France, led by General Alfred-Amédée Dodds, and Dahomey under King Béhanzin.
The schooner Clotilda was the last known U.S. slave ship to bring captives from Africa to the United States, arriving at Mobile Bay, in autumn 1859 or on July 9, 1860, with 110 African men, women, and children. The ship was a two-masted schooner, 86 feet (26 m) long with a beam of 23 ft (7.0 m).
Africatown, also known as AfricaTown USA and Plateau, is a historic community located three miles (5 km) north of downtown Mobile, Alabama. It was formed by a group of 32 West Africans, who in 1860 were bought and transported against their will in the last known illegal shipment of slaves to the United States. The Atlantic slave trade had been banned since 1808, but 110 slaves held by the Kingdom of Dahomey were smuggled into Mobile on the Clotilda, which was burned and scuttled to try to conceal its illicit cargo. More than 30 of these people, believed to be ethnic Yoruba, Ewe, and Fon, founded and created their own community in what became Africatown. They retained their West African customs and language into the 1950s, while their children and some elders also learned English. Cudjo Kazoola Lewis, a founder of Africatown, lived until 1935 and was long thought to be the last survivor of the slaves from the Clotilda living in Africatown.
The Royal Palaces of Abomey are 12 palaces spread over an area of 40 hectares at the heart of the Abomey town in Benin, formerly the capital of the West African Kingdom of Dahomey. The Kingdom was founded in 1625 by the Fon people who developed it into a powerful military and commercial empire, which dominated trade with European slave traders on the Slave Coast until the late 19th century, to whom they sold their prisoners of war. At its peak the palaces could accommodate up to 8000 people. The King's palace included a two-story building known as the "cowrie house" or akuehue. Under the twelve kings who succeeded from 1625 to 1900, the kingdom established itself as one of the most powerful of the western coast of Africa.
Slavery in South Africa existed from 1653 in the Dutch Cape Colony until the abolition of slavery in the British Cape Colony on 1 January 1834. This followed the British banning the trade of slaves between colonies in 1807, with their emancipation by 1834. Beyond legal abolition, slavery continued in the Transvaal though a system of inboekstelsel.
The History of the Kingdom of Dahomey spans 400 years from around 1600 until 1904 with the rise of the Kingdom of Dahomey as a major power on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Benin until French conquest. The kingdom became a major regional power in the 1720s when it conquered the coastal kingdoms of Allada and Whydah. With control over these key coastal cities, Dahomey became a major center in the Atlantic Slave Trade until 1852 when the British imposed a naval blockade to stop the trade. War with the French began in 1892 and the French took over the Kingdom of Dahomey in 1894. The throne was vacated by the French in 1900, but the royal families and key administrative positions of the administration continued to have a large impact in the politics of the French administration and the post-independence Republic of Dahomey, renamed Benin in 1975. Historiography of the kingdom has had a significant impact on work far beyond African history and the history of the kingdom forms the backdrop for a number of novels and plays.
Sir William Robert Wolseley Winniett was the Governor General of Gold Coast at Cape Coast Castle (Ghana). He worked to abolish the slave trade on the Slave Coast of West Africa.
Yaya Migansi or Houekode was a princess of Dahomey, a kingdom in present-day Benin. Her father was Glele, who was the 10th king of Dahomey from 1858 to 1889. Her mother was Miagbe, also known as Hoonon Magnitin who gave birth to three sets of twins with Glele; Migansi was the first-born of the eldest pair of twins. Her name was Houekode, and the epithet "Yaya", an affectionate term meaning "old woman" is thought to refer to her mother. As her father was the future king, she and her sister were married to the two leading ministers of the kingdom: the name "Migansi" means wife or dependant of the "Migan" or prime minister.