Dahomey Amazons

The Dahomey Amazons (Fon:"Mino" or "Minon") were a Fon all-female military regiment of the Kingdom of Dahomey which existed until 1904. They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the mythical Amazons of ancient Anatolia and the Black Sea. This unusual emergence of an all-female military regiment was the result of Dahomey's male population facing high casualties in frequent warfare with neighboring West African states, as well as Dahomey being forced to annually give male slaves to the Oyo Empire. The lack of men likely led the kings of Dahomey to recruit women into the army.[1]

The Dahomey Amazons around 1890

Origin

King Houegbadja (who ruled from 1645 to 1685), the third King of Dahomey, is said to have originally started the group which would become the Amazons as a corps of elephant hunters called the gbeto. [2]

Houegbadja's daughter Queen Hangbe (ruling from 1708 to 1711) established a female bodyguard. European merchants recorded their presence. According to tradition, her brother and successor King Agaja successfully used them in Dahomey's defeat of the neighbouring kingdom of Savi in 1727.[3] The group of female warriors was referred to as Mino, meaning "Our Mothers" in the Fon language, by the male army of Dahomey.[4] Other sources contest the claim that King Agaja's older sister Queen Hangbe was the ruler to establish the units, some even going so far as to question whether or not Queen Hangbe actually existed.[5]

From the time of King Ghezo (ruling from 1818 to 1858), Dahomey became increasingly militaristic. Ghezo placed great importance on the army, increasing its budget and formalizing its structure from ceremonial to a serious military. While European narratives refer to the women soldiers as "Amazons", they called themselves ahosi (king's wives) or Mino (our mothers).[3]

In 1864, Captain Sir Richard F. Burton documented over two thousand masculine tribeswomen serving as warriors and reported how two-thirds of them were maidens with passions and love between each other. He also mentioned “a corps of prostitutes” kept for the Amazons’ use. Several years earlier, in 1850, English naval officer Frederick Forbes wrote down his own observations: “The Amazons are not supposed to marry, and, by their own statement, they have changed their sex. ‘We are men,’ they say, ‘not women.’ All dress alike, diet alike, and male and female emulate each other: what the males do, the Amazons will endeavour to surpass.” One Amazon chief asserted her gender transformation as follows: “As the blacksmith takes an iron bar and by fire changes its fashion, so we have changed our nature. We are no longer women, we are men.” The Amazon she-warriors assured victory to an entire line of Dahomey kings for nearly three centuries from the 1600s onward. At their peak in the early nineteenth century, Amazon women numbered as high as six thousand and comprised nearly a third of the Dahomey army.[6]

Recruitment
Seh-Dong-Hong-Beh, a leader of the Amazons, drawing by Frederick Edwyn Forbes, 1851

Ghezo recruited both men and women soldiers from foreign captives, though women soldiers were also recruited from free Dahomean women, some enrolled as young as 8 years old.[3] Other accounts indicate that the Mino were recruited from among the ahosi ("king's wives") of which there were often hundreds.[7] Some women in Fon society became soldiers voluntarily, while others were involuntarily enrolled if their husbands or fathers complained to the king about their behaviour.

Membership among the Mino was supposed to hone any aggressive character traits for the purpose of war. During their membership they were not allowed to have children or be part of married life (though they were legally married to the king). Many of them were virgins. The regiment had a semi-sacred status, which was intertwined with the Fon belief in Vodun.

The Mino trained with intense physical exercise. They learnt survival skills and indifference to pain and death, storming acacia-thorn defenses in military exercises and executing prisoners.[8] Discipline was emphasised.

Serving in the Mino offered women the opportunity to "rise to positions of command and influence" in an environment structured for individual empowerment.[3] The Mino were also wealthy and held high status.[8]

Political role

The Mino took a prominent role in the Grand Council, debating the policy of the kingdom. From the 1840s to 1870s (when the opposing party collapsed), they generally supported peace with Abeokuta and stronger commercial relations with England, favouring the trade in palm oil above that in slaves; this set them at odds with their male military colleagues.[9]

Apart from the council, the Annual Customs of Dahomey included a parade and reviewing of the troops, and the troops swearing of an oath to the king. The celebrations on the 27th day of the Annual Customs consisted of a mock battle in which the Amazons attacked a "fort" and "captured" the slaves within,[9] a custom recorded by the priest Francesco Borghero in his diaries.[8]

Combat and structure

The women soldiers were rigorously trained and given uniforms. By the mid-19th century, they numbered between 1,000 and 6,000 women, about a third of the entire Dahomey army, according to reports written by visitors. These documented reports also indicated that the women soldiers suffered several defeats.

