The French Conquest of Dahomey
'The White man is concerned with commerce and the Black man must trade with the White. Let the Blacks do no harm to the Whites and in the same way the Whites must do no harm to the Blacks' - Behanzin, last King of Dahomey. An Article by John D. Hargreaves
Late Victorians, and their continental contemporaries, were psychologically prepared for imperialism by prevalent images of unregenerate African savagery. These were epitomised by the West African kingdom of Dahomey, a despotic monarchy which not only raided its neighbours for slaves but engaged regularly in the practice of human sacrifice. Modern anthropologists and historians have done much to make these sanguinary practices of the Fon, as the people of Dahomey were known, intelligible, explaining how the national ancestor cult required messengers to be dispatched repeatedly to the dead kings. Hence human victims were sacrificed annually as an essential part of the religious ceremonies carried out in Abomey, the capital, at the national 'customs', a sort of festival to exemplify the power of the monarch. Much larger numbers perished at the funerals of kings.
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