The women soldiers were said to be structured in parallel with the army as a whole, with a center wing (the king's bodyguards) flanked on both sides, each under separate commanders. Some accounts note that each male soldier had a female warrior counterpart.[3] In an mid-19th century account by an English observer, it was documented that the women that had three stripes of whitewash around each leg, were honored with marks of distinction.[10]

The women's army consisted of a number of regiments: huntresses, riflewomen, reapers, archers and gunners. Each regiment had different uniforms, weapons and commanders.[1]

In the latter period, the Dahomean female warriors were armed with Winchester rifles, clubs and knives. Units were under female command. An 1851 published translation of a war chant of the women claims the warriors would chant, "a[s] the blacksmith takes an iron bar and by fire changes its fashion so have we changed our nature. We are no longer women, we are men."[11]

Conflict with neighbouring kingdoms

The Dahomey kingdom was often at war with its neighbors, and captives were needed for the slave trade. The Dahomey women soldiers fought in slave raids, as referenced in the Zora Neale Hurston non-fiction work Barracoon,[12] and in the unsuccessful wars against Abeokuta.

Conflict with France

First Franco-Dahomean War

European encroachment into West Africa gained pace during the latter half of the 19th century, and in 1890 King Béhanzin started fighting French forces in the course of the First Franco-Dahomean War. European observers noted that the women "handled admirably" in hand-to-hand combat, but fired their flintlocks from the hip rather than firing from the shoulder.[8] The Amazons participated in one major battle: Cotonou, where thousands of Dahomey (including many Amazons) charged the French lines and engaged the defenders in hand-to-hand combat. Despite the compliments given to them by the Europeans, the Amazons were decisively crushed, with several hundred Dahomey troops being gunned down while reportedly 129 Dahomey were killed in melee combat within the French lines.[13]

Second Franco-Dahomean War

By the end of the Second Franco-Dahomean War, special units of the Amazons were being assigned specifically to target French officers.[14] After several battles, the French prevailed in the Second Franco-Dahomean War and put an end to the independent Dahomean kingdom. French soldiers, particularly of the French Foreign Legion, were impressed by the boldness of the Amazons and later wrote about their "incredible courage and audacity" in combat. Against a military unit with decidedly superior weaponry and a longer bayonet, however, the Dahomey Amazons could not prevail.[9] During a battle with French soldiers at Adegon on 6 October during the second war, the bulk of the Amazon corps were wiped out in a matter of hours in hand-to-hand combat after the French engaged them with a bayonet charge.

Group portrait of the so-called "Amazons from Dahomey" during their stay in Paris.

Disbandment and legacy
Veterans at the annual meeting in Abomey in 1908

The troops were disbanded when the kingdom became a French protectorate.[15] Oral tradition states that some surviving amazons secretly remained in Abomey afterwards, where they quietly assassinated a number of French officers. Other stories say the women pledged their services in protection of Agoli-Agbo, the brother of Béhanzin, disguising themselves as his wives in order to guard him.[16]

Some of the women married and had children, while others remained single. According to a historian who traced the lives of almost two dozen ex-amazons, all the women displayed difficulties adjusting to life as retired warriors, often struggling to find new roles in their communities that gave them a sense of pride comparable to their former lives. Many displayed a tendency to start fights or arguments that frightened their neighbours and relatives.[16]

Between 1934 and 1942, several British travellers in Abomey recorded encounters with ex-amazons, now old women who spun cotton or idled around courtyards.[17] An unknown number of women are said to have trained with the members of the Dahomey Amazons after they were disbanded, in effect continuing the tradition. They never saw combat. Around 2019, Lupita Nyong'o interviewed one of these who was still alive.[18]

Nawi, the last Dahomey Amazon

The last survivor of the Dahomey Amazons is thought to have been a woman named Nawi. In a 1978 interview in the village of Kinta, a Beninese historian met Nawi, who claimed to have fought the French in 1892.[8] Nawi died in November 1979, aged well over 100.[8]

Actress Thuso Mbedu portrays Nawi in the American historical epic film The Woman King.[19] She stars alongside Viola Davis, Lashana Lynch, and John Boyega. The film is scheduled to be released on September 16, 2022.[20]

UNESCO comic novel

In 2015, UNESCO published the comic novel The women soldiers of Dahomey as part of their UNESCO Series on Women in African History.[21][1] As an artistic and visual interpretation intended for private or public use in classrooms,[22] it tells the story of the Amazons in connection with European colonial rule in Africa and ends with their legacy for the present-day Republic of Benin: "In addition to the imprint that they have left on the collective memory, the women soldiers bequeathed to the Republic of Benin dances that are performed to this day in Abomey, songs and legends. There are many women soldiers in Benin’s armed forces today. They keep the memory of the women soldiers of the Kingdom of Dahomey alive."[23]

Dahomey Amazons were represented in the 1987 film Cobra Verde by German director Werner Herzog.

Ghezo's Amazons play a significant role in the novel Flash for Freedom! by George MacDonald Fraser.

The warriors are also the main focus and written about in Layon Gray's stage play The Dahomey Warriors.[24]

The Dora Milaje, warriors and bodyguards of the Marvel Comics character Black Panther, are partially based on the Dahomey Amazons.[25]

In Age of Empires II: The African Kingdoms and Age of Empires III: The African Royals there is a female unit named Gbeto that is influenced by and named after Dahomey Amazons.

In the Lovecraft Country episode "I Am", Hippolyta is transported to a world where she becomes a Dahomey warrior.

"The Last Amazon of Dahomey" is a play in the Booker Prize-winning novel of 2019 called Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo.

See also

Sources

 This article incorporates text derived from a free content work. Licensed under C-BY-SA 3.0 IGO Licensed text taken from The women soldiers of Dahomey, UNESCO. To learn how to add open license text to Wikipedia articles, please see this how-to page. For information on reusing text from Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia's terms of use.

References
  1. Serbin, Sylvia; Masioni, Pat; Joubeaud, Edouard; Adande, Joseph C. E.; UNESCO (2015). The women soldiers of Dahomey (PDF). UNESCO Women in African History. Paris: UNESCO. ISBN 978-92-3-100115-4. Retrieved October 31, 2018.
  2. Alpern 1998, p. 20.
  3. Law 1993.
  4. Alpern 1998, p. 44.
  5. Macdonald, Fleur (August 26, 2018). "The legend of Benin's fearless female warriors". BBC. Retrieved August 26, 2018.
  6. "GALVA-108| Gay History| West Africa". around-the-world. Retrieved November 21, 2021.
  7. Alpern 1998, p. 38.
  8. Dash 2011.
  9. Yoder 1974.
  10. Forbes, Frederick (2010). Dahomey And The Dahomans: Being The Journals Of Two Missions To The King Of Dahomey And Residence At His Capital 1849 To 1850. Kessinger Publishing LLC. ISBN 978-1163235027.
  11. Adams, Maeve (Spring 2010). "The Amazon Warrior Women and the De/construction of Gendered Imperial Authority in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Literature" (PDF). Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. 6. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-08-30. Retrieved 2018-08-29.
  12. "Zora Neale Hurston's Lost Interview With One of America's Last Living Slaves". Vulture. April 29, 2018. Retrieved September 2, 2021.
  13. Alpern 1998, p. 195.
  14. Alpern 1998, p. 205.
  15. Historical Museum of Abomey.
  16. Alpern 1998, pp. 208–209.
  17. Alpern 1998, pp. 210–211.
  18. "Warrior Women with Lupita Nyong'o, 2019", IMDb.
  19. Kroll, Justin (April 28, 2021). "Underground Railroad's Thuso Mbedu To Star Opposite Viola Davis In The Woman King". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on April 28, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  20. D'Alessandro, Anthony (November 5, 2021). "Sony Dates TriStar Viola Davis Pic The Woman King; Moves Affirm's George Foreman Biopic To 2023". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on November 9, 2021. Retrieved December 2, 2021.
  21. "Women in African History - How to Use this Website". en.unesco.org. Archived from the original on 2015-06-07. Retrieved October 29, 2021.
  22. UNESCO. "The women soldiers of Dahomey pedagogical unit". en.unesco.org. Archived from the original on 2015-06-07. Retrieved October 29, 2021.
  23. UNESCO The women soldiers of Dahomey, p. 21
  24. Clodfelter 2017.
  25. Johnson 2018.

Bibliography

Further reading
  • Richard Burton, A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome. London, 1864
  • Holmes R. Acts of War: the behavior of men in battle. New York, Free Press, 1985
  • Frederick E. Forbes. Dahomey and the Dahomans, Being the Journals of Two Missions to the King of Dahomey and the Residence at his Capital in the Years 1849 and 1850. Kessinger Publishing. 2010 ISBN 978-1163235027
  • W. Peukert. Der Atlantische Sklavenhandel von Dahomey, 1740–1797, Wiesbaden, 1978 (in German)
  • Grossman D. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning To Kill in War and Society. New York, Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company, 1995 ISBN 0-316-33011-6 pp. 175
  • D’Almeida-Topor, Hélène. Les Amazones, Une armée de femmes dans l’Afrique précoloniale. Paris, Editions Rochevignes, 1984.
  • Robert B. Edgerton. Warrior Women: The Amazons of Dahomey and the Nature of War. Boulder: Westview Press, 2000
  • Edna G. Bay. Wives of the Leopard: Gender, Culture, and Politics in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville, 1998
  • Tim Newark and Angus McBride. Women Warlords: An Illustrated Military History of Female Warriors. Blandford Press, 1989 ISBN 0-7137-1965-6
